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 [12月 20, 2024]

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The world this week

The world this year 2024
The world this year ::

The weekly cartoon

This week’s cover
The Economist :: How we saw the world

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The world this year

The world this year 2024

12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

In a remarkable comebackDonald Trump was elected as America’s

president for a second time. Six months before the vote Mr Trump was
found guilty of falsifying business records in a hush-money case, the first
criminal conviction handed to anyone who has sat in the Oval Office. In
July a gunman tried to assassinate the Republican at a campaign event,
slightly wounding him; Mr Trump’s rallying cry of “Fight, fight, fight!”
energised his base. Kamala Harris’s “brat summer” turned out to be a damp
squib for the Democrats, who also lost control of the Senate at the election.
Ms Harris became the Democratic candidate when Joe Biden pulled out of
the race after a disastrous debate for him.

I could never be president

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Elon Musk aligned himself with Mr Trump and spent $277m backing the
Republicans. His wealth has risen by $170bn since the election, thanks
mostly to the increase in the value of his Tesla stock.

Israelinvaded Lebanon, after Hizbullah intensified its rocket attacks. In

preparation for its offensive Israel injured or killed thousands of Hizbullah
operatives by tapping and exploding their pagers and Israeli forces went
about eliminating the Iranian-backed militia’s leadership, including Hassan
Nasrallah, its long-serving head. The leadership of Hamas was also all but
wiped out. Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the terror attacks on October
7th 2023, was killed sitting in a chair. In April Iran launched its first direct
missile attack on Israel. America, Britain, France, Jordan and other Arab
states contributed to Israel’s defence.

The war in Gaza ground on, even though Hamas found itself increasingly
isolated and boxed in. There was no let-up in the misery for ordinary
Gazans caught up in the fighting, and aid agencies warned of possible
famine. In December Israel and Hamas seemed to be moving closer to a
ceasefire.

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, was killed in a helicopter crash. The new
president, Masoud Pezeshkian, brought a change of tone to the government,
suggesting he would like to restart negotiations with the West. At the start
of the year Islamic State bombed an event commemorating an Iranian
general assassinated by America in 2020, killing 95 people.

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Syrian rebels rolled into Damascus, bringing an end to the 53-year rule of
the Assad regime. The speed of the advance took everyone by surprise, not
least Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow. The rebels are led by an
Islamist group, which has appointed an interim prime minister until March
2025.

Election day

Labour won Britain’s election with a stonking majority, ending 14 years of

Conservative rule. But things quickly turned sour for Sir Keir Starmer’s
new government. Anti-migrant riots soon broke out and a decision to end
winter-fuel aid for pensioners was widely criticised. Businesses took fright
at a tax-raising budget. The Tories chose Kemi Badenoch as their new
leader, the first black person to head one of Britain’s big parties. In
February Michelle O’Neill became the first Irish-nationalist to lead
Northern Ireland’s executive.

Ukraine lost ground in its fight against Russia. In a bold move, Ukrainian
troops took the fight across the border into Russia’s Kursk province. But
Russia turned to North Korea for soldiers to replenish its forces, the first
time in a century it has invited a foreign force into the country. NATO allies

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sent F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine for the first time and America allowed it to
use long-range ATACMS missiles. Meanwhile, Sweden at last joined
NATO. Mark Rutte became the military alliance’s new secretary-general.

My vote don’t count

In Russia Alexei Navalny, the country’s leading opposition figure, died

mysteriously in the Arctic prison where he was being held. No serious
opponents to Vladimir Putin were allowed to stand in a sham presidential
election. Soon after the poll an affiliate of Islamic State in Central Asia
attacked a venue holding a rock concert in Moscow’s suburbs, killing 145
people.

With inflation easing, the big central banks started to cut interest rates for
the first time in years. The European Central Bank set the ball rolling,
followed by the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. The Bank of
Japan went in the other direction, raising its main rate in March for the first
time in 17 years. At the end of the year, the Fed cut again, taking its main
rate to a range of between 4.25% and 4.5%, but it also signalled that it
would drastically slow the pace of reductions in 2025.

Stockmarkets shuddered at the Fed’s forecast of a slower pace of easing,

though it was generally a good year for equities, with markets hitting many
record highs. The S&P 500 broke its first of the year in January, two years
after the previous record was set. It has risen by 23% in 2024. Japanese
markets broke highs set 34 years ago, but they plunged in early August in
an unwinding of the carry trade. The Nikkei 225 is up by 17%. Nvidia,
which saw its stock increase by 170%, vied with Apple and Microsoft for
the title of world’s most valuable company.

Japan’s new prime minister, Ishiba Shigeru, called a snap election and in a
shock result his Liberal Democratic Party lost its majority. He now depends
on a minority coalition to govern, just as the country faces some stiff
economic challenges.

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In Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina won re-election in January, but huge
demonstrations in July and a violent crackdown on the protests caused her
to flee the country, ending 15 years of autocratic rule. Elsewhere in South
Asia India’s BJP lost its majority in India’s election, forcing Narendra
Modi to turn to allied parties for support. Sri Lanka’s presidential election
was won by Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a former Marxist. Candidates
linked to Imran Khan claimed that Pakistan’s election was rigged; parties
aligned with the army formed the government.

Vote, baby, vote

More than 70 elections were held in 2024 in countries covering more than
half of the world’s population. In South Africa the African National
Congress lost its majority for the first time since the end of apartheid.
Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as Mexico’s first female president.
Prabowo Subianto, Indonesia’s defence minister, declared victory in a
presidential election. After a constitutional crisis Senegal’s presidential
ballot was won by Bassirou Diomaye Faye, an anti-corruption crusader who
was freed from prison less than two weeks before the vote. Georgia’s
Russia-friendly governing party was returned to power, despite widespread
protests against a law curtailing the media and NGOS.

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Thailand was thrown into political turmoil when the Constitutional Court
dismissed Srettha Thavisin as prime minister. Paetongtarn Shinawatra was
sworn in as Thailand’s new leader. She is the daughter of Thaksin
Shinawatra, an influential former prime minister and de facto chief of the
ruling Pheu Thai party.

People have the power

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, was impeached by parliament

after he briefly imposed martial law. Mr Yoon’s order prompted huge
protests in Seoul, calling on him to resign. The constitutional court now has
six months to decide whether he should indeed leave office.

In France Emmanuel Macron’s centrists lost heavily to hard-right and left-

wing parties in a snap parliamentary election. The president appointed a
moderate prime minister, who lasted just three months before losing a vote
of confidence, the first time the National Assembly has turfed out a
government since 1962. Mr Macron appointed another centrist, François
Bayrou, to the job. It wasn’t all gloom for Mr Macron. The Paris Olympics
were a success and a restored Notre Dame reopened just five years after a
fire gutted the cathedral.

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The beleaguered German government led by Olaf Scholz also lost a vote of
confidence in parliament, triggering early elections for February 2025.

Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida and the south-eastern United States,
was among the worst storms of 2024, killing over 200 people there.
Valencia was deluged by flooding from heavy rains; at least 220 people
died. In December Mayotte, in the Indian Ocean, was devastated by a
cyclone. Thousands of islanders are missing.

Ballot or the bullet

Venezuela’s opposition candidate for president, Edmundo González, was

recognised by America and the EU as the winner of an election, though
Nicolás Maduro’s regime thought otherwise and the autocrat stayed in
office. America slapped new sanctions on Venezuelan officials after the
inevitable post-election crackdown on the opposition.

A new transitional council took charge in Haiti, though it could do little to

stop the violence and chaos caused by roaming gang lords. A peacekeeping
force led by Kenyan troops eventually made its way to the country but had
little effect. In November the council sacked the prime minister it had
approved in May. The worst atrocity was the murder of 180 mostly elderly
people by a gang leader who believed they were using witchcraft.

It was a bad year for the car industry. The slowdown in demand for
electric vehicles hurt Tesla, which reported its first year-on-year decline in
deliveries since 2020. Quarterly revenue at BYD, a Chinese maker of EVs,
overtook revenue at Tesla for the first time. Tesla’s stock was languishing
until the “Trump trade” boosted shares in companies that markets think will
do well under the new administration. In Europe workers at Volkswagen
went on strike after the firm announced a painful restructuring. Carlos
Tavares abruptly resigned as chief executive of Stellantis. Honda and
Nissan talked about merging.

The industry was also rocked by Joe Biden imposing tariffs of 100% on
Chinese-made EVs (though America imports few EVs from China). The
EU, a much bigger market for Chinese EVs, followed suit by levying its

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own duties. China responded by imposing trade penalties on certain
European products. Tariffs will be a big issue under Mr Trump, who has
vowed to impose more of them to protect American industry.

Every company seemed to push out a strategy in 2024 for using artificial
intelligence, though Alphabet, Google’s parent company, lost $80bn in
market value in a day amid controversy over Gemini, its AI model. In
overcompensating for diversity Gemini depicted erroneous images of
historical figures, including black Vikings and a female pope. Google also
lost a landmark antitrust case over its search engine. In 2025 a judge will
decide whether to break up Google.

Boeing had a terrible year. In January a panel fell off one of its planes after
take-off, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the aircraft. The incident
turned up more safety mishaps in Boeing’s manufacturing process, leading
to the resignation of Dave Calhoun as CEO. To top it all Boeing workers
went on strike, causing more delays to production.

Boeing was also humbled by the breakdown of its Starliner spacecraft,

stranding two astronauts at the International Space Station. But there were
successes in space elsewhere. SpaceX’s Starship took one giant leap
forward when the rocket’s booster returned directly to its launch pad.

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NASA went back to the Moon for the first time since 1972 with its
Odysseus lander. Japan became the fifth country to land a spacecraft on the
lunar surface. And a private crew of four astronauts flew 1,400km (870
miles) above Earth’s surface, the farthest humans have travelled in space
apart from missions to the Moon. The crew was led by Jared Isaacman,
whom Mr Trump wants to lead NASA. Mr Isaacman has vowed to “usher
in an era where humanity becomes a true spacefaring civilisation”.
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The world this week

The weekly cartoon

12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

Dig deeper into the subject of this week’s cartoon:

Europe: Once dominant, Germany is now desperate

Leader: Germany cannot afford to wait to relax its debt brake
German election 2025: Who is ahead in the polls?

The editorial cartoon appears weekly in The Economist. You can see last
week’s here.

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The Economist

This week’s cover

How we saw the world
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

CHOOSING THE cover of the end-of-year double issue can feel odd. No
matter how tumultuous the news (and events in Syria and Georgia are
making sure that the holiday season brings little in the way of calm), it
swerves away from it. Instead inspiration comes from myriad special
features, which this year include everything from efforts to cancel Pushkin
in Odessa, to the glories of the Triassic period, to the afterlife of aeroplanes.

It has become customary for our brilliant designers to come up with two
types of cover. The first takes inspiration from just one story to create a
single image that nods to the season in some way. The other incorporates all
the stories for readers to discover (Christmas Easter eggs, if you like). Last
year’s cover was an unapologetically festive version of the second variety: a
Christmas tree in suitably seasonal green and red.

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This year was no different. Our first idea drew on a piece about Paul
Salopek, an American writer who is on a 38,000km journey across the
planet, retracing the path of the first human migration—on foot. Our
correspondent walked with Mr Salopek through the heat of a Japanese
summer.

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That didn’t seem quite the right weather for a cover at this time of year so
the sketch showed him walking through the snow. In the first iteration he is
rather small, dwarfed by the sheer length of his journey but also oddly
overshadowed by a telephone pole.

The second idea drew on a story about the world’s greatest fish market,
Toyosu, in the Japanese capital, Tokyo. Fish is more Christmassy than you
might think. Many countries incorporate fish into their festive meals
(herring in Denmark, shrimp on the BBQ in Australia, the feast of the seven
fishes in Italy). And a fish market is an icy place, which also seemed to suit
the season.

The illustrator, Xinmei Liu, took inspiration from a Japanese painting, “Fish
Market at Zakoba”, from the series, “Famous Views of Naniwa”, by
Utagawa Hiroshige, which dates back to around 1834. It felt appropriate
because apart from the fish market and Mr Salopek’s walk through Japan,
we have two other stories about Japan in the issue this year: one about the
rigours of Japanese child-rearing, and another about Godzilla, a classic of
the Japanese film industry.

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Ms Liu used the image as a starting point for a cover showing a fish market
that featured references to all the stories in the issue. Her first version works
well. A good Samaritan helps someone who has slipped over. An axolotl
lurks in a tank (mournfully, I assume, given their status as a delicacy in
Japan). A couple canoodle between crustaceans, a nod to the story about
how little anyone actually knows about sex. A cat and a dog get under
everyone’s feet, representing the tale of America’s abandoned pets and the
network of volunteers rescuing them.

It’s all in black and white so it’s hard to imagine the mood of the final
design. The colours of the original artwork are muted blues and browns.
The blues would work but replicating those tones wholesale wouldn’t bring
the cheer we want from a holiday cover. The Harvard pennant looks odd in
a tank of water. We’re missing Pushkin, who made a late appearance in the
issue in a piece about cancel culture in Ukraine. And there isn’t enough
space to advertise the stories in the issue—crucial information to tempt
readers.

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In the redrafted first option, Mr Salopek looms much larger and the pole has
gone. A heavily laden donkey has appeared, a nice allusion to the extent of
his journey and the time of year. The balance of the image works far better
and overall it is charming. But it might not hold readers’ interest for two
weeks.

The reworked fish market is delightful. The colours are warm and cheerful.
The fairy lights glow and now include a planetary bulb alluding to a story
charting the entire contents of the universe. A new string of lights has been
wound around the coppiced bonsai tree. Pushkin has joined the axolotl in
the fish tank and the Harvard flag is pinned in a more fitting spot. The
references to each story are distinct and cryptic enough to keep you poring
over it, if not for a fortnight, then at least for the duration of a glass of
mulled wine.■

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The World Ahead

The World Ahead 2025
Future-gazing analysis, predictions and speculation

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The World Ahead

The World Ahead 2025

Future-gazing analysis, predictions and speculation
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

EVERY NOVEMBER we publish our annual predictive guide to the

coming year, The World Ahead. In this year’s edition, our correspondents
and invited experts consider the global outlook in geopolitics, business,
technology and culture; the implications of Donald Trump’s victory, for
America and the world; and the challenges and opportunities of rapid
technological change in clean energy, artificial intelligence and medicine.

See the full edition.

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Leaders
What to make of 2024
The world :: A turbulent year has shed fresh light on some important truths

Keep the Caucasus safe from Russia

Georgia on your mind :: Georgia’s protesters and president need help

Global warming is speeding up. Another reason to think

about geoengineering
Of clouds and Crutzen :: Reducing sulphur emissions saves lives. But it could also be
hastening planetary warming

The Economist’s country of the year for 2024

When nations excel :: The winner toppled a tyrant and seems headed for something better

How to give money to good causes

Doing good :: Let a balance of morals, liberty and efficiency be your guide

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The world

What to make of 2024

A turbulent year has shed fresh light on some important truths
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

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OUR PAGES have been full of suffering in 2024. War has raged on three
continents: the world watched Gaza, Lebanon and Ukraine most closely, but
the fighting in Sudan was the most deadly. Storms, tempests, floods and
fires have ruined lives, and taken them. All the while, the rivalry between
countries siding with China and the American-led Western alliance has
deepened, even as America has chosen as president a man whose
commitment to that alliance is in doubt.

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At first sight, therefore, 2024 has amplified a growing sense that the
multilateral order which emerged from the second world war is coming
apart. Increasingly, governments act as if might is right. Autocrats flout the
rules and the Western powers that preach them are accused of double
standards.

However, take a wider view, and 2024 holds a more hopeful message. It
affirmed the resilience of capitalist democracies, including America’s. At
the same time, it laid bare some of the weaknesses of autocracies, including
China. There is no easy road back to the old order. But world wars happen
when rising powers challenge those in decline. American strength not only
sets an example; it also makes conflict less likely.

One measure of democratic resilience was how the year’s elections led to
peaceful political change. In 2024, 76 countries containing over half the
world’s population went to the ballot box, more than ever before. Not all
elections are real—Russia’s and Venezuela’s were farcical. But as Britain
showed, when it turfed out the Conservatives after 14 years and five prime
ministers, many were a rebuke to incumbents.

Elections are a good way to avert bad outcomes. In India, in a raucous

festival of democracy, the increasingly illiberal government of Narendra
Modi had expected to enhance its dominance. Voters had other ideas. They
wanted Mr Modi to focus less on Hindu nationalism and more on their
standard of living, and they steered him into a coalition. In South Africa, the
African National Congress lost its majority. Instead of rejecting the result—
as many liberation movements have—it chose to govern with the reform-
minded Democratic Alliance.

In America the year began amid warnings of election violence. Donald

Trump’s clear victory meant America escaped that fate. That is a low bar,
but Americans may now not face such perilous circumstances for many
years—in which time its politics will evolve. The fact that so many African-
Americans and Hispanics voted Republican suggests that the Democrats’
divisive and losing politics of identity has peaked.

The enduring nature of America’s power was visible in the economy, too.
Since 2020 it has grown at three times the pace of the rest of the G7. In

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2024 the S&P 500 index rose by over 20%. In recent decades China’s
economy has been catching up, but nominal GDP has fallen from about
three-quarters the size of America’s at its peak in 2021 to two-thirds today.

This success is partly thanks to pandemic-inspired government spending.

But the fundamental reason is the dynamism of the private sector. Along
with America’s huge market, this is a magnet for capital and talent. No
other economy is better placed to create and profit from revolutionary
technologies like biotech, advanced materials and, especially, artificial
intelligence, where its lead is astounding. Were it not for growing
protectionism, America’s prospects would be even brighter.

Contrast all that with China. Its authoritarian model of economic

management will have fewer admirers after 2024, when it became clear that
the country’s slowdown is not just cyclical, but the product of its political
system. President Xi Jinping has resisted a consumer stimulus, for fear of
too much debt and because he sees consumerism as a distraction from the
rivalry with America. Instead he instructs young people to “eat bitterness”.
Rather than have his country’s disappointing economic performance on
display, he has preferred to censor statistics—though flying blind leads to
worse economic decisions.

The failings of authoritarianism have been even clearer in Russia. It now

has the advantage over Ukraine on the battlefield, but its gains are slow and
costly. At home inflation is mounting and resources that should have been
invested in Russia’s future are being wasted on war. In a free society
Vladimir Putin would have paid for his ruinous aggression. Even if the
fighting stops in 2025, Russians seem stuck with him.

Attempts to change the world by force are hard to sustain, as Iran has
affirmed. With Russia, it spent billions of dollars to keep Bashar al-Assad in
power in Syria after an uprising was about to topple him in 2011. As Iran’s
economy buckled and sentiment hardened against its foreign mischief-
making, the mullahs in Tehran could no longer afford to prop up a dictator
whose subjects had rejected him. The victory for people power in Syria
came after Hamas and Hizbullah, both Iranian proxies, had been crippled by
Israel.

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Democracies have vulnerabilities, too. This is clearest in Europe, where the
political centre is crumbling as governments fail to grapple with Russian
aggression and their weakness in the industries of the future. If Europe
fades, America will also suffer—though Mr Trump may not see it that way.

And many questions hang over Mr Trump. Iran’s retreat and the promise of
a ceasefire in Gaza give him a chance to forge relations between Israel and
Saudi Arabia, and even to find an accommodation with Iran. He could also
oversee a peace that gives Ukraine a chance to escape Russia’s orbit. Yet
risks abound. Markets have priced in Muskian deregulation and AI-
propelled growth. If Mr Trump becomes mired in cronyism, or pursues
mass deportation, persecutes his enemies and wages a trade war in earnest
rather than for show, his presidency will do grave harm. Indeed, those risks
were worrying enough for The Economist to endorse Kamala Harris. We
still worry today.

Assume, though, that Mr Trump opts against self-sabotage. In 2025 and

beyond, technological and political change will continue to create
remarkable opportunities for human progress. In 2024 democracies showed
that they are built to take advantage of those opportunities—by sacking bad
leaders, jettisoning obsolete ideas and choosing new priorities. That process
is often messy, but it is a source of enduring strength. ■

Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our new Opinion newsletter,

which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
reader correspondence.
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Georgia on your mind

Keep the Caucasus safe from

Russia
Georgia’s protesters and president need help
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

GEORGIA WAS once seen as a vital island of democracy in the Caucasus.

A year ago the European Union still hoped to fasten it to the West, formally
recognising it in December 2023 as a candidate for full membership. Since
then, almost everything has gone wrong.

First, in May, the ruling Georgian Dream party passed a law requiring
organisations that received money from abroad to register as “foreign
agents”, a trick used in Russia and in Hungary, under the autocratic Viktor
Orban, to harass pro-democracy outfits. Georgian Dream is led by a
reclusive billionaire-oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, who made a fortune in

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Moscow in the 1990s before returning home. He has tried to position his
country in equipoise between Russia and the West, but has found himself
ever more firmly under Vladimir Putin’s thumb.

The EU said in May that the new law looked as if Georgia were wriggling
out of its pre-membership promises to reform, not least because the new
conditions would hamstring independent election monitors. And the general
election in October was indeed far from fair. Plausible claims of ballot-
rigging, biased state media, threats to ban opposition parties and the
intimidation of voters were well enough documented for the European
Parliament to reject the result and call for a fresh poll. Georgia’s president,
Salome Zourabichvili, also called the election illegitimate.

Georgian Dream responded on November 28th by suspending the country’s

accession talks with the EU, triggering vast demonstrations in the capital,
Tbilisi, and many other cities besides. The police have responded with
beatings and arrests. Amnesty International says it has verified “numerous
instances of torture and other ill-treatment, several of which also revealed
the organised and systemic nature of these abuses”.

As the protests and thuggery persist, a crisis looms. Georgia’s next

president must be chosen by an electoral college consisting of the
parliament plus regional representatives. Ms Zourabichvili, whose term is
due to end on December 29th, says that this parliament is illegal and refuses
to stand down until it is replaced by a body that was elected fairly.
Meanwhile the college, dominated by Georgian Dream, has chosen a new
president, a former Manchester City footballer, in a vote with only a single
candidate.

How should the West respond? Ms Zourabichvili needs support for her
brave refusal to hand her office to Russia’s choice. Those who back
democracy should continue to recognise her, not her rival, as president. In
addition, sanctions should be imposed on those responsible for the violence
and for cooking the election. Some countries, including America, Ukraine
and the Baltic states, have made a start, with travel bans on a few top
officials, and in some cases on Mr Ivanishvili, who holds no government
position. These could be reinforced by reaching further down the power
structure (to cover those who run the state media, say), as well as extending

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them to the subjects’ families. Those most responsible should have their
assets frozen.

Two big omissions from the list of those imposing personal sanctions stand
out. One is Britain. Like many other countries, it has halted most forms of
official co-operation, but that hits mainly the innocent. The other is the EU.
This week its impressive new foreign-affairs chief, Kaja Kallas, proposed a
list of people for sanctions, but her move was blocked by the vetoes of
Hungary and Slovakia, both led by apologists for Mr Putin. If you needed
an emblem of the EU’s shameful weakness in the face of autocracy, that
would be hard to beat. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
reader correspondence.
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Of clouds and Crutzen

Global warming is speeding up.

Another reason to think about
geoengineering
Reducing sulphur emissions saves lives. But it could also be hastening
planetary warming
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

SEEN FROM afar—as it first was, by human eyes, on Christmas Eve 1968
—Earth is a wonder. When the astronauts of Apollo 8 saw their bright,
cloud-girdled home rise over the barren lunar horizon they recognised at
once that it was dynamic, beautiful and exceptional: something to be cared
for.

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But the view from space does not only inspire: it also informs. Satellites
reveal how Earth is changing, and thus what sort of care it needs. And the
latest such diagnostic information is that, although Earth remains as
beautiful as ever, it has been getting a little less bright.

Satellite data show that, since the turn of the century, Earth’s albedo—the
amount of incoming sunlight it reflects—has been dropping. Because light
not reflected is absorbed, that adds heat to the system and exacerbates
global warming. It is part of the reason why the rate at which the planet is
warming, until the 2010s around 0.18°C a decade, now appears to be well
over 0.2°C a decade. In the decade to 2023 (admittedly a particularly hot
year) it was 0.26°C. For ecosystems under stress the rate of warming can
matter a lot; for humans faster warming brings forward extremes that might
not have been seen for decades.

One reason for this dimming is air pollution—or, rather, its absence. Fossil
fuels contain traces of sulphur along with the carbon and hydrogen that give
them their name; the sulphur dioxide that is created when hydrocarbons
burn forms tiny airborne particles that make the air smoggy. This is deadly.
Every year global deaths from air pollution number in the millions.

Preventing sulphur emissions from getting into lungs improves people’s

health, productivity and spirits. This is why the Chinese Communist Party
has been keen on such reductions. And China’s efforts have been
impressive; over the past two decades scrubbing sulphur from smoke stacks
has reduced its gargantuan emissions by about 90%. Likewise, restrictions
on the sulphur content of fuel used by shipping has seen emissions on the
high seas plummet since 2020.

Reducing sulphur emissions also lowers albedo. Sulphate particles scatter

light. As a result, some of it bounces back into space. Sulphate particles can
also serve as seeds for the water droplets that make up clouds. Fewer such
seeds can make clouds less bright; sometimes clouds do not form at all.

Quite how much of Earth’s accelerated warming can be put down to the
reduction in sulphur emissions is uncertain. The workings of clouds are
complex and sulphur is not the only factor at play. But atmospheric
scientists have long expected more warming when this offset is removed.

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As one of the greatest of them, Paul Crutzen, wrote in 2006: “Air-pollution
regulations, in combination with continued growing emissions of CO2, may
bring the world closer than is realised to the danger [of catastrophic global
warming].”

In his seminal paper Crutzen also noted that there was an alternative.
Particles high in the stratosphere stay aloft far longer than those close to the
surface, and so provide much more cooling per tonne. A thin layer of
sulphates deliberately added to the stratosphere could provide the same
amount of cooling as all the thick, polluting smogs clogging the lower
atmosphere while doing much less damage to human health. Crutzen did
not advocate this. But he did say it should be researched more vigorously,
and that there might be deteriorations which warrant action. One such, he
suggested, would be seeing the rate of warming rise above 0.2°C a decade.

Since then, the amount of research into solar geoengineering with

stratospheric aerosols has increased substantially. But it remains pitifully
small, in part because the experts whom governments listen to on climate
and research policy are leery of it. A report to the European Commission at
the end of 2024 added to calls for a moratorium on practical steps towards
it, and argued for various restrictions on research. And it is indeed a
daunting prospect, not least because it requires a high level of trust in
science, a resource declining even faster than the world is warming.

Crutzen wanted swift cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions to render debates

about geoengineering moot; he also feared that this was just “a pious wish”.
The world’s capacity to do without fossil fuels has increased a lot since
then. But emissions have yet to decline, and warming is speeding up. As
well as cutting emissions, governments should urgently heed Crutzen’s call
for research and discuss how such powers might be used. The message of
Apollo 8 still applies; the bright, beautiful world needs to be cared for. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
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When nations excel

The Economist’s country of the

year for 2024
The winner toppled a tyrant and seems headed for something better
12月 19, 2024 10:08 上午

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EACH DECEMBER The Economist picks a country of the year. The
winner is not the richest, happiest or most virtuous place, but the one that
has improved the most in the previous 12 months. The debate among our
correspondents is vigorous. Previous winners include Colombia (for ending
a civil war), Ukraine (for resisting an unprovoked invasion) and Malawi
(for democratising). In 2023 we gave the prize to Greece for dragging itself
out of a long financial crisis and re-electing a sensible centrist government.

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Our shortlist this year had five names on it. Two took a stand against bad
government. In Poland the new administration of Donald Tusk, formed
after parliamentary elections in 2023, spent the year trying to fix the
damage done by its predecessor. The Law and Justice party, which had
ruled for eight years, eroded liberal democratic norms by capturing control
of the courts, media and business, following the model of Viktor Orban in
Hungary. Mr Tusk has begun the long slog of repairing institutions. He has
also made Poland an even stronger pillar of European security, with its large
army and rising defence spending. However, he has cut some constitutional
corners, and Poland’s relations with Germany are poor.

Some 10,000km away, South Africans also demanded better. In elections

in May the African National Congress (ANC) lost its parliamentary
majority for the first time, having ruled since the end of apartheid in 1994.
Voters were fed up with economic failure, aggravated by ruling-party
bigwigs gutting and looting organs of the state. The ANC must now govern
through a coalition, and its more reasonable leaders have chosen to do so
with the Democratic Alliance, a liberal party with a record of running towns
and cities well. The new coalition will struggle to solve gaping problems
such as unemployment and crime, but it offers a chance of better rule.

A country can win our prize for economic reform. Argentina’s policies
have long been dire, with profligate spending, high inflation, multiple
exchange rates and serial defaults. In 2024 Javier Milei, its “anarcho-
capitalist” president, unleashed the world’s most radical free-market
experiment, slashing public spending and deregulating. This paid off:
inflation and borrowing costs fell and the economy started to grow again in
the third quarter. But Argentina still has an overvalued currency, and public
support for shock therapy may not last.

Our runner-up is a late entrant: Syria. The ousting of Bashar al-Assad on

December 8th ended half a century of depraved dynastic dictatorship. In
just the past 13 years civil war and state violence have killed perhaps
600,000 people. Mr Assad’s regime used chemical weapons and mass
torture against perceived opponents, and resorted to industrial-scale drug-
dealing to raise cash. His fall brought joy to Syrians and humiliation to his
autocratic backers—Russia, which lent him air power to drop barrel bombs,

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and Iran, which counted Syria (with Hamas and Hizbullah) as part of its
“axis of resistance”.

Mr Assad was easily the worst tyrant deposed in 2024. But the quality of
what replaces him matters, too. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the most
powerful rebel group, which now controls Damascus and chunks of the rest
of Syria, has been pragmatic so far. But until 2016 it was affiliated with al-
Qaeda, and for some years it governed Idlib province competently, but
repressively. If HTS gains too much power, it may impose an Islamist
autocracy. If it has too little, Syria may fall apart.

Delta force

Our winner is Bangladesh, which also overthrew an autocrat. In August

student-led street protests forced out Sheikh Hasina, who had ruled the
country of 175m for 15 years. A daughter of an independence hero, she
once presided over swift economic growth. But she became repressive,
rigging elections, jailing opponents and ordering the security forces to shoot
protesters. Huge sums of money were stolen on her watch.

Bangladesh has a history of vengeful violence when power changes hands.

The main opposition party, the BNP, is venal. Islamic extremism is a threat.
Yet the transition has so far been encouraging. A temporary technocratic
government, led by Muhammad Yunus, a Nobel peace prizewinner, is
backed by students, the army, business and civil society. It has restored
order and stabilised the economy. In 2025 it will need to repair ties with
India and decide when to hold elections—first ensuring that the courts are
neutral and the opposition has time to organise. None of this will be easy.
But for toppling a despot and taking strides towards a more liberal
government, Bangladesh is our country of the year. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
reader correspondence.
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Doing good

How to give money to good causes

Let a balance of morals, liberty and efficiency be your guide
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

IT IS THE season for giving. Nearly two-fifths of Americans tell pollsters

that they sign over more of their savings to charity in the holiday season
than at any other time of year; more than two-thirds of Britons say they plan
to donate money at Christmas. But the labyrinth of charities, good causes
and people in need can be as hard to navigate as the seasonal family get-
together. How to give well?

Unfortunately, the idea that you should treat charitable donations

methodically has been tarnished by effective altruism, a movement
associated with Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), a convicted crypto con man
who insinuated that his fraudulent enterprise was ultimately all about doing
good. Happily, the notion that there is a wise way to give has a long and

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noble history. Aristotle suggested that virtue stemmed from correct giving:
to the right people, in the right amounts, for the right reasons and at the
right times.

For the modern giver, three considerations could usefully serve as a guide.
First should be to observe your own moral priorities. Giving to rescue dying
languages and to save dying children both have an intrinsic value. Religion
and philosophy may help you balance their competing claims. But
ultimately, how important you find one good cause compared with another
is a matter of personal choice.

Another consideration is how much freedom you should allow worthy

recipients to choose between different good things for themselves. You
might be fired up with the mission to lift up the neediest out of poverty. But
they may prefer to spend your precious money on a funeral for a close
friend than to invest in a cow as a source of future income. You need to
decide how much to defer to their wishes. This way of thinking helps
explain why schemes offering cash transfers have become more popular in
recent years. GiveDirectly, which offers such handouts in poor countries,
has alone raised over half a billion dollars in the past three years.

The third consideration is efficiency. Be it preventing river blindness,

improving literacy or doling out cash, some organisations are better than
others at getting the job done.

However, it is not always possible to know how efficient charities are.

Sometimes the dollar gains for each dollar spent are hard to measure, if not
impossible. How do you quantify whether a programme to support
democracy has been successful? If an autocrat ends up in power, you may
conclude the effort was futile; then again, you may think it was worth
staving off democratic collapse at least for a while. Smaller charities can
struggle to collect the data they need to evaluate their work. That does not
mean charities that try to solve complex problems or lack data are worse;
just that how well they do good is anyone’s guess.

When you can get evidence about charities’ efficiency, it should enter your
calculations. A defined goal, such as digging wells for clean water, should
be measurable. So, too, should programmes that promise quick results.

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Because some charities really do get more done per dollar, whom you give
to can matter as much as how much you give.

GiveWell, a charity ranker, spends thousands of hours on such calculations

to produce a list of the best charities. Drawing on the SBF-free insights
behind effective altruism, it focuses on the organisations with plenty of data
and places special weight on saving the lives of young children. Charities
themselves could do more to be transparent on efficiency, so as to help
donors make more informed decisions.

Not just for Christmas

Obviously, there is more than one way of measuring efficiency and different
methodologies will reflect different priorities. Rigorous giving calls for
thought and judgment. That may seem like hard work, but the effort helps
donors maximise the benefit of what is given. And, as Aristotle argued, it
makes those who give better, too. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
reader correspondence.
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Letters
Letters to the editor
On gambling, Stack Overflow, museums, Africa, Britain, ancient Rome, book titles,
Britishisms, lift humour :: A selection of correspondence

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On gambling, Stack Overflow, museums, Africa, Britain, ancient Rome, book titles,
Britishisms, lift humour

Letters to the editor

A selection of correspondence
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

Letters are welcome via email to letters@economist.com

The dark side of gambling

I was shocked, saddened and outraged about your leader stating that the
boom in sports betting is something to be celebrated (“America’s gambling
frenzy”, December 7th).

I lost my 28-year-old son to suicide in May. I did not know until after his
death that he had lost thousands of dollars of his hard-earned money. He
had kept it secret that a sports-gambling problem had overtaken his life and

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mind. Based on the evidence that I have gathered since my son’s sudden
death, I would argue that the “gambling frenzy” is mostly about exploiting
and endangering people’s lives in the name of this predatory industry’s
greed and disregard for human life, rather than being “about people being
free to enjoy themselves”.

You skirted over the role of technology. The smartphone has indeed fuelled
the boom. Armed with data of an individual’s betting tendencies, the
industry cultivates and fuels addiction and targets those whom it has
identified as problem gamblers. Horrified as I examined my son’s phone
after his death, I saw first-hand how sports-gambling operators offered him
free box-seat tickets to live sports events, addressed directly in texts to him
from a “VIP host” and “free” ($200-plus) gambling money to ensure he
remained actively engaged with the multiple gambling apps on his phone.

You described online sports gambling as “often a communal activity”, and

therefore less of a worry than “sitting at a [slot] machine, alone”. The
$10,000 bet my son frenetically placed on a losing NHL Stanley Cup game
team during the last 48 hours of his life was followed by a series of still
more frenetic bets placed in isolation on his phone to try to win back his
massive loss. It is clear he died alone.

You said that “Other vices that America enjoys and taxes, like alcohol, are
responsible for far more catastrophic harm.” Yet, according to recent studies
in America and Britain, people who are addicted to gambling are more
likely to attempt suicide than those addicted to substances.

As described by Les Bernal, national director of the Stop Predatory

Gambling organisation, the entire business model is based on human
suffering—and this is normalised.

NAME WITHHELD

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Stack Overflow responds

“Death by LLM”, November 23rd) mentioned Stack Overflow as one of

ChatGPT’s corporate victims. Like the rise of the web, mobile and cloud,
generative artificial-intelligence tools are another chapter in the changing
technology landscape and by no means offer a conclusion for any particular
company or industry.

For more than 15 years, developers have come to Stack Overflow to get a
solution to a specific problem. Our goal over the past two years has been to
ensure developers not only contribute to the foundation of GenAI , they also
become an integral part of building its future.

There are more than 58m questions and answers on the Stack Overflow site
alone. In a world where technology evolves at an unparalleled pace, the
ability of teams to share insights, solutions and experiences is crucial and
cannot be achieved just by AI. The future of the internet and the modern
tech landscape isn’t going to be measured by web traffic. It is going to be
focused on the quality of data, trust in data and the communities of experts
and human beings curating that data.

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With so many GenAI solutions plagued by misinformation, a user’s trust in
data, trust in technology products, and trust in community knowledge is
more crucial than ever. This is at the heart of our recent announcements
with companies like Google, OpenAI and GitHub to ensure AI tools are
socially responsible in sharing content from Stack Overflow and attributing
it back to the users that generated those responses.

There are powerful synergies between Stack Overflow and these AI

partners. This hardly feels like we are a victim of this technology. Instead
we are an active architect in building its future.

PRASHANTH CHANDRASEKAR
Chief executive
Stack Overflow
New York

Museums are for the people

The soundbite from Dan Hicks that the museum is “a prison cell, where
objects go to die” may reflect today’s fashionable thinking, yet repeating it
uncritically has led to us losing sight of what the Western museum is about:

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unrestricted mass access to heritage and art (“Losing your marbles”, The
World Ahead 2025, November 23rd). The British Museum was founded in
1753 and, except in the 1980s, has always been free for the public to visit.
Historically there have been precious few institutions in the world where
this has been possible.

It has always been more common for antiquities and art to be monopolised
by the few rather than the many, such as in Britain’s stately homes. Before
they went to “die” at the British Museum, many of the Parthenon sculptures
were incorporated into other buildings in Athens. Most Egyptian artefacts
were buried with elites and never saw the light of day.

There are places where artefacts die a second death. Museums are not
among them.

DR ROBERT FROST
Research fellow
University of Leicester

According to “Restoring pride” (November 30th) Nigeria intends to build

an ambitious new museum to adequately host the Benin bronzes. Yet the
British Museum refuses to give back its holdings. There is a simple solution

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to this conflict. Copy the bronzes identically, which is possible today, put
them anonymously next to each other and invite Nigerian and British
museum representatives to choose between them in a random sequence. The
public would then have a better opportunity to see these beautiful pieces.

BRUNO FREY
Permanent visiting professor
University of Basel

Give Africa some credit

“The Africa premium” (November 16th) highlighted how perceptions of

risk inflate borrowing costs for African countries. However, your dismissal
of homegrown African credit-rating agencies underestimated Africa’s
capacity for transformative innovation. A credible, African-based credit-
rating agency, armed with deep regional expertise and granular data, could
reshape risk assessment. The experiences of Latin America and Asia
demonstrate that local rating agencies don’t merely reflect market realities,
they help transform them.

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DIANA AMOA
Greenwich, Connecticut

The road less travelled

It is no wonder that the England Coast Path took so long to complete

(“Coastally awesome”, The World Ahead 2025, November 23rd). In his
famous article from 1967, “How long is the coast of Britain? Statistical self-
similarity and fractional dimension”, Benoit Mandelbrot proved that,
mathematically speaking, the coast of Britain is, in fact, infinitely long. The
article gave birth to the theory of fractal geometry.

PETER TANKOV
Institut Polytechnique de Paris

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Tutor in classics

“Gladiator II” may be a poor film overflowing with historical inaccuracies

(“What does Gladiator II get wrong?”, November 16th). But perhaps it will
spark an interest in studies of the ancient classics and Rome. As Dame
Mary Beard mentioned in “SPQR”, historical Rome is a study of
imagination, fantasy, horror and fun as well as a subject from which we can
learn a great deal about our own societies today. In these troubled times, we
would be wise to pay heed to the brilliant books analysing the Roman
Empire and the reasons for its downfall. If it takes a part-gibbon, part-
Gollum computer-generated monkey to ignite interest in Rome, so be it.

CHRISTIAN SCOTT UHLIG

Copenhagen

Solid Christmas reading

Thank you for the list of books with the oddest titles, which included such
gems as “Highlights in the History of Concrete” (“Judging a book by its
title”, December 14th). I am as much a fan of severe contests between
intelligence and ignorance as any of your loyal readers, but it was still a

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welcome treat to read an article in The Economist that had my husband and
I crying with laughter. And I’m sure all my loved ones will be delighted
with their forthcoming Christmas presents.

PETER EDWARDS
Cambridge

You included “The Book of Marmalade: Its Antecedents, Its History and Its
Role in the World Today” as one of the winners of the Oddest Book Title
the Year. You asked, “How many different roles can marmalade have? And
above all who on earth is buying this stuff?” For the latter, the answer
seems obvious: Paddington Bear.

BILL LLOYD
Borex, Switzerland

Some authors just don’t want to die not knowing what would have
happened if they hadn’t given their book a title featuring the longest “F”
word in the English language.

JON MANNING
Author of “Overcoming Floccinaucinihilipilification: Valuing and
Monetising Products and Services”
Melbourne

Strange Britishisms

Dorothy Corner Amsden’s letter (November 2nd) on unfamiliar British

expressions did not mention “put paid” or “cock-a-hoop”. Then there is
“chancellor of the exchequer”.

MICHAEL FIELD
Farmington, Maine

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A murder mystery in the lift

The letters on elevator etiquette (December 14th) in response to a Bartleby

column reminded me of the story of Alfred Hitchcock and Peter
Bogdanovich. Both men were descending in an elevator in Manhattan and
Hitchcock couldn’t resist exploiting the usual awkward dead silence. Just as
other people were getting in the elevator, he turned to Bogdanovich and
started a conversation with “Well, it was quite shocking, I must say there
was blood everywhere!”

KEITH CARLSON
Belmont, Massachusetts
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United States
Is the opioid epidemic finally burning out?
Through the eye of the needle :: Overdose deaths are falling steadily

The Biden administration pursued a mistaken policy on

LNG exports
Gas without light :: It will be reversed eventually, but not before the courts have had their say

Donald Trump’s DEI assessment

Progressive MAGA :: The Economist has been handed a confidential memo by a consultancy
with way too much time on its hands

How the Democrats wandered away from America’s

workers
Lexington :: A pro-labour Democrat’s career traces the party’s erratic path

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Through the eye of the needle

Is the opioid epidemic finally

burning out?
Overdose deaths are falling steadily
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | MIDDLETOWN AND HAMILTON, OHIO

STANDING IN THE bitter cold outside the DeCoach Recovery Centre, a

drug treatment clinic on the edge of an ocean of car parking in Hamilton,
Ohio, Scott Weaver explains where his life went off track. First, he says,
about ten years ago he was in a car wreck. “I started taking pills”, he
explains—they were prescribed. “But I wasn’t hooked on them at that
time.”

Then his mother got cancer and, in his depression, he began taking her pain
pills. After she died he turned to heroin. Then came fentanyl. He lost a
girlfriend to an overdose. “It messed me up pretty bad,” he says. Now Mr

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Weaver is clean and he is taking Suboxone, a drug that is meant to reduce
cravings. “It works,” he says. “People will tell you it don’t because they
don’t want to take it, ‘cause they ain’t done yet.”

Mr Weaver’s story reflects America’s opioid crisis. Having begun in earnest

two decades ago with the overprescription of pain pills, it escalated through
heroin and now to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid so potent that 0.2% of a gram
can kill. Over a million Americans have died from overdoses since the turn
of the century; 108,000 of those deaths were in 2022 alone.

And yet there is reason to think that the tide may be turning. Data published
by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a government agency,
suggest that nationally, deaths peaked around August last year. In the 12
months to July this year, there were 90,000 deaths—still an appalling total,
but a reduction of around a sixth (see chart). Could America be nearing the
point where it is, as Mr Weaver might put it, “done” with opioids?

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No one is exactly sure why deaths might have started falling. “We’re all
speculating at this point,” says Daniel Ciccarone, a professor in addiction

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medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. Data on the
number of fentanyl users are scarce, as are data on prices and purity.

Addiction treatment has been expanding for years. But the drop in deaths is
too sudden and too widespread (almost all states have experienced it) to be
primarily down to this. There has been no dramatic increase in prescriptions
of anti-addiction drugs, either. More naloxone kits (an injection which can
reverse an overdose, first approved under the brand name Narcan) are being
distributed. That must be helping, but also cannot fully explain the drop.

One possibility is a supply shock. According to the Drug Enforcement

Administration, which polices drug smuggling, the amount of fentanyl in
pills they intercept has fallen. Some reports suggest the Sinaloa cartel, a
huge Mexican organised-crime group, has stepped back from smuggling
fentanyl because of American pressure. In July two high-ranking members,
including the son of El Chapo, one of Sinaloa’s founders, were arrested.
Experts however say it is far too early to be sure.

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Another possibility is that the decline represents a return to pre-pandemic
norms. When covid-19 hit, opioid overdoses soared. It is hard to say why,
but feels intuitive: hospitals were full of covid patients, many treatment
centres had shut, and more people were experiencing the sort of traumatic
losses that can make them turn to drugs. If this is the primary reason, the
current decline will level off, and seems unlikely to keep falling.

If this is instead a sustained drop, look to a third explanation. Though

deaths have fallen in most of the country, the steepest improvements have
been in places that were hit especially early, particularly in Appalachia and
the Midwest. In Ohio, which covers both regions, the number of deaths
dropped by a quarter in the year to July, the second biggest improvement of
any state (North Carolina’s was even steeper).

The epidemic may simply be “burning out”, suggests Professor Ciccarone.

The theory is that the most vulnerable have already died, that those left
behind understand the danger from fentanyl, and so new addicts do not
replace them.

For a sense of why this is plausible, a visit to Butler County, Ohio—of

which Hamilton is the seat—is instructive. The county (where J.D. Vance,
the vice president-elect, grew up) is a sprawl of farmland and industrial
towns north of Cincinnati. It was also early to the opiates boom (in the
1990s Mr Vance’s mother, who worked as a nurse, was among the first to
get addicted to pain pills). Now, it is among the places improving fastest in
America.

So far this year, there have been 88 suspected overdose deaths in the county,
down from 130 last year. In 2017, the county’s worst year on record, there
were 236. “We never thought we would see this drop this fast,” says Jordan
Meyer, an epidemiologist at the county’s health district, which distributes
Narcan kits and fentanyl testing strips. That must have helped. But the
biggest change in Butler county is how drug users are behaving.

“It’s fear”, says Dave Hawley, the clinical supervisor at River Rocks
Recovery, a treatment centre in Middletown. In a place like Middletown,
almost everybody will know somebody who has died of an overdose
recently, he says. With the rise of fentanyl, “It’s not about riding the edge

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anymore”. Even hardened addicts are taking more precautions than they
used to.

A few years ago the main way to take fentanyl was by injecting it. Now
addicts are taking pills or smoking it, which is less risky. Xylazine, a
veterinary sedative, is also increasingly mixed with fentanyl into a potent
cocktail known as “tranq”. Tranq comes with awful costs—injecting it can
lead to flesh-rotting infections—but curiously it may be helping some users
to avoid taking too much fentanyl.

According to Mr Hawley, many fentanyl addicts have switched to taking

methamphetamine. This is used either as a straight substitute or to help ease
withdrawal or overcome cravings. Meth is extremely unhealthy. But in the
short term, it is cheap and lasts a long time, and the overdose risk is smaller;
if you are in opioid withdrawal, it can give you the energy to go to work. Of
the fentanyl overdoses still happening in Butler county, half now also
include methamphetamine.

Drug epidemics can be depressingly persistent. Deaths have recently risen

in Scotland, one of very few other places to suffer an overdose death rate
comparable to America’s. But in most of Europe, the 1980s heroin boom
faded away. Memories last longer than funding streams or police successes.
At the treatment centre in Hamilton, Mr Weaver says he too thinks people
have learned from the awful experience of the past few years. “It’s just
more people who want to get their lives back together”, he says. Drugs
offered an escape from the monotony and trauma of daily life. But fentanyl
was, perhaps, just too much. ■

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with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and
Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the
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epidemic-finally-burning-out

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Gas without light

The Biden administration pursued

a mistaken policy on LNG exports
It will be reversed eventually, but not before the courts have had their say
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | NEW YORK

“WE CAN NOW assess the future of natural gas exports based on the
facts.” So declared Jennifer Granholm, America’s outgoing energy
secretary, in a statement published on December 17th. It accompanied a
research report from the Department of Energy (DoE) on the implications
of increased exports of American liquefied natural gas (LNG). Despite her
reassuring tone, this was a sharp-elbowed effort to place an obstacle in the
way of the incoming Trump administration.

Boosting LNG exports ought to have been a point of policy agreement

between Messrs Trump and Biden. The former had championed such

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exports during his first term as “freedom gas” that could help liberate
Europe from the tyranny of piped Russian gas. When Vladimir Putin cut off
supplies as punishment for Europe’s support for Ukraine, Mr Biden heartily
supported American LNG exports, which rose to a record high (and will go
higher). Projects already approved are set to propel American exports to a
level 50% above those of Qatar, a gas superpower, by 2030.

The trouble began when Mr Biden bowed to election-year pressure from the
subset of environmentalists hostile to LNG. On January 26th he unveiled a
controversial “temporary pause” on pending LNG-export projects so that
the DoE’s boffins could scrutinise their environmental, security and
economic impact. Though not an export ban, it cast a shadow over proposed
long-term projects that would benefit countries lacking free-trade
agreements with America (including important ones in Asia and Europe).
The move rattled the industry’s financiers and upset those American allies
who import LNG.

The DoE study, released this week, examines various scenarios for export
growth and their potential impacts. Though the boffins’ language is muted,
Ms Granholm paints a stark picture in her letter (which was leaked in
advance to the New York Times). Further “unfettered” expansion of exports
would, she suggests, raise consumer prices, support an adversarial China
and contribute to global warming. All three claims are worth examining.

The government’s analysis suggests the “unfettered” boom would boost

wholesale domestic gas prices by more than 30% and increase costs for the
average American household by over $100 a year by 2050. This claim is
politically combustible, but open to challenge. An analysis by S&P Global,
a research firm, was also published this week. Looking at plausible export
levels up to 2040, it finds no big price increase likely. It notes that LNG
exports and overall gas production have skyrocketed since 2010 but real gas
prices in America have fallen by two-thirds. Abundant shale resources and
continued innovation are likely to add to supply and keep prices in check.

As for the claim that increasing American LNG would help China, it is
politically clever, playing as it does on anti-China sentiment in Washington,
DC, but energetically dumb. Daniel Yergin, a Pulitzer-winning historian of
oil markets and vice chairman of S&P Global, notes that globally-traded

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molecules of frozen gas are fungible, and cargoes are regularly rerouted to
the highest bidder. This became apparent during Europe’s energy shock
when cargoes destined for Asia were resold to European bidders desperate
to replace lost Russian gas. America gains no extra security by discouraging
exports to China as it will simply get its LNG from eager suppliers in Qatar,
Australia or elsewhere.

The third argument is more plausible. If exported gas is produced in ways

that are reckless, as happened previously in America’s shale patch, a lot of
climate-warming methane is released through needless venting and flaring,
as well as via leaky pipes and shoddy LNG kit.

The Biden administration has introduced a fee on methane emissions from

the hydrocarbon industry, as well as strong rules restricting those emissions.
There is little chance of that fee surviving in a Republican-controlled
Congress. If Mr Trump scraps those tough methane rules too, then future
LNG exports could indeed become a big climate worry.

But that may not happen. Paul Bledsoe of American University points to
new methane standards imposed by the European Union that provide an
incentive for American exporters eyeing that huge market to cut their
emissions of the gas. Giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron already have
made investments to do so and support such regulation to avoid being
tarnished by smaller and dirtier rivals. Also, if LNG is made with low
methane emissions, it is a much cleaner alternative to the coal burning in
the developing world.

So will the last-minute gas gambit keep Mr Trump from his promise to lift
the LNG pause? Not a chance, especially given that Chris Wright, his
designated replacement for Ms Granholm at the top of the DoE, is himself a
shale boss. Even so, reckons Kevin Book of ClearView, an energy research
firm, the move looks likely to delay the new administration’s decision. The
study has probably provided enough fodder for LNG opponents to slow
things down for a while by bringing lawsuits. ■

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with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and

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Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the
state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.
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Progressive MAGA

Donald Trump’s DEI assessment

The Economist has been handed a confidential memo by a consultancy with
way too much time on its hands
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

TO: Susie Wiles

FROM:——Human Progress Values (a B-corp)

CC: Howard Lutnick

DATE: ——December 2024

DONALD (HE/HIM) has made significant strides in enhancing the

diversity of his team this year. Although there are of course opportunities
for improvement, he can point to several diversity, equity and inclusion
(DEI) metrics by which his performance has demonstrably improved.

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Having previously expressed reservations about the virtues of DEI (notably
by calling a former competitor a “DEI candidate”), Donald should be
commended for using his privilege to become a more active ally this year.

Donald’s proposed cabinet contains several significant firsts. His

appointment of Susie Wiles, the first ever female chief-of-staff, will serve
as an inspiration to young girls around the world. Scott Bessent, nominated
as Treasury Secretary, would be the first openly gay person to hold that
coveted post, beating Joe Biden’s record for the most senior cabinet
position held by a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Secretary of state
Marco Rubio would become the highest-ranking Hispanic cabinet member
in American history: a big win for the LatinX community.

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
Donald has been criticised for putting together a less diverse cabinet than
his predecessors, with Newsweek berating him for being on track to pick
“the least diverse cabinet this century”. The HR department thinks such
criticisms are mean-spirited and unconstructive. Sure, when looking at
cabinet and cabinet-level nominees, the second Trump administration looks
as white as his first (see chart). But by the metrics that we have decided to
focus on, Donald has in fact outdone his targets.

He has a higher share of women on his team than Barack Obama did in his
cabinets. He has also made huge strides in the representation of one of the
most marginalised, underprivileged groups in American politics: young
people. If they are all confirmed, his Big Four (secretary of state, defence
secretary, attorney-general and treasury secretary) would be the youngest
line-up for at least the past five administrations. Ten out of Joe’s 25 original
picks were aged 60 or older when they started the job. The figure for
Donald’s second term, should they be confirmed, is just seven out of 24.
His pipeline includes the youngest ever press secretary, aged 27, and the
third-youngest vice-president, aged 40. His cabinet is set to include three
millennials, a 300% increase over that of his Democratic predecessor.

Donald is aware that despite all this, he has room for personal growth. In
the year ahead he should focus in particular on the “I” in DEI. Referring to
certain ethnic groups as “bad hombres” is not conducive to an inclusive
work environment. He does, however, reject the idea that the over-
representation of billionaires (five compared with Joe’s zero) and people
from Florida should subtract points from his DEI score. Donald argues that
positive discrimination in such cases can be justified to make up for historic
wrongs.■

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with fast analysis of the most important political news, and Checks and
Balance, a weekly note from our Lexington columnist that examines the
state of American democracy and the issues that matter to voters.
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Lexington

How the Democrats wandered

away from America’s workers
A pro-labour Democrat’s career traces the party’s erratic path
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

“FREE TRADE’S just a dandy concept/Advertisers tell us so/Don’t you

question, don’t you doubt it/You’re so stupid. You don’t know.” So goes a
song Sherrod Brown composed on his guitar back in 1993, when he was a
freshman congressman from Ohio helping lead the fight against ratifying
the North American Free Trade Agreement. The new president, Bill Clinton,
was a Democrat, too, and he had agonised during his campaign over the
trade deal, negotiated by his Republican predecessor. He eventually came
out in support of it while promising to strengthen its protections for workers
and the environment. The new protections did not go nearly far enough for
Mr Brown, and his song expressed his aggravation with what he saw as a

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blinkered and patronising uniformity of elite opinion. In the end Mr Clinton
rallied enough Democrats to join with most Republicans to ratify the treaty.

Mr Brown went on to serve seven terms in the House and then three in
Senate, earning a reputation as one of labour’s best friends on Capitol Hill.
Rather than wear the official Senate lapel pin, he wears a golden pin given
him by a steelworker that depicts a canary in a cage, meant to evoke the
days miners had to rely on sudden silence from the birds to alert them to
lethal gases. The only trade deal he ever voted for was Donald Trump’s
renegotiated version of NAFTA. But eventually the leadership of his own
party swung back in his direction. As a senator Joe Biden voted for
NAFTA, but he turned out, in Mr Brown’s view, to be the most pro-labour
president since Lyndon Johnson, if not Franklin Roosevelt.

Yet now Mr Brown finds himself in the role, for his party, of sacrificial
canary. In his Senate race in Ohio, he ran more than seven points ahead of
the Democrats’ presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. But he still lost to
Bernie Moreno, a businessman, in a state that not long ago went for Barack
Obama twice. Democrats’ leftward lurch on economic policy did not stop
Donald Trump from gaining ground with working-class voters. A national
post-election poll by YouGov found that Americans without college degrees
saw Democrats as more out of touch and extreme than Republicans, and as
less likely to “fight for people like me”.

Mr Brown has no patience for the argument that working-class Americans

who supported Republicans voted against their own interests. “I shoot
people on my staff who say that,” he says, laughing in his Senate office,
where surviving staff have been packing up mementoes accumulated across
his 32 years in Congress. “It is insulting to people to say, ‘You’re too
dumb.’” Mr Brown thinks Democrats’ problem started with NAFTA. Over
the past 30 years, the party alienated working people, the base of its
coalition for generations, by not fighting harder to protect their jobs and
return to them the rewards of rising productivity. “Workers have understood
that the Republican Party is the party of the rich, and Democrats were
supposed to be the party of workers,” he says, so they had higher
expectations of it. Now, “off the coasts, they just think that we’re a bi-
coastal elite party. And that’s hard to shake.”

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Mr Clinton had reason to advocate freer trade, having witnessed its power
to spread prosperity as governor of a poor southern state, Arkansas. But
over time Democrats’ attention drifted away from those who were swamped
rather than lifted by the rising tide. “I won the places that represent two-
thirds of America’s gross domestic product,” Hillary Clinton said proudly in
2018, looking back on her loss to Mr Trump in 2016. From Roosevelt up
through Mr Clinton himself, that would have registered within her party as
more of a lament than a boast.

Despite their embrace of industrial policy and unions, Mr Biden and Ms

Harris could not overcome the party’s image in one term, Mr Brown says,
and the president’s own policies often got in the way. His decision to
suspend tariffs levied by Mr Trump on Chinese solar panels delighted the
party’s environmentalists but undercut domestic manufacturers, including in
Ohio. For Mr Brown the Biden administration went too far in regulating
power-plant emissions, and not far enough in restricting imports of Chinese
electric cars.

Labour’s love lost

Mr Brown also thinks the White House failed for too long to empathise
with Americans’ dismay at rising grocery prices, and that in general
Democrats do not realise how condescending their approach to non-
professional workers can seem. “They think we see them as a sort of charity
case,” he says. Beyond the rumpled hair and raspy voice, hallmarks of a
style that seems unpractised even after decades of execution, Mr Brown’s
own approach has been to log countless hours in union halls and to
emphasise “the dignity of work”. He likes to quote Martin Luther King:
“No labour is really menial unless you’re not getting adequate wages”. He
tells stories about the pride blue-collar workers take in having helped build
a stadium or a bridge and wonders why Democrats do not make more effort
to celebrate those sorts of contributions.

In previous elections, Mr Brown’s record of fighting for pension rights or

the Earned Income Tax Credit helped protect him against concerns he was
to the left of his constituents on gun control or gay rights. “People are
complicated, and people can hold a variety of different, contradictory

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ideas,” he says. Even in 2024, Mr Brown felt he weathered attacks over
transgender athletes and illegal immigration. “The ad that beat us,” Mr
Brown says, was one that declared a vote for Mr Brown to be a vote against
Mr Trump. “There was no really good answer for that,” he says.

Mr Brown believes Democrats can fight their way back, because

Republicans will not deliver in the end. “Are they going to be protecting the
right to organise?” he scoffs. Probably not. But given the Democrats’ erratic
record, it was neither stupid nor dumb to give Republicans this chance to
prove themselves. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
reader correspondence.
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The Americas
Latin Americans are worryingly relaxed about
authoritarianism
Attitudes to democracy :: The Latinobarómetro poll shows a region that is happier with its
democracies, but at ease with illiberalism

A crushing blow for the Justin Trudeau show

Canadian politics :: His most powerful minister, Chrystia Freeland, quits

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Attitudes to democracy

Latin Americans are worryingly

relaxed about authoritarianism
The Latinobarómetro poll shows a region that is happier with its
democracies, but at ease with illiberalism
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

FOR THE first time since 2015 there are more Latin Americans who think
their country is progressing than those who think it is moving backwards,
though almost half see stagnation (see chart 1). Only a bare majority think
that democracy is preferable to other modes of government, but that is still
a small increase on recent years. Though scathing about their politicians and
institutions, Latin Americans are a shade less dissatisfied with the way their
political systems work in practice. Nayib Bukele, the elected autocrat who
runs El Salvador with an iron fist, continues to be by far the most admired
leader in the region.

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These are some of the findings of the latest Latinobarómetro poll, taken in
17 countries and published exclusively in The Economist. Because the poll
has been taken regularly since 1995, it does a good job of showing how
attitudes in the region are evolving. Although Latin America has suffered
years of economic stagnation, political turmoil and the terrifying advance of
organised crime, this year’s survey data point to a degree of resilience.

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Support for democracy has nudged up since the 2023 survey, though it still
sits below the level usually maintained before 2017 (see chart 2).
Importantly, Latin Americans still believe in voting; as in the past, the
survey shows that new presidents provide a boost to democracy. That
applies in Argentina, which elected Javier Milei as president last year, as
well as in Mexico, where the new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is a
protégée of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the popular ruler from 2018
until this year. Elections in Ecuador, Guatemala and Panama also revived

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faith in democracy. Support for it has fallen in Peru, which is saddled with a
frivolous president, Dina Boluarte, and a self-serving Congress, and in
Bolivia, where decision-making is paralysed by a power struggle between
the president, Luis Arce, and his former political mentor, Evo Morales. This
year’s poll reveals widespread discontent in both places.

Unopposed democracy

Satisfaction with the way democracy works has also ticked up, though two-
thirds of respondents remain discontented (see chart 3). Back in 2009, at the
height of the commodity boom that lifted many of the region’s economies,
almost as many were happy with their democracies as were not.

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
Dig a little deeper and attitudes to democracy become ambivalent. More
than half—and 61% of those who define themselves as upper-class—say it
would not worry them if an undemocratic government took over, so long as
it solved their country’s problems. “The greatest weakness of Latin
American democracy is that around four out of ten think it can work
without political parties, parliament or an opposition,” says Marta Lagos,
Latinobarómetro’s director. The rise in support for democracy in Mexico,
even as its new president is concentrating power in the executive, is
symptomatic of that contradiction.

In a region scarred by extreme inequalities of income and wealth, 72%

think their country is governed by powerful groups for their own benefit,
though that is down from 79% in 2018. El Salvador and Mexico buck this
trend, with 62% and 47% respectively agreeing that their countries are
governed for the good of all. Though 76% think the distribution of income
in their country unfair, 89% believe so in Chile and 85% in supposedly
socialist Venezuela.

In the years before the covid-19 pandemic, Latin America saw several
social explosions, with sometimes violent mass street protests led by
frustrated young people. The mood is more patient now. Only 26% say their
society needs radical change, down from 30% last year, and 35% say it can
improve with small changes. But the majority reject the status quo.

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There is little confidence in institutions. Although the Catholic church
remains the most trusted of the bunch, it has lost the confidence of around
one in ten. In contrast, trust in the police has risen. That reflects a demand
for security in the face of crime. Even so, almost twice as many respondents
think that the economy, rather than security, is the biggest problem in their
country.

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Despite the region’s generally mediocre economic growth, 60% say that
they and their family have made progress in the past ten years. And 48%
now define themselves as middle-class, up from 41% last year and 32% in
2020. On the other hand, 25% say they lack sufficient food either some or
most of the time. Access to a mobile phone is enjoyed by 92%, access to the
internet by 69% and 35% have access to a car. Support for the market
economy has increased steadily, from 47% in 2007 to 66% today (see chart
4). That chimes with a slight tilt towards the right in underlying political
attitudes.

West still best

If they had to choose, Latin Americans would prefer closer ties with the
United States than China. But that was before Donald Trump’s election
victory, and they have a more positive view of President Xi Jinping than of
Mr Trump. Even so, and unlike some other parts of the global south, Latin
Americans tend to identify with the West more than the east. ■

Methodological note: Latinobarómetro is a non-profit organisation based

in Santiago, Chile, which has carried out regular surveys of opinions,
attitudes and values in Latin America since 1995. The poll was taken by
local opinion-research companies in 17 countries and involved 19,214 face-
to-face interviews conducted between August 23rd and October 9th 2024.
The average margin of error is around 3%. The poll is no longer taken in
Nicaragua since its dictatorship does not allow pollsters to work safely
there. Full details at: www.latinobarometro.org

Sign up to El Boletín, our subscriber-only newsletter on Latin America, to

understand the forces shaping a fascinating and complex region.
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Canadian politics

A crushing blow for the Justin

Trudeau show
His most powerful minister, Chrystia Freeland, quits
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Ottawa

Correction (December 17th 2024): An earlier version of this article stated

that Mr Trudeau’s handouts and tax cuts had contributed to increasing the
2024 budget deficit. In fact the handouts were promised after the period for
which the 2024 budget is calculated. This has been changed.

POLITICALLY SPEAKING, the resignation of a finance minister may be

tolerable. When she is also the deputy prime minister, her departure cuts
more deeply. And when the quitter was once your most trusted ally, and
resigns suddenly, just before she is due to deliver a vital economic update, it
may well be a sign that your political spark has finally been snuffed out.

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On December 16th this fate befell Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister,
when Chrystia Freeland left his cabinet. In a scornful note she accused Mr
Trudeau of resorting to “costly political gimmicks” to shore up his
popularity through tax breaks and handouts. Ms Freeland’s resignation
tosses Mr Trudeau’s government into disarray just as Canada faces a
possible economic battering from the tariffs proposed by Donald Trump,
president-elect of the United States. Ms Freeland had dealt with Mr Trump
before, steering the negotiations that led to the renewal of a North American
trade pact between Canada, Mexico and the United States in 2018.

On the morning she resigned, Ms Freeland had been due to brief the House
of Commons on Canada’s latest economic prognosis. Speculation had
already been swirling that Mr Trudeau was about to give her job to Mark
Carney, a former governor of the Bank of England and of the Bank of
Canada before that. Mr Carney guided both central banks during crises; his
experience of right-wing populism during Brexit would have helped handle
Mr Trump.

The prime minister’s efforts to woo Mr Carney into Ms Freeland’s post

were not kept private (Mr Carney had resisted quieter pleas by Mr Trudeau
in 2019 and 2021). Mr Trudeau also compromised his deputy by overruling
her to announce a temporary reduction of Canada’s value-added tax, and to
send C$250 ($175) to the 18m Canadians who earned less than C$150,000
in 2023. Her credibility was damaged further when it was announced that
Canada’s budget deficit for 2024 had widened far beyond Ms Freeland’s
avowed limit of C$40bn, to C$62bn, some 2% of GDP. Mr Trudeau has had
two finance ministers during his nine years in power. Both were driven out
by a torrent of leaks from his office which undermined their authority.

The offence to Ms Freeland seems to have been for nought. Mr Trudeau’s

next finance minister will not be Mr Carney (who maintains utter public
silence) but Dominic LeBlanc, who has been the minister for public safety.
He is a childhood friend of Mr Trudeau who often shields him from
political heat, and who recently accompanied him to Mar-a-Lago to meet
Mr Trump.

Now he must shield him again, since Mr Trudeau faces challenges from his
cabinet and his caucus. The number of Liberal MPs calling publicly for him

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to step down is growing. Fewer than a quarter of Canadians think Mr
Trudeau deserves re-election, according to Ipsos, a pollster. In Mr Trump he
will face a president who feasts on weakness and seems intent on bullying
him and Canada into trade concessions. Canada’s federal elections are
scheduled for October 2025. The country may be best served by a prime
minister with a fresh mandate, to face mounting challenges at home and
across its southern border. ■
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americas/2024/12/16/a-crushing-blow-for-the-justin-trudeau-show

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Asia
Singapore’s government is determined to keep hawker
centres alive
Food fetish :: Why is the city-state’s bare-bones government running a bureaucracy of stir-
fries?

South Korea’s president is impeached

Systemic failure :: Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law destroyed his presidency. For
the country the reckoning has just begun

Dommaraju Gukesh’s win will accelerate India’s chess

ambitions
Grandmaster flash :: The world’s youngest-ever grandmaster is part of a bigger country-wide
trend

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Food fetish

Singapore’s government is
determined to keep hawker centres
alive
Why is the city-state’s bare-bones government running a bureaucracy of
stir-fries?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Singapore

WELFARE IS “a dirty word” in Singapore—or so a past prime minister,

Lee Hsien Loong, once approvingly declared. What the city-state prizes, he
explained, was not handouts, but self-reliance. Workers do not receive a
state pension, but pay instead into individual retirement accounts. Health
care, too, must be purchased from mandatory savings, not dispensed by a
spendthrift state. There is no minimum wage, and no subsidies for staples
such as rice or electricity. Oddly, though, there is one aspect of everyday

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life that almost no other governments get involved in but that the
Singaporean authorities are not willing to leave to the vicissitudes of the
market: eating out.

Singapore’s government operates an island-wide network of 121 “hawker

centres”, which together house more than 6,000 tiny, privately operated
stalls. These state-run food courts are not mere vestiges of a more
interventionist era: the government has built 14 new ones in the past nine
years. The latest opened in September. The authorities take a minute interest
in what the hawkers serve (there must be a mix of different cuisines,
including halal options for Singapore’s Muslims), how much the food costs
(some hawkers are obliged to offer at least one dish for around S$3.50, or
$2.59), who cooks it (only Singaporeans or permanent residents may work
in hawker centres, and no one may lease more than two stalls) and so on.

This being Singapore, there are also strict rules for how customers should
behave. Parliament recently approved a new law obliging them to clear
their trays and litter from the communal tables, or risk a fine of S$300.
Politicians have since debated why the tray and crockery return rate
(TCRR) remains perplexingly stuck at about 90%.

Why maintain this vast bureaucracy of stir-fries and soups? Hawker centres
were originally conceived in the 1960s and 1970s as a way to get food
vendors off the streets, to reduce disruption to traffic, littering and poor
hygiene. More recently the authorities have come to see hawker centres as
“community dining halls”, providing an essential service by giving hard-up
Singaporeans access to tasty meals at low prices.

Shrimp-paste patriots

The government also describes hawker centres as embodying the national

spirit, because cooks and customers of many different races and creeds rub
shoulders in them harmoniously. As the UN put it in 2020 when, at the
government’s request, it added “hawker culture” to its catalogue of world
heritage, “Hawkers and hawker centres have become markers of Singapore
as a multicultural city-state.” (Hawker centres also reveal the limits of this
integration: mixed groups at a single table are rare.)

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Whatever hawker centres’ purpose, the government is determined to keep
them going. That is not easy. Hawkers work long hours in hot and cramped
conditions. Their average age is about 60. Singapore’s rapid development in
recent decades has lifted the median income to more than $48,000 a year—
higher than in Germany or Japan. Although vacancies in hawker centres are
low, officials fret that younger people will not want to go into the trade, and
that hawking will gradually die out unless the state intervenes.

The government’s response has been a smorgasbord of programmes and

grants intended to entice young people to become hawkers. There is the
“Incubation Stall Programme”, which gives new hawkers discounted rent
on fully equipped stalls for 15 months, to try their hand at the business
without incurring big upfront costs. There is the “Hawkers Succession
Scheme”, which pairs veterans hoping to retire with neophytes learning the
ropes, to allow successful stalls to keep operating when the stallholder stops
working. There are “Hawkers’ Productivity Grants”, which reimburse
hawkers for 80% of the cost of new labour-saving equipment, to make the
job less gruelling.

School of hard woks

The most ambitious scheme is the “Hawkers’ Development Programme”,

which provides training, an apprenticeship and mentoring to new hawkers,
to help them find their feet. At a five-day course that seeks to convey the
basics of running a business as well as cooking, an instructor pauses, wok
sizzling, ingredients chopped, to explain how to give hokkien mee, a staple
of hawker centres, a proper depth of flavour. The key is the braising of
noodles in flavoursome stock, he confides, before he tosses in beansprouts,
fish sauce, spring onions and prawns to complete the dish. Twenty students
look on, rapt, some taking notes, others filming on their phones.

One of the students, Margaret, works in logistics for a furniture company.

She has happy memories of cooking with her grandmother, and would love
to do her bit to preserve Singapore’s own brand of culinary fusion, Nyonya
cuisine, which blends Chinese and Malay techniques. She likes the idea of
being her own boss and is willing to accept a reduced income—but she is

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worried about how low her earnings might sink if she takes the plunge and
becomes a full-time hawker.

The family of another student, Kevin, has a business making fishballs, for a
type of soup that is another staple of hawker centres. As a child, he used to
help his parents by scraping scraps of fish off bones. Having worked for a
fancy chef in Australia, he thinks he could freshen up old recipes with new
techniques, such as brining protein before cooking. But he, too, is uncertain
that he can make a lifelong career out of hawking.

The fundamental problem, argues Wee Ling Soh, a food blogger whose
mother ran a fishball-soup stall for 20 years, is that the assistance the
government is offering is not nearly enough to compensate for a lifetime of
back-breaking work for low pay. The piecemeal incentives, she says,
remind her of the various schemes the government has adopted to persuade
Singaporean women to have more children. They are all helpful, but
insignificant when weighed against the cost and difficulty of raising a child.
(This year, for the first time, the number of children the typical Singaporean
woman is expected to have over her lifetime fell below one.)

The statistics bear Ms Wee out. The Hawkers’ Development Programme has
been running since 2020. By the end of April some 566 would-be hawkers
had attended the week’s training course. Of those, only 120 had gone on to
complete an apprenticeship with a hawker. A mere 29 had started a stall of
their own, of which only 16 remained in operation.

The usually hard-headed Singaporean government would not normally

persist with a scheme that yields a success rate of less than 3%. But then the
authorities seem strangely conflicted over hawker centres. They want to
preserve them, but not to coddle hawkers, most of whom must pay market
rents determined by independent surveyors. By the same token, although
the government is a big believer in market forces, it does not think
Singapore’s 8,000-odd private food outlets and hundreds of thousands of
culinary businesses should be allowed to make state-run hawker centres
redundant.

City-state on a plate

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“Singapore” declared Lawrence Wong, the current prime minister, in his
most recent National Day address, “is like a plate of Hainanese curry rice”.
The city-state, like the meal, he explained, is the product of many different
cultures—Western, Chinese, Malay and Indian—all blended together. “Such
a unique dish,” he continued, “can only be found in our inclusive and
multicultural society.” Never mind that Singapore’s sizable Muslim
minority does not really see itself in a dish whose main ingredient is a pork
chop. Never mind that Hainanese curry rice is an obscure enough dish that
the Straits Times, Singapore’s biggest English-language newspaper, felt
obliged to publish an article explaining what it is and where it can be
bought. Singaporean politicians, it seems, like hawker-centre metaphors
even more than Singaporeans like hawker-centre food. ■
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Systemic failure

South Korea’s president is

impeached
Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law destroyed his presidency. For the
country the reckoning has just begun
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | SEOUL

THE DAY of reckoning finally arrived for Yoon Suk Yeol, South Korea’s
president. The country’s National Assembly voted on December 14th to
impeach him for his short-lived attempt to impose martial law earlier this
month. Outside the assembly, crowds of tens of thousands erupted into
cheers and applause when the results were announced; demonstrators
embraced and shed tears. “Into the New World”, a hit K-pop-song-turned-
protest anthem, rang out from the speakers: “The end of wandering that I
was longing for.”

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The impeachment indeed ended ten extraordinary days. Late on December
3rd, Mr Yoon declared martial law—only to pull back early the following
morning in the face of opposition from the parliament, the public and his
own party, the People’s Power Party (PPP). But the PPP boycotted a first
impeachment motion on December 7th. Following that disappointing result,
“I was sad, so I went drinking,” says Kim Seong-nam, an electronics-
company employee who has protested four times since the martial law
declaration.

Mr Yoon’s defiant stance in the ensuing week turned even some in his own
party against him. The PPP took part in the second impeachment
proceeding, with 12 of its members voting in favour. That pushed the
motion over the required two-thirds threshold, with 204 of 300 lawmakers
voting to impeach the president. Mr Kim, like many of his compatriots, was
thrilled: “I am happy, so I’ll go drinking!”

Yet the turbulence is far from over. The vote triggered Mr Yoon’s
immediate suspension from office. The prime minister, Han Duck-soo, a
career technocrat appointed by the PPP, is now acting president. He has
sought to project calm to allies, investors and his own people, pledging to
allow “no vacuum in state affairs”. His mandate, however, is limited and his
political authority weak.

Mr Han will remain in charge of the country until the constitutional court
issues a final ruling. The court has up to 180 days to do so but, given the
urgency of the case, the proceedings may move more swiftly: justices took
92 days to uphold the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, a former president,
in 2017; the impeachment of Roh Moo-hyun, one of her predecessors, in
2004, was overturned in just 64. The first public hearing in Mr Yoon’s case
will be held on December 27th. “I hope they’ll rule quickly,” Mr Kim says.
“The longer the uncertainty lasts, the more damage it does.”

The case is hardly straightforward. Following the retirement of three

justices in October, only six of the nine seats are currently filled. Six
affirmative votes are necessary to rule on impeachment; one of the justices
is a conservative appointed directly by Mr Yoon. (The remaining seats may
be filled before the case is heard.) Mr Yoon pledges to “never give up”. He
will try to argue to the court that imposing martial law was within his

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authority as president, and that he followed proper constitutional procedures
for doing so.

The court tends to take public opinion into account. Mr Yoon’s approval
ratings have fallen to as low as 11%; some 75% of South Koreans believe
he should be impeached. “The justices know where the South Korean
people stand—just look at this crowd,” says Park Song-mi, a screenwriter,
gesturing to an impromptu dance party that broke out near the National
Assembly in the wake of the impeachment vote. If the court does uphold
the impeachment, new presidential elections must be held within two
months.

Mr Yoon also faces a possible separate criminal trial for treason.

Investigators have already put him on a no-fly list and have tried to search
the presidential office. He has thus far refused summons to appear for
questioning. Ms Park, the former president, was first impeached and then
convicted on corruption and abuse-of-power charges. In fact, Mr Yoon, a
former prosecutor, made his name in part by leading the case against her.
She served nearly five years of a 20-year sentence in prison, before being
pardoned by Moon Jae-in, Mr Yoon’s predecessor.

For many Koreans, the sense of déjà vu is unsettling. “We didn’t quite work
out the kinks last time,” Ms Park, the screenwriter, laments. Calls for more
fundamental political reform are growing. When South Korea brought in
democracy in the late 1980s, the country adopted a political system with a
powerful president limited to a single five-year term and checked by a
unicameral legislature. A more straightforward parliamentary system or
introducing multiple but shorter presidential terms could help improve
accountability and decentralise power.

The current system “has reached the end of its lifespan”, Yoon Young-kwan,
a former foreign minister, argued in a recent column in the JoongAng Ilbo, a
South Korean daily, noting that in the past four decades, four presidents
have been imprisoned and now two impeached. “How long will we tolerate
this kind of political situation?” For South Korea as a whole, the reckoning
has only just begun. ■

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Grandmaster flash

Dommaraju Gukesh’s win will

accelerate India’s chess ambitions
The world’s youngest-ever grandmaster is part of a bigger country-wide
trend
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Mumbai

ON DECEMBER 16TH throngs of fans waited outside Chennai airport to

cheer Dommaraju Gukesh, the 18-year-old world chess champion, on his
return to his home city. Mr Gukesh is the youngest ever person to win the
title. His triumph demonstrates India’s growing ambitions in chess—and is
being seen as a symbol of its growing geopolitical clout. This month
Narendra Modi, the prime minister, will meet Mr Gukesh, whom he praised
for inspiring “millions of young minds to dream big and pursue
excellence”.

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Chess champions are often young. But Mr Gukesh has established a new
benchmark: he is younger than Russia’s Garry Kasparov and Norway’s
Magnus Carlsen, who were both 22 when they gained the title, and Mikhail
Tal and Anatoly Karpov, both of the then Soviet Union, who were 23. Mr
Gukesh’s final match was striking for another reason. It was the first
between two Asian competitors, with the youngster prevailing over the
reigning champion, Ding Liren of China. Mr Gukesh and Mr Ding split the
prize money between them, taking home $1.3m and $1.2m, respectively.

The competition, held in Singapore, was nail-biting. Mr Gukesh lost his

first game against Mr Ding. He only won overall after Mr Ding blundered
on the 55th move in the 14th game. Inevitably, the conclusion has drawn
volumes of analysis tied not only to how the tournament was played but
also how the players reflect the current state of their countries. Mr Ding’s
rise encompassed the defeat of Mr Carlsen, who many considered
unbeatable. Mr Ding’s victory in 2023 over a European opponent came at a
time when China’s economy appeared to have eclipsed Europe’s. Mr Ding’s
stumble came after he had discussed facing depression and sleeplessness. It
may well be seen in the context of China’s own recent struggles.

More broadly, however, Mr Gukesh’s win reflects a growing pool of chess

fanatics in India. Chennai is packed with chess academies. He is the second
champion from the city, following Viswanathan Anand, who became the
first Indian chess grandmaster in 1988. The country now has 64
grandmasters, according to the global chess body, up from just two in 1994
and 36 in 2014. By contrast China has 48. (Russia has 256 and America
101.) On chess.com, a popular website, Indians account for the largest
number of users.

From an early age, Mr Gukesh was coached by another grandmaster,

Vishnu Prasanna. But his ascent has not been easy. His father stepped away
from his own work as surgeon to accompany his son to global tournaments,
with the family relying on his mother’s earnings as a microbiologist. When
those were insufficient, friends of the family stepped in to provide support.
Mr Gukesh trained for a gruelling ten to 12 hours each day.

Despite the growing popularity of chess in India, it does not yet have the
same mass appeal as cricket. As a result, just a handful of participants get

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corporate sponsorship, Mr Gukesh among them. That may change soon,
however. Indian aspirational middle-class parents already place a premium
on their children achieving intellectual, not athletic, trophies. Winning at
chess will probably be next. ■

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weekly newsletter.
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indias-chess-ambitions

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China
China’s economy is in for another rough year
The difficult path ahead :: Bold action is needed to turn things around

How to get a free meal in China

Charitable cooking :: As the economy slows, more restaurants are offering food to those in
need

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The difficult path ahead

China’s economy is in for another

rough year
Bold action is needed to turn things around
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | HONG KONG

EACH DECEMBER China’s rulers gather for their Central Economic Work
Conference, where they review the past 12 months and preview the tasks
they face in the year ahead. It is a useful exercise, even if you are not a
member of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo.

This year the view in both directions looks bleak. Retail sales in November
were 3% higher than a year ago, below expectations, even before adjusting
for inflation. Not that there was much of that. Consumer prices rose by only
0.2% over the same period. Both stats reflect the chronic caution of

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households. Consumer confidence has never recovered from its collapse
during the covid-19 lockdowns of spring 2022.

That is the rear view. What about the future? Exports and manufacturing
investment, which have helped prop the economy up in 2024, face the
prospect of a new trade war with America. On the campaign trail, Donald
Trump threatened China with tariffs of 60% or higher. Since his victory, he
has said he will impose an extra 10% if China does not do more to curtail
the flow of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid made from chemical precursors that
often originate in the country. Some commentators in China hoped the 10%
threat superseded the earlier, bigger one. But Mr Trump has said the
fentanyl penalty will supplement “additional tariffs”, not substitute for
them. Back-of-the-envelope calculations by Citigroup, a bank, suggest
tariffs that high could cut 2.4 percentage points off China’s growth rate, if
the government did nothing to cushion the blow.

All of this leaves the folk at the Central Economic Work Conference with a
lot of economic work to do. They must revive spending in advance of the
trade war and soften the blow to demand, if and when tariffs rise. The past
offers some encouragement. In 2008, during the global financial crisis,
China’s export markets in the West collapsed. But its economy still grew
briskly, thanks to the government’s rescue efforts. China back then was a
stimulus superpower, able to mobilise vast amounts of demand by calling
on state-owned banks to lend and state-owned enterprises to spend. It was
also helped by a bubbly property market, which was hard to bottle up, but
easy to uncork.

Unfortunately, China’s stimulus efforts for much of this year were tardy,
cautious and ineffectual. It has gradually cut interest rates, mortgage costs
and banks’ reserve requirements. But credit demand has remained weak. To
restore faith in the property market, the state has urged banks to lend to a
“white list” of supposedly viable homebuilding projects. Banks, though,
remain wary. In May the central bank offered up to 300bn yuan ($41bn) in
cheap refinancing to state-owned enterprises willing to buy unsold property
and convert it into affordable housing. Take-up has been paltry: less than
15% by November 23rd, according to Huatai, a securities firm.

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One reason why stimulus has fallen short in this downturn is that it overshot
in the past. The credit boom after the global financial crisis left China with
high debts, overcapacity and millions of unsold flats. Xi Jinping, China’s
ruler, came to power in 2012 determined not to repeat the mistake. When
the economy faltered in 2015, he coined a new slogan, “supply-side
structural reform”, which emphasised cutting industrial capacity, reducing
property inventories and lowering corporate debt—including the liabilities
of quasi-corporate vehicles sponsored by local governments. A similar spirit
motivated his later policy known as the “three red lines”, which imposed
strict borrowing limits on property developers, pushing many of them into
bankruptcy after 2021.

Whatever its virtues, this mindset has hampered China’s efforts to

resuscitate the economy in 2024. Although the central government
increased its borrowing, it continued to impose financial discipline on many
indebted local governments, which were forced to tighten their belts. Banks
are also cautious about lending to white-listed developers because they
worry they will take a hit if the loans turn sour. Under supply-side structural
reform, for example, lenders were urged to take equity stakes in corporate
borrowers that could not repay their loans.

To cope with the risks of the year ahead, China’s rulers will have to
prioritise encouraging demand over enforcing discipline. There are signs
they now accept that fact. In November the Ministry of Finance said it
would allow local governments to issue additional bonds to replace 10trn
yuan in “hidden” liabilities, mostly held by financing vehicles set up to
evade borrowing limits. That will lower their borrowing costs. And, as
Adam Wolfe of Absolute Strategy Research has pointed out, in 2025 it will
free up about 1.2trn yuan they previously devoted to refinancing this debt.

The policy pivot was also evident at the Central Economic Work
Conference. The need to “vigorously boost consumption” and expand
domestic demand was listed as the first of nine tasks the government must
tackle, elevated above Mr Xi’s signature goal of industrial upgrading. And
after appearing in every official conference report since 2015, the term
“supply-side structural reform” was this year conspicuous by its absence.

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Policymakers have therefore identified the right priority. But how do they
intend to achieve it? They may be helped by a nascent stabilisation of the
housing market. Sales of new residential properties rose a little year on year
in November, the first increase in over three years excluding a surge in
early 2023 after covid controls were abandoned (see chart). Prices also
seem to be flattening out. That may give some measure of confidence to
consumers whose wealth is tied up in housing.

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To prise open their wallets, cities may experiment with electronic-shopping
coupons of the kind that Shanghai has distributed in recent months. These
give people a discount on meals, films, hotels and sports if they spend
above a threshold amount. The government also seems bent on expanding
its trade-in programme, which encourages households to upgrade their cars,
fridges, air-conditioners and other gizmos to newer models. This policy
succeeded in raising retail sales of household appliances by over 22% in
November compared with a year earlier. (Overall retail sales were
nonetheless weak, thanks to an early start to the “Singles’ Day” shopping
festival, which brought forward many purchases to the previous month.)

In a further effort to get people to save less and spend more, China’s leaders
have promised to increase pensions and subsidies for health insurance.
Goldman Sachs thinks the government’s broad fiscal deficit could rise by
almost 2% of GDP in 2025. In the year ahead China needs to lift domestic
spending using measures it has in the past neglected. You could call it
demand-side structural reform. ■

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world.
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Charitable cooking

How to get a free meal in China

As the economy slows, more restaurants are offering food to those in need
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | BEIJING

CHINESE PANCAKES, pepper-beef stir-fry, fish with pickled mustard

greens: to the average diner in China, these must sound like normal food
orders. But to the staff at some restaurants they represent something else.
These are code words that customers can use to signal that they would like
a free meal. Such charitable schemes are becoming more common, as the
Chinese economy sags. And restaurant owners report that an increasing
number of people are using the code words.

Huang Ming has offered free bowls of noodles or dumplings since he

opened his restaurant in the south-western city of Chengdu eight years ago.
Back then, he says, only a few free bowls were claimed each month. Now
his restaurant hands out dozens, usually to people in their 20s and 30s, says

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Mr Huang. China’s youth-unemployment rate has been over 16% since
July.

Most of the restaurant owners offering free meals appear motivated by

compassion. Mr Huang recalls his own experience nearly a decade ago.
Hungry and struggling, he walked into a restaurant he could not afford and
left with a full stomach. The cost of such kindness tends to be manageable.
And today there is also a marketing benefit. Users of Dianping, a
restaurant-review app, and Xiaohongshu, China’s answer to Instagram,
share photos of signs advertising free meals. Commenters often vow to
frequent benevolent eateries.

Most people in China do not need a free meal, but many are spending less
on food. Young people are going to canteens for senior citizens, where they
can buy tasty dishes at discounted prices. Cheap food courts beneath malls
and office buildings have become lively lunch spots. Some eateries promote
inexpensive options called “poor man’s meals”. Users of delivery platforms
are making their orders more affordable by choosing an option that allows
them to share costs with other users nearby.

The food industry, like other sectors of the economy, has suffered from the
public’s thriftiness. National restaurant chains report lower average
spending per customer. Beijing’s big food and beverage companies saw
their profits fall by 88.8% year on year in the first half of 2024, according to
city statistics. Mr Huang says his restaurant may have to close because of
declining revenues. That danger will not stop him from offering free meals,
though.■

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understand what the world makes of China—and what China makes of the
world.
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Middle East & Africa

Everyone wants to meet Syria’s new rulers
Meet the boss :: But a flurry of diplomatic meetings in Damascus points to the obstacles ahead

Israel and Hamas look close to some kind of deal

Prospects of a ceasefire in Gaza :: Lebanon, Syria and Donald Trump have all been important

Ethiopia and Somalia claim to have settled a dangerous

feud
A deal in the Horn? :: But there are reasons to be sceptical

South Sudan’s economic crisis threatens its fragile peace

When the oil stops :: It shows what happens when a petrostate’s lifeline disappears overnight

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Meet the boss

Everyone wants to meet Syria’s

new rulers
But a flurry of diplomatic meetings in Damascus points to the obstacles
ahead
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | DAMASCUS AND DUBAI

IT WAS A very social week for a man with a $10m bounty on his head.
Foreign diplomats rushed to Damascus to talk with Ahmad al-Sharaa
(pictured), the rebel commander who led the offensive that ousted Bashar
al-Assad. His Islamist faction, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), is blacklisted
as a terrorist group by America, Britain, the European Union and the United
Nations. That did not prevent him from meeting Geir Pedersen, the UN
special envoy for Syria, or delegations from Britain, France, Qatar, Turkey
and other countries.

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After more than a decade of civil war, Syria is emerging from isolation. But
Mr Sharaa’s meetings this week point to the challenges ahead: sceptical
foreign powers, uncertain politics and a worsening conflict in the country’s
north-east.

An interim government, dominated by HTS, is meant to rule until March.

One of its priorities is to persuade Western governments to lift the sanctions
imposed during Mr Assad’s reign. America has broad restrictions aimed at
Syria’s energy and construction sectors, both of which will be vital for post-
war reconstruction.

In a letter to Joe Biden, the lawmakers who wrote one of America’s

sanctions bills urged the president to move quickly in removing the
restrictions. “The fall of the Assad regime presents a pivotal opportunity,”
they argued. But other members of Congress seem inclined to wait. So do
European governments. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, said the
bloc would only start lifting sanctions once HTS has taken “positive steps”
towards creating an inclusive government.

Early signs of that are mixed. In recent days Mr Sharaa has met
representatives of minority groups, including the Druze, and rival rebel
groups, like the faction that led the uprising in southern Syria earlier this
month. Meeting them is one thing, though; giving them a role in a post-
Assad government is another.

The road map for Syria’s political transition has long been Resolution 2254,
approved by the UN Security Council in 2015, which calls for an 18-month
process that culminates in new elections. On December 14th a group of
Western and regional powers met in Jordan and reiterated their support for
the resolution.

But when Mr Sharaa met Mr Pedersen a day later, the HTS leader said it
was time to reconsider the plan. On some level, he is right. The resolution’s
call for dialogue between the Assad regime and the opposition is clearly no
longer relevant. Talk of discarding the resolution, though, leaves some
Syrians fearing that HTS may eschew dialogue altogether—and that it will
seek to monopolise control.

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Wrangling with foreign powers is hardly easier. Mr Sharaa has condemned
Israel for carrying out hundreds of air strikes and seizing territory in
southern Syria. On the northern border Turkey is building up forces, both its
own troops and members of a Syrian mercenary outfit. It seems to be
planning a larger offensive against the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a
Kurdish-led militia that controls much of north-east Syria. Turkey considers
it a terrorist group because of its ties to Kurdish rebels.

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This would not be the first time Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president,
has threatened such a move. But this time he may be serious: the Assad
regime’s overthrow has left the SDF vulnerable. On December 17th a
spokesman for America’s State Department said Turkey had agreed to
extend a ceasefire with the SDF until the end of the week—a very brief
respite.

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Meanwhile, some European countries want to withhold sanctions relief
unless Russia is forced out of its military bases in Syria. According to Ms
Kallas, “many foreign ministers” believe “it should be a condition for the
new leadership that they also get rid of the Russian influence.”

HTS is negotiating with Russia about the bases. A source close to the group
says it wants to be pragmatic. For now, though, Russia is scrambling to
withdraw hundreds of troops and military vehicles from other parts of
Syria, consolidating its forces at Khemeimim air base near the coast.

Russia’s leverage is limited. It could threaten to block efforts to lift UN

sanctions on HTS—but if the group eventually dissolves itself, as Mr
Sharaa has promised, those sanctions will be moot. It could also offer
humanitarian aid to Syria, though it might find itself in a bidding war.
Ukraine has already offered to supply wheat.

Syria will soon have a pressing need for basic commodities. Iran had been
shipping as much as 80,000 barrels of free oil per day. Those deliveries
have been halted. Syria could buy oil on the spot market, but that requires
hard currency, which is scarce. Foreign reserves are believed to have fallen
as low as $200m, down from $17bn before the war. Mr Assad and his
cronies are thought to have stolen billions.

After more than a week of silence, on December 16th a statement attributed

to Mr Assad appeared on a social-media account he previously used. He
claimed he never wanted to flee Syria—“the only course of action was to
continue fighting”—but that his Russian backers forced him to evacuate.
Though it could not be authenticated, the missive sounded like Mr Assad. It
was widely mocked by Syrians, and then forgotten: another sign of how
quickly the former president, who loomed so large over Syrian life for
decades, has faded into irrelevance. ■

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Prospects of a ceasefire in Gaza

Israel and Hamas look close to

some kind of deal
Lebanon, Syria and Donald Trump have all been important
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

A SERIES OF meetings in Cairo and Doha have led to renewed optimism

about the prospect of a deal between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian
Islamists in Gaza, ending the war there after over 14 months. A number of
factors, including a ceasefire in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in
Syria, which have isolated Hamas, and pressure on Israel from Donald
Trump, who would like to take credit for a deal, have brought new
flexibility on both sides. But Israel’s military presence in Gaza and the
question of the release of 100 Israeli hostages remain obstacles. A truce of
some weeks will probably precede a longer-term ceasefire.■

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A deal in the Horn?

Ethiopia and Somalia claim to have

settled a dangerous feud
But there are reasons to be sceptical
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Hargeisa

FOR MONTHS a spat between Somalia and Ethiopia had been creeping
towards a crisis. In June Somalia threatened to expel all of Ethiopia’s troops
from its territory, where they have long spearheaded the regional fight
against al-Shabab, a jihadist group. By October Somalia had formed a
military alliance with Egypt and Eritrea, Ethiopia’s bitterest foes, as
Ethiopia’s army chief mused openly about arming groups hostile to the
Somali government. Many feared the tensions could set off proxy wars and
draw in other powers in the vicinity or create a security vacuum in Somalia
that al-Shabab might exploit.

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Perhaps they need not have worried. In a surprise announcement on
December 11th Ethiopia and Somalia appeared to make up. After
negotiations in Ankara, brokered by Turkey, a joint declaration was signed
by Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud,
Somalia’s president, agreeing to “leave behind differences and contentious
issues”. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, called it a “historic
reconciliation”. But there are reasons to be sceptical.

At the heart of the crisis is a memorandum of understanding (MOU) signed

on January 1st between Ethiopia and Somaliland, a self-governing statelet
in northern Somalia. Under that agreement Ethiopia had offered to become
the first country to recognise the breakaway republic, in return for a long-
term lease of a strip of its coastline. This enraged Somalia, which considers
Somaliland a renegade province and thus regarded the MOU as a violation
of its sovereignty.

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According to the joint declaration, Ethiopia will now seek “access to and
from the sea, under the sovereign authority of the Federal Republic of
Somalia”. It has also agreed to respect Somalia’s “territorial integrity”.
Somalia argues that this implies the end of the MOU. It will provide
Ethiopia with an outlet to the sea for trade; in return, Ethiopia has rescinded
its offer to recognise Somaliland. “The MOU is retracted,” says an official
in Somalia.

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Not everyone agrees. The vaguely worded declaration does not mention the
MOU and Ethiopia has not confirmed it has cancelled it. Somaliland, the
other party to the MOU, has greeted the news from Ankara with a shrug.
Senior Somaliland officials say they have heard nothing from Ethiopia to
suggest that the deal is off the table.

Some experts suspect that Mr Abiy is still committed to the MOU and is
simply playing for time. Under President Joe Biden both Ethiopia and
Somaliland have been under heavy pressure from America to kill the deal.
But both expect Donald Trump’s administration to be more
accommodating. “From what I understand, Abiy is not deterred by
international pressure, and is determined to pursue the MOU by any means
necessary,” says Abel Abate Demissie, an Ethiopia-based analyst for
Chatham House, a British think-tank.

There is a darker possibility. Mr Abiy may not be satisfied with sea access
for commerce, as promised by the deal with Somalia. What he may really
want is a naval base. The MOU would have allowed him to build one on
Somaliland’s coast. Another option would be somehow to take back Assab
or Massawa, Eritrea’s Red Sea ports, over which Ethiopia lost control when
Eritrea seceded in 1993.

Just over a year ago, Mr Abiy suggested that Ethiopia could try to take the
Eritrean ports back by force. His language was subsequently toned down.
But recently the idea of reclaiming Assab has resurfaced on Ethiopia’s
tightly controlled state media. Last week it was suggested that ceding the
port to Eritrea had been unconstitutional and that Ethiopia was being
“suffocated” as a result. Add other ominous signs that the two countries are
preparing for a conflict, and the outlook looks bleak. “The MOU was just
an appetiser,” says an observer. “Assab is the main meal.” ■

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When the oil stops

South Sudan’s economic crisis

threatens its fragile peace
It shows what happens when a petrostate’s lifeline disappears overnight
12月 19, 2024 12:44 下午 | Juba

SOUTH SUDAN could have been off to a good start. Thanks to its oil
riches, the world’s youngest country qualified as a middle-income one when
it got independence from Sudan in 2011. The new country also had
minerals, livestock and timber for export. As it was near the bottom of most
global development indices on health and education, it received more aid
per person than almost anywhere else on earth.

Yet 13 years on, things in South Sudan have not gone to plan. The country
is experiencing perhaps its worst economic crisis since independence. The
malaise is partly the result of years of civil war and woeful economic

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management. The more immediate reason is the shutdown of its main oil
pipeline following fighting in Sudan, to the north. The crisis is threatening
to destabilise the government, which may jeopardise the country’s fragile
peace.

South Sudan’s bad times started soon after independence. In 2013 civil war
broke out between the two main ethnic groups, costing perhaps 400,000
lives and forcing around a third of the country’s 11m people to flee. The
worst of the fighting stopped after a power-sharing deal in 2018, but key
terms have long been ignored. The army has not been unified. The country
has never had an election, with a poll originally due in 2024 now planned
for 2026.

Civil war in Sudan has made things worse. It has forced nearly 1m refugees
to flee south and diminished cross-border trade in almost everything except
guns and mercenaries. Yet the damage inflicted on South Sudan’s oil sector
may prove the most significant consequence. Oil exports make up at least
85% of government revenue. Since February, a 1,400km-long pipeline that
used to carry two-thirds of the oil north to Sudan’s Red Sea coast has been
out of action, in part due to fighting in areas it crosses (see map).

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That has tanked the government’s finances. The IMF estimates that the
economy shrank by more than a quarter in 2024. The local currency has
fallen to an all-time low against the dollar. “There’s no money, no
business,” fumes Peace Mary, a mother of six who sells smoked fish at a
market stall in Juba, the capital. Because South Sudan imports almost
everything from wheat to fuel, inflation this year rose to about 120%, one of
the highest rates in the world. The owner of an upmarket restaurant says a
customer recently paid for dinner with a crate full of banknotes.

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Salaries for most civil servants and soldiers have not been paid for the best
part of the year. Schools in Juba have closed as unpaid teachers stopped
showing up for lessons. At the finance ministry, people are waiting in long
queues to plead with officials for financial support. “They’re supposed to
look after me,” complains Wisley John, a blind army veteran clutching a
letter from the ministry of defence requesting money for his medical
treatment. “But they say there’s nothing in the bank.”

Violent crime appears to be rising. Each night unpaid soldiers in the capital
erect makeshift checkpoints to extort cash from passers-by. In the
countryside, aid agencies report a spate of armed robberies and kidnappings
for ransom.

The government says it is trying to ease the squeeze. “The past nine months
without oil money has highlighted the importance of restructuring the
economy,” says Marial Dongrin, the finance minister. This means boosting
exports of minerals and agriculture, collecting more tax and printing less
money. Faced with a balance-of-payments crisis, the government has said it
is seeking a $250m emergency loan from the IMF. To reduce its reliance on
Sudan, it has floated the idea of teaming up with China to build an
alternative oil pipeline through Ethiopia to the port of Djibouti.

The government, however, has had more than a decade to diversify the
economy. Yet there are still barely any non-oil exports. The state had been
failing to pay civil servants and contractors long before the oil stopped
flowing. At the same time, members of South Sudan’s political elite have
amassed vast wealth since the country became independent.

Even if the pipeline were turned back on tomorrow, the troubles in the oil
sector would hardly disappear. Production peaked at more than 350,000
barrels per day in 2011 and has been in steady decline ever since. In August
Petronas, a Malaysian firm, announced it was selling its 40% stake in the
oilfields after 14 years, in part due to rising costs resulting from the broken
pipeline. The company has since launched legal action against the
government for blocking a proposed $1.25bn takeover by a British energy
firm.

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The biggest worry is that the crisis could lead to more fighting. For all the
failings of Salva Kiir, South Sudan’s first and only president, he has been
using oil money to keep the peace between fractious elites. Civil war
erupted just months after the end of a previous pipeline shutdown.

Some South Sudanese fear history may be repeating itself. In November the
army exchanged fire with security personnel loyal to the former national-
security chief, whom the president had sacked the previous month. Mr Kiir
has since fired more officials, including the army’s chief of staff and the
police chief. “When you remove the glue, it can all break down,” warns
Daniel Akech of the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think-
tank.

South Sudan’s government wants the warring parties next door to accept a
buffer zone around the pipeline where fighting would be off-limits. Yet
without a ceasefire in Sudan, guarantees will be elusive. All the more
reason to find a source of revenue other than oil. ■

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Europe
German politicians are talking tough, but offering little
Fiery talk, low ambition :: Sparks fly as the election campaign kicks off—but the parties are
scaling back their ambitions

Ukrainian troops celebrate a grim Christmas in Kursk

Ink and blood :: A local paper braves Russian bombs to deliver news on the front line

France’s new prime minister faces a looming mess

French politics :: François Bayrou has an emergency budget but no government yet

Police brutality is not stopping Georgia’s protests

How to beat protesters :: Pro-EU demonstrations continue, despite little help from abroad

We need to talk about Europe’s Kevins

Charlemagne :: How an American name became a European diagnosis

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Fiery talk, low ambition

German politicians are talking

tough, but offering little
Sparks fly as the election campaign kicks off—but the parties are scaling
back their ambitions
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | BERLIN

ONE WEEK ago the leaders of Germany’s mainstream parties solemnly

pledged to wage a fair-minded campaign in the run-up to the election due
on February 23rd, triggered by last month’s premature collapse of the three-
party coalition. Days later, they were tearing each other to shreds. Olaf
Scholz, the chancellor and candidate for the Social Democrats (SPD), said
his opponents lacked “moral maturity”. Deploying the demotic of his home
town of Hamburg, he dismissed Friedrich Merz, his rival from the
conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), as “Fritze, who likes to talk
Tünkram [nonsense]”.

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Fritze gave as good as he got. The chancellor was displaying “sheer
impertinence” and “living on another planet”, said Mr Merz. Worse, Mr
Scholz was an “embarrassment” among his EU counterparts, unequal to the
stature of his office. Accusations of dishonesty and duplicity flew back and
forth like tennis balls. Germany’s election, only the fourth early vote in the
post-war republic’s history, thus promises to be a rather livelier affair than
usual.

The flurry of insults gave some high-minded German commentators a case

of the vapours. Their nerves might be settled by a glance at the leading
parties’ humdrum manifestos. Most were published on December 17th, the
day after the Bundestag launched the mudslinging season by officially
declaring that it had no confidence in Mr Scholz’s chancellorship. The
programmes do offer competing visions for Germany’s future. But largely
absent is any serious thinking about the country’s untold challenges: its
flailing industrial model, its relations with China or its creaking pension
system, which already gobbles up a quarter of federal spending in a rapidly
ageing country.

Instead the scene is set for what, so far, looks like a traditional campaign
focused on bread-and-butter concerns: jobs, taxes, prices and welfare.
Precisely, in fact, the issues that German voters tell pollsters they care
about. On the left sit the SPD and the Greens, both of them promising an
investment bonanza and tax increases on the wealthy. (The Green manifesto
has more to say about the cost of living than about climate change, in sharp
contrast to the previous election, in 2021.) On the right, the CDU (along
with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) and the pro-
business Free Democrats (FDP) urge cuts to taxes and spending, and
welfare reform. All parties call for slashing red tape, as they always do.
None has funded its pledges properly, but the SPD and Greens have more
wiggle room because they pledge to loosen the constraints of Germany’s
constitutional debt brake, which restricts government borrowing.

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“My hope is that the campaign will focus on the big questions we are
facing,” says Ricarda Lang, who until recently co-led the Greens. “So far,
it’s not what I see.” That could change when things kick off in earnest after

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the new year, especially once Donald Trump takes office on January 20th.
Should he slap tariffs on EU exports, or demand European troops police a
settlement in Ukraine, German politicians will have to respond. The top two
candidates both think they are better placed to weather such a February
surprise. Mr Scholz believes German voters will value his equanimity under
pressure; Mr Merz, a more assertive figure, reckons they will regard him as
a better match for Mr Trump.

Yet another danger arises. In Germany, party manifestos are less

programmes for government than opening gambits for post-election
coalition negotiations. In politically simpler times, Germany’s left- and
right-wing camps might hope to get majorities that made ideologically
coherent coalitions possible. Today, politics is so fragmented that seven
parties hope to enter the Bundestag, making that job harder.

The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), also campaigning on a

message of economic recovery, is polling in second slot and hoping for its
best-ever result. No other party will work with it. And even if the three
parties hovering close to the 5% threshold (see chart 1) fail to qualify, the
only possible two-party coalitions are likely to include Mr Merz’s
CDU/CSU and either the SPD or the Greens. The risk is of a split-the-
difference coalition agreement that is inadequate to meet Germany’s
challenges. Populists will then position themselves as honest tellers of hard
truths ignored by the mainstream.

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CDU insiders insist that cautious messaging should not be mistaken for a
failure of ambition. Talk too tough on Ukraine, and they drive risk-averse
German voters into Mr Scholz’s arms. At times the conservatives have
hinted at a willingness to modify the debt brake, and most observers expect
them to make an offer in coalition talks, albeit at a price; but spell it out,
and they lose votes to the fiscal dogmatists of the FDP. Immigration, on

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which the CDU/CSU proposals are especially tough, is a favoured AfD
talking point. “Merz can’t win on Ukraine, and he can’t win on migration,
so he has to focus on the economy,” says Wigan Salazar, a CDU member
and head of MSL, a political consultancy.

The recent tumult is not shifting the opinion polls much; the CDU/CSU
retains the big lead it has long held. The SPD usually improves its standing
during election campaigns. Yet number-crunching by The Economist shows
that, ten weeks before the vote, the party faces a polling deficit relative to
the CDU/CSU larger than any it has ever overcome since reunification,
including in Mr Scholz’s naysayer-defying win in 2021 (see chart 2). The
chancellor’s aides continue to insist victory is possible, especially if they
can goad the irascible Mr Merz into losing his cool. “It’s certainly going to
be a rough, tough campaign,” says Tilman Kuban, a CDU MP. Expect more
fruity language as Germany’s election kicks into gear. ■

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Ink and blood

Ukrainian troops celebrate a grim

Christmas in Kursk
A local paper braves Russian bombs to deliver news on the front line
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Sumy province

THE NEWSPAPER round in Velyka Pysarivka can be sketchy. Barely 3km

from the Russian border, the village is stalked by death. Oleksiy and Natalia
Pasyuga, the husband-and-wife duo behind the Vorskla (the weekly takes its
name from the local river) have a survival algorithm. Oleksiy, 56, drives.
Natalia, 53, listens out of the passenger window for the drones that grow
stealthier with every day. They say they are careful, though they know they
are kidding themselves. Delivering the paper to the last remaining residents
of the village is not a rational exercise, but a love affair. The tears of
subscribers make it worth it, Ms Pasyuga says: “They grab the paper and
hold it to their nose to smell the fresh newsprint.”

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For its 2,500 readers, the Vorskla is more than a news source; it is a
connection to the outside world. Most of Ukraine’s border villages now
have no electricity or mobile connection. When televisions work, they pick
up Russian channels. The Pasyugas say they feel obliged to stay to debunk
the propaganda, though they evacuated their offices from Velyka Pysarivka
in March after a glide bomb smashed their car and half the building. Six
months later the Russians destroyed the other half, during attacks that
coincided with Ukraine’s advance into Russia’s Kursk province just to the
north. Now the Vorskla is put together in a library in the nearby town of
Okhtyrka. It is printed and hand delivered to front-line villages in a car the
couple borrow from their son.

When your correspondent calls, the Pasyugas are preparing a special

Christmas issue. They already know what they want: uplifting stories to
raise the morale of their weary readers. For once, there will be no obituaries
of the local boys lost in battle. The Kursk offensive will be left out too,
though that is less unusual. The Pasyugas say they know “too much” to
accept the official celebration of the offensive as “Ukraine’s great and only
triumph of 2024”. They choose silence instead.

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At a command post to the north, Major Ivan Bakrev is candid about
Ukraine’s troubles in the salient. The artillery commander in the 82nd Air
Assault Brigade says Vladimir Putin’s men are tightening the screws, and
that was so even before North Korean soldiers began to join the battle. The
Russians enjoy a “massive” advantage in almost everything—men, artillery,
machines—and switch between mechanised and infantry assaults to
powerful effect. Ukraine has already lost “about half” of the territories it
once controlled. The reverses began when Ukraine swapped out elite units
for less hardened ones in late September; that was a mistake, the major
reckons. Now the Russians are trying to choke off their main grouping from
Ukraine proper by attacking on their east and west flanks. “Every unit in
Kursk has switched to defence,” he says.

The urgency of Russia’s counter-attack appears tied to Donald Trump’s

impending inauguration. Mr Putin wants Kursk to be a done deal by
January 20th, rather than an embarrassing topic for discussion. Volodymyr
Zelensky seems equally determined to retain the pocket as a bargaining
chip. The Ukrainians are holding on, though the conditions on (and under)
ground are getting grimmer. “Rain, slush, snow, cold, mud, beetles, worms,
rats and glide bombs,” says Ruslan Mokritsky, a 33-year-old non-
commissioned officer in the 95th Air Assault Brigade. The Russians can
drop as many as 40 glide bombs on one position in the space of a few hours,
he says. “In Kursk, death is always close; it practically holds your hand.”

Mr Mokritsky, whose elegant handlebar moustache is a reminder of his

more comfortable civilian life as a restaurateur in central Ukraine, is
surprisingly unfazed. Ukraine has so far found ways to respond to new
challenges—even Russian chemical attacks, he says. “If the Death Star
showed up above us, we’d figure a way out.” He admits to only one fear:
what would happen to his two young children if he were “two-hundreded”,
the military code for being killed in action. The kids are never far from his
mind. He splashed out on iPads to slip under their pillows for St Nicholas
Day, the traditional family celebration on December 5th and 6th. The same
night, he placed twigs under his comrades’ pillows, a punishment usually
dished out to naughty children. The joke brought a rare moment of laughter
in the dugout.

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Four and a half months in may be too early to judge the Kursk operation.
Born at a moment of desperation for Ukraine, whose commander-in-chief,
Oleksandr Syrsky, was facing the sack, the incursion did not achieve its
goal of diverting troops from Russia’s main effort in Donetsk province. It
has cost Ukraine some of its elite troops. But it did ease the pressure
elsewhere, and offered Ukraine a rare political fillip in a bad year. The
soldiers seem to believe the counter-invasion was worth it, if only for
giving the Russians a dose of their own medicine. “When I stepped foot in
Kursk, I understood what they felt when they entered Ukraine,” says
Sergeant Mokritsky. “Let them die and rot on their own lands, and the more
of them the better.”

Back in Okhtyrka, Oleksiy Pasyuga says that the soldiers’ struggle puts his
own worries into perspective. His five hryvnia ($0.12) margin on the 15
hryvnia cover price is enough to keep his team in business, he says. He is
determined not to be the man who ends the Vorskla’s 95-year history. There
is not much of a cushion, no adverts, no excess, so the paper’s Christmas
edition will be the same lean eight pages as usual. They have decided to
lead with a feature on the soldiers’ New Year: how they will mark it, what
they might eat. For Major Bakrev, the answer is simple enough. On New
Year’s Eve he will be at work; he will not be celebrating while his men
freeze in the trenches. “Maybe I’ll mark it with a couple of volleys of our

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guns,” he quips. Officer Mokritsky, who is likely to spend the night
underground, shrugs. The soldiers on the front line will celebrate as best
they can. “Maybe we’ll have Coca-Cola.” ■

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French politics

France’s new prime minister faces

a looming mess
François Bayrou has an emergency budget but no government yet
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | PARIS

FRANCE STUMBLED into the holiday season with its fourth prime
minister this year, no new government and only an emergency rollover
budget to get it through the first months of 2025. François Bayrou is a wily
veteran, a 73-year-old fellow centrist whom President Emmanuel Macron
appointed to form a government on December 13th. He hopes to broaden
the coalition formed by Michel Barnier, his conservative predecessor, who
was toppled by parliament on December 4th. Even if Mr Bayrou manages
to recruit more widely, however, he will struggle to put in place what
France really needs: a stable, lasting government that can begin to get its
dismal public finances under control.

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The circumstances of Mr Bayrou’s appointment were downright bizarre. A
tractor-driving part-time farmer from a town at the foot of the Pyrenees, the
new prime minister was a centrist decades before Mr Macron transformed
centrism into a powerful electoral platform. A three-time presidential
candidate, Mr Bayrou stood down in 2017 to allow his junior to carry the
centrist banner alone, with astonishing success. Yet their bonds have at
times been strained. Mr Macron seems to have had others in mind for the
job, including two loyalists, Sébastien Lecornu and Roland Lescure. In the
end, says Mr Bayrou’s camp, the older politician forced the president’s hand
by threatening to pull out of the centrist alliance, setting up an
unconventional power dynamic.

Upon his appointment, Mr Bayrou referred to a “Himalaya” of difficulties

ahead, the first being the budget. This was underlined by Moody’s, a ratings
agency, which on December 14th downgraded France’s sovereign debt one
notch to Aa3. It considers that the country’s public finances “will be
substantially weakened over the coming years, because political
fragmentation is more likely to impede meaningful fiscal consolidation”.
Mr Barnier’s previous budget, which he tried and failed to force through
parliament, was designed to curb the budget deficit from over 6% of GDP
in 2024 to 5% in 2025. The emergency budget law, passed on December
18th, rolls over current measures, but contains no further effort at fiscal
consolidation. Mr Bayrou’s new government will need to start afresh in the
new year.

It is unlikely to be any simpler. The parliament remains split into three

deadlocked blocs. Fresh elections cannot be called before July 2025. Jean-
Luc Mélenchon’s radical left says it will seek to vote Mr Bayrou down. The
Socialists, beginning to free themselves from Mr Mélenchon’s grip, sound
more co-operative—but say they will not join the government. The
conservatives are likely to take part, if they, in turn, get what they want.

The hard-right Marine Le Pen, who was pivotal in Mr Barnier’s downfall,

has at times sounded warmer towards Mr Bayrou, but now says she is
preparing for an early presidential election. Mr Mélenchon has been
demanding Mr Macron’s resignation for months. The president retorts that
he has no intention of leaving office before the end of his term in 2027.

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Perhaps Mr Bayrou’s best hope of survival is that, apart from the political
extremes, no party has an interest in putting the sort of political pressure on
Mr Macron that might, just, bring the presidential vote forward. ■

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How to beat protesters

Police brutality is not stopping

Georgia’s protests
Pro-EU demonstrations continue, despite little help from abroad
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Tbilisi

THE FACE of the woman in the courtroom was covered in green and
yellow bruises. She was being fined 500 lari ($178); police had arrested her
at an anti-government protest. They had also, she said, shattered her orbital
bone. Many of the demonstrators filing through Tbilisi’s courts have such
wounds: bandaged skulls, splints on broken noses. They target the face,
says Tamar Oniani of Georgia’s Association of Young Lawyers. It creates a
public signal that “if you’re gonna come here again, then you receive this.”

Georgians have been demonstrating for three weeks, since Georgian Dream,
the Russia-friendly ruling party, suspended efforts to join the European

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Union. For the first week, police tried to brutally suppress the protests.
Then they changed tack, letting the demonstrations go ahead but arresting
participants at home or work. They are subjected to physical violence or
threats while in custody, says Ms Oniani, often including threats of rape.

The repression is not yet working. Every night thousands flood the streets
of Tbilisi. Vocational and hobby groups organise their own marches: health-
care workers, rock climbers. There are protests in smaller towns too. The
government has raised fines and made arbitrary detention easier. “They are
losing the propaganda battle,” says Shota Utiashvili of the Georgian
Foundation for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank in Tbilisi.
Some broadcasters at pro-government channels have quit, and there are
rumours of defections in the civil service.

The international response has been muted. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s foreign-
policy chief, wants sanctions against Georgian Dream leaders. Those were
blocked at a summit of EU foreign ministers on December 16th by Hungary
and Slovakia, the Kremlin’s best friends in Europe. An American package is
reportedly in the works.

“Not everyone can afford to stand here every day,” says Tamar Makatsaria,
who is at the protests every night waving an EU flag. The government
hopes to intimidate the demonstrations’ leaders and let anger fade away
over the holidays. It may succeed.■

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Charlemagne

We need to talk about Europe’s

Kevins
How an American name became a European diagnosis
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

AS FAMILIES IN Europe wind up the year, a few seasonal traditions will

feel familiar, from Brussels to Bucharest. After awkwardly lugging an
overpriced Christmas tree up an apartment staircase and dashing out for a
panicked bout of gift-shopping, exhausted parents will plop the kids in front
of the telly in search of a little yuletide peace. French youngsters will watch
a film whose title translates as “Mummy, I missed the plane”, Hungarians
one called “Tremble, burglars!” while Poles enjoy “Kevin alone in the
house”. Beneath the dodgy dubbing lies the same film, “Home Alone”, an
American flick from 1990. Its cultural significance in Europe is not so
much its ubiquity in Christmas programming, nor the film’s cinematic

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merits (the highlight of the sequel is a cameo by one Donald Trump).
Rather, sociologists point to the story’s young hero Kevin, a rascally type
played by the then nine-year-old Macaulay Culkin. In the late 1980s, before
the film came out, the most popular names given to baby boys in western
Europe were local variants of ancestral ones: Julien in France, Jan in
Germany, Johannes in the Netherlands. By 1991 Kevin was the most
popular name in all three countries, and stayed so for many years.

To grow up with the name in Europe has not been an altogether easy
experience. Being a Kevin came to be seen as a sign that one hails from the
great cultural unwashed, at least in the eyes of sophisticated types who
claimed to be more familiar with the names of characters in Victor Hugo or
Hermann Hesse than those in American pop culture. (Kevin is of Irish
origin but is more common across the Atlantic.) Now in their 30s, Europe’s
Kevins have put up with a torrent of bourgeois snootiness. Was it the kid
from “Home Alone” they were named after? Or Kevin Costner, whose hit
film “Dances with Wolves” was also out at that time? Or perhaps one of the
Backstreet Boys, early 1990s heart-throbs? (Or elsewhere: the French had
discovered the name by 1989.)

Whatever the reason, in England “Kev” has become a synonym for

working-class wastrel, a denigration as severe as being a Karen in America.
Germans speak of Kevinismus, or the plight of prejudice felt by those
bearing the name; a Kevinometer app helps parents avoid giving their kid a
name that sounds great today but will come to be seen as a marker of poor
parental taste come 2040. So bad is the name’s reputation there that a
German wag once summarised the existential angst of bearing it: “Kevin is
not a name, it’s a diagnosis.” Studies that seek to establish whether
employers or potential dates discriminate against certain types of job
applicants often focus on two male names, Muhammad and Kevin. Bigotry
against Muhammads is considered poor form these days. For Kevins, it
remains open season.

The urbane pomposity towards European Kevins is in part a reaction to the

upper classes having themselves been snubbed. Tradition in many parts of
the continent once dictated that names should cascade down the social
ladder: blue-bloods would innovate with newfangled forenames, which the

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merely well-heeled would then adopt before the plebeian underclass was
allowed to recycle them. But in the 1980s, those at the bottom of the totem
pole started to balk at such nomenclaturic hand-me-downs. To plump for
Kevin was a mark of social emancipation, of the downtrodden refusing to
play the role elites had ascribed to them.

Many European countries long required names to come from an approved

list (mainly of Christian saints). The easing of such strictures allowed
parents to draw inspiration from farther afield. Proclaiming their cultural
independence, many looked to America. Kevin’s rise was the most visible
result. But the countryside and poorer suburbs of western Europe have their
fair share of 30-something Jordans, Dylans, Jessicas and Cindies too, often
coinciding with characters’ debuts in imported TV series.

The European curse of the Kevins et al fell mainly on boys, and not in all
countries. Italy in the 1990s stuck with its Marcos, and Spain with Josés.
Poland had its share of English-sounding names, often dubiously rendered
(sorry, Brajan). One place had adopted the Anglo monikers early, for its
own reasons. In East Germany in the 1970s, before the fall of the Berlin
Wall, to be born a Mandy, Percy or Ronnie was a sign that one’s parents had
cosmopolitan aspirations, and television sets capable of receiving (banned)
Western programmes. Naming a kid after a character in “Dallas”—there are
a few ageing Sue Ellens in the Berlin hinterland—was an act of quiet
rebellion against the communist state.

We also need to talk about Dylan

Some Kevins have found fame and fortune, often in fields the elites
consider beneath them. A Dutch rapper born in 1994 defiantly goes by his
first name alone. The Kevins Behrens and De Bruyne, both born in 1991,
are star footballers for Germany and Belgium respectively. Since 2022 two
Kévins, accent and all, sit in the French parliament, the subject of much
sniggering at the time. They are MPs for the National Rally, a party whose
migrant-bashing rhetoric has attracted plenty of blue-collar voters (its leader
is himself a Jordan, born in 1995). Whether in hardscrabble northern France
or Saxony in Germany, Kevins are most prevalent in the “left behind”
places where the hard right has thrived.

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Given how its popularity cratered in the 1990s, Kevin is itself a “left
behind” name. Having topped the charts in France until 1994, it is no longer
in the top 500 given names. But visit a European registry office today and
you might conclude Kevins were merely forerunners. Anglo-Saxon names
are everywhere. Noah, the English spelling of a biblical name, is the most
common boys’ name in Germany today. Liam, a Britpop staple, is popular
in France and Spain. Polish parents are naming kids Alan or Amelia, while
Emma is ubiquitous from Spain to the Netherlands. For decades Europe has
mocked its Kevins. It may be they will have the last laugh. ■

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Britain
Britain prepares for its third defence review in four years
Here we go again :: Does it want to remain a serious power on land or sea?

Why meal-replacement drinks are shaking up the British

lunch
Huel tide :: They are being rebranded as aspirational as well as efficient

How to get money from Ebenezer Scrooge

Marley’s ghost :: Get him to leave a gift in his will

Britain’s Labour government is keen on deporting illegal

migrants
Point of slow return :: But its efforts will run into roadblocks

The eternal Bossman

Bagehot :: Britain’s corner shops will never die

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Here we go again

Britain prepares for its third

defence review in four years
Does it want to remain a serious power on land or sea?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

IN WHITEHALL THERE is no pastime taken up with greater enthusiasm

than a good policy review. At least a dozen are under way in the Foreign
Office alone. China policy is going through an “audit”. The AUKUS
submarine deal is being assessed. The crown jewel among all these is the
strategic defence review—Britain’s third in four years. As it reaches its
denouement, Britain’s armed forces are staring down the barrel of dramatic
change.

The review has been entrusted to three outsiders. George Robertson, a

former Labour defence secretary and NATO secretary-general, is chairman,

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reprising a duty he performed in 1998. He is joined by Sir Richard Barrons,
a retired general, and Fiona Hill, a British-American expert on Russia
policy who served on Donald Trump’s National Security Council. That trio
is supported by six defence bigwigs, among them a former Conservative
junior defence minister, and a secretariat which includes American, French
and German officers. They are expected to finish and submit their
recommendations in early 2025, but it is up to the government to decide
whether to follow them. Months of internal wrangling probably lie ahead.

Sir Richard, appearing in front of the House of Commons Defence

Committee alongside Lord Robertson on December 3rd, described two
priorities for reform. One was the primacy of digital technology—cloud
computing, artificial intelligence, virtual environments—as the backbone of
the armed forces. The second was the role of vehicles, planes and ships
without humans in them and the eventual dominance of autonomy. (“The
thing about robots”, Sir Richard told your correspondent in 2019, “is that
they don’t have pensions.”)

These are not settled issues. The Royal Air Force says that autonomy will
not be reliable enough to replace humans in the cockpit completely by
2040. Others retort that this is too conservative. But the review will “chart
that path”, promised Sir Richard, “with at least a 20-year horizon”. He
added that the team would also make “powerful recommendations” on how
to solve the skills crisis in defence, and tackle areas from logistics to
homeland resilience.

Then there is a more profound fork in the road. The reviewers have been
told that their recommendations must be affordable “within the trajectory”
from spending 2.3% of GDP on defence, the present level, to 2.5%, the
target. Yet in Kafkaesque fashion, that trajectory might not be set until a
spending review in June.

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Moreover, the nuclear deterrent increasingly cannibalises all else. Its cost
has risen from 5-6% of the defence budget a few years ago to at least 19%
by next year, notes Sash Tusa of Agency Partners, an equity-research firm
(see chart). That, plus two other big projects—the AUKUS pact to build
submarines with Australia, and GCAP, a scheme to build a next-generation
warplane with Italy and Japan—appear to be set in stone. That leaves
precious little to plug other holes.

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For the past decade Britain’s solution to this problem has been to continue
doing everything, decreasingly well. The result is an army that cannot
produce a combat-capable division, an aircraft-carrier strike group without
a fully resourced air wing or complement of escorts and an air force without
the munitions it needs. Many insiders hope that the new review will at last
identify priorities and trade-offs. By definition, that means winners and
losers.

One vision in the Ministry of Defence, backed by many in senior positions,

is that Britain’s natural strengths lie in air and maritime capabilities, rather
than in heavy ground forces that might be provided by others, such as
Germany and Poland. “Does [NATO] want an alliance of 32 ‘mini me’s?”
asked Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, rhetorically,
in a lecture on December 4th. “Or can we use NATO’s size to be able to
take more risk and constantly search for a winning edge?”

In this view, the defence of NATO on land is impossible without dealing

with Russia’s northern fleet, which is largely unscathed from the war in
Ukraine. China’s navy is increasingly active in the Atlantic and Arctic. Air
and naval forces are flexible instruments of statecraft that could be used in
the Middle East and Pacific. “NATO first”, the government’s mantra for
defence policy, need not mean “NATO only”.

The alternative to this maritime-air vision is one focusing on land-air.

Russia is on the front foot in Ukraine. Its army is larger than it was at the
start of the war there. And Britain has big holes to fill in this area. Army
generals acknowledge that NATO’s formal demand—a “strategic reserve
corps” with nine brigades and a bevy of supporting capabilities—is
unrealistic at current levels of spending. Their aim is not to expand the
army. It is to show that a more modest force, one explicitly modelled on
Ukraine’s way of war, fuelled by intelligence from America and other
members of the Five Eyes spy pact, could still do the same job.

The idea is that, through technology, a British brigade of 7,000 or so

soldiers could defeat a Russian “combined-arms army” triple the size.
Naval power matters, in this view, but should be focused on specific areas,
such as anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, rather than carriers.

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It is tempting to frame these debates as inter-service bunfights. In fact, they
are as much if not more about differing visions of the threat, how to counter
it and, crucially, the timeline over which it will unfold. “The defining
political choice of this strategic defence review will be the degree to which
the government invests limited resources in these long-term projects,” notes
Justin Bronk of RUSI, a think-tank, referring to AUKUS and GCAP, “as
opposed to plugging the capability gaps in the current force [for] Russian
aggression this decade.” The air force says that the expense of GCAP is
necessary because no other system will be able to destroy Chinese and
Russian air defences and long-range missiles by 2040. To critics, that is
impossibly far away and risks swallowing resources needed to keep Russia
at bay in the next five years.

Lord Robertson, Sir Richard and Ms Hill are confronted with a stark set of
options. Defence spending would have to rise to 3% of GDP to meet all
these goals. If it rose to 2.5% immediately, Britain might be able to preserve
front-line air, land and naval forces but would need to accept greater
shortfalls in areas such as munition stockpiles and training. If the Treasury
only signs up to hitting that level by the end of the decade, something has to
give.

Your money or your life

That would come with political and diplomatic costs. Formally quashing the
army’s ambition to field a division would provoke a backlash in NATO
even as Donald Trump is demanding that allies step up. Mothballing a
carrier would invite derision on a party that authorised their construction
when it was last in government.

John Healey, the defence secretary, is said to have balked at the binary
choice between land- and sea-focused forces. The trade-offs will be hotly
debated in Whitehall. American officials are also weighing in. On
December 10th Kathleen Hicks, America’s deputy secretary of defence,
when asked what the Pentagon wanted to see in the review, singled out the
nuclear deterrent and maritime capability—“the ability to be expeditionary,
to operate throughout the world”. The tension between continental and
maritime commitments has been a leitmotif of British strategic debates for

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centuries. But after years of slicing away capability across the board,
Britain will find itself at a moment of reckoning, unless the fiscal taps open.
■

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Huel tide

Why meal-replacement drinks are

shaking up the British lunch
They are being rebranded as aspirational as well as efficient
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

BRITONS LOVE a sandwich. But rather than eating their lunch, a growing
number have started to drink it. Once a niche product for dieters and
convalescents, meal-replacement drinks are moving into the mainstream.

Six years ago less than one in ten British adults told YouGov, a pollster, that
they would consider buying such a thing. Soylent, an American brand,
found the going hard when it launched in Britain. But Britons are now
taking to a food fashion with a global market worth some $14bn, by one
estimate. The choice for consumers has grown. Huel, a Hertfordshire-based

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startup whose profits have nearly tripled in the past year along with record
sales, is now available in seven in ten supermarkets across the country.

Efficiency is part of the appeal. According to a survey by Compass Group, a

food-services firm, British employees spend less than 33 minutes on lunch.
But given that the average sandwich is scoffed down in less than five
minutes, saving time can’t be the only draw.

Economy is another. Huel’s powdered formula, and those of rivals such as

Myprotein and yfood, provide meals at a cost of between £1.30 ($1.65) and
£1.80 each. By comparison, an egg-and-cress sandwich at M&S costs
£3.25.

Huel and its peers claim to be a healthy choice, too (because of the balance
of nutrients they contain). They have dropped the “meal-replacement” label.
“It’s not a term we use because it implies something that’s inferior,” says
Huel’s CEO, James McMaster, “whereas our product is vastly superior.”
Nu26, another brand, calls itself a “nutritionally complete” shake; yfood
dubs itself “smart food”.

Clever marketing has helped shed the dour image of being diet drinks.
Huel’s monochromatic look has drawn a cult following among gym rats and
girl bosses. Slogans about efficiency and empowerment rather than weight
loss or restriction aim to position the products as both practical and
aspirational. “If everyone had Huel, the world would be a much, much
better place,” Mr McMaster claims. But it’s still hard to beat a tasty
sandwich.■

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Marley’s ghost

How to get money from Ebenezer

Scrooge
Get him to leave a gift in his will
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THOSE WITH exquisite taste in Christmas films will be familiar with the
scene in “The Muppet Christmas Carol” in which Dr Bunsen Honeydew
and his sidekick Beaker solicit Ebenezer Scrooge for a donation to the poor.
Scrooge refuses and is then haunted by three ghosts who remind him of the
importance of having a charitable heart.

British fund-raisers are experiencing similar difficulties to Muppets. The

Charities Aid Foundation, which tracks charitable giving in Britain,
reported that 58% of people donated in 2023, down from 69% in 2016.
Businesses are also giving less. Although profits from Britain’s top

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companies have grown by 13% over the past decade in real terms, their
charitable giving has declined by 34% over the same period. And yet the
need, if not quite Dickensian, remains great. A study published in early
2024 by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, for example, suggested that more
than one in five adults, and 30% of children, in Britain lived in poverty.

Charities may find some hope in demography. Baby-boomers (those born

between 1946 and 1964) have amassed wealth and been stingy with it
during their lifetime. In the next three decades those boomers will leave
behind an estimated £7trn. And, thanks to historically low fertility rates, a
growing number of them will die childless. So there will be a lot of money
with nobody obvious to pass it to. Rather than try to squeeze money from
Scrooge on Christmas Eve when he’s alive, charities might do well to focus
more of their efforts on getting him to leave money behind in his will when
he’s dead.

Many are already doing just that. A survey published in April 2024 found
that marketing investment in legacy giving had increased by one-third over
the previous year, resulting in a 40% increase in the number of charitable
gifts left in wills. Legacy Futures, a consultancy that helps charities
understand the potential of legacy giving, has found that gifts in wills have
quadrupled since the early 1990s to around £4bn expected in 2024, and it
predicts that this will rise to £10bn by mid-century. Britain’s top 1,000
charities now receive 28% of total donated income from legacy gifts.

However, although legacy giving is rising, relatively few gifts are going to
the poor. Health charities receive the bulk of legacy gifts, followed by
animal and conservation ones respectively. Charities providing end-of-life
services are also benefiting. “Catastrophe clauses” in wills can produce a
bonanza for some causes. In 2018 a catering boss, Richard Cousins, died in
a tragic helicopter crash with his two sons. With no heirs left his will
stipulated that £41m of his fortune should go to Oxfam, which focuses on
famine relief.

Modern Scrooges have a choice should they wish to change their ways.
They could give generously in their lifetime—like the donors in west
Belfast, an area in Northern Ireland where over a quarter of children live in
poverty, who in 2023 gave four times more to charity as a proportion of

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their income than the far wealthier residents of Kensington in west London.
Or they can go to a probate solicitor before, as Charles Dickens put it in the
opening lines of his novella “A Christmas Carol”, they are dead as a
doornail. ■

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Point of slow return

Britain’s Labour government is

keen on deporting illegal migrants
But its efforts will run into roadblocks
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

“MARK MY WORDS, this government will turn the page,” Sir Keir
Starmer promised in a recent speech. It is the sort of thing the prime
minister says about many areas of policy. This time the topic was one near
the top of voters’ concerns: immigration. Labour has pledged to expand
detention centres, “smash” people-smuggling gangs and, above all, return
more illegal entrants. Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, boasted on
December 16th that the government is on course to send home more in its
first six months than in any six-month period in the past five years. Days
earlier Britain carried out the first removal flight to Pakistan since 2020.

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Removing people with no right to be in Britain seems an obvious way to
improve on the Tories’ dismal record. Voluntary returns (migrants who
leave of their own accord, sometimes with the encouragement of cash) and
enforced returns fell by a third since Labour was last in power (see chart),
even as the numbers entering Britain soared. Although there is a legal duty
to remove foreigners sentenced to over a year in prison, 18,000 such people
remain, four times the number a decade ago.

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The Conservatives blamed an obstructive justice system, particularly since
the courts blocked their plan to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda. In truth, it
was mainly their own bungling. The Windrush scandal, in which the
government hounded and deported law-abiding British citizens, and reports
of woeful mistreatment at removal centres made matters toxic. Immigration
officers complain that Atlas, the computer system brought in by the
Conservatives, is broken and time-consuming. The decline in returns
coincided with an 11% real-terms budget squeeze between 2015 and 2020.

But there are few simple fixes. Atlas needed a painful three-year handover,
during which officers had to enter everything twice: once in the new
system, once in the old. Replacing it will not be cheap or quick. The Home
Office admits it hasn’t tried to count how many illegal migrants there are in
Britain since 2005 (when it estimated the number at 430,000).

Legal hurdles do, as the Tories claimed, make removals harder. In 2019 half
of the Home Office’s attempts to enforce a return failed, often due to last-
minute appeals on the planned day of departure. The courts tend to be
reluctant to approve the removal of those who have married or had children
in Britain. In two recent cases judges ruled that paedophiles could remain in
part because it would be unduly harsh on their families, despite one being
convicted of raping his stepdaughter.

Returning failed asylum-seekers, which Sir Keir has promised to do, is

really hard. Nearly seven in ten of those refused in 2015 were still in Britain
in 2022, according to the Migration Observatory at the University of
Oxford. People are rarely sent back to very poor countries like Iraq or
Somalia. The longer claimants stay, the likelier they are to build lives and
family ties in Britain of the sort the law and courts value.

Deportations appeal to the public. According to More in Common, a

pollster, Labour’s removal flights are more popular with voters than
flagship schemes like creating GB Energy, a planned public energy
company. But a zeal for expulsions risks uncomfortable comparisons to
another deportation enthusiast, Donald Trump, and anger on the Labour left.
Sir Keir may turn the page on immigration only to find that it makes for
difficult reading. ■

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Bagehot

The eternal Bossman

Britain’s corner shops will never die
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

FOR A FEW weeks every December, Denmark Hill Food & Wine is
transformed from a corner shop in south London into Santa’s grotto. About
250 parcels are scattered about the poky shop, beneath Pulp Riot hair dye,
bottles of Ribena, tea bags and condoms. Big packages are stuffed into
overflowing sacks; small ones are arranged neatly in requisitioned shopping
baskets. It is mid-morning. Another 250 packages are due at 1pm.

Becoming a gonzo post office is only the latest shift in the evolution of
Bossman, a name (originating in London slang) for those who run a small
shop in Britain. Corner shops have become the high street of last resort.
Post offices and banks have retreated, leaving the fiddly tasks of paying in

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cash and collecting parcels or benefits underserved. Bossman has filled the
gap.

It is these services that have helped Britain’s 35,000-strong independent

corner shops stay alive. Parcels are only one part. Customers of online-only
banks, such as Monzo, can deposit cash wherever there is a PayPoint, a
British payments company that works with corner shops. Benefits can be
paid out in cash via corner shops in the same way. About 4m households—
roughly one in seven—are on pre-payment gas and electricity meters,
meaning they have to schlep to a shop whenever it runs out. Bossman is
happy to offer almost any service, provided enough customers buy a can of
Diet Coke on their way out.

Corner shops have always moulded themselves to fit British society. When
supermarkets first emerged in the 1950s, they began to steamroller small
shops. They were kept alive by arrivals from Punjab and Gujarat, who leapt
at the opportunity to swap factory work for the chance to work for
themselves. Corner shops went from producing politicians such as Margaret
Thatcher, a former prime minister, to politicians such as Priti Patel, a former
home secretary. Strip out race and the story of the petit bourgeois made
good is a corner-shop constant.

What Bossman stocks tells a story, too. Corner shops thrive via a cocktail of
convenience and vice. Once the staple business of corner shops was
cigarettes, alcohol and newspapers, alongside pornographic magazines,
with black dots delicately placed over nipples. Now, amid the ramshackle
piles of parcels that adorn every other shop, adverts for vapes have replaced
posters of the Marlboro Man. American-style candy does well. So does
Monster, an energy drink that competes with Red Bull via the ruse of
selling itself by the half-litre. At the same time, fresh produce now takes up
more shelf space. Bossman will provide whatever someone needs whenever
they need it, whether milk and pornography back then or a lump of ginger
and a pint of Monster today.

Bossman is in the right part of the market. Convenience commands a

premium. Trip frequency is growing (now just under three times a week) as
is basket size, says Lumina Intelligence, which researches the sector. The
“treat mission”—a fantastic piece of jargon—is on the up. Forget the

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lipstick effect, when women splash out on affordable luxuries in a
downturn. Bossman benefits from the Tony’s Chocolonely effect: if people
cannot afford a night out, they will splurge £4 ($5.10) on the lurid Dutch
chocolate to eat in front of the telly instead.

Parcels will become only a more significant driver of footfall, and not just
at Christmas. Evri, a delivery company, now drops 180m parcels a year into
shops, or 22.5% of all its deliveries. Each packet earns a shop 30p or so.
The hassle is worth it. Some handle a few hundred a week; others manage
thousands. A lot of people have to run a calorie gauntlet at the till.

Shoplifting may be at a 20-year high. Yet inside any corner shop is a

testament to man’s better nature, with thousands of pounds’ worth of
parcels, containing everything from children’s toys to subtly packaged
iPhones left unstolen. The Post Office has become a byword for
bureaucratic malfeasance, wrongly accusing hundreds of sub-postmasters of
theft, as well as poor service, with package collection available for a few
hours per day, whereas Bossman is open from dawn until the dead of night.
Bossman Britain is a vision of a high-trust society.

For years, the big grocers have attempted to muscle into the convenience
sector. Bossman has held almost steady. Independents still account for 71%
of all convenience stores. About half of them have their own brand. The
other half are franchises such as Nisa, owned by the Co-op, or Londis,
owned by Tesco. If you cannot beat Bossman, join him. After all, Bossman
has tools that Tesco does not. Encouraging staff to work overnight can be
expensive; cajoling family members to do the 4am shift, or doing it
yourself, is cheap. Bossman economics are different.

Cornering a market

The life of a Bossman is not all rosy. Rises in the minimum wage and
employer national-insurance contributions will hurt. Government is
increasingly fussy. A ban on the sale of cigarettes to anyone born from 2009
onwards will in time cut an already depleted moneymaker. Single-use
vapes, another cash cow, are to be nixed. A ban on teenagers buying energy
drinks is mooted. From this perspective, the future looks grim.

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Yet Bossman will prevail. To see how, pop down on Christmas Day.
Bossman will be busy. Searches for “convenience store” peak during the
festive week. Parcels must be returned (one year, PayPoint clocked a parcel
return at 6.30am, suggesting an emotional start to festivities in a corner of
Merseyside). Perhaps the money in the boiler has run out. Maybe someone
forgot to buy milk. Bossman will be there. Someone has to be. ■

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A journalist retraces humanity’s journey out of Africa—on
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Around the world in 50m paces

A journalist retraces humanity’s

journey out of Africa—on foot
The Economist tries “slow journalism” with Paul Salopek
12月 19, 2024 01:09 下午 | On the road in Japan

IN 2013 PAUL SALOPEK, an American journalist, began a trek around the

planet. His aim was to follow Homo sapiens’ first migration, out of Africa,
across the Middle East and Asia, by boat to Alaska, then down to Tierra del
Fuego at the southern tip of the Americas, the place humans arrived last,
around 8000BC. He called it the “Out of Eden” walk. He guessed it would
take seven years. Eleven years later, he is still walking.

Mr Salopek has trekked across deserts and mountains, river plains and
cloud forests, along pilgrim paths and ancient trade routes, in the footsteps
of Alexander the Great and Mao Zedong. He has been shot at in the West

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Bank, held up by Kurdish gunmen, detained for two days and deported
from Pakistan, and stopped by police so often that he logs these encounters
on a “freedom of movement” map. He has led camels and mules and pack
horses across the Arabian sands and Central Asia’s endless steppe. He
buried caches of water at 25km intervals to traverse the Kyzyl-Kum desert
in Uzbekistan, got caught in a snowstorm in the Pamir mountains and
helped a man who had severed his leg in a rockslide. “The man was so
cheerful, he was making jokes as we tied a tourniquet.”

Mr Salopek halts often to write and explore. He waited eight months in

Georgia for an Iranian visa that never came and ended up falling in love and
marrying a documentary-maker. He was marooned for over a year in
Myanmar by covid rules and then had to leave when the besieged junta
became too threatening.

The Out of Eden walk is backed, in large part, by National Geographic,

which oversees the project’s website, where Mr Salopek posts dispatches.
Now 62, tall and rangy (“My hair turned white in China”), he says his walk
“is not an expedition”, but a way of slowing down to collect stories, “like
beads on a string”. He has written several hundred thousand words so far,
about archaeological digs and vanished civilisations, about industry and
craftsmen, pollution and conservation. He has done what many journalists
would envy: invented his perfect job. He calls it slow journalism. The
Economist joined him in Japan.

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We set off from Fukuoka, a city on the southernmost of Japan’s four main
islands, at 7am on a Tuesday. It was mid-September, but the temperature
was broiling. Your correspondent shouldered a small pack, “no more than 5-
6kg”, Mr Salopek advised, containing notebooks, a rain jacket, a change of
clothes, two pairs of underpants and minimal toiletries, but no laptop,
make-up or spare shoes. We were accompanied by Koriyama Soichiro, a
photographer who doubled as a translator, interlocutor and guide. In our
hiking gear we stood out among the neatly dressed commuters.

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Mr Salopek is an ascetic; he owns almost nothing but the clothes on his
back and the tools of his trade: laptop, mobile phone, camera. He has no
home and little money. Out of Eden is a non-profit; his “salary” goes into a
back-up account for operational expenses. “We are often in the red.” His
manner is calm, humble, almost saintly, as he bends his head to listen
intently to the people he meets along the way. But his mildness belies a
certain steel. He is the kind of person who always takes the stairs over the
escalator, never mind the weight of a pack, climbing two at a time.

Born to ramble

His wanderlust was inculcated in childhood. In 1968, when he was five, his
father moved the family to a small village near Guadalajara in Mexico. He
and his four older siblings grew up among poor farmers and went to local
schools. “My Dad was a bit like the father in ‘The Mosquito Coast’,” he
says, referring to a novel and film about an American who grows
disillusioned with consumerism and seeks a simpler life in Latin America.
After graduating from the University of California, he did various jobs:
farm hand, cowboy; shrimper, gold miner. Still in his 20s, he was working
two jobs in Roswell, New Mexico, when his landlady, a former magazine
editor, persuaded the local newspaper to hire him as a police reporter.

People everywhere share similar genetics and concerns

He went on to win two Pulitzer prizes. One was for writing about the
human genome. (“Basically, we are all the same,” he concluded.) The other
was for covering a gigantic war in Congo, where combatants firmly
believed we are not all the same; that the tribe next door are the enemy.
After a decade in Africa he decided to change the way he wrote about the
world; to focus on ordinary people who live away from the headlines but
whose stories illustrate big issues.

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He is walking through “a golden age of migration”, he says. Almost
everywhere, he has seen people on the move. He stumbled over the bones

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of migrants in the desert on the Ethiopia-Djibouti border; met Syrian
refugees picking tomatoes in Jordan; noted the numbers of Punjabis who
have left their villages. Today, he points out, one in seven people live or
work far from their birth places, and “the push-pull factors for human
movement remain basically the same as back in the Stone Age”: scarce
resources, changing weather patterns, the search for greener pastures.

It is partly by looking at genetic evidence that scientists have been able to

map early migration routes, to show how humans colonised the planet after
leaving Africa between 60,000 and 90,000 years ago. When he gives talks
about the project, Mr Salopek likes to remind people that we all share very
similar genetics and concerns: Why am I not loved enough? I hate my boss!
I worry about my children.

We walked 12-25km a day in 35-degree heat, past a banal parade of car

dealerships, shopping centres and pachinko (pinball) parlours. There were
few trees and little shade. We stopped often for water from the many
vending machines and to cool off in convenience stores. “I feel like my
head is in the mouth of an animal,” said Mr Salopek after a few days. When
your correspondent developed blisters, he bought her sticking plasters.
“Every culture has their blister cure,” he said, “chacha liquor in Georgia,
camel fat in Saudi Arabia.”

Walking with someone is very intimate. You become friends quickly

We trudged on, sweaty, sticky. Cars went by, trains went by; there were
almost no other pedestrians. People travelled from air-conditioned boxes to
air-conditioned boxes in air-conditioned cars. We were, literally, outsiders.
The heat kept people inside, precluding the chance encounters that Mr
Salopek relishes.

In Fukuma, a dormitory town, we arranged to meet Tone Shiori, a local

activist running for mayor (“I am the only female candidate!”), at a tempura
restaurant. Ms Tone was impassioned, bemoaning Japanese conservatism
and the lack of women in public office.

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Bias against women is “one global thing we share”, says Mr Salopek.
Women wake up early to do chores, and go to bed late. Men dominate
public spaces, own most property and bully their wives. Several times, in
remote parts of Central Asia, a woman would wait for Mr Salopek on the

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road outside her village and tell him, weeping, of the injustices she endured.
Such women “entrusted us with their secrets because we were walking
away”. In South Korea, where an unprecedented number of women are
opting out of marriage and children, he found the casual misogyny—the
way men talked about women when they were sitting around a table with
some beers—“breathtaking”.

It has been hard to find female walking partners, Mr Salopek laments. He

has walked with more than 100 people: journalists and jihadis, camel
herders, biologists, historians, artists and a judge who had been sacked for
graft. In Korea he walked with an expert on frogs. Some people join him for
a few days, others for weeks. His wife meets him on the road, as do friends
and family. “Walking with someone is very intimate,” says Mr Salopek. “It
unlocks something in your heart; you become friends very quickly.”

Over the years, a network has grown up around Out of Eden. Mr Salopek
encourages his walking partners to contribute their own stories to the
website. Several have garnered National Geographic and other grants for
projects. A Saudi walking partner has become an online storyteller with
hundreds of thousands of followers; an Indian walking partner has set up a
charity to fund conservation. One woman he walked with is trying to
establish a national hiking trail in China.

Slow down and listen

Along the way, Mr Salopek often gives workshops on slow journalism. Don
Belt, a journalism professor at Richmond University in Virginia and friend
of Mr Salopek, sends his students walking in poorer parts of Richmond to
discover different kinds of stories. The Harvard Graduate School of
Education, a sponsor of the project, has developed a six- to eight-week
curriculum called “Open Canopy” for schools. Over 70,000 children in 30
countries have followed Mr Salopek’s progress, written up their own
projects and shared their work with classes in other countries.

Over time and distance, Salopek’s dispatches have evolved, from

journalistic to more impressionistic. “It’s like layers on a pearl, with my
memory and my experience, the stories get deeper.” Themes recur and

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overlap. “A story about health is connected to ecology which is connected
to education which is connected to economics. The water crisis in India,
where half the population doesn’t have access to clean sufficient water, is
connected to a story I wrote about women working in a brick kiln because
they have had to leave their homes because of the water shortage.”

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On our sixth day together, a sweltering Sunday, we stopped, exhausted, at a
McDonald’s to mainline sugar and sodium. A man at the next table was
wearing a puffy shirt, fitted with fans that inflated it and kept him cool.
Suddenly it dawned: all along we had been walking through the story. The
story was the heat.

It had been Japan’s hottest summer ever recorded. More than 50 people had
died, thousands had been hospitalised. Globally, 2024 is predicted to be the
hottest year on record.

“I’ve walked through climate change,” said Mr Salopek. “Here in suburban

Japan, it’s just an inconvenience for most people, but in many places, it is
already existential.” In Ethiopia, where he began his odyssey, he had to skirt
fighting over dwindling pasture between Afar and Issa tribesmen. In
Kazakhstan he saw the steppe bloom after unusually heavy rains with
grasses unknown even to the oldest locals. In Georgia he watched a whole
neighbourhood of Tbilisi slide into the river. In Afghanistan he found
villagers enjoying bumper apricot harvests, because the summers had
become warmer and the glaciers were melting. He couldn’t make them

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understand that in a few years the glaciers would be gone and their land
would become desert. Everywhere, Mr Salopek said, farmers are worried;
the weather is getting weirder.

On our last day together, we talked to farmers tending pocket-handkerchief

fields girded between roads and tower blocks. “Every year it’s getting
hotter,” said Takami Tsunehiro, 81 years old, who had been farming the
same land with his wife for over 50 years. He paused digging up sweet
potatoes and laid his scythe on the ground. “There used to be four seasons,
now there is just summer and winter. There is either too much sun or too
much rain.” Other farmers concurred; the heat was hard on rice plants, and
working outdoors was becoming increasingly perilous.

Walking for days had tattooed the sensation of an overheating world into
our consciousness. “Of course I know about climate change intellectually,”
said Mr Salopek as we stopped in a Joyfull diner to rehydrate. “But I hadn’t
felt it in my body, the way I have over the past three months. Walking
through the summer in South Korea, there was no one on the streets. It was
like a ghost landscape. There were cooling stations, with mist; and I
thought, for the first time, OK this is really dystopian. I thought it would be
cooler in September in Japan but it’s not, and now I can feel it’s affecting
me. It’s hurting me.”

At the end of the day, we ditched our packs and went for a stroll among the
rice paddies. The sun was low and gold. Egrets stalked the verges,
squadrons of dragonflies flitted “like glitter”, said Mr Salopek, and we
walked beside an irrigation canal full of fish, turtles and ducks. The fizz and
crackle of cicadas coming from a bamboo forest was ferocious. It was the
only countryside we walked in.

All the local hotels were full, so we slept in cubicles in a cyber-café, an

ingenious and impeccably clean gaming facility often used by homeless
people, with a gym, showers and a giant manga library. The next morning, I
took the bullet train back to Fukuoka, where we had started eight days
earlier. The train sped past a blur of grey-block suburbs, through black
tunnels. It took just 30 minutes. ■

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This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/a-journalist-retraces-humanitys-journey-out-of-africa-on-foot

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Mammon and merriment

How much happiness does money

buy?
Your answer determines not just how you should live, but how you should
invest
12月 19, 2024 01:11 下午

IMAGINE A GAME in which you roll a six-sided dice and win a number
of dollars equal to the score. So a one gets you $1, a two gets $2 and so on.
How much should you pay to play?

Those who paid attention in probability class already know the answer. The
potential outcomes are $1, $2, $3, $4, $5 or $6, each of which has a one-in-
six chance of coming up. Your expected winnings are the sum of each result
multiplied by its odds of occurring. Add it all up and this comes to $3.50.
And so you have your price: if you can play for anything less than $3.50,

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you should. If you can pay $3 to play, for example, then on average you
will make a net gain of $0.50.

Nice, but hardly enough to set anyone’s pulse racing. After all, there is a
50% chance of making either nothing or a loss and you can’t do much with
a few dollars anyway. But suppose you are instead offered 10,000 rolls.
This is a lot more interesting. Your intuition says you are now bound to
average close to $3.50 per throw, since repetition will smooth away the
effects of luck. A mathematician would confirm your instincts: with that
many throws, the odds of the average falling far from $3.50 are near zero. If
each roll costs $3, in other words, you are virtually guaranteed a profit of
around $5,000 (or 10,000 lots of $0.50). You would be a fool to turn down
such a deal—so much so that, if you lack the $30,000 needed to play, you
should borrow it.

Now consider a final variation: instead of 10,000 rolls, you are back to just
one. This time, though, your winnings will be $10,000 times the score on
the dice and the cost to play is $30,000. How keen are you now? The
expected profit is still $5,000, but the risk of losing at least $10,000 (by
rolling a one or two) has risen from almost nothing to one in three. In spite
of the expected profit, most people would probably walk away.

What unites all three games is the ratio of expected gain to initial outlay. In
each case it is 17%, or $0.50 divided by $3. Why, then, do they prompt such
different responses? The answer is that they involve different amounts of
risk. Betting $30,000 on a single roll is clearly riskier than betting $3. But
spread the $30,000 over 10,000 rolls, make the odds of a loss negligible,
and the bet is a no-brainer. For gamblers and investors alike, the lesson is
clear. It is not only expected returns that matter, but the risk you must take
to get them.

Such contrived games may seem silly. In fact, armed with little more than
the principles behind them and some maths that has been solved for half a
century, you can build an entire theory of how to invest your hard-earned
savings. It tells you how much you should risk on the stockmarket, how
much you should keep safe and what you can spend in retirement. It
requires just a few facts about financial markets and some of the simplest,
cheapest investment funds that asset managers offer. What is more, it was

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first formulated by a Nobel-prizewinning economist and is today almost
universally accepted by his successors as the “correct” approach to
investment and spending. Yet outside academia, almost no one has heard of
it.

The tendency that explains why each dice game triggers a different
response is known as the “diminishing marginal utility of wealth”. This is a
fancy way of saying that the more money people have already, the less they
enjoy getting even more. For someone who cannot afford food, $1m will be
life-transforming. But a second million will raise their living standards by
far less, and a third will simply make them a bit richer.

To see the connection to gambling, consider how eager our newly minted
millionaire might be to stake it all on a coin toss. Winning might mean a
bigger house—but the resulting pleasure would be far outweighed by the
pain of losing, which would mean a return to hunger. Even if the stakes
were halved, most would dodge the gamble. This follows from the
diminishing marginal utility of wealth. A 50/50 risk to a big chunk of your
savings, even if you might win the same amount, is not worth it. The dollar
amounts are equal but the impact of the loss would be greater.

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
The corollary is less obvious: that the rate at which your enjoyment of new
wealth declines as you get richer and your aversion to risking large sums
are two sides of the same coin. The two can be represented by a single
parameter in a family of “utility functions”, which describe the pleasure
derived from different amounts of wealth. Researchers have found that
these “constant relative risk-aversion” (CRRA) utility functions fit most
people’s attitudes to wealth fairly well. The parameter, known as “risk
aversion”, can be calibrated to any individual’s level of daredevilry. Chart 1
shows CRRA utility functions for a range of risk aversions.

That explains why risk matters in the dice games. But what does any of it
have to do with investing? This is what Robert Merton, who later won a
Nobel prize for economics, set out in a paper in 1969. His snappily titled
“Lifetime Portfolio Selection Under Uncertainty: The Continuous-Time
Case” showed how a CRRA utility function, calibrated to any individual’s
risk aversion, could be translated into a portfolio with an optimal split
between high-returning but risky assets, such as stocks, and safe ones such
as bonds. In Mr Merton’s procedure, “optimal” means balancing the
individual’s desire for returns with their aversion to risk in such a way as to
maximise their expected happiness.

Don’t risk the necessary...

Maximising happiness sounds good. And Mr Merton’s procedure has some

even neater features. The most common advice to retail investors for
splitting savings between stocks and bonds can seem arbitrary. This is the
“60/40” rule, which advocates 60% stocks and 40% bonds—but why 60/40
rather than 70/30 or 50/50? More intuitive rules tell those saving for
retirement to gradually reduce their stockmarket exposure as they age, since
this gives them less time to top up their savings after a crash. You could,
say, keep a percentage of your portfolio equal to your age in bonds, and the
rest in stocks. But why should it be your age rather than, say, your age plus
or minus five?

Maximising happiness sounds good

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By contrast, the “Merton share” calculates the proportion of a portfolio to
place in risky assets from factors that are obviously relevant. It says that the
share in risky assets should be equal to their excess expected return over
that of the safe alternative, divided by both the investor’s risk aversion and
the square of the risky assets’ volatility. Mr Merton originally showed this
for a two-asset portfolio (risky and safe). A real-life example would be a
portfolio comprised of a global equity-tracker fund and a long-term
government-bond fund.

If the Merton share’s definition seems like a mouthful, consider what it

implies. Should the safe asset’s yield fall, perhaps because interest rates are
falling, but shares’ expected return remain the same, you should put more
into the stockmarket. This makes sense: the opportunity cost of holding
bonds over stocks has just risen. Conversely, if the stockmarket’s volatility
is soaring, say because a banking crisis is under way, you should sell some
shares to buy bonds. As with the $30,000 dice roll, the odds of big gains or
equivalent losses have just increased—but the pain of the losses would
outweigh the pleasure of the gains.

The Merton share is even more instructive for the broad lessons it imparts
about investment. Except in rare circumstances, everyone with savings
should buy at least some stocks. Provided their expected return is greater
than the risk-free yield on bonds, the Merton share is always greater than
zero. The flipside is that, very rarely, no one should own stocks. The late
1990s, during the inflation of the dotcom bubble, is an example. Share
prices had risen so astronomically relative to underlying earnings that the
expected return of the stockmarket was below that of government bonds,
putting the Merton share below zero. Investors who took heed and sold their
stocks before the subsequent crash would have ended up feeling rather
smug.

How well does the theory work in practice? Very well...

John Campbell, a professor of economics at Harvard, points out that the

Merton share also counsels against “reaching for yield”. This idea was in
vogue when interest rates were near zero, and involved cramming portfolios
full of risky assets to juice returns. But another lesson from the Merton
share is that, in deciding your allocation to risky assets, it is the gap

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between their expected returns and the risk-free rate that matters, not the
absolute level. Low yields imply low returns, not that you should suddenly
load up on risk.

So much for the theory. How does it work in practice? Going by long-run
historical returns, very well indeed. Victor Haghani and James White, co-
authors of “The Missing Billionaires”, which seeks to popularise Mr
Merton’s ideas, have crunched the numbers. They took an index of
American shares as the risky asset and inflation-protected Treasury bonds
as the safe one, using data from 1900 to 2022 (using a proxy for the bonds
for before 1997, when they were first issued). They then compared the
Merton-share portfolio with one split 65/35 between stocks and bonds.

The results are shown in chart 2. Not only would the Merton portfolio have
beaten the 65/35 one, generating an annualised return of 10% compared
with 8.5%. Even more remarkably, it would have outperformed the strategy
of being 100% in stocks, despite involving 40% less risk. Past returns, of
course, are not a perfect guide to future ones, and perhaps the Merton
strategy has simply been lucky. But with both theory and history pointing in
the same direction, this seems unlikely.

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Possibly the most attractive feature of the Merton share is its prescription
for responding to changing market conditions. An investment strategy that
adapts in light of new information—such as a plunge in prices that has
raised expected returns—is one that many will find easier to stick with. This
helps avoid the snare of continually switching strategy, which makes

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investors vulnerable to wealth-sapping instincts such as the impulse to sell
everything during a crash. Instead, they can follow a set procedure and
avoid such traps.

All this poses a puzzle. Virtually anyone who studies postgraduate finance,
says John Cochrane of Stanford University, will learn about Mr Merton’s
framework. Yet among practitioners, and especially wealth managers, it is
astonishingly poorly adopted and often unknown. Mr Haghani epitomises
this divide, having worked with Mr Merton in the 1980s before co-founding
a hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), with him. In spite
of this, says Mr Haghani, it was not until after LTCM had blown up in
spectacular fashion—wiping out a personal stake the Merton share would
have told him was much too large—that he understood this aspect of his
former colleague’s work.

...in the hope of winning the superfluous

One reason for this, argues Mr Cochrane, is that the calculations required
are highly sensitive to their inputs, which in turn are hard to estimate. An
example is the volatility term in the Merton share. This is not directly
observable from the market and, since the calculation involves its square, a
small error changes the prescribed allocation a lot. Similarly, estimating
expected returns on stocks, or correlations between risky assets, can be
nightmarish.

Nevertheless, fudges are possible. Your risky asset can simply be a fund
tracking a broad share-price index. Volatility can be estimated as a
composite of its long-run historical level (about 20% for America’s
stockmarket) and the shorter-term VIX index, which measures how much
traders pay to insure against big price swings. An imperfect, but reasonable,
forecast of shares’ expected returns is the inverse of the cyclically adjusted
price-earnings ratio popularised by Robert Shiller of Yale University. If
your “safe” asset is government bonds, the expected return is simply the
yield.

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A bigger problem is that the Merton share’s prescription is sometimes
bonkers for retail investors. Harvard’s Professor Campbell notes that it
occasionally suggests a short position, which individuals often cannot take
and which can lead to unlimited losses. If it is to be calculated rigorously, it
also requires an estimate of the individual’s human capital, or the sum of
their expected future earnings. For youngsters, this might be the vast

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majority of their total capital, and reasonably “safe”. As a result, following
the Merton share’s allocation for risky assets might require them to borrow
to buy shares. Again, many are unable to do this. And even if they can, they
would risk bankruptcy if prices swung abruptly. Avoiding such dangers
means imposing limits, such as setting the share to 0% or 100% if it ever
falls outside that range.

Mr White, who with Mr Haghani runs a wealth-management outfit that puts

Mr Merton’s ideas into practice, offers a plausible explanation for their poor
adoption: it is not in wealth managers’ interests. It takes financial
sophistication to understand this framework and buy into it for the long run.
Few money-minders wish to restrict their pool of potential clients like this.
What is more, maximising risk-adjusted expected returns can be a tough
sell when many customers just want the stockmarket to make them rich.
Young investors particularly favour this “billionaire or bust” mentality, says
Mr White. For them, the incremental improvements of the Merton
framework are less sexy than trying to pick the next Apple.

This is the paradox of Mr Merton’s ideas. Though purportedly based on

investors’ attitudes to risk and wealth, they do not match what many real-
life investors say they want. Another example is a spending rule implied by
the framework, which says that in retirement savers should spend a set
percentage of their wealth each year, rather than a fixed dollar amount. This
reduces the risk of depleting your portfolio too quickly, but also means your
spending must fluctuate in line with the prices of your assets. Few people
are thrilled by this prospect, yet they still invest in stocks, the prices of
which can fluctuate a lot.

The problem, in other words, is people’s unwillingness to accept the Merton

framework’s trade-offs. But these trade-offs are unavoidable, and what
investors say they want is often unachievable. Hotheads in search of the
next tech superstar will mostly pick the wrong one, and “billionaire or bust”
sounds less seductive once you have actually gone bust. Refusing to link
spending to your portfolio’s performance is simply a denial of reality. The
strength of Mr Merton’s half-century-old ideas is that they force investors to
confront such facts head-on, while shooting for the best returns they can

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realistically hope for. Despite their unpopularity, they are surely worth
another roll of the dice. ■

ILLUSTRATION STEPHAN DYBUS

This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/how-much-happiness-does-money-buy

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The tadpole that conquered the world

How the axolotl rose from

obscurity to global stardom
A tale that unites Alexander von Humboldt, Diego Rivera and Pokémon
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | MEXICO CITY

THE SMOG and noise of Mexico City feel a world away as flotillas of
trajineras, brightly decorated wooden gondolas, glide up and down the cool
canals of Xochimilco. The quiet network of waterways, on the southern
edge of Mexico’s hectic capital, was built by the Aztecs long before the
Spanish conquest. Farmers still grow kale, tomatoes and chillies on
Xochimilco’s islands, though these days most Mexicans know the area as a
weekend party spot to escape the heat of the city. Some boats carry troupes
of mariachi with trumpets and guitars; others serve as floating cafés.

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The peaceful neighbourhood is home to Mexico’s perhaps most famous,
and most reclusive, celebrity. The Ambystoma mexicanum, or axolotl, has
lived a quiet life in the dark waters of Xochimilco since before the Aztecs
established their empire in the Valley of Mexico. With its sludgy-brown,
gelatinous little body and dislike of noise, the species of salamander seemed
destined for a life of watery obscurity.

Yet the axolotl has become an improbable global megastar. Shops are
crowded with cuddly axolotls. Toy axolotls fall out of McDonald’s Happy
Meals. Axolotl-themed clothes, jewellery and Christmas decorations flood
the pages of craft sites such as Etsy. Real and cartoon versions of the
creatures rack up tens of millions of views on YouTube and TikTok and star
in video games. How did the axolotl emerge from Mexico’s canals to
become a worldwide celebrity?

The comeback of the axolotl has been 200 years in the making

Axolotls lived happily for a long time in Lake Texcoco, overlooked by the
smouldering volcano, Popocatépetl. In around 1300 the Aztecs showed up,
looking for a new home. According to myth, a prophecy had told them to
set up camp at the place where they saw an eagle perched on a cactus with a
snake in its beak. Inconveniently, they eventually sighted such a scene on
an island in the middle of Lake Texcoco. Undaunted, the Aztecs built a
series of causeways and established the seat of their empire there.

Aztecs got on swimmingly with axolotls, which they named after Xolotl,
their god of fire and lightning. True, axolotls sometimes made their way
into Aztec meals (they are fatty and rich in protein) and medicine (they are
said to make a good cough syrup), but broadly they thrived. This changed
with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, in the 16th century, who
considered the strange-looking axolotl—four fingers, five toes, funny gills
—to be a creature that God created on an off day. Worse, the Spanish
colonists considered Lake Texcoco dirty and flood-prone and drained most
of it, consigning the axolotls to Xochimilco, the one neighbourhood where
the old waterways survived.

The comeback of the axolotl has been 200 years in the making. They
stealthily began to work their way back into the popular imagination in the

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19th century, when they charmed explorers such as Alexander von
Humboldt, a German geographer who stopped off in Mexico City and sent
axolotl specimens back to Europe. Scientists marvelled at their weird and
wonderful attributes. Although the axolotl is a species of salamander, it
remains in a state of perpetual tadpolehood, never losing its gills to become
a full-time land-dweller. Most prized is its ability to regenerate. If an axolotl
loses a limb, it grows the whole thing back; it can even rebuild lost parts of
brain tissue.

Having won over natural scientists, axolotls next inspired social ones.
Roger Bartra, a Mexican sociologist, used the forever-young creature as a
metaphor for Mexican national identity: trapped in a “violated limbo”
between a lost past and unfulfilled future. Octavio Paz, another public
intellectual, featured them in his poetry. Diego Rivera worked them into a
mural. Yet the creature was still not famous outside Mexico. Disney
invented a cartoon character in the 1990s called Dr Axolotl—but he was a
villain and, in fact, a lizard.

The Japanese, connoisseurs of kawaii, or cuteness, seem to have first

spotted the axolotl’s potential as an A-list celebrity. In 1999 Pokémon, a
video-game and card-collecting franchise part-owned by Nintendo,
introduced an axolotl-based character called Wooper. (In Japan axolotls are
known as “wooper loopers”, after an axolotl character in a 1985 TV ad for
instant noodles. The name caught on partly because “axolotl” sounds
similar to the Japanese for “stupid old person”.) Slowly, the axolotl seeped
into Western popular culture. Wildlife documentaries came first. Then the
main character of “How to Train Your Dragon”, one of the highest-grossing
films of 2010, was modelled on one. “Fortnite”, a video game, added
“Axo”, an axolotl, in 2020.

The event that turned the animal into a household name—or at least a
school-playground one—came in 2021, when “Minecraft”, another video
game, added the axolotl to the ranks of its digital characters. “Minecraft”
holds the Guinness world record for the greatest number of copies sold by a
video game; today more than 100m people play it every month. In 2021 it
was about to launch a new “cliffs and caves” environment and needed an
amphibious animal. The axolotl, which gives players regenerative powers if

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they capture it, embodies the “Minecraft-cute aesthetic”, says Ingela
Garneij of Mojang Studios, the game’s publisher.

The “Minecraft” effect was instant: searches for “axolotl” on Google

trebled, making the animal almost as searched for as “unicorn”. Today
searches for axolotls are four times more frequent than a decade ago,
making it probably the most sought-after Mexican.

The creature’s new fame has been noted at home. In Mexico City, the
national zoo in Chapultepec park has promoted its axolotls to live in three
storeys of splendour in what used to be the elephant house. Their new
home, which opened last year, receives 30,000 visitors a month. At the
nearby “zoovenir” shop, axolotls are the star product: customers can buy
axolotl cuddly toys, key rings and tequila-shot glasses. Mexico has even put
the axolotl on its 50 peso note, which was recently recognised as “bank note
of the year” by the International Bank Note Society.

Why, of all Earth’s species, has the axolotl taken off thus? “You have to
dissect it,” says Gerhard Runken, head of brand development at Jazwares, a
toy-maker (speaking strictly metaphorically). Jazwares launched an axolotl
variety of Squishmallow, a series of soft toys, in 2019, and had an instant
hit. First, explains Mr Runken, an animal needs a unique, recognisable look:

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“You don’t want people to do a second take in the aisle.” Second, it needs
appropriate physiognomy for a toy: rounded heads with no pointed beaks or
snouts are best. Last, it needs a good back story, a box the axolotl ticks with
its single habitat and weird powers. Jazwares now makes 30 kinds of
axolotl Squishmallow and puts them on T-shirts, bags and bedding.

Will any of this help save the axolotl? Despite its international fame, its
status in the wild is worse than ever. Although plenty of axolotls are bred in
captivity for scientific research and, in some places, food, they are on the
brink of extinction in Xochimilco, their only natural habitat. Their
population there has diminished from an estimated 6,000 per km2 in 1998 to
just 36 per km2 in 2014. Luis Zambrano of the National Autonomous
University of Mexico (UNAM), who is carrying out a new census at the
moment, believes there may no longer be any axolotls left in Xochimilco’s
large canals, and that the few remaining have retreated to smaller
waterways too small for boats.

Some have been scared off by the noisy trajinera party gondolas. Others are
eaten by carp and tilapia, introduced to the canals in the 1970s by the
government to provide sustenance to locals, with the unintended
consequence that axolotl eggs and babies became fish food. The latest threat
is football. Farmers have discovered that they can make more money by
renting out their flat, grassy land to amateur football players than they can
by growing vegetables on it. To make a field large enough for a game often
means filling in the narrow waterways that separate Xochimilco’s islands,
meaning still less space for axolotls.

Every lotl helps

But the axolotl’s fame may rescue it from oblivion. Mr Zambrano was once
pessimistic for the creature’s future. “But then, about ten years ago,
everybody started to think about axolotls,” he says. Conservationists have
latched onto this new popularity, with some success. Two years ago the
UNAM launched an adopt-an-axolotl programme, where people can donate
between $10 (to “buy dinner” for an axolotl) and $5,000 (to adopt a whole
island refuge). In its most recent year the scheme generated $200,000,
mostly from America; one girl sent all her birthday money and then visited

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with her family. The UNAM is nudging farmers away from football and
back to vegetables, and installing filters on canals to block pollution and
predator fish. At a conservation centre in Xochimilco run by the UAM,
another university, axolotls are bred for release into the wild. It includes a
miniature axolotl hospital, where several patients lie zonked out under
anaesthetic.

Fame has pitfalls. Conservationists are wary of what they call the “Nemo
effect”: Disney’s blockbuster, “Finding Nemo”, sparked a mania for pet
clownfish in 2003, but did little to protect the animal’s habitat. TV and
video games have stoked enthusiasm for the rare pink axolotl, a genetic
mutation. Visiting children always prefer the pink ones, says José Antonio
Ocampo Cervantes of the UAM. But they are sitting ducks for birds and
snakes. And when pink axolotl pets are abandoned in Xochimilco they
upset the gene pool, he says. Politicians’ conservation efforts have also been
mixed. In 2022 some Mexican mayors released 200 axolotls into the wild in
Xochimilco. But in pursuit of a good photo, the creatures were left out for
too long in the sun. Many are thought to have died not long after.

Protecting the axolotl will mean preserving its wider habitat. In that sense,
there is more at stake than the creature itself. The canals where it lives
protect Mexico’s capital from climate change, by buffering temperatures
and conserving water. “If we lose the axolotl, we lose Xochimilco. And if
we lose Xochimilco, Mexico City will be vulnerable,” says Mr Zambrano.
The race is on to save the creature in its natural habitat. The axolotl is
already as popular as the mythical unicorn. The next few years will
determine whether it becomes as rare in the wild. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/how-the-axolotl-rose-from-obscurity-to-global-stardom

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Annals of American populism

A Bible-bashing, gun-toting
governor holds lessons for today
Xenophobia, disputed elections, indictments: the story of Sidney Catts is
eerily familiar
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | DEFUNIAK SPRINGS AND PLEASANT HILL

BACK IN GOVERNOR CATTS’S day, you approached Sunbright Manor

on a driveway lined with magnolias. His was the first house in Walton
County to have indoor plumbing, along with a bathtub said to have been
made specially for his large frame. From the octagonal turret or wraparound
verandas, he had a view of the pretty lake at the heart of DeFuniak Springs.

For Sidney Catts, this corner of Florida was a congenial bolthole from the
maelstrom of politics. He left office over a century ago, but his style and
story are eerily familiar. Catts was a man of the people who grew up in

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luxury. He fulminated against immigrants and reviled the media, thrilled the
pious and stoked scandal and indictments. He drove his enemies nuts and
supporters wild—showing that, with enough gall and gumption, the rules of
political decorum could be smashed. Like others of his ilk, he embodied the
turmoil of democracy. An interloper in Florida, he was born in 1863, in the
middle of America’s civil war, in the small town of Pleasant Hill, Alabama.

Today cotton grows once again in the fields around Pleasant Hill, glowing
in the golden evening light. But otherwise it is very different from Catts’s
time. “The town has vanished,” says Michael Vaughn Sims, a local
historian, dodging a turkey buzzard that his car has startled on a verge. Next
to the whitewashed Baptist church is a plot overrun by long grass and bugs.
This is where the grand Catts house once stood. The governor’s father, a
Confederate cavalryman, is buried nearby, as is the first of his many
children, Allie Catts. He had a lifelong fondness for puns on his surname.

In the late 19th century, Pleasant Hill was wealthy. Slave-owners before the
war, the Catts clan held onto their plantation and servants after it; Mr Sims
points out a pecan grove on what he thinks was their land. At three, Catts
lost an eye in an accident (the glass replacement is still in the family). This
upbringing left two contradictory impressions. The scions of plantations had
expectations of grandeur: “He wanted to be somebody,” says Wayne Flynt,
author of “Cracker Messiah”, an excellent biography of Catts. In his case,
however, a taste for the high life went along with a strict Baptist faith.

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Surveying his later years—not least his ties to gamblers and counterfeiters
—you might conclude that religion was just a vehicle for Catts’s raging
ambition. But that is to read his life backwards when, like everyone’s, it
was lived the other way. Pleasant Hill was a devout place. “Modern
dancing”, declared a resolution of the Baptist church in the 1890s, “is a sin
against God.” As Mr Flynt recounts, Catts’s first foray into politics came in
a local liquor referendum. He inveighed against “demon rum”, despite
enjoying fortified eggnog at Christmas. (Until recently, remembers a
resident of nearby Selma, bashful Baptists in this part of Alabama enlisted
Methodists to buy their booze.)

Catts practised briefly as a lawyer, until, by his account, the Holy Spirit led
him to a revival meeting and he took up preaching, an alternative path to
renown. Ordained in 1886, he was a pastor in several then-prosperous, now
faded Alabama towns, among them Fort Deposit, today a poor place rich in
churches, and Tuskegee, where many palatial old homes are crumbling. But
he rowed with his flocks over money—“He was the kind of guy”, says Mr
Flynt, “who goes to his boss every year for a raise”—and his fierce
moralising.

In 1911 Catts headed south to DeFuniak Springs, in the centre of Florida’s

Panhandle. Follow his route today, and you pass signs affirming that “There

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is evidence for God” and adverts for all-you-can-eat catfish buffets. When
Catts arrived, the town was home to an outpost of the Chautauqua
movement, an education initiative that drew thousands of visitors. In 1914,
after another dust-up, he quit the church for good and became an itinerant
insurance salesman, underwriting mortal bodies instead of eternal souls.

From preaching to insurance may seem a leap. But the two jobs had a lot in
common. Both took Catts to backwoods places where he frightened,
entertained and charmed Florida’s “crackers”, or poor rural whites. He
knew their hopes and prejudices, and they knew him, much as a stint on
television might warm up an electorate today. Since Reconstruction the real
political contests in the segregated South had mostly been in Democratic
primaries. In 1904 Catts had entered a congressional race in Alabama,
making rookie errors (a man he paid to canvass for him bet the fee on his
opponent). When he stood for Florida’s governorship in 1916, he was ready.

A Bible and two pistols

Catts loved the poorly educated—and persuaded them that this son of a
plantation was on their side. He saw that Florida’s yeoman farmers,
fishermen and labourers craved protection from both social change and
rapacious employers. He knew they deemed politics a plutocrats’ racket,
and wooed them in speeches laced with anecdotes and jokes. “He could say
things that in other speakers would sound coarse and possibly offensive,” an
observer noted. Tall and red-haired, he trekked across the state in a white
suit, cooling himself with a palmetto fan on the stump. He pledged to drain
the swamp—in his case, the Everglades.

Above all, Catts sensed that Florida had an unserved market for nativism,
which, like populists before and later, he mixed with promises of a fairer
economy. He had imbibed white supremacy in Pleasant Hill and saw
segregation as natural and necessary. In Tuskegee, home of a pioneering
black university, Catts’s wife, Alice May, once unwittingly invited Booker
T. Washington, its first president, to do her gardening. This condescending
racism had a bloody seam. Catts blamed African-Americans for provoking
their own lynchings. He had once killed a black man himself—in self-
defence, he insisted.

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But his main bogeymen were Catholics. Anti-Catholicism in America was
older than the country; a popular children’s game in colonial times was
called “Break the pope’s neck”. Especially after waves of immigration, the
animosity erupted in arson, riots and allegations of depravity and disloyalty.
Catts refined these age-old tropes to a hysterical pitch.

He threatened to punch, shoot or imprison his critics

The Catholics were planning a revolt, he warned, for which they were
storing arms in a cathedral in Tampa (it didn’t have a cathedral, but never
mind). The Holy See was to be moved to Florida; a papist cabal in
Apalachicola was plotting to kill him. Amid febrile speculation about
goings-on in convents and monasteries, Catts proposed a law allowing the
state to inspect them. His supporters dressed up as priests and tainted an
opponent by praising him. Too few in number to wield political clout,
Florida’s Catholics made easy scapegoats. Many voters didn’t know any:
useful when you want to demonise a minority.

His conspiracy-mongering illustrates the enduring power of whopping lies.

Invent a peril out of whole cloth, and it can be hard to disprove. The
absence of evidence merely shows the conspirators’ cunning. If your
adversaries pooh-pooh the menace, denounce them for betraying the voters,
as Catts did.

He had a taste for violent rhetoric, and flirted with actual violence.
Colourful insults and nicknames were a forte, such as “Hog Island Pete”,
for a man who did business on Hog Island, Pennsylvania. Catts revelled in
personal attacks and braggadocio, favourably comparing the size of his
head, and supposedly his brain, with a rival’s. He hated journalists and they
reciprocated. After he predicted they would be “cast into hell”, one said he
feared bumping into Catts there. It wasn’t just words. As well as
brandishing a Bible, he toted two loaded pistols with which to fend off
assassins. He spoke darkly of his supporters marching on Tallahassee, the
state capital, should he be denied victory. He threatened to punch, shoot or
imprison his critics.

Catts’s opponents in the Democratic primary made two big and familiar
mistakes. They didn’t take him seriously, ignoring or deriding him until it

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was too late. “Every time Catts says anything,” mocked an editorial, “he
hits the nail on the thumb.” And too many of them ran against him, splitting
the establishment vote. At the poll in June 1916 Catts won—probably. It is
hard to be sure, because after months of wrangling and recounts, Florida’s
Supreme Court dubiously declared a different primary victor. Catts may
have been paranoid, but some people were indeed out to get him.

It didn’t stop him. The self-anointed martyr of a conspiracy, he got on the

ballot on the Prohibition Party’s ticket. Previously he had to pass a hat
around his crowds to pay for onward fares. Now he raised enough cash to
buy a Model T Ford, mounting a loudspeaker on the roof—an innovation in
Florida politics. It boosted his reach as social media do today, wowing
voters who had never seen either a candidate or a car. He harped on elite
skulduggery: “Kill the Rats…Vote for Catts” proclaimed a poster. The
Florida cracker, it was said, had but three friends, God Almighty, the mail-
order retailer Sears Roebuck—and Catts.

In November 1916 he won the governorship handily. Among other things,

the result was, for its era, a triumph of democracy. An outsider and political
ingénue, Catts channelled the grievances of people who felt ignored. He
convinced them that attacks on him were really assaults on them; that he
was, so to speak, their retribution. His voters embraced the slights directed
at them. Referring to the dodgy primary, some displayed placards saying,
“We may be ignorant, but we will not steal.”

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The history museum in DeFuniak Springs has a crepe and silk dress that it
once thought Catts’s wife wore to his inauguration ball. She couldn’t have,
however, because the couple didn’t attend, on account of the sinful dancing.
But he had a parade, an event captured on a jerky silent newsreel. First
come Confederate veterans on horseback, then a cavalcade of cars. Catts’s
vehicle bears a sign: “THIS IS THE FORD THAT-GOT-ME THERE”.
(Evidently he had a thing for hyphens.) A ray of sunlight is said to have
pierced the clouds when he spoke. “America for Americans,” Catts
thundered, “throughout eternity!”

Fond memories of the family’s sojourn in Tallahassee have come down to

his descendants. “It wasn’t just a stern, militaristic life,” says Nancy Catts-
Tippin, his charming great-granddaughter. (The current generation, she
notes, have a wide range of political views.) His children recalled playing
pranks in the governor’s mansion. When one married a Catholic, he
accepted her warmly. Among the heirlooms is a letter in which Catts
expounds his love for his wife over two pages. If home was a refuge, the
governor needed it.

“He’s an insurance salesman and a preacher,” says Andrew Frank of Florida

State University, sitting in the old Capitol building, down the hall from
what was once Catts’s office. “He’s been in uncomfortable situations

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before.” Tallahassee was certainly one of them. Reviling him as a turncoat
and upstart, Democrats talked of impeaching him. He was criticised for
purging bureaucrats who had opposed him and for nepotism (he tried to
make his lawyer the state’s attorney-general). Catts responded punningly:
“Did you ever see an old cat that wouldn’t take care of its kittens?”

In office he flogged some old hobby-horses. He signed a state prohibition

bill, and pondered using martial law to enforce it in the gap before the
national booze ban took effect. After America entered the first world war,
he urged troops in Jacksonville to abjure prostitution and get married,
offering to help any who couldn’t afford the licence. “There is no record of
any such requests,” Mr Flynt’s biography reports.

“Any man who don’t like a good dog, a fast horse and a good-looking
woman just ain’t in my class”

But he also had positive, even enlightened achievements. He made humane

reforms to the penal system and invested in education, including for girls
and black pupils. He improved the state’s roads and mental-health facilities.
He mostly left the Catholics alone.

At least he did until, limited to one term at a time as governor, he ran for the
Senate in 1920. Reviving his old themes, he railed against both immigration
and American involvement in the League of Nations, warning that it would
lead to foreigners inspecting Floridian women’s underwear. He lost. In 1924
and 1928 he tried for the governorship again, making a stink about the
supposed circulation of obscene books in colleges, another echo of today’s
politics.

Less adept at comebacks than some, he lost twice more. Yet the support
Catts retained is as noteworthy as his defeats. Maybe because of donations
from betting syndicates, the erstwhile preacher proposed to let Florida’s
counties legalise gambling, so its citizens could enjoy “horse-racing, dog-
racing, and cat-racing if you want it”. When fellow Baptists objected, he
threatened to “beat hell out of them”. Ridiculed as the God and gambling
candidate, Catts was insouciant: “Any man who don’t like a good dog, a
fast horse and a good-looking woman just ain’t in my class.”

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His fans were loyal less to specific policies or prejudices than to his
personality and pugnacious style. That is often the way with demagogues. A
corollary is that they struggle to transfer their mandates to their acolytes.
This proved true in Florida, where an ally of Catts who tried to succeed him
flopped.

Gato’s ghosts

His post-political career was eclectic. Moving briefly to Atlanta, he peddled

“Catts’ Hog Tonic” and other quack cures for humans and animals. Back in
DeFuniak Springs he grew peaches to make brandy and dabbled in real
estate. Along the way he got acquainted with some shady characters
(Florida was a mob haven). These links contributed to the legal troubles that
are another familiar feature of his story.

Catts was accused of selling pardons, including for the murderer of a deputy
sheriff, and of using convicts as forced labour on his land. And he was
snagged in a lurid counterfeiting bust. He was said to have sneaked five
$1,000 bills into a motel room in his shoes, operating under the alias Gato,
Spanish for “cat”. He acknowledged carrying money in his footwear but
denied wrongdoing. The charges were politically motivated, he insisted.
Perhaps they were. He was eventually acquitted of all of them. He died in
1936.

Today Catts is forgotten. Even the pastor at his church in DeFuniak Springs
hasn’t heard of him. But his career, at once alien and recognisable, holds
lessons and, for the anxious, a muted kind of consolation. For starters, there
is nothing new under the Florida sun. The ideal of America as a melting pot
has always jostled with a view of it as a fortress. Facing change and
complex problems, Americans, like many others, have sometimes looked
for scapegoats and strongmen. Such populist irruptions are not fatal to
democracy but part of it. The lightning of history illuminates a gaudy
champion—and then the storm passes.

If, a century on, Catts seems reprehensible, he is also a little pitiable.

Planter, lawyer, salesman, gun-toting Bible-basher, demagogue, reformer,
shifty operator: throughout his rollercoaster life he seems to have been

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chasing a goal that endlessly receded. It is hard to work out who he really
was by the end, says Mr Flynt, and he may not have known himself.

Catts lay in state in his parlour in DeFuniak Springs and was buried in
Magnolia Cemetery, a serene spot shaded by cedars and oaks. His house is
now a swankily restored inn. It is rumoured to be haunted; locals have seen
a figure dressed in white hovering in the turret. The spectre of Catts may
stalk American politics, but lately the innkeeper hasn’t seen any ghosts. “If
they were here,” he says, “they all moved away.” ■
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specials/2024/12/19/a-bible-bashing-gun-toting-governor-holds-lessons-for-today

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Batswomen v bigots

The incredible story of

Afghanistan's exiled women’s
cricket team
The Taliban would kill them for daring to play “the gentlemen’s game”
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

IT WAS A warm night in Kabul. Just days earlier, on August 15th 2021, the
Taliban had seized control of the Afghan capital, and with it, the country. At
around 4am Feroza Afghan, then a 17-year-old girl, crept through the silent
streets, dodging Taliban soldiers. In all, it took her and her family three
months to escape from Afghanistan, via nine hotels and 18 Taliban
checkpoints. “If they found us, they would kill us,” Ms Afghan recalls. Her
crime? She played cricket.

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The Afghan regime is surely the world’s most sexist. The Taliban, an
Islamist militia that swept to power when President Joe Biden ended
military support for a democratic government in Kabul, bar girls from
studying beyond sixth grade and women from raising their voices in public.
If a woman steps outside, she must be covered from head to toe. If the
morality police spot an infraction, they can punish it in any way they deem
“appropriate”. All refugees tell tales of the joyless theocracy Afghanistan
has become. But few are as poignant as those of its exiled women
cricketers.

Around nine months before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan formed its
first national women’s cricket team, with 25 players. Nearly all have since
fled abroad. Now scattered across Australia, Canada and Britain, they are
fighting a lonely battle to be allowed to represent their country. For them,
cricket is not just a game. It is a way of showing that women can make their
own choices, rather than meekly obeying the rules laid down by unelected
bigots with beards.

Cricket is an unlikely weapon of resistance. Afghanistan's national sport is

Buzkashi, a rugged version of polo in which horse-mounted players fight to
toss a goat carcass into a goal. But it is cricket that has become
Afghanistan's favourite sport.

In neighbouring Pakistan and India, cricket’s roots stretch back to the 18th
century, when British colonists introduced it. Afghans did not embrace the
game until much later. During civil wars in the 1980s and 1990s, millions of
Afghans fled into Pakistan. In refugee camps, they saw their Pakistani
neighbours playing cricket, and tried it. Raees Ahmadzai, a former player,
remembers improvising with a washing paddle as a bat and a tennis ball
wrapped in tape.

For them, cricket is not just a game. It shows women can make choices

In 2001 America toppled the Taliban for hosting al-Qaeda, the terrorist
group that had just flown planes packed with people into the twin towers in
New York. Many Afghan refugees returned home, bringing cricket with
them. Over the next few years a small group formed the core of a national
men’s team. Despite a paltry budget, they have become remarkably

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successful and wildly popular. In the most recently concluded T20 World
Cup, they reached the final four.

As a young girl, Ms Afghan watched the men's team on television and

asked her mother why the country did not have a women's team, too. The
Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) had tried to set one up in 2010, but
quietly shelved the plan after four years, citing a shortage of female players.
In 2020 it tried again. Players for the national side were chosen from school
teams—a pool of just 500 girls. By the end of the year, 25 were offered
contracts.

Most of their families hesitated to let them play in public. Benafsha

Hashimi, a team member, remembers her mother wishing that she would
play poorly and give up on a sporting career. Roya Samim, another player,
says that whenever there was a threat of an attack from the Taliban, officials
would say the female cricketers had provoked them.

The gloves are off

Yet they never gave up. Tuba Sangar, an administrator for the women’s
team, recalls their pride when they got their first cricket gear. They showed
off their kit bags in public, calling it the “best moment ever”, she
remembers. By 2021 they were training regularly, in preparation for their
first overseas tour, to Oman. For a short while, their prospects seemed rosy.

Then the Taliban took over. The women knew their lives were at risk.
Australia’s government, understanding the danger, granted visas to the
players and their families. Most escaped from Kabul within days, but not
Ms Afghan’s family. They did not have passports.

So they headed for Pakistan overland. Ms Afghan dumped her cricket kit
and destroyed her treasured certificates by washing the ink from the paper.
She could not risk being identified. Her coach forged medical documents
for her. (At the time, Pakistan was accepting refugees who needed medical
treatment.) But still, Ms Afghan and her family were turned back at several
of the 18 Taliban checkpoints they approached, and had to keep trying.

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After three months, they at last made it to Pakistan. It took another nine
months to get their papers to move to Australia—and safety.

For the men’s cricket team, not much has changed under the Taliban. Their
calendar remains packed. Most “home” matches are played in the United
Arab Emirates or India, since few teams are willing to travel to
Afghanistan. The Taliban are in two minds about men’s cricket. Hardliners
want to ban it, because banning fun is what they do. Others quietly enjoy
watching the game. A former player told The Economist that some Taliban
leaders call players to congratulate them after big wins.

Afghanistan is a prison, says Ms Hashimi. Now, in Australia, she can feel

the sun on her face without fear of arrest, and she can study. But her dream
of playing cricket for her country is over. Or is it?

The women’s team have not played together since they fled from their
homes, though several keep their hands in by playing for local clubs. Yet
they have a plan. They are urging the International Cricket Council (ICC),
the sport’s governing body, to recognise a refugee team. Under the ICC's
own rules, full members like Afghanistan must have a proper women’s
cricket programme and allocate a portion of their funds to it. The
Afghanistan Cricket Board, which depends on the ICC for most of its
budget, allocates none of that money to women’s cricket. So the women
argue that a portion of the ICC funds earmarked for Afghanistan should
instead fund a team of female exiles.

The logic of this argument makes international cricket officials squirm. A

spokesperson for the ICC says that only the Afghan national body can
recognise a women’s team (which the Taliban won’t allow). Yet some other
sports have found workarounds. At this year's Olympic games, Afghanistan
fielded a team of three women and three men, all chosen by the country's
exiled Olympic body.

Some campaigners have called for the Afghan men’s team to be banned
from international cricket, just as South Africa was banned during
apartheid. But most Afghan women players oppose such a move, since it
would deprive their compatriots of a rare source of pride and pleasure.

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Ms Samim suggests that the ICC could support an Afghan women’s team
based abroad. It could easily afford to do so: the ICC generates $600m a
year. But so far, it has demurred. Male cricket grandees can be clueless. In
September the captains of the Afghan and New Zealand men’s teams posed
for a photo beside a trophy veiled in a black cloth—and then “unveiled” it.
Neither noticed the awful symbolism.

Globally, women’s cricket is booming, with a lucrative league launched in

India in 2023 and the ICC announcing in 2024 that men’s and women’s
national teams would receive equal prize money. For the Afghan women,
though, time is slipping away. Ms Samim sighs that she has lost three years
of her cricketing life, with no guarantee of a reprieve before her youth and
batting skills fade. Back home in Afghanistan, no new girls are learning to
play cricket—indeed, the Taliban are straining to prevent girls from
learning anything much besides cookery, obedience and fear.

No member of Afghanistan’s male team has publicly spoken up about the

women’s plight. In 2023, when the men's team were playing in Australia,
Ms Afghan visited their hotel. She approached one of the stars and asked
him why he had not said anything. He listened quietly, and after a pause,
simply said, “Sorry.” ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/the-incredible-story-of-afghanistans-exiled-womens-cricket-team

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Life, the universe and everything

A chart that shows everything that

has ever existed
Could the universe itself be a black hole?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

SOME 13.8BN YEARS ago, the universe came into existence in the Big
Bang. Its first moments were a period of pure energy with intense, possibly
infinite, heat and density. As the universe expanded, it cooled and objects
began to emerge, like snowflakes forming in cold air. In less than a
nanosecond the elementary particles—photons, electrons, quarks and
gluons—condensed from the maelstrom. As the universe cooled further, the
quarks coalesced into neutrons and protons. Then these composite particles
formed atomic nuclei and, pulling electrons into orbit around them, became
atoms of hydrogen and helium. Over hundreds of millions of years, gravity
pulled these simple atoms together to form stars; in the cores of those (and

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later) stars, simple nuclei fused to create the nuclei of heavier elements.
Those elements ended up in dust, planets, people, whales, galaxies, and
black holes.

“The whole history of the universe can be understood as a sequence of

condensations,” says Charles Lineweaver, a physicist at the Australian
National University. Each new class of fundamental particles was formed at
a time when the entire cosmos had that specific density. At the moment
when protons emerged, the entire universe was the density of a proton.
Protons are still with us as distinct objects because—at roughly the same
time—the strong nuclear force was able to pull quarks together. This froze
protons (and neutrons) in time at a higher density than their surroundings.
That is all any object is, cosmologically—something made from particles
left at a higher density as the universe has become less dense around them.

Noting that, Dr Lineweaver and a fellow physicist, Vihan Patel, devised a

single chart onto which every known object in the history of the universe
could be plotted. They wondered what they might learn if they categorised
everything in terms of its size and mass.

The solid white diagonals represent the bounds of what we know as objects.
At the top, gravity imposes a limit on how dense something can get. As
more mass is concentrated into the same volume, its gravity will increase
until, eventually, the force overcomes everything else and the mass will
collapse into a black hole. The size at which any given mass will collapse is
its “Schwarzschild radius”. Black holes of all sizes sit on the “gravitational
limit” line. Gravity forbids anything from existing above this line [1]; an
object of a specific size can never have more mass than a black hole of the
same size.

Small, old black holes, created just after the Big Bang, sit towards the
bottom section of the gravitational-limit line. Move up and right, and you
find black holes that are the remnants of massive stars; farther along are the
supermassive black holes that sit at the centres of galaxies, such as
Sagittarius A* in the Milky Way. At the top, where the line meets the
modern day [2], is the largest object—the entire known universe itself. This
is represented by the mass inside the Hubble radius—the distance from
Earth at which galaxies are receding at the speed of light. The fact that this

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object fits on the gravitational-limit line raises the question: is our universe
itself a black hole?

At the bottom of the chart are the fundamental particles—quarks, bosons

(eg Higgs, W+, W-, Z), protons, neutrons, electrons and neutrinos. A
particle’s “Compton wavelength” is used here as a proxy for its size—the
more massive a particle, the smaller its wavelength. Top quarks and protons
have small wavelengths; electrons have big wavelengths, around the size of
atoms; visible-light particles (photons) have bigger wavelengths still. All
these particles sit along a line, the Compton limit, which is a lower
boundary, determined by quantum physics, for what you can call an object.

Quantum mechanics says that the more precisely a particle’s location is

known, the bigger the uncertainty in how much energy it has. Albert
Einstein showed that energy and matter are equivalent (E=mc2), so
pinpointing the tiniest particles would require so much energy that new
particles would be conjured into existence from the vacuum. Below the
Compton limit [3], therefore, is a realm of uncertainty in which it makes no
sense to talk of individual objects.

Everything that exists (or has existed) in the universe that has the same
density appears on the same positively sloping, dotted line. Viruses, fleas,
humans, whales, Earth and the Sun appear on the same line as atoms [4],
since that is what they are all made from. This line is the most populated
thing on the chart because scientists know more about atoms (and the
objects they create) than anything else.

Look at where the gravitational- and Compton-limit lines meet: any object
here would be an instanton [5], dense enough to be governed by gravity but
small enough to be wholly quantum. Given its position on the map, “The
instanton may be the same thing as the origin of a universe,” says Dr
Lineweaver.

The chart also provides pointers for the unknown. Dark matter, which
makes up around 27% of the universe (normal matter makes up only 5%), is
not on the chart because scientists don’t know what it is. But the galaxies
and superclusters at the top right might provide clues. These will be
overwhelmingly composed of dark matter so—just as dotted lines of equal

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density connect atoms and stars—could the densities of galaxies tell us
something about the place of fundamental dark-matter particles along the
Compton limit?

And what of the vast triangle of emptiness [6] to the left of the Higgs
boson? No forces or laws of physics have yet been found, which would
dominate here in order to create objects. But that doesn’t mean nothing
could exist there. “It’s a wonderful wild west of particle existence,” says Dr
Lineweaver. ■
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https://www.economist.com/interactive/christmas-specials/2024/12/21/the-chart-of-
everything

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Boy scouts with attitude

Inside the RSS, the world’s most

powerful volunteer group
Among the foot soldiers of Hindu nationalism, bored young men find
purpose
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Nagpur

IT FEELS LIKE a cross between a military parade and a school sports day.
In the Indian city of Nagpur, thousands of members of the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu-nationalist group, are goose-stepping
into a playground, dressed in khaki trousers, white shirts and black caps.
There are young men with bristling moustaches, middle-aged men with
paunches bulging over belts and elderly men with glasses resting on the tips
of their noses. There are no women.

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All watch in silence as a small saffron flag, limp in the late monsoon air,
shimmies up a mast. Then the command comes. Every man holds his right
arm stiff across his chest and then straight at his sides, stopping just short of
raising it in salute.

With over 5m members, all male, the RSS is the biggest volunteer group in
the world. It does charity work and teaches young men discipline, say its
supporters. It is a bigoted paramilitary group that persecutes India’s
minorities, say its detractors. Your correspondent went to Nagpur to talk to
some of its members.

To be close to the RSS is to be close to power

Like other clubs, the RSS is held together by shared experiences, rituals and
garb. Young boys join as soon as they can walk and talk. They go to daily
meetings and training camps. Many are sent by parents who want them to
make friends, do some exercise and get out of the house. All learn the RSS
prayer, chants and games. The uniform is so well-known that it made
headlines in India when the group swapped its khaki shorts for full-length
trousers a few years ago.

The biggest event on the RSS calendar is the Hindu festival of Dussehra,
which coincides with the anniversary of the organisation’s founding. And
this year’s celebrations in Nagpur kicked off its centenary year. Once the
sea of uniformed men paraded into the playground, Mohan Bhagwat, a
round-faced septuagenarian who is the sixth leader of the RSS, took the
stage. He talked of the threats to India from Muslim-majority Pakistan, and
from domestic enemies such as the “deep state”, “wokeism” and “cultural
Marxists”. He urged the crowd to buy local and keep traditional dress and
language alive. “The world worships the strong,” he said. “The weak are
ignored.”

To be close to the RSS is to be close to power. A former head of India’s

space agency was in the audience, as was at least one billionaire. And if Mr
Bhagwat’s speech echoed themes beloved of India’s prime minister,
Narendra Modi, this was perhaps because Mr Modi is one of the club. He
joined the RSS when he was eight, and was a full-time RSS worker, or
pracharak, until he entered politics in his 30s. (This meant renouncing

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material possessions and taking a vow of celibacy.) Since being elected
prime minister in 2014, Mr Modi has filled his cabinet with RSS men.

I’m just mad about saffron

How did a group that advocates traditional values and modest living amass
such influence? Its power lies in something simple and visceral: it gives its
members “a tremendous sense of self-worth”, says Purushottam Agrawal, a
writer who joined briefly as a child and is now a vocal critic. “The RSS
makes young people, despite their young age, and older people, despite
their limitations as family men, feel they are still contributing to the cause
of the Hindu nation.”

Rewind 100 years. The RSS was set up in Nagpur in 1925 by a doctor and
politician, Keshav Baliram Hedgewar. He and his successors taught that
India is a great, ancient civilisation crippled by humiliating invasions. In the
16th century it was the Mughals; in the 18th the British. Today, the RSS
hints that the 15% of Indians who are Muslim are outsiders: descendants of
the Mughals, a potential fifth column for Pakistan, and not to be trusted
near a good Hindu’s cows or daughters. Hedgewar’s goal was to raise a
cadre of disciplined patriots to remake India as a Hindu country.

Hedgewar wanted the RSS to be a cultural organisation, not a political one.

But when India won independence in 1947 its members were aghast at what
followed. They saw the subcontinent’s partition into India and Pakistan as a
carve-up of sacred territory. They objected to India’s tricolour flag,
preferring saffron. They loathed the new secular constitution.

In 1948 an ex-member of the RSS, Nathuram Godse, murdered Mahatma

Gandhi, the pre-eminent leader of the independence movement. Godse had
criticised Gandhi for the same reasons the RSS did: for taking a soft line on
Muslims and promoting secular democracy. The group tried to distance
itself from the assassin, but the government banned it for more than a year.
Its leaders decided they had to get into politics. They set up a political wing,
the forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leads the
government today.

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The RSS has spawned India’s biggest trade union, its biggest private school
system, a women’s group, a student association and scores of other
organisations. Overseas affiliates organise meetings in Britain, America and
anywhere with a Hindu diaspora (though RSS leaders abroad are coy about
their links with the parent group in India). The RSS says it is funded by
donations, though its finances are opaque. Through its network, the RSS
“family”, it has quietly gained influence in all corners of India.

Manohar Vinayak (pictured) joined when he was ten. He was weedy,

awkward and illiterate. Other RSS boys bullied him, but his mother
wouldn’t let him quit, and in time he made friends. He never finished
school, but RSS elders helped him find on-the-job training. He became a
tailor, then a teacher. Now 92, he still attends RSS meetings at dawn each
day, wearing his old khaki shorts. “I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it
wasn’t for the shakha,” he says.

There are over 73,000 shakhas, or RSS branches. They meet for an hour
every day in parks, playgrounds or temple forecourts. First, the group does
yoga. Then members play games, such as kabaddi, a traditional cross
between wrestling and tag, or duel with big sticks. Sessions close with a
lesson in history and philosophy. Group leaders can be strict, particularly
with young boys who fail to follow instructions.

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The shakha model adapts to stay relevant. During covid-19 lockdowns,
when public gatherings were forbidden, meetings took place remotely via
WhatsApp and Zoom. Around Bangalore, India’s tech capital, shakhas
gather on Sunday mornings to suit busy professionals. And, though the RSS
generally promotes Hindi and Sanskrit, the meetings are conducted in
English to include people from all corners of India.

Avaneesh Harday, a 16-year-old acolyte in Nagpur, first went to a shakha

with his grandfather, when he was eight. To begin with, it was the games
that fired him up. Now it is the history lessons. He has learned about the
mistreatment of Hindus by Mughal rulers and how Bangladesh and Pakistan
were ripped away from India. A Christian friend suggested to him that the
RSS stokes interreligious violence. “I told him to read Guruji’s books,”
Harday says.

That is not the compelling rebuttal he thinks it is. M.S. Golwalkar, known
as Guruji, who led the RSS through India’s independence, wrote about the
supremacy of Hindus in India and praised the Nazis. “Germany shocked the
world by her purging the country of the Semitic races,” Golwalkar wrote.
“Race pride at its highest has been manifested here... a good lesson for us in
Hindustan to learn and profit by.”

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Today, the most feared RSS affiliates are the Vishwa Hindu Parishad
(VHP), or World Hindu Organisation, and its youth wing, the Bajrang Dal.
Members are steeped in conspiracy theories: that Muslim men seduce
Hindu women as part of a “love jihad”; that Christians win converts by
trickery. Sometimes, they beat up Muslims or Christians they suspect of
such transgressions. Videos of the attacks go viral and, explains Christophe
Jaffrelot at King’s College London, send a message that minorities should
“disappear from the public sphere”.

The worst anti-Muslim pogrom in recent decades took place in 2002 in

Gujarat. Over 1,000 people were killed. Witnesses said the attackers wore
khaki shorts and saffron scarves. Police reports accused local VHP chiefs of
leading the mobs. A former regional boss of the Bajrang Dal was recorded
telling an undercover reporter how he beat and burned Muslims; he boasted
of slitting open a pregnant woman’s stomach. Mr Modi, who was chief
minister of Gujarat at the time, was accused of presiding over a culture of
impunity. However, India’s Supreme Court cleared him of complicity.

The RSS insists it is peaceful. Of late, its leaders have distanced themselves
from predecessors who admired European fascists. They would rather talk
about the RSS’s charitable work: some 52,500 projects in total, including
13,000 schools, as well as health clinics and shelters. Sunil Ambekar, a
spokesman, says the RSS welcomes people of all faiths, though it doesn’t
keep count of its non-Hindu members. Yes, the goal is to remake India as a
Hindu nation, he explains, but the organisation defines Hindus as the people
of “Hindustan”, the Hindi name for India, or “those who follow the Hindu
way of life”.

To help unite Hindus, the group hopes to do away with divisions of caste.
This is easier said than done, however. Bhanwar Meghwanshi, who grew up
a dalit (the caste formerly known as “untouchable”) in the northern state of
Rajasthan, was pleasantly surprised when he joined a local shakha and
everyone addressed him as “ji”, or sir, as they did one another. But he
noticed that leaders were all higher caste. And one time, when a meeting
was held in his neighbourhood and he cooked for everyone, the leaders said
they would pack up their meal and eat it on their travels. It was found

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strewn on the roadside—they did not want to eat food cooked in a dalit
home. Mr Meghwanshi quit the RSS soon afterwards.

Modi’s relationship with the RSS is not straightforward

Mr Modi often talks of his time as a pracharak, sleeping in RSS offices and
following a strict routine of early mornings, spartan meals and lots of yoga.
He travelled across India, living out of a small shoulder bag and giving
rousing speeches. That, says R. Balashankar, a former editor of the
Organiser, an RSS newspaper,is where the prime minister developed his
discipline and oratorical skills.

India is too vast, diverse and decentralised ever to become a theocracy like,
say, Iran. But under Mr Modi the government has shown signs of what a
biographer calls “Hindu triumphalism”. It has stripped Jammu and
Kashmir, hitherto India’s only Muslim-majority state, of much of its
autonomy. It has introduced citizenship rules that discriminate against
Muslims. Several states have tightened the rules around cattle slaughter and
religious conversion. And Mr Modi presided over the erection of a Hindu
temple in Ayodhya, on the site of a 16th-century mosque that was razed by
a Hindu mob—causing massive bloodshed—in 1992.

Still, Mr Modi’s relationship with the RSS is not straightforward. It has

always advised BJP governments on appointments and policy. But over Mr
Modi’s first two terms, when the BJP had a thumping majority in
parliament, his government felt confident enough not to need advice, even
from the movement that spawned it. At the same time, it promoted a
personality cult, plastering Mr Modi’s face on billboards, vaccine
certificates and the bags of grain the state hands out to the poor. This irked
many RSS officials, who frown on the idea that any man, even a prime
minister, could be bigger than the organisation.

Capped crusaders

A very public tussle is now under way between the RSS and its most
famous disciple. In an election in 2024 Mr Modi won a third term, but lost
his parliamentary majority. This has crimped his power, making it harder

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for him to neglect his allies. Since the election Mr Bhagwat has obliquely
criticised Mr Modi; and Mr Modi has made gestures of deference, such as
beefing up Mr Bhagwat’s security detail and lifting a long-standing ban on
civil servants being RSS members.

It is hard to say whether Mr Modi needs the RSS more than it needs him, or
vice versa. Its millions of volunteers preach the BJP party line and help
drum up votes. “That’s the BJP’s electoral trump card,” says Tanika Sarkar,
a historian. “No other party has this cadre.” But without Mr Modi, whose
charisma has given the BJP its longest-ever stint in power, the RSS might
never have realised so much of its majoritarian vision. Some RSS bigwigs
may resent the way he hogs the limelight, but the rank-and-file revere him.

Sreevallabha Washimkar, 13, started going to a shakha in Nagpur six years

ago. He knows Mr Modi started as a foot soldier in the RSS, just like him.
How does that make him feel? He looks up from the saffron flag he is
diligently folding: “I feel proud.” ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/inside-the-rss-the-worlds-most-powerful-volunteer-group

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Carnal knowledge

How better data could lead to

better sex
What we don’t know about human sexual behaviour is scandalous
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Dhaka, London and Nairobi

YEARS AGO, when Caroline Kabiru was due to learn about sex in school,
she found that the relevant pages of one of the textbooks had been glued
together. And the teacher never showed up.

Oddly, given how much time people spend thinking about sex, many
understand it only poorly. Dr Kabiru, who is now an expert at the African
Population and Health Research Centre in Nairobi, recalls a survey her
team conducted among young Kenyans in 2008. Roughly half thought the
time of the month when a woman was most likely to get pregnant was
during her period. She speculates that this myth may have arisen because

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when a girl gets her first period, many Kenyan parents say “Now you must
stop playing with boys, or you might get pregnant.”

There is little data about poor countries, men or the over-50s. These
are huge omissions

Globally, three forces hinder the spread of good information about sex. One
is shame—many adults, like Dr Kabiru’s biology teacher, find the topic
embarrassing. Another problem is that bad information often crowds out the
good. Many teenagers pick up ideas from online pornography, which is as
accurate a guide to real sex as James Bond films are to the daily routine of a
British civil servant. Rebecca Cant of Brook, a British sex-education
charity, quotes one teenage boy who said, in all seriousness, that he was not
ready to have sex with his girlfriend because he was “not ready” to choke
her. He assumed it was expected.

A third problem is that data are often not gathered in the first place. Lianne
Gonsalves of the World Health Organisation (WHO) cites three blind spots:
non-wealthy countries, men and people over 50. Less is known about poor
countries than rich ones, since they have less money for sex surveys. (China
and Russia are black holes, too.) And less is known about men and older
people because most big surveys concentrate on those who might get
pregnant.

These are huge omissions. To make things harder, some governments are
prudish, and so reluctant to pry into this area. Some people, when asked
about their sexual habits, do not tell the truth. And in several countries gay
sex is still illegal, making it tricky even to pose questions about it.

Early sex research was often shoddy. In 1948 Alfred Kinsey’s “Sexual
Behaviour in the Human Male” scandalised America, but since it was based
on non-random samples it was wildly inaccurate.

Globally, AIDS gave a big boost in the 1980s and 90s to better research.
Britain’s well-regarded national sex survey, NATSAL, wouldn’t have
happened without it, reckons Soazig Clifton of University College London.
Scientists and rational politicians immediately saw the point of studies to
help predict the spread of what was then an invariably fatal disease.

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Let’s talk about sex, baby

The broadest source of reliable data today, the USAID-sponsored

Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), are conducted in 90 countries and
focus on females aged 15-49. They tend to ask basic questions about acts
that might lead to infection or conception (“bugs and babies”). They don’t
ask about pleasure, consent or the context in which sex occurs.

Understanding sex is not just a matter of public health. Evidence from

America, India and other places suggests that troubles with emotional or
physical intimacy are a cause of 20-50% of divorces—which tend to make
children sadder and families poorer. If better information leads to better sex,
it could add to the sum of human joy for a trivial price tag. Small wonder
sex researchers are passionate about their vocation.

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
To start, some are trying to extrapolate more information from basic
surveys. Emma Slaymaker of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical
Medicine and her co-authors crunched data from DHS surveys and
estimated the number of partners people in 47 developing countries could
expect to have by the age of 50.

There was enormous variation. A Congolese man of 50 will have had on

average 20 partners; an Indian, only nine. There was great variety within
continents, too. Men from Niger have only an eighth as many as their
Congolese peers. Is this because they often live in small, conservative
villages and must cross large deserts to find cities with nightlife? No one
knows.

Everywhere, women report fewer partners than men. This may sound
mathematically improbable, but surveys seldom capture sex workers and
women often underreport. Their stated lifetime tally ranges from 1.2 in
Cambodia to nine in Gabon; for men it ranges from 2.4 in Niger to 21 in
Gabon. Several countries fit the stereotype that as men get richer, they have
more partners. But in India and Madagascar, it is the other way round:
poorer men have more partners. Perhaps this is because many migrate to
work far from their families and pay for sex; again, it is hard to be sure.

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The chance of having more than one partner at the same time varies, too.
Men in Niger who already live with a partner are 60% as likely to find a
new one each year as their single compatriots; for men in Albania, the
figure is only 1%. This may reflect widespread polygamy in Niger—and
perhaps a reluctance among Albanians to admit to pollsters that they are
cheating.

As people live longer nearly everywhere, they are not giving up on sex.
Being over 55 need not mean “focusing only on gardening and trying to get
your socks on without putting your back out”, notes David Spiegelhalter, a
statistician and author of “Sex by Numbers”. Libido declines with age, but
slowly, and older people are more likely than in previous generations to be
divorced and seeking new partners. Yet in most countries no one has much
idea what they get up to. Data that do exist suggest big differences. The
median 55- to 64-year-old British woman with a partner has had sex twice
in the past month; her 49-year-old married Japanese peer has done it zero
times. Why?

“Maybe it’s norms,” suggests Peter Ueda of the Karolinska Institute in

Stockholm. In western Europe, a sexless marriage might be seen as a sign
that the relationship is in trouble. In Japan “It’s sort of accepted, [since]
marriage is more transactional.” It cannot help, though, that more than 70%
of Japanese married women over 50 say they and their husbands “never
communicate” about their sexual desires.

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A study in South Africa, by contrast, found that the old were strikingly
vigorous: most men were still having sex until their 80s. It also noted that
23% of men over 40 had HIV, and few used condoms. Despite this,
information about HIV risks among older adults is scarce, the authors
lament, and “very few prevention interventions [are] specifically targeted”
at them.

Poor information is not only a problem for societies, but also for couples.
Many are reluctant to talk about sex, which can make it not just
unpleasurable but unpleasant, especially for women. Even when men are
well-meaning, they are seldom telepathic. They cannot simply guess what
their partners like or dislike, and non-verbal cues are no substitute for frank
talk. This is tricky, though, when the topic is shrouded in shame. Consider
Bangladesh, a conservative Muslim country. Its DHS survey collects data
about marriage and contraception, but not about pleasure or consent. How
satisfied are Bangladeshi women with their sex lives? How easy is it for
them to tell their husbands what they want? Anecdotally, not easy at all.

“Sexual dissatisfaction is really high with women in Bangladesh,” says a

local feminist who prefers not to be named. “Lots of women have heard of
this thing called an orgasm, but they’ve never had one. If I told my

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husband, ‘you do this and I don’t enjoy it, he would be so upset he would
not be able to perform again.’”

If a wife asks for something new, her husband may angrily assume she is
promiscuous, suggests Prima Alam, a sexual-health researcher: how else
would she know of such things? No one is taught to think about women’s
pleasure, she laments. If they have watched porn, “what they see is [the
man] just doing it, and the woman apparently enjoying it, screaming and so
on, but real life is not like that, right?” The local mindset is that men should
take charge. “I think marital rape may be common, but we don’t have
enough data.”

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What would it take to boost sex research? Perhaps voters’ hunger for
information will gradually outweigh politicians’ squeamishness. Nana
Darkoa Sekyiamah, author of “The Sex Lives of African Women”, and co-
founder of a blog, “Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women”,
reckons there is plenty of bottled-up demand for more information. She
hears “a lot more conversation about oral sex”, suggesting that “Younger

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men have realised that for most women, the standard penis-in-vagina sex is
not [good enough].”

Britain could provide an example. Sex education in British schools is fact-

based. Teenagers who rely on it are less likely to have their first sex while
under the age of 16, and their first experience is more likely to be a good
one, with both partners willing and protected. The country has problems
aplenty in the bedroom, NATSAL reveals, but only around one in seven
sexually active Brits says they are sexually dissatisfied. Those who feel at
ease talking about sex with their mates are more likely to enjoy it, notes Ms
Clifton. And young Brits appear to be communicative: happy to try
something new, but ready to stop if their lovers don’t like it.

Oral sex, which was once so taboo that prostitutes charged more for it than
penetrative sex, has become a staple, especially among the better-off and
the young. When it comes to anal sex, by contrast, around 50% of British
men and 40% of women aged 25 to 34 in 2010 had tried it, but fewer than
half as many had done it in the previous year. Dr Spiegelhalter suggests that
for many it is “tried for the experience but [does] not necessarily become a
habit. Like swimming at Blackpool.”

Porn is to real sex as James Bond films are to the routine of a civil
servant

With more accurate research that was more widely disseminated, people
would have a better sense of what others get up to. That might make it
easier to overcome taboos, which are often based on circular reasoning (you
shouldn’t do X because it is “not normal”). “Knowing you’re not alone is
really helpful,” says Ms Darkoa Sekyiamah. “If you know that lots of other
couples have oral sex, [for example], that quite often will make people feel
that it’s okay and it’s something that they might try.” A culture of
transparency around what other people do might also help couples talk to
each other about what they actually want.

Experts at the WHO are eager to fill some of the gaps in the world’s
knowledge. They have spent four years devising a much more detailed
survey called SHAPE. It asks, for example, about degrees of consent. (The
last time you had sex, did you want it, just go along with it, or were you

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“forced or frightened” into doing it?) The aim is to do SHAPE surveys all
around the world. But so far, funding has not materialised. For most
governments, it is not a priority.

And many conservatives are loth to fund research that might reveal
unwelcome facts, such as that some of their compatriots are gay. Some go
further. In 2024 Ghana’s parliament passed a bill, which awaits the
president’s signature, to ban any “promotion” on social media of
“unnatural” sex. This would make Ms Darkoa Sekyiamah’s broad-minded
blog illegal.

She recalls that she married the first man she had sex with, “Because I felt
that’s what you had to do.” It was only after her divorce that she came into
her own, sexually. Now in her 40s, she says she wouldn’t want her
daughter, or any other young girl, to make the same mistakes she did. And
to avoid that, they need to hear straightforward talk about sex. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/how-better-data-could-lead-to-better-sex

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The titans of tuna

A day in the life of Toyosu, the

world’s greatest fish market
The best sashimi chefs on the planet rely on Japan’s Wall Street of seafood
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Toyosu

WIRY AND FRENETIC in a white headband, Yamazaki Yasuhiro presides

over his corner stall. Around him underlings cut and package fish. Like
much of Tokyo, his stall is not exactly cramped but has little space to spare.
He navigates through a maze of tanks holding twitching prawns and
seething crabs; blue buckets in which fish swim in anxious tight circles, as
if aware that plates and chopsticks await; and stacks of white boxes packed
with seafood of all kinds—apologising for his paltry inventory. A typhoon
the previous day grounded planes across Japan, halting deliveries. What
looks like abundance is only a tenth of his usual daily trade, Mr Yamazaki
explains.

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Toyosu, where Mr Yamazaki has worked since it opened, is the biggest fish
market in the world. It employs around 42,000 people and shifts more than
a quarter of all fish sold in Japan, worth ¥2bn ($12.9m) on an average day.
It is central to Japanese cuisine—and not just in Japan. Chefs from Europe,
America and Australia pay handsomely for fish from Toyosu. To understand
what makes this market exceptional, follow a hypothetical tuna from sea to
plate, via Toyosu.

Why, of the roughly 500 types of seafood on offer, choose tuna? First,
because no country eats more of it than Japan, and Toyosu almost certainly
sells more fine tuna than anywhere else. Early-morning auctions, at which
around 170 fresh and 830 frozen tuna are sold each day, attract both tourists
and the best fish: fleets send them to Tokyo from as far away as New
England and the Horn of Africa. Tuna is to Toyosu what Old Master
paintings are to Sotheby’s: one can buy them elsewhere, but Toyosu is the
market-maker.

Many assume that tuna bought from Japan is superior because of the
species, or where they are caught. That is partly true: bluefin tuna, which
tend to be fattier than other species, fetch higher prices than the leaner
bigeye and yellowfin, while skipjack and albacore often end up in cans. But
holding species equal, the way a fish is caught and processed matters
immensely to how it tastes—and therefore to its value.

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Our journey begins on a hook. Expert tuna fishermen avoid nets, which
make the creature thrash around in fear, producing lactic acid and

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adrenaline that mar its taste and texture. Instead, they reel it in slowly, and
then begin a process called ikejime.

First, they drive a spike into its brain, killing it instantly to avoid a stress
reaction that ruins the meat. Then they remove the tail fin and slice beneath
the gills to bleed the fish while its heart is still beating. Blood contributes to
spoilage through bacterial growth; properly bled fish will last longer. Robby
Cook, head chef at Coral Omakase in Manhattan, says that the tuna he has
shipped from Toyosu “has no smell [and] will keep a week, a week and a
half”, properly refrigerated—and will taste richer as it ages.

With the tail fin removed, they run a long, stiff wire into the fish to destroy
its spinal cord and prevent rigor mortis. Once killed, bled and paralysed the
fish goes into the freezer—or, if sold fresh, is submerged in an ice-and-
water slurry.

Fin tech

This sounds time-consuming, but one morning your correspondent watches

a pair of workers at Toyosu perform ikejime on a tank full of live fish. One
grabs the fish with one hand and cuts its head and tail off with the other,
while another plunges a wire through the tail, cuts into the fish’s back,
yanks the wire up and down a few times and drops the fish into a box of ice
and water. It takes less than 15 seconds per fish.

A boat with a freezer full of fish arrives back at port after ten months at sea.
Our tuna is loaded into a freezer lorry and driven north to Toyosu. It arrives
in time to let buyers inspect it before the auction, which begins around
5.30am, so the roads will be relatively empty.

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Toyosu, which opened in 2018, was designed for an age of lorries, air-
conditioning and exports. Its predecessor, Tsukiji, a fish market in the centre

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of Tokyo, was more convenient for chefs but cramped, dilapidated and open
to the elements, requiring dollops of ice and ingenuity in the summer heat.
From its opening in 1935 until 1987 it also had a train running through it.
The director of one of the market’s seven wholesalers put it bluntly:
“Working in Tsukiji was hell.”

Toyosu, by contrast, sprawls across 40.7 hectares (around 100 acres) of

reclaimed land south of Tokyo proper. A coal gasification plant once sat on
the site, so it needed a long clean-up. From decision to completion, the
move from Tsukiji to Toyosu took 17 years.

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
Toyosu is made up of three main buildings: one for auctions, one for
wholesalers, and one for fruit and vegetables. The second building is the
largest; it also has a floor with restaurants for tourists and another selling
dry goods and supplies: knives, aprons and rubber boots for the market
floor, as well as miso, sake, pickles and other essentials for a restaurant
kitchen.

Tsukiji was often called “Tokyo’s pantry”: built before the second world
war, it boomed with Japan’s wealth and population. Today that population is
falling and eating less fish, so exports are increasingly important (see
charts). Toyosu has markedly better access for the 19,000 trucks that come
daily, which helps.

During the wee hours workers bring the tuna up from the loading docks to
the auction floor and lay it on a pallet. It has already been consigned to, or
bought by, one of the five wholesalers that sell fresh and live fish. (Two
others deal in smoked, salted and dried fish.) These wholesalers are often
part of large, listed, vertically integrated fishing firms; they take a 5.5%
commission on each sale.

The auction may look like raw capitalism, but it is managed

Before the auction, the floor is a hive of silent activity. The frozen tuna—
headless, tailless ovals with icy white skin, laid out in long rows—look
more like munitions than fish. Atop each sits a sticker detailing provenance
and weight, as well as a thick slice cut from the tail so buyers can see the
colour. Some use hooked picks to dig out small chunks of flesh, kneading it
as they walk around to determine the fat content through feel. Most carry
clipboards; some acknowledge each other with a brief nod. Mekiki, experts
in fish evaluation, set the floor price for each fish.

Around 5.30am an auctioneer rings a bell and sales begin. Fresh bluefin
tuna fetch the highest prices: an average of $25 per kilo between January
and August 2024, with the priciest fish fetching $750,000 on January 5th.
Auctioneers chant rhythmically, keeping up a patter as buyers show interest
with idiosyncratic hand signals and, because two houses often hold auctions
simultaneously right next to each other, with eye contact. Buyers wear
baseball caps with plastic plackets bearing the names of their firms;

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officials from Tokyo’s government, which owns the market, wear blue caps
and watch out for collusion.

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The action is hard to follow, relying on subtle gestures and clues. Workers
load bought fish onto hand trucks, and then small pickups that zip around
the market, sending distracted walkers scurrying.

The auction may look like raw capitalism, but is managed: only five
companies are allowed to sell, and only certain species are flogged.
Wholesalers are quick to say that they do not want to put their rivals out of
business. Threats to their livelihood come not from neighbours, but from
retailers bypassing the market and buying directly from fishing firms. Many
outfits at Toyosu stretch back generations, often linked through kinship and
marriage. Good behaviour and bad are remembered, and in time rewarded
and punished.

In his magnificent book “Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Centre of the
World”, Ted Bestor, an anthropologist, argued that intermediate wholesalers
“define much of the character of the marketplace”. The seven big
wholesalers deal with shippers and suppliers; intermediates sell to
restaurant groups, supermarkets and chefs. Many are family firms. The
smallest may have just two employees: the husband or son who handles the
fish, and the wife or mother who keeps the books. (Toyosu remains very
male; book-keeping is the only job mostly held by women.)

Net profits

The number of intermediate wholesalers has fallen from nearly 1,700 in the
mid-1960s to 457 today. Many small firms refused, or were unable, to move
to Toyosu. Others have merged. They are laid out on what look like streets
that line their building’s ground floor: cheek by jowl, with some large
enough to have hefty fish tanks, a dozen workers and butchering tables big
enough for an entire tuna and an arm-size knife to cut it. Some specialise,
selling just tuna or eel, but many are generalists. Mr Yamazaki’s firm sells
around 300 types of fish, changing them seasonally, often with fanfare.
Posters announce the year’s first Pacific saury, a sleek, bony fish, delicious
grilled, whose arrival heralds the coming of autumn. Each day his firm buys
around 20,000kg of fish from the big wholesalers, selling them for an
average of ¥36m ($238,000).

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Relationships between wholesaler and buyer can last years, even
generations. The former’s success depends not just on expertise in choosing

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fish, but on knowing clients’ tastes and anticipating their needs.

A wall of Mr Yamazaki’s shop is taken up with tanks of live prawns, each

with a slightly different temperature and salinity. From one tank he pulls a
prawn, and from another another; they appear identical. But the first, he
explains, is five grams lighter, and so more suited to the small sakizuke
(amuse-bouche) that begins a multi-course kaiseki dinner. The heavier one
is better for tempura. If they were reversed, the former would look slightly
too large, and might leave the diner feeling too full; the latter would seem
too stingy.

The three-wheeled truck holding our tuna flits through a network of

underground passages until it reaches the wholesaler who bought it. By 7am
the auction floor is mostly empty and being hosed down; activity now picks
up in the other building. Stalls do not display prices, and often charge
regular customers less than they would occasional ones. Buyers for
supermarkets, restaurant groups and overseas chefs make big purchases at
multiple stalls.

Individual chefs, such as Arakawa Takehiro, who runs Sushi Dan in the
upscale neighbourhood of Hiroo, buy a few days’ worth of tuna and an
assortment of other fish. Mr Arakawa strides purposefully through the
market—like most chefs, he has long relationships with specific
wholesalers, and he would no more desert them to save a few yen than they
would overcharge him. But he still greets workers at a few stalls where he
buys nothing: a quick doff of his Dodgers cap, a shouted “Good morning”
and a polite bow.

At one stall, he points out a cornetfish, which looks like a sinuous red
magic-marker with pitiless bovine eyes (“It tastes like a cross between
snapper and shrimp”). At another, he reaches into a bucket and gently
squeezes a horse mackerel (“The belly should feel full”). At a third, he
points to a bucket of writhing loach (“Cook them in a deep pot with egg and
soy sauce”). His fish bought, he goes upstairs to the dry-goods floor for
kombu, kelp sold in brittle squares, and katsuobushi, dried smoked skipjack;
the two ingredients are essential to dashi, Japanese cuisine’s foundational
stock. Naturally, Mr Arakawa makes his own.

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By 8am the tuna has been butchered and sent on its way: some to
restaurants across Japan; some, still frozen, stuffed into styrofoam boxes
and flown to New York, Sydney or Singapore. But some, perhaps, will find
its way upstairs, to the first-rate sushi joints on the fourth floor, which open
just after the tuna auction ends and close by mid-morning. One offers a tuna
breakfast: a four-piece roll and six nigiri, arranged in order of fattiness,
from mouth-coatingly unctuous to lean, poached-celery light crunch.

How guilty diners should feel about such pleasures is an open question.
Stocks of the once-endangered bluefin have recovered, but the threat of
overfishing has not receded, and many complain that Japan is doing too
little to ensure the sustainability of its catch.

Warmer seas are making fish migrate. Mr Yamazaki says that those native
to Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost big island, are turning up around
Hokkaido, its northernmost, 2,000km away. A growing share of the fish
sold at Toyosu is farmed—something locals once winced at, but which now
seems inevitable.

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By noon the day’s action is over. Afternoon is the market’s quiet time: the
auction floors are cleaned, with pallets neatly stacked. In the other building,
accountants tally up the day’s sales before pulling down the metal shutters,
going home and getting ready to do it all again tomorrow. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/a-day-in-the-life-of-toyosu-the-worlds-greatest-fish-market

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How good are good Samaritans?

When doing the right thing goes

wrong
How a car crash in Los Angeles rewrote the law on helping strangers
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Los Angeles

A MOMENT MAY come, for every one of us, that tests our willingness to
help. Walking by the sea, you hear a cry of distress from the surf. At a party,
someone starts choking. On the road, a car up ahead crashes: your friend is
in the passenger seat; she is trying to get out; the door is jammed; you see
smoke. That was Lisa Torti’s moment and it came on October 31st 2003.

The short version of America’s most pivotal case on Good Samaritans goes
like this. “They were young people not doing anything terribly wrong, out
to have a good time, and then, tragedy happens.” Bob Hutchinson may tell
it simply. But winning this case in California’s supreme court was a

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defining moment in his legal career. His triumph was widely, if unfairly,
seen as America’s failure. Two decades on, that night’s disaster remains a
test of what it means to do good.

Heroism is both ordinary and extraordinary. A hero usually has no particular

duty or special ability to help the person in peril. Both are going about their
lives, and then their fates collide. Some hesitate. The hero proves her
mettle.

Not so fast, say America’s courts. Under an old principle of common law
inherited from Britain, Americans in most states have no obligation to come
to one another’s aid, or even to call for help. It does not matter if your
failure to assist is morally outrageous: if you walk away, you will face no
legal consequences.

There are exceptions. A parent must always rescue their child, a teacher his
students and a captain her crew. Others who try to help, however, can be
sued if their intervention fails. “Good Samaritan laws”, state to state, offer
them some protection. Generous ones shield do-gooders as long as they act
with reasonable care. But lots do not protect rescuers without professional
training. This makes America an outlier among Western democracies. Most
European countries require their citizens to help one another.

Americans, by contrast, must make snap choices, with consequences that

may reverberate for years. In Lisa’s case, they rippled through California’s
courtrooms, then its state capitol, until finally they rewrote America’s oldest
law on Good Samaritanism.

Genesis

On Halloween eve, three friends had finished a late shift at a mall in the
foothills of north-west Los Angeles, and were getting ready to go out.
Alexandra Van Horn and Jonelle Freed swung by Lisa’s house to put on
some make-up and pick out something to wear.

Lisa’s boyfriend, Dion Ofoegbu, and Anthony Watson, another friend, drove
them to a dive bar. Tucked into the corner of a nearby strip mall, it was

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known for stiff drinks and terrific music. The women danced and had
several rounds; the men drank little. They all called it a night around
1.30am. Lisa got into Dion’s car. Alexandra and Jonelle went to Anthony’s.

In the car park, Alexandra glanced at Anthony. It was a moonless night, but
he seemed sober enough. She buckled herself into the passenger seat and
Jonelle hopped in the back. The two cars turned onto Topanga Canyon
Boulevard and idled at a red light.

The highway runs for 20 miles from the edge of the Pacific Ocean, winding
through the canyon among sagebrush and walnut shrubs. In the stretch near
the bar, strait-jacketed by a suburban grid, it becomes a smooth seven-mile
shot—perfect for drag racing.

She was terrified the car would blow up. She had seconds to decide
what to do

When the light turned green, Anthony and Dion floored it. Soon Dion fell
back, but Anthony kept going. He crested a hill and suddenly the highway,
as if forgetting itself, made a bend. Anthony lost control of the car and
rammed it into a lamp post.

An airbag punched Alexandra in the face. Jonelle was crawling out of the
back, and Anthony got out. Alexandra tried to open the passenger door, but
something was wrong with it. And maybe something was wrong with her,
too, because she realised she couldn’t reach the handle. “I can’t get out,”
she said. Her body felt like it had been ripped apart.

“Alexandra, we’ve got to get you out of the car,” she heard Lisa yell
through the window. Lisa had jumped out of her own car and rushed to the
crash. She saw smoke, and liquid pooling. She was terrified the car was
about to blow up. She had seconds to decide.

Lisa yanked open the door and scooped Alexandra up, one arm under her
legs and the other behind her back, she recalled in her deposition. She set
her down five to ten feet away, she said, supporting her neck with a jacket.
Police and paramedics arrived. Anthony’s breathalyser test came back

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negative. Still, for the police it was clear: Anthony was at fault for speeding.
They would write that down and wrap up their report.

The paramedics’ investigation was just beginning. “Does this hurt?” they
asked Alexandra in the ambulance, as they touched her. I don’t feel that, she
said. She could not move below the waist. She had three rounds of
emergency surgery and never walked again.

But Lisa had the story wrong, Alexandra said. Lisa had grabbed her arm and
“jerked” her out of the car “like a rag doll”, she said in her legal claim. The
pain got a hundred times worse. She said Lisa had actually put her down
close to the car. That didn’t seem like the action of someone worried it
would explode. (Lisa contested this version of events in her deposition. She
said Alexandra never told her not to touch or move her. Both women
declined to speak to The Economist. The account above is drawn primarily
from court records.)

Lisa visited Alexandra in hospital several times. According to Lisa’s lawyer,

she felt terrible about how things had turned out. She had wanted to help.
Then she heard from Mr Hutchinson’s office. “I told Jonelle that Alex was
suing me and she said, ‘That’s absurd’,” Lisa recalled. Alexandra was asked
during her deposition if she thought Lisa had been trying to hurt her. “I
hope not. I don’t think so,” she said. Would she consider Lisa a friend
before the accident? Yes, she would.

The first court to hear Van Horn v Watson ruled quickly for Lisa, on the
basis that she was protected under California’s Good Samaritan law.
(Anthony appears on the case name because he is the first defendant listed.)
That judgment was reversed on appeal. In 2008 the state supreme court
ruled in Alexandra’s favour. The case never went to trial. She won a $4m
settlement out of court, with the bill going to insurers.

American law seems at odds with Americans’ moral instincts

The justices were not weighing the morals of the case. They needed only to
interpret the Good Samaritan law and so establish whether or not Lisa was
immune. California’s law was drafted in the 1950s to protect doctors from

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being sued if they rendered aid off duty. Later tweaks hoped to encourage
citizens with first-aid training to perform CPR.

Van Horn turned on whether the law shielded only qualified rescuers, or all
citizens. Mr Hutchinson argued Lisa had no protection. Lawmakers had
never intended “to invite any wannabe hero wearing a cape to rush in and
make a situation worse”. Moreover, he argued, she had not provided
medical care in merely pulling Alexandra out of the car, whether or not she
had believed it was about to go up in flames.

Lamentations

Lisa’s lawyer, Jody Steinberg, argued that such a narrow interpretation of

the law would chill do-gooding. The Boy Scouts of America lent its support
to Lisa in court, alarmed that a ruling against her could expose its 3m
Scouts—who pledge to “help other people at all times”—to lawsuits. It
noted a twisted incentive: a rescuer would do better to wait for a victim to
suffer burns before saving them from a fire, so that the law deems their care
medical and protects them.

Courts enforce many of our widely shared moral values. Without

prohibitions against murder, rape and theft, strangers would find it hard to
co-exist. But should the law also dictate when and how we help one
another? This question is at the heart of the biblical parable of the Good
Samaritan. On the road from Jerusalem to Jericho, a man is robbed and left
for dead. A priest and a Levite see him but walk by on the other side of the
road. A Samaritan—an enemy of the Jews, in Jesus’s time—stops to help.
Rabbinic law instructed holy men not to touch a corpse. The parable implies
that the two pious Israelites used this as an excuse to ignore the stricken
man. Jesus’s message was that the moral duty to help strangers in need
should trump the letter of the law.

After Van Horn, newspapers ran lines such as “No good deed goes
unpunished”. Many were shocked that attempted heroics had been
condemned. American law seems at odds with Americans’ moral instincts.
Only four states punish Bad Samaritans for failing to help a fellow citizen,
on the European model: Minnesota, Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin.

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To their critics, who include many American legal scholars and
philosophers, “Bad Samaritan laws” violate the freedom to choose whether
to do a good deed. Yet examples of forced civic duty abound: the obligation
to pay taxes and serve on a jury, for instance.

Some foresee more bungled rescues. A weak swimmer should not be

expected to save a drowning man. They picture a legal logjam if everyone
at the scene of an emergency could be prosecuted. Such laws would
embolden daredevils, they argue, imposing an unfair burden on the prudent.
Others consider the effects on morality. Forcing us to help one another
would make true and coerced altruism indistinguishable. Spontaneous kind
acts would lose their cachet—a perverse consequence for a law that
champions virtue.

Yet a study by Harry Kaufmann of Hunter College found that even a

minimal legal duty to rescue can help reset people’s moral compasses in a
positive way. Such laws also allow us to come to one another’s aid without
fear of reprisal. Plenty of countries have had them for decades, without dire
repercussions. This may reveal the best argument against them: they don’t
do much at all. America’s four states threaten Bad Samaritans with a $500
fine, community service or a brief stint in jail. Only a single American case,
30 years ago, ended in a conviction.

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Theoretically, lots of non-rescues could be going unnoticed. David Hyman
of Georgetown University doubts it: in fact, many are sensationalised. Mr
Hyman tried to quantify how often Americans help or fail to help one
another. He found that rescues exceeded non-rescues by 800 to one in 1994-
2004; and that 100 Americans lost their lives every year trying to rescue
someone. Sixty times as many rescuers died as did victims who had been
ignored. Americans were not failing to intervene—they were far too willing
to do so. Whether a state had Good or Bad Samaritan laws made no
difference. Perhaps this is unsurprising. Most people are not legal experts
and, when the crucial moment arrives, there is no time to consult a
textbook.

Revelation

Four days after the final ruling in Van Horn, California’s state assembly
introduced a bill to protect everyday rescuers like Lisa. It remains the law
of the state.

Under it, Alexandra might have received a smaller payout—possibly one far
from commensurate with her life-altering injuries. Would it have mattered
to a jury that the smoke that scared Lisa came from the airbags, a result of
the chemical reaction that makes them deploy quickly? Or that a paramedic
said in his deposition that he found Alexandra lying at an awkward angle,
perhaps a clue that the rescue had injured her? Or maybe this detail would
have stuck: in that split second, Dion too had rushed to the mangled car and
grasped Jonelle to help her out. Perhaps there lies in all of us an
irrepressible urge to help. As the jurors deliberated, they may have asked a
question of themselves: if it had been me, what could I have lived with? ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/when-doing-the-right-thing-goes-wrong

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The afterlife of aeroplanes

How retired aircraft find a second

act
And how retired planes keep the global aviation industry aloft
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | MUMBAI AND TUCSON

ON A CLEAR Monday morning in April 2024 an Air India 747-400 named

Agra lined up on runway 27 at Mumbai airport and commenced its take-off
roll. As the aircraft left the ground and started its ascent over the densely
packed metropolis it looked for a brief, scary moment as though something
might be wrong. Grounded in the pandemic, for three long years it had sat
exposed to humidity and monsoons. Its enormous wings, nearly as wide as
its body is long, tipped alarmingly to the left, and then to the right, before it
stabilised and soared over the Arabian Sea.

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For observers in the know it was an enthralling moment, tinged with
sadness. The manoeuvre, called a wing wave, is an aviation tradition
commemorating an aircraft’s last journey. For a quarter of a century Agra
had carried families to loved ones, students to new lives and executives to
fresh markets. It had flown prime ministers to summits, taken pilgrims to
Mecca and repatriated stranded citizens during the pandemic. All told, it
made more than 13,000 trips and spent 63,120 hours—over seven years—in
the sky. Now it was en route to its final destination: Roswell, New Mexico,
in the deserts of the American south-west. That is where it sits today, among
the cactus and the odd lost extraterrestrial. But Agra will have an afterlife—
one that is crucial to keeping global aviation aloft.

Airlines are constantly disposing of old aircraft and acquiring new ones.
The reasons rarely have much—if anything—to do with airworthiness. A
Boeing 747-400 can fly at least twice as many hours and nearly three times
as many trips as Agra did before its structure starts to reach its limits. For
an industry that operates on razor-thin margins and frequently stands
accused of being environmentally unsustainable, it might seem extravagant
not to wring every last mile out of a pricey asset. The case is in fact the
opposite. The life and death of aircraft are determined by hard-nosed
business calculations.

The biggest factors in deciding to stop operating a particular type of aircraft

are customer expectations, costs and accounting. The first may come as a
surprise to flyers accustomed to shrinking legroom and vanishing baggage
allowances—the well-being of its passengers can seem like the last thing on
an airline’s list of priorities. Yet flying has become more pleasant in subtle
but important ways.

An aircraft’s individual parts may end up being worth more than their
sum

The latest generation of long-haul planes—Boeing’s 787 “Dreamliner” and

the Airbus A350—is less noisy and more stable in turbulence. The new jets
can manage higher humidity levels, lowering the chances of dehydration for
travellers, and maintain higher cabin pressures that feel closer to conditions
on the ground. An economy-class passenger on Air India’s new flagship
A350s will not enjoy the 747’s menu of suprême de poulet à la imperiale

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served with pommes à la savoyarde and haricots verts au beurre, but she
will feel fresher when she arrives at her destination.

New planes are also more efficient. Fuel is the single largest cost for any
airline. Engines and weight are major factors in determining consumption.
The biggest modern aircraft have just two engines compared with four on
the 747 or the enormous Airbus A380 double-decker, and about much of the
airframe is made of light composite materials, such as carbon fibre, instead
of heavier aluminium alloys. Airbus boasts that the A350 consumes 25%
less fuel per seat than its predecessors, producing comparably fewer
emissions.

Then there are the mysterious workings of an airline’s accountants, who

unlike its pilots are not bound by the laws of physics. Guidance from the
International Air Transport Association, an industry body, states that the
accounting for aircraft acquisition and depreciation is “complex” and
“requires judgment by airlines”. The oversimplified version is that an
aircraft’s individual parts may eventually be worth more than their sum. Or
the cost of the most extensive mandatory maintenance checks can exceed a
plane’s book value. Better to sell it off.

External factors also affect the life cycle of aircraft. Commercial aviation is
in the middle of a demand boom. But manufacturers are struggling to
produce enough new planes to fill orders and many aircraft are stuck on the
ground because of engine troubles. Some airlines are flying older jets for
longer than planned or bringing others back from retirement. Conversely,
the pandemic hastened the departure of planes a step away from retirement,
including most passenger 747s. British Airways had planned to fly its 31-
strong fleet of 747s until this year but in July 2020 it announced the
“heartbreaking decision” to retire them immediately. Agra operated the last
scheduled flight of any Air India 747, from Delhi to Mumbai, in March
2021.

The post-retirement careers of aircraft are diverse. Some transition to

different forms of hospitality. The Jumbo Stay Hotel is a 747 parked outside
Arlanda airport near Stockholm; guests can sleep in a cockpit room
equipped with a shower and minibar. One retired British Airways 747 has
been turned into a party venue in the Cotswolds.

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Others serve society in different ways. A 747 that flew passengers for two
decades was converted in 1997 into a flying space observatory for
America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In
Iztapalapa, a poor corner of Mexico City, a retired 737—the workhorse of
short hops—is now a library. In 2012 America’s Discovery Channel and
Britain’s Channel 4 deliberately crashed a 727 in the Sonoran Desert to see
which seats offered the best odds of survival (the cheap ones). A lucky few
end up as exhibits in aviation museums, continuing to evoke wonder in
future generations of pilots, engineers and frequent flyers.

But the majority of retirees make their way, like Agra, to somewhere like
the American south-west. This remote corner of the world is the exact
opposite of Mumbai. Land is cheap and there are barely any people. The
sun shines for some 300 days a year. Humidity levels hover in the low
double digits. It is so dry that the soil, known as caliche, hardens to a
cement-like consistency—ideal conditions for storing planes, heavy things
whose enemy is corrosion-causing moisture. (Interior Spain offers a similar
climate and some European planes end up there.)

Doors to manual and re-sell

Commercial aircraft head to a facility like Pinal County Airpark, about

50km north of Tucson, where private companies store, maintain, convert
and disassemble planes of all sorts. As you turn off the interstate and head
west through the desert, you are greeted by the incongruous sight of dozens
of tail fins rising in the middle of the desert. Pinal is home to some 200-300
aircraft at any given time. Unless a plane is simply there for storage (about
$5,000 a month for a single-aisle jet, twice that for a big one), it usually has
a new owner by the time it gets here. What happens to it next depends on
the owner’s business, what kind of plane it is and market conditions. But
each path allows it to keep flying, in whole or in part.

One route back into the skies is acquisition. Airlines in rich countries prefer
factory-fresh aircraft because of fuel efficiency and customer expectations.
But smaller carriers in poorer places are willing to settle for older models. A
15-year-old Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 may well find a post-retirement gig
ferrying passengers around Africa. An aircraft can also be converted to

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carry cargo, which can add ten to 20 years to its flying life. Despite higher
operating costs, second-hand planes offer better value to logistics firms than
more-efficient but pricey new ones because freighters clock fewer hours in
the air than passenger services.

The other route back into the skies is more convoluted, but more common.
Every aircraft at every airline undergoes routine checks of increasing
degrees of intensity. These range from monthly “A checks”, inspecting parts
that see the heaviest usage, to multi-year “D checks”, at which point
“You’re really taking apart nearly the entire aircraft” to identify problems
and fix them, says Scott Butler of Ascent Aviation Services, a major aircraft
maintenance and teardown company based at Pinal.

Retired aircraft in Arizona

An airline with hundreds of planes will be running checks every day. Worn-
out or damaged components are replaced. “With the amount of maintenance
that goes into it, you’re basically rebuilding that airplane two to three times
over the course of its life,” says Mike McBride, a vice-president of
maintenance operations at Delta Air Lines, which has nearly 1,000 aircraft.

For a sense of the scale of the operation, consider the Boeing 777. It has
132,500 unique parts and some 3m in total, including bolts and rivets.

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Beneath the soft, rounded surfaces of the passenger cabin is a bewildering
tangle of sensors, radars, pumps, pistons, cylinders and drums. Miles of
wires connect avionics to the cockpit. Hydraulic systems move the rudder
or wing flaps or brakes. Airlines need a reliable supply of all these bits and
pieces. The global aviation industry would grind to a halt without them.
(Sanctions-hit Russian airlines have resorted to smuggling in components in
passenger luggage.)

The industry’s insatiable appetite for parts is fed by retired planes. Some
aircraft parked at Pinal sit atop Jenga assemblies of wooden railway
sleepers, their landing gears long since wheeled away. Others are missing
flight decks or chunks of the fuselage, exposing the innards of the aircraft
like a grotesque real-life version of a cutaway diagram. Clamber into one—
watching for rattlesnakes—and half the instruments in the cockpit may be
gone. Many of those parts are either inside other aircraft or in storage
waiting to be used. There are warehouses in nearby Phoenix, pleasingly
named after the mythological bird that regenerates from the ashes, that look
like Amazon fulfilment centres if Amazon only did aircraft spares.

The first things to come off when a plane arrives in Arizona are the engines.
Next to go is the landing gear. Avionics, instruments, hydraulics and other
components are either harvested and stored or removed gradually on the
basis of need. Cockpits are sometimes removed to be converted into flight
simulators for pilot training. Luxurious seats at the front of the plane find
new homes with second- or third-tier airlines or in the basements and
garages of aviation aficionados.

The least desirable parts of a plane, in the desert as in the sky, are the
economy-class seats. Nobody wants them. Nor are they easily recyclable.
An airplane seat contains 20 or 30 different materials, says David Butler of
the University of Birmingham. They end up being shredded or in a landfill
or both. Some airlines have tried to reduce the waste. When Southwest, an
American carrier, undertook a rebranding exercise in 2014 it eventually
replaced coverings on 71,786 seats, resulting in 43 acres of leather
weighing 635 tonnes. It has since been donating the leather to non-profits
which turn it into footballs, shoes and bags.

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 A Boeing 747 at Pinal Airpark

Emirates, a big carrier based in Dubai, is likewise in the process of

overhauling the interiors of its planes. An A380 carries around 800-900kg
of soft furnishings, says Ahmed Safa, the airline’s head of engineering.
Emirates employs 14 tailors who repurpose materials from its cabins into
bags, wallets and suitcases, with proceeds from sales going to charity. The
airline is thinking about expanding its range to things like umbrellas made
from escape slides. “This actually costs us money,” says Mr Safa. The
returns for such efforts come in the form of good corporate citizenship.

Upcycling bits of planes is a fun idea, and some aviation nuts may be
willing to spend, for example, €7,000 on a chair made from the nose of an
A350 (this actually exists). But for the most part it is neither economic nor
scalable, except for the odd product. One example is made by PlaneTags, a
California-based firm, which harvests the metal sheet, or “skin”, that covers
a plane’s airframe and turns it into engraved keyrings that sell for a
handsomely marked-up $40.

Partly the same, and partly not the same

More commonly, the skin of the plane meets the same fate as the rest of the
airframe. Once everything—engines, components, interiors—has been

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stripped out, the metal structure is all that remains. Made of high-quality
aluminium alloy, it commands premium prices in scrap. Airbus and Boeing
both estimate that around 90% of their aircraft by weight is recycled or
reused in some form. The use of composites in new aircraft poses
challenges—it is not as easily recyclable as metal—but the industry has
about a decade to work it out before the retirements start.

This is the end that probably awaits Agra. Even after its corporeal form has
vanished from this Earth, it will continue to roam the skies as a small part
of other jets. Five airlines—Air China, Korean Air, Lufthansa, Mahan Air
and Rossiya Airlines—still use the 747 for passenger services. And the
model is still hugely popular as a freighter. Of the 1,574 produced from the
first in 1969 until production ceased in 2023, as many as a quarter remain in
service, the majority carrying cargo.

Agra and its counterparts from Air India, British Airways and every airline
that operated the 747 will live on in another way too. Despite the great
advances in technology and cabin comfort, no aircraft has ever been as
beloved (or beautiful) as the 747. It ushered the world into the jet age. It
formed the backbone of the global fleet at a time when international travel
was broadening out beyond the wealthy. It is the aircraft on which many
readers of this piece will have taken their first foreign trips. It will live on in
legend. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from
https://www.economist.com/interactive/christmas-specials/2024/12/21/how-retired-
aircraft-find-a-second-act

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The megapreacher Putin hates

How a Nigerian built one of

Europe’s largest churches in…
Ukraine
The astonishing tale of an unlikely merchant of miracles
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | BRUSSELS AND KYIV

AT 5AM ON February 24th 2022, Sunday Adelaja woke to the sound of

explosions. The 57-year-old Nigerian was living in Irpin, just outside Kyiv,
close to a military airport. Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine was starting.
Mr Adelaja hastily gathered his wife, four students staying with them, and a
backpack. They took a car as fast as they could to the Polish border.

The founder of one of the largest evangelical churches in Europe, the

Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for All Nations (“Embassy of

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God”), says he had good reason to dash. His Pentecostal network had its
headquarters, improbably, in Ukraine. You might think that an ebullient,
polychromatically besuited Nigerian given to speaking in tongues would
struggle to attract a flock in a country with an Orthodox tradition stretching
back over 1,000 years. Yet with its evangelical razzmatazz and pro-Western,
can-do spirit, Mr Adelaja’s church had 100,000 worshippers in Ukraine and
perhaps millions more worldwide.

He became a local celebrity; but also angered reactionaries in Ukraine and

Russia. On the day of the invasion he says he was tipped off by the
government in Kyiv that he was on a Russian hit list. “Putin was my
personal fight,” he says. “It became the world’s fight.”

But critics allege that Mr Adelaja was escaping from justice. More than a
decade ago he was accused by Ukrainian authorities of involvement in a
pyramid scheme that fleeced his flock. Victims of the scheme say he used
his influence to dupe them into investing and used the chaos of the war to
escape. Mr Adelaja, who has never been found guilty of any crime and
whose cases have now passed the relevant statute of limitations, says he did
nothing wrong. He believes that the allegations were part of a vendetta
against him orchestrated by powerful political enemies.

It is the stuff of Hollywood—or Nollywood, as Nigeria’s film industry is

known. Mr Adelaja’s rags-to-riches tale is astonishing. But his life is also
emblematic of broader trends: the global rise of Pentecostalism and its
potent Nigerian brand; the role of religion in countries emerging from
trauma; the way politicians use faith for their own ends; and the immense
power that charismatic preachers have over their congregations, especially
during turbulent times.

Prosperity gospel meets spiritual void

Idomila, the village where Mr Adelaja grew up, was “poor even by Nigerian
standards”, recalls Tai Adelaja, one of his uncles. To make ends meet the
young Sunday would sell firewood. Even today he can roll up his trouser
legs to reveal scars from foraging for sticks.

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But he won a scholarship to attend university in the Soviet Union, like more
than 50,000 other Africans during the cold war. Before he left he had a
“supernatural experience” when watching an evangelical preacher on TV.
In a recent interview in Brussels, Belgium’s capital, where he has been
granted refuge, Mr Adelaja closed his eyes and rapturously recalled how he
“felt like there was a big light coming and this light …was coming from
inside of me”.

When he got to Moscow he was excited to see “big, beautiful, golden

churches”, but was told that under atheistic communism these buildings
were just museums. He was shocked by the economic grimness. Nigeria
had had Lada cars in the 1960s and ’70s, he notes, but by the 1980s it had
“Mercedes and Volkswagen”.

Mr Adelaja was sent to Minsk, where he studied journalism. In Belarus’s

capital there was a “mini-Africa” of students, recalls Martin Ocholi, a
Kenyan contemporary. Mr Adelaja ran clandestine Bible-study groups. He
was “disciplined”, “intelligent” and “extremely determined”. He also
partied less than some.

Being African helped: many see Africa as the last bastion of

spirituality

In 1993 Mr Adelaja moved to Ukraine, which had voted overwhelmingly

for independence two years earlier. He got a job at a TV station, becoming
possibly the first black correspondent on Ukrainian screens. He was soon
presenting a show about religion. He mixed on-air proselytising with
grassroots work building a new church. Catherine Wanner of Penn State
University, an expert on religion in Ukraine, first saw Mr Adelaja in a metro
station in Kyiv, where he was spreading the Gospel literally underground.
By the 2000s Mr Adelaja had one of Europe’s largest church networks,
including a megachurch in Kyiv which sometimes pulled in 25,000
worshippers on a Sunday.

Mr Adelaja was at the confluence of two trends. The first was the global
rise of Pentecostalism, a form of evangelicalism that emphasises personal
connections with God. The number of Pentecostalists has risen 12-fold
since 1970, from 58m to 683m, out of a total Christian population of 2.5bn,

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according to the Status of Global Christianity database. In developing
countries such as Brazil and Nigeria its emphasis on the “prosperity
gospel”, the idea that God wants you to be rich, has made it an alluring
alternative to churches that promise rewards only in the afterlife.

Pentecostalism exploded in Nigeria in the 1980s “at a time of profound

social crisis” after the country’s civil war, says Ebenezer Obadare, author of
“Pentecostal Republic”. Then, when an oil-price crash drove many
Nigerians to emigrate, they took their faith with them.

Yet Mr Adelaja’s congregation was made up of Ukrainians and Russians,

not diasporic Nigerians. And this unlikely scene depended on the second
trend, the fallout from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Ukraine in the
1990s “There was a lot of shock but not a lot of therapy,” says Ms Wanner.
Planeloads of American missionaries arrived to fill the spiritual void. Mr
Adelaja’s church offered a “total institution” at a time of hyperinflation,
state collapse and rampant substance abuse. Embassy of God ran soup
kitchens and ministered to drug addicts and prostitutes. Natasha Potopaeva,
an early member, says she joined for help with her alcoholism. “It was such
a taboo. You could not go to the Orthodox church.”

His church ran soup kitchens and ministered to addicts. Also, it was
fun

Yuriy Demidenko, another congregant, says his racist friends asked what
Mr Adelaja could teach them “If he was just...eating bananas yesterday.”
But being African gave Mr Adelaja a unique selling-point. “He was
successful...precisely because he is black,” argues Mr Obadare. “There can
be a sense that Africa is the last bastion of the spiritual, while the rest of the
world is succumbing to decadence.”

And his church was fun. Mr Adelaja hollered his way through scripture and
carried out “miracles” to a gospel-rock soundtrack. Another congregant
says it was freezing when she first attended. “But Pastor Sunday came in
and he threw off his coat…running from one end of the hall to another…
when he took off his suit, I noticed he was...drenched with sweat.”

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As it grew, the church became influential. Politicians such as Yulia
Tymoshenko, twice the country’s prime minister, attended services. In 2004
the church played a part in the Orange revolution, the protests that
overturned a rigged election and helped elevate Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-
Western candidate, to the presidency in 2005. Mr Yushchenko sent a framed
photograph of himself to Mr Adelaja as a thank-you.

In 2006 Leonid Chernovetsky, an oligarch and one of Mr Adelaja’s flock,

became mayor of Kyiv. Mr Adelaja claims that most of the city council and
50 MPs were associated with the church, too. “They were beginning to
change the social fabric of the city,” says Ms Wanner. The church’s boot-
straps individualism and embrace of all sorts, including criminals and ethnic
minorities, offered a contrast to the conservatism by candlelight of its
Orthodox rivals.

Success brought enemies. “Yesterday he was swinging from the trees, and
now he is here teaching people with a thousand years of Christian culture,”
complained an Orthodox patriarch. In the late 1990s the health department
investigated whether the church was psychologically abusing its
congregation (it found no evidence). In parliament MPs fulminated about
Mr Adelaja’s influence.

In Russia the reaction was even fiercer. “There is no question they are a tool
of the US,” a Russian MP told the Wall Street Journal. In 2006 Mr Adelaja
was barred entry at Moscow airport despite having been invited onto a chat
show called “Let Them Talk”. The show aired anyway, and implied that Mr
Adelaja was Satanic. Most of his Russian branches were closed.

Mr Adelaja says that it was the church’s greater political prominence, and
its links to Mr Chernovetsky, that led to his subsequent legal difficulties. In
2008 Ukrainian investigators accused him of involvement in an alleged
pyramid scheme called King’s Capital, which was founded by members of
his church. According to police the scheme defrauded more than 600
people. Police alleged that Mr Adelaja organised fraud to “unlawfully
acquire funds from citizens in particularly large amounts”.

“He was incredibly charismatic; we never entertained the thought that the
pastor could betray us,” says Nadia Zaniuk, a victim of the scheme. Mr

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Adelaja’s services featured promotions for King’s Capital, she says.
“Sunday framed it this way: if you were part of King’s Capital, you were
successful; if not, you were a loser,” Nadia recalls.

In 2008 Ms Zaniuk put her flat up as collateral to get a loan, which she
invested in King’s Capital. She says she was promised that her repayments
to the bank would be covered. When the firm collapsed she was left with
crippling debt. She has tried to sue the bank on the grounds that she was
defrauded, but has not been successful. “Only about seven of us are still
fighting; the rest have given up,” she says.

Nataliya Bogutska, another victim, says that at church Mr Adelaja would

invite those who had invested in King’s Capital on stage. He would
challenge those who had not to stand up, and stress that they must invest to
prosper. She took the plunge, investing the equivalent of $75,000 in King’s
Capital and other schemes promoted by the church. “I remember how
Sunday told us not to worry, as he was a millionaire and could resolve all
our difficulties.”

Yet Mr Adelaja insists he did nothing wrong. He says the charges were
motivated by rivals of Mr Chernovetsky trying to get to the mayor through
him. He argues that if he had promoted King’s Capital then his whole

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church of 25,000 people would have signed up. He knew very little about
the scheme, he says. As for the victims, he says that for everyone saying he
was involved there are 100 who would say the opposite. “If I had done that,
I would not be living as a refugee here [in Brussels]. I will be living like
somebody who has money.” He claims that his wife invested and lost
money in King’s Capital.

Legally a court deemed in 2023 that the case has passed its statute of
limitations (though a lawyer close to the case says the authorities are
attempting to appeal that decision). The pastor has never been convicted of
any offence.

Still, the allegations took their toll. Church membership dropped, branches
closed and ambitious plans for expansion overseas were cancelled. During
the 2010s Mr Adelaja was a diminished figure. He agreed not to leave
Ukraine, remaining there for all of 2008-19. He spent less time preaching
and more writing books (he has published dozens, including “Create Your
Own Net Worth” and “Where There is Problem, There is Money”), and
making YouTube videos.

Back to Africa

When your correspondent tracked him down, Mr Adelaja was living in

damp, peaceful, earnest Brussels. He says he and his wife have lived in
more than a dozen flats since arriving in 2022.

Does he want to return to Ukraine? Once, to hand over the church to other
pastors, he says. But not to stay. His house was ransacked and destroyed by
Russian troops. To Mr Adelaja this is proof they were looking for him.
(Ukraine’s intelligence service did not respond to requests for comment.) To
Ms Wanner, the academic, the idea that a Nigerian preacher was on a
Russian hit list is not ridiculous. “Was he top of the list? I doubt it. But he
could have been on the list.”

The church, like most things in Ukraine, has been upended by the war.
“Many of our people were killed,” says a congregant. But branches still
operate. Every evening there are online prayers.

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Mr Adelaja’s thoughts have turned towards the continent of his birth. He
told The Economist he wants to go back and “give my life to make sure we
give every African child a chance at life”. He sent a video of himself
speaking to a large group of children at a school in the Republic of Congo,
where he tells them, via a French translator using a megaphone, that
“Before I was European I was African. I lived like you.”

Might Mr Adelaja want to educate Africans about Russia, which pumps out
anti-Western disinformation across the continent? Yes, he says. They need
to know about Putin’s “imperialistic spirit”. But his main reason for
wanting to return is because he feels other Pentecostalists are letting Africa
down. Earlier this year the BBC revealed that T.B. Joshua, a Nigerian
megapastor who died in 2021, had raped, tortured and abused followers
over two decades. “When I saw what they are doing in Africa, it made me
want to cry.”

Mr Adelaja will surely stand out less in Nigeria than he did in Ukraine. But
he is not short of belief in God—or in himself. The Lord has given him “the
audacity [to] imagine unimaginable things”, he reflects. And having defied
long odds to rise from rural poverty in Nigeria to fame (and notoriety) in
Ukraine, returning to Africa is probably easier than the journey he began
almost 40 years ago. Even if, as he says, “I’m more Ukrainian than African
now.” ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/how-a-nigerian-built-one-of-europes-largest-churches-inukraine

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The first age of renewables

How premodern energy shaped

Britain
And the lessons for life after
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | THE SUSSEX WEALD

ENTERING SHADOW WOODS, a coppice just outside the town of Haven

in West Sussex, England, is like stepping into a medieval fairy-tale. Before
the Industrial Revolution, coppicing, a method of harvesting wood on a
multi-year cycle by cutting trees back to a stump, helped meet Britain’s
energy needs. After the tree, usually hazel, hornbeam or oak, is cut, new
shoots spring to life. A coppiced tree looks more like a porcupine than the
arboreal lollipop of a child’s picture book. Shadow Woods was largely
abandoned after the second world war and many of the trees are now
“overstood”, grown beyond the point at which they would be harvested,
shading the ground and preventing the growth of any new saplings. But

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they have kept their shape. From each of the hornbeams as many as half a
dozen thin trunks rise from a thick stump, resembling the crown of some
pagan god.

Since early humans first kindled firewood until Britain’s Industrial

Revolution, energy typically came from renewable sources like wind, water
and the sun, not from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas. Vertical
windmills were used to grind flour in ancient Persia. Chinese water power
pulped paper and hammered iron. The Romans combined their aqueducts
with complexes of watermills. All of this was renewable.

In the case of wood, the practice of coppicing made it much more so. An
untended ash tree might last a few centuries. There are probably coppiced
ash stumps that have endured in Britain for at least a thousand years since
they were first harvested. They are living relics from the first age of
renewable energy.

The Weald supplied much of the energy for premodern London

The pre-industrial world operated on a lot less energy than the modern one.
In the 1560s, during the reign of Elizabeth I, Britain’s 3.2m people
consumed 18 terawatt-hours of energy annually, according to estimates
from Paul Warde, a professor of environmental history at the University of
Cambridge. That equates to 10.6m barrels of oil, or slightly more than three
barrels of oil per person, less than one-twentieth of what a Briton consumes
nowadays. Draft animals, such as horses, provided a little under a third of
this energy, and human muscle provided slightly under a quarter (solar
power fuelled this muscle energy indirectly, by way of photosynthesis in
plants, yielding sugar). Less than a sixth of the energy came from coal,
water and wind, in that order. The rest—nearly a third of all consumed—
came from firewood.

The Sussex Weald, where Shadow Woods is located, once provided a

substantial portion of London’s energy budget. For your correspondent,
trimming coppiced hazel poles with a billhook, muscle energy feels more
like a price that must be paid than a budget that can be spent. “Everything
to do with coppicing is simple if you’re not frightened of failing,” advises
Clive Cobie, a coppicer who lives in a self-built wooden cabin in Shadow

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Woods. An enthusiast for the natural world and an evangelist about the
power of mycelium, part of a fungus, to rejuvenate the soil and store
carbon, Mr Cobie taught himself the near-forgotten techniques of
premodern forest management. Hazel can be harvested for firewood every
seven to nine years; hornbeam, used as the feedstock for charcoal-burning,
was on a 20-year cycle. As the tree’s stump remains anchored into its root
system—and the wood-wide network of mycelium—it should regrow more
rapidly than a freshly planted sapling.

For all the modern-day appeal of sustainability, the first age of renewable
energy was not some agrarian Arcadia. Scarcity, or the fear of it, shaped life
and the terrain. The dependence on solar power rooted the economy in the
seasons, and in the land to be cultivated. The land, in turn, had to be used
for either food or fuel, not both. Hedges, which formed the boundary
between one field and the next, could be used for firewood, and were
planted with oaks, hazels and hornbeams for coppicing. Mostly, though, in
times when people wanted more farmland, that meant giving up fuel. By the
time of the Domesday Book, a survey of the holdings carried out in 1086,
after the Norman conquest, farmers had cleared much of Britain’s wildwood
for farmland. Just 15% of the country was covered in woodland, and this
would fall by more than half over the next three centuries until the Black
Death killed millions and eased pressure on the land.

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The Sussex Weald was not torn up for crops. It was little use for farming.
The soil in the High Weald, the uplands, sits on sandstone—it is hardly
more fertile than gravel. The Low Weald is clay. The area remained thickly
forested in the 16th century, making it, for premodern Britain, the Saudi
Arabia of forest energy.

Big stick energy

With copious reserves of ironstone as well, the Weald became the centre of
the Tudor and Stuart iron industry. The Romans had smelted iron there. At
the peak the Weald had around 180 ironworks, making iron for London and
eventually armaments for the Royal Navy. The cannons the navy used at the
Battle of Trafalgar, during the Napoleonic wars, were smelted there.

Smelting iron used a vast amount of forest energy, in the form of charcoal
from wood. The energy- and land-needs were massive. Some 30kg of wood
would yield enough charcoal to smelt a kilogram of iron. A Wealden
ironworks would probably have needed around 2,000 hectares of wood,
covering the equivalent of 5,000 football pitches, to sustain its operations.

Clive Cobie, a modern-day coppicer

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From the vantage point of the 21st century, coal’s rise and the end of the
first renewable era might seem inevitable. Using fossil fuels built up within
Earth broke through the “photosynthetic constraint” placed on energy by
what could grow on its surface. Energy budgets surged and living standards
began their first sustained rise. Yet coal was not a new discovery. It had
been known about for millennia and largely rejected as an inferior, choking,
fuel source compared with wood. It was confined to limited uses in
blacksmithing and the making of salt and lime, for mortar and spreading on
fields (to improve crop production).

For economic historians the puzzle is why coal took over when it did and
why it did so in one corner of western Europe. Explanations fall into two
camps: one stresses the scarcity of renewable energy; the other focuses on
innovation and shifting patterns of demand.

Among its many sins, coal made British food awful

Britain’s renewable economy was, perhaps, testing its limits by the 16th
century as fossil fuels began their inexorable rise. Politicians of the time
fretted about wood shortages: in 1581 a statute prevented any ironworks
fuelled by charcoal (and thus wood) from being set up within 22 miles of
London. Yet politicians worrying about shortages, then as now, are not
proof of true scarcity. Prices for firewood in London, already a trading
entrepot, were rising as the city’s population expanded but this was caused
by rising demand rather than shortages. Anton Howes, an economic
historian, notes charcoal-burners were able quickly to find new woods to
expand to as demand grew. Britain imported firewood from Norway and the
Baltic, which combined lower population densities with even more forests.
Mr Howes writes that backers of the 1581 law were worried mostly about
maintaining a domestic supply of old-growth timber—the sort substantial
enough for shipbuilding, not wood for kindling and charcoal. The wood age
did not end because they ran out of wood.

The beginning of the end of the first era of renewables was the advent of
coal in the English home. Mr Howes notes that coal could be delivered to
many places easily, by sea and river. Wooded land near water, where coal
was plentifully available, began to be churned up to be used more profitably
for crops. Cheap coal began to win out in nearby cities.

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Thus began a “domestic revolution”, in the phrase of Ruth Goodman, a
historian. Coal was quickly adopted, and then adapted to. Wood smoke
could find its way out of the crannies of wattle-and-daub houses and small
openings of thatched roofs but coal smoke could not. Houses were rebuilt
with chimneys to whip away the noxious gases. The “Great Rebuilding” of
London in the 17th century, aided by the Great Fire in 1666, turned a wood-
powered city into a coal-fired one. Houses changed from being open-plan
structures built around a central communal hearth, Ms Goodman notes, to
individual rooms with fireplaces built into walls. Tapestries, which would
collect coal dust, were dispensed with. Women began to devote more hours
to cleaning soot from walls, surfaces and dishes (and less time on outdoor
chores like going to the market or ploughing fields). Britain’s medieval
cuisine, cooked over the low and stable heat of wood, was replaced with
boiled vegetables and baked meat, easier to manage with the hotter and
more variable flame of coal. Britain’s reputation for cookery has never
recovered.

The renewable era survived longer outside the home, and shaped the Weald
in enduring ways. Littered throughout the Weald are lakes and ponds which
provide a scenic stop-off for hikers and day-trippers. These “hammer
ponds” are not natural features but were made for iron works. Rivers that
flow through the Weald’s deep valleys, “ghylls” in the local dialect, were
stopped up to build a head of water behind a dam. When the dam was
lowered the water would rush out and turn a wheel which would, in turn,
blow bellows helping to superheat blast furnaces.

Power to the people

In England the first age of hydropower met its downfall because it was not
located where people were. Remote valleys struggled to attract workers and
were easily paralysed by strikes; mill owners had to provide schools, shops
and churches to lure workers to these valleys. Manchester, rather than
Lancashire, became Cottonopolis not because it had better access to energy
but because it had better access to labour, according to Andreas Malm, a
Swedish historian.

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Pre-industrial peoples did not have a notion of “energy” as a fungible,
movable thing. It was the invention of the steam engine, in which chemical
energy swiftly became heat and then motion, that led engineers and
scientists to conceptualise energy as a fundamental, conserved quantity that
can take different forms. Energy has since become understood as a
commodity that can be transformed, stored, moved about and made useful
in new and surprising ways.

Such insights would have been of no use to medieval peasants, who mostly
consumed energy when and where nature provided it (wood being an
exception). But this knowledge ensures the second age of renewable energy
will not be like the first. The challenges of intermittency are being
overcome with storage technology. The immobility of renewable sources
can be ameliorated by electricity grids. An incipient second domestic
revolution is transforming some homes with solar panels on the roofs,
induction hobs in the kitchen and a battery pack in the attic.

It will, like previous transitions, transform more than just the energy
economies use. The spread of coal changed Britain’s landscape as well as
its cities. Without their economic value as a producer of fuel the forests
were either turned into timber plantations or dug up to become pasture. The
mixed-wood hedgerows were ripped out to be replaced with hawthorn,
worse as a source of firewood but far better as a barrier to wandering
livestock. Coppicers of today are hobbyists who “coppice for nature”,
mimicking the behaviour of long-extinct megafauna from when the trees
evolved. Cutting trees down to the stumps allows light to reach the forest
floor and creates new ecological niches.

On September 30th 2024, the day before the start of the traditional
coppicing season, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, Britain’s final remaining coal-fired
power station, closed alongside the coal-fired blast furnace at Port Talbot, a
steel town in south Wales. A half-millennium-long interlude in Britain’s
energy history came to an end. That day wind provided 43.1% of Britain’s
electricity, biomass 6.0%, solar 1.4% and the little hydropower the country
has 0.5%. No smoke billowed from the chimneys that punctuate London’s
skylines. Its fireplaces have become “attractive period details” to tempt
homeowners, like the Sussex Weald’s hammer ponds and coppices. Power

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stations on the southern bank of the Thames have already been turned into
art galleries and luxury flats. A new energy economy is once again growing,
from the stump of the old. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/how-premodern-energy-shaped-britain

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The Ivy League rat race

Finance, consulting and tech are

gobbling up top students
Are they abandoning their dreams—and does that matter?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS

TO UNDERSTAND HOW America’s Ivy League universities see

themselves, read their admissions brochures. Leafing through the just-so
photos of giggling students on tidy lawns, a vision emerges of sanctuaries
for personal growth and intellectual exploration—as much cocoon as ivory
tower. The world has come to a different impression. Portrayals of the Ivies
dwell on out-of-control woke politics and tented encampments protesting
the war in Gaza. The presidents of four Ivy League schools have stepped
down since late 2023 after being accused by politicians and alumni of
excess sympathy for the latter vision.

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But neither image captures the full reality in the Ivy League now. A better
place to look is the Whitney, a museum in New York. In September 800
students were hosted there by DE Shaw, a hedge fund, to mingle between
canapés and sculptures. The event’s goal, attendees say, was to nudge this
young and impressionable cohort towards a particular view of success.

Look at where graduates of Harvard, for example, end up. In the 1970s, one
in 20 who went straight into the workforce after graduation found jobs in
the likes of finance or consulting. By the 1980s, that was up to one in five;
in the 1990s, one in four. That is perhaps no shock, especially considering
those were boom times for Wall Street. But in the past quarter-century there
has been an even more pronounced shift: in 2024 fully half of Harvard
graduates who entered the workforce took jobs in finance, consulting or
technology.

More than before—more even than when your correspondent entered

Harvard less than a decade ago—life on campus feels like a fast track to the
corporate world. Around the same time as the DE Shaw party at the
Whitney, Harvard ran an activities fair for new freshmen. Hundreds of clubs
laid out their wares: the beekeepers, the bell-ringers, the Model UN team.

But as the freshmen wandered between stalls, they would soon clock a
pecking order. Among the most coveted clubs were pre-professional groups
in consulting, investing and the like. Several admit only a single-digit
percentage of applicants, conferring a cachet that the clubs like to compare
to the selectivity of admission to the university itself: the “5% of the 5%”.
The fortunate few become not “members”, in the parlance of some clubs,
but rather “partners” or “managing directors”: less dorm room, more Wall
Street.

“They’re drawn to exclusivity, like a firefly being drawn to a lantern,” says

Luke (a pseudonym), a student in his fourth year who runs one such club.
Those in Luke’s club can expect to make connections at investment banks
like Goldman Sachs and hedge funds like Citadel. “We have alumni at all
the big names.”

More than before, life on campus feels like a fast track to the corporate
world

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The pre-professional clubs are merely the most visible part of a pervasive
process of acculturation, one that slowly reshapes many students’ worthy
ambitions to make a difference, ill-defined and unrealistic though they may
be, into a plan to get a management-consulting internship. Annushka, a
second-year student, recalls an “overwhelming flood” of groups pitching a
career leg-up to new arrivals. “You’re constantly being bombarded,” she
says. She resisted the temptation to join, but did attend informational
sessions.

Luke, by contrast, arrived at Harvard expecting to focus on politics and

policy, but did not stick with it. He pivoted to the more concrete and
quantifiable world of finance by the start of his second year. That was quite
late in the game, by his reckoning. Even he is astonished at how early the
career-hustling starts: he gets calls from students who have not yet started
their first year. “I’m like: ‘I will not talk to you, go explore, do other things,
enjoy your fucking freshman year’.”

It was not ever thus. Twenty years ago, says Deb Carroll, the head of
Harvard’s careers office, summer internships (often served after the third
year at university) might be secured just a few months in advance, even in
competitive fields like investment banking. These days, banking internships
start the hiring process two years out. Some students already have plans for
the summer of 2026. “It’s really unfortunate”, says Ms Carroll, “but it’s not
something that we can stop.” Students at Ivies feel the crunch; at Yale some
second-year students bid for tech internships meant for third-years by
claiming they will graduate early.

All this raises the question of what a university is meant to be. Ivy League
schools exist in the imagination as places to search for one’s calling,
whether it is to become a playwright, a cancer researcher or some other
surprising possibility. Or, yes, a Wall Street banker (a few people know the
suit fits them from an early age). Today corporate recruiting has become a
dominant feature that shapes campus life from the moment students step
into it. This careerist atmosphere may turn off some students like Annushka
and draw in others like Luke. Either way, their experience of the university
is shaped by recruiting.

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A female classmate of Luke’s, who interned with him at an investment bank
last summer, met your correspondent at a Scandi-chic café near Harvard
Square, the sort of place where a latte costs $8. Outside, protesters handed
out flyers saying that a student had been fired as a barista for trying to set
up a union.

“I went into college not really knowing what I wanted to do, hoping
inspiration would strike,” she says. “So I fell into the finance thing.” She
may stay in it for no more than five years. She suspects she would rather be
a teacher. But she asked not to be named out of fear of hurting her prospects
on Wall Street.

Even the protests against the war in Gaza cannot escape the recruitment
drive. Students demanding that universities divest from firms linked to the
war might seem to clash awkwardly with the more buttoned-down would-
be partners in Luke’s club. But these are not always different people. Some
student protesters cover their faces with masks or keffiyehs in part to ensure
that compromising pictures do not drift into the hands of would-be
employers. (Some opponents of the protesters, such as Bill Ackman, a
hedge-fund boss, have urged recruiters not to hire them).

Just keeping my options open

Top firms capitalise on young people’s desire to avoid risk, which evidence
suggests is greater than it should be. Isaac Hacamo and Kristoph Kleiner,
economists at Indiana University, have studied “forced entrepreneurs”.
Students who graduate from top colleges during periods of high
unemployment start more companies. These firms are also more likely than
average to survive, to receive venture-capital backing and to get acquired.
The study suggests that, outside recessions, high-skilled graduates are
taking too little risk.

That is a lot of pressure for students. But they are young enough to change
their minds. An intern at a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm today will not
necessarily be a tech bro tomorrow. In 2011 Marina Keegan, a Yale student,
wrote an essay lamenting the lost potential of classmates who were mulling
jobs as bankers or consultants: “I want to watch Shloe’s movies and I want

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to see Mark’s musicals and I want to volunteer with Joe’s non-profit and eat
at Annie’s restaurant and send my kids to schools Jeff’s reformed.”

Tragically Keegan died in a car accident a few days after graduating. More
than a decade on, though, your correspondent perused the LinkedIn profiles
of the people she had fussed over. Today, each is now working in, or fairly
close to, the field she had hoped they would end up in. Strivers nowadays
may find their true calling too—even if it is not necessarily the consulting
job they land while at Harvard. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/finance-consulting-and-tech-are-gobbling-up-top-students

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The titanic Triassic

Of all the geological periods, the

Triassic was the most fabulous
In 50m years it spawned dinosaurs, seafood, geopolitics—and our distant
ancestors
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

EVERYTHING HAS its pecking order, and geology is no exception. The

cocks of the rocks are the big, swaggering periods of the past that fill books,
television programmes and natural-history museums. The Cambrian, with
its metaphorical explosion—the evolutionary burst that put animals in life’s
pole position. The Cretaceous, with its real one, when a collision with a
space rock slaughtered 70% of the species then around. The Permian, the
Great Dying at the end of which dwarfed even the Cretaceous

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slaughterhouse. The Carboniferous, which bequeathed to humans the
Faustian legacy of coal, permitting the industrial revolution at the cost of
global warming. And the Jurassic, with its theme-park cast of dinosaurs
(though most of those in the movie were actually from the Cretaceous).

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
Lesser periods live in the shadows of these behemoths. The Ordovician,
Silurian and Devonian have their points of interest: fish armoured like
medieval knights, giant sea-scorpions, and the first, floundering attempts by
backboned creatures to walk on land. But little of this fires the imagination.
Nor, surprisingly, does the Caenozoic, the so-called age of mammals.
Mammoths and sabre-tooths score points with some. But the allure of
Brontotheria (extinct rhinoceros-like beasts) has never matched that of
Brontosaurus.

And then there is the Triassic. The poor, neglected Triassic, sandwiched
between the deadly Permian and the popinjay Jurassic like Cinderella
between the ugly sisters. This needs to change. For the truth is that, the
Cambrian animal-factory aside, the Triassic was the most important
geological period of all. It was the moment of life’s reset, a festival of
evolution which prepared the stage not only for the age of the dinosaurs, but
also for the then-far-distant mammalian takeover that led eventually to
humans. It filled the land with giants, the seas with monsters and the skies
with dragons. And, like the Carboniferous with its coal, it left a legacy that
haunts humanity to this day.

The history boys

The Triassic is a tale of two histories. One is its natural history, begun after
the Great Permian Dying, 252m years ago, when, as happens from time to
time, plate tectonics brought Earth’s continents together into a single mass
—this time called Pangaea. The Triassic’s other history, though, is human.

It began in 1834, with a German civil servant called Friedrich August von
Alberti (his official title was “salt technician”), who realised that three rock
types widespread in southern Germany—a sandstone, a limestone and a
marl—were always found together, with their strata in that order. He
proposed that they thus formed what was then known as a geological
“system”.

With Teutonic literalism, the name he suggested for his discovery reflected
that triune nature. Tri-assic. And the period (as it is now known, since the
realisation that Earth is far older than the 6,000 years implied by the Bible,

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and each system of rocks corresponds to a huge hunk of time) has been
lumbered with this unmemorable moniker ever since. Other system namers
borrowed mountain ranges (Jurassic), Celtic tribes (Ordovician and
Silurian), relevant places (Cambrian, Devonian and Permian) or even
pertinent rocks (Carboniferous, after coal, and Cretaceous, from the Latin
for “chalk”). The Triassic got lumbered with a number.

A poor start. What really did for its brand recognition, though, came later,
when two Americans, Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh,
turned palaeontology into a branch of showbusiness.

These scientific contemporaries of P.T. Barnum, who detested each other,

combined to plunder the newly railwayed western territories of the union of
their fossil treasures, to the benefit of fashionable east coast museums. In
doing so they pretty-much defined public perceptions of palaeontology, and
that definition boiled down to one word: dinosaurs.

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 Ammonites— common “starter” fossils for budding palaeontologists— were abundant in Triassic
oceans

Between them, Cope and Marsh named and publicised most of the
dinosaurs whose names are now familiar: Allosaurus, Brontosaurus,
Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops. Others (Ankylosaurus,
Tyrannosaurus) were discovered shortly afterwards by their imitators. The
dinosaur brand has been so successful that even species Cope and Marsh
discovered that are not dinosaurs (Pteranodon, a flying reptile, and
Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus, two Permian animals with giant sails on
their backs), are often misdescribed as such.

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Ironically, one of the first real dinosaurs unearthed by geologists,
Plateosaurus, was a Triassic beast (it was discovered in Germany in 1834,
the year von Alberti gave the period its name). But the great American bone
rush of the 1870s, ’80s and ’90s failed to produce any more. Partly, that was
geological bad luck. North America had few good Triassic sites for Cope
and Marsh to work. But partly it was because there are actually few Triassic
dinosaurs to find. Only in the most recent rocks of the period do they show
up, for they were latecomers to the Triassic party.

Trilobites would not have been tasty. All shell and legs

Back to Pangaea. Its coming together shrank the amount of coastline, and
therefore of continental shelf—the ocean’s most biologically productive
part. It also put a huge amount of land beyond maritime influence, and thus
beyond rainfall. The result was a giant desert in the supercontinent’s
interior. Then, to finish things off, Earth burped. Huge fissures opened in
what is now Siberia, spewing out more lava than any other eruption known
to history, along with dioxides of carbon and sulphur, gaseous drivers of
global warming and acid rain, in quantities dwarfing anything humanity
might ever do to the atmosphere.

When it was over, so little was left of the old world that evolution had to
start again. Gone from the oceans were those stalwarts of the Cambrian, the
many-legged trilobites. Gone were the giant sea scorpions. Gone were half
the fish. Coral reefs were wiped out. Snails, ammonites, sea lilies and sea
urchins got through, somehow. Single-celled critters were affected, too.
Foraminifera, which make calcite shells to house their unicellular bodies
(and can thus be tracked as fossils) lost 85% of their species. If they had
vanished, the Cretaceous would have a different name, since such shells are
the main ingredient of chalk.

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Synapsids, of which mammals are the last representatives, came then as now in all shapes and sizes

Much changed on land, too. The synapsids, a group of vertebrates which

dominated the Permian (Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus were two of its
showier members) were culled. So was the most abundant terrestrial group
of all, the insects (though beetles survived). Opportunity was there, for taxa
that could grab it.

The blind sometimes see more than the sighted. That is surely true of Geerat
Vermeij, a Dutch palaeontologist who lost his vision at the age of three. Dr
Vermeij who, at 78, still works at the University of California, Davis, is

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responsible for the Mesozoic marine revolution. Not literally, but he
invented the term.

Dr Vermeij is an expert on marine molluscs, the shells of which he can

study in detail by touch. In the 1970s he realised that those of some sea
snails he was examining had become sturdier over the course of the
Mesozoic era (the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods), in response,
presumably, to shell-crushing and shell-boring predators becoming more
effective. That got people thinking about just how much things oceanic had
changed from the days of the Palaeozoic (the era which lasted from the
Cambrian to the Permian). But to nail down the details required more
fossils. And two sites in China provided them.

The Meishan beds in Zhejiang province, identified in 1932 and studied in

detail since the 1990s, straddle the Permo-Triassic boundary and contain
layers of volcanic ash which permit the precise radiometric dating of their
strata. In them, the catastrophe is writ large. The sea temperature rises
suddenly by 10°C (this can be measured by looking at the ratios of oxygen
isotopes in certain minerals). The water becomes both acidic and anoxic.
Biodiversity crashes.

The Luoping beds in Yunnan province, meanwhile—laid down a mere 10m

years later and first reported in 2008—speak of a flourishing ecosystem,
filled with snails, bivalves, squid-like molluscs called belemnoids and fish.
Corals, too, re-evolved about now. The revolution, in other words, got going
fast.

In this context Mike Benton of Bristol University, a Triassic expert who

helped Chinese scholars during early excavations of the Luoping strata,
notes one crucial consequence of the Triassic for humans: seafood.
Palaeozoic marine invertebrates such as trilobites would have offered
modern gourmets little. They were all shell and legs. But the Triassic, as
Luoping witnesses, saw the burgeoning of bivalves (think oysters, clams
and scallops), decapods (lobsters, crabs and shrimp), shell-less “coleoid”
cephalopods (octopus and squid) and, for sushi lovers, sea urchins.

Tortoises did a reverse ferret

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The Luoping strata also illuminate another aspect of the revolution, the
return to the ocean abandoned by their Devonian ancestors of landlubbing
vertebrates, their limbs converted to paddles. First were the ichthyosaurs,
reminiscent of modern dolphins. But they did not have the sea to
themselves for long. They were soon joined by thalattosaurs, reminiscent of
ichthyosaurs in shape though unrelated to them, by turtles and, at the very
end of the period, by plesiosaurs—reminiscent of no living creature unless
you believe the Loch Ness monster is real (full disclosure: it isn’t).

Of these, only turtles now survive. But in their prime, the Triassic’s marine
reptiles matched any sea creature alive today, the great whales included.
Shonisaurus sikanniensis, a late-Triassic ichthyosaur, for example, is
reckoned to have exceeded 80 tonnes. This is not far short of a modern blue
whale.

It is on the land, though, that the Triassic’s effect on the future is most
apparent. All terrestrial vertebrates now alive are members of one of six
groups that originated then. Turtles’ offshoots the tortoises are one such (for
this group did a reverse ferret in which, having taken to the briny, some
members then returned to dry land). The others are the frogs, toads and
salamanders; the lizards, snakes and tuataras; the crocodiles and their kin;
the mammals; and the theropod dinosaurs (though modern members of this
group are generally referred to as “birds”).

These were the eventual winners. But their staying power, with one
exception, might not have been obvious to a contemporary zoologist. That
exception is the crocodiles. Their relatives in the Triassic were abundant,
and included creatures Cope and Marsh would have killed to have in their
collections.

Modern crocs can be big. The largest on record was just over six metres
long. But Triassic crocodylomorphs could easily outdo that. Prestosuchus
reached seven metres from snout to tail, as did Saurosuchus. Fasolasuchus
was bigger still. It could grow up to ten metres in length—as long as
Marsh’s Allosaurus. And what is big is heavy. Some Fasolasuchus
specimens are reckoned to have weighed three tonnes when alive—the
same as a female Asian elephant and more than most estimates for

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Allosaurus. They would not have outweighed Tyrannosaurus, but they were
still probably the largest non-dinosaur land predators of all time.

Triassic pterosaurs had tails. Later ones, such as Pteranodon from the Cretaceous, were often tail-less

They could, moreover, support their weight permanently on their legs in the
way that modern mammals do, allowing them not only to walk, but also to
run—unlike today’s crocodiles, which have to adopt a special, temporary
posture called a “high walk” to achieve anything similar. Not surprisingly,
the large herbivores of the period were well armoured. Aetosaurs were also
crocodylomorphs—but plant-eating ones. They may not quite have matched
their meat-eating contemporaries for size (the biggest, Desmatosuchus,

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reached six metres long and weighed half a tonne), but they were
impressively fitted out with plates, and sometimes also with spines, like the
dinosaur Ankylosaurus and its kin.

In the skies, meanwhile, a new group of reptiles took off: the pterosaurs.
These were the first vertebrates to fly, beating the dinosaurs (or birds, if you
insist) by 50m years. And among those smaller flying animals the insects,
beetles, which had boomed in the Triassic, were joined by wasps, flies and
moths. These four groups (with due allowance for wasps giving rise to ants
and bees, and moths giving rise to butterflies) now number between them
about 90% of known insect species, and thus 80% of known animal species
on Earth—another testament to the Triassic’s long reach.

The dinosaurs and the mammals, though, were still hiding in the shadows.
The early discovery of Plateosaurus turned out to be a fluke. Even once
they had appeared, Triassic dinosaurs were not that important. They
probably would not now get a second glance from palaeontologists were it
not for their subsequent history. Likewise mammals, a minor group of
synapsids, also from the late Triassic, would scarcely have a look-in were
human beings not their descendants.

It took the randomness of two further mass extinctions to propel these

groups into the limelight. One, as is well known, involved the dinosaur-
destroying asteroid collision which ushered in the Caenozoic, meaning that
mammals had to scurry all the way through the Jurassic and Cretaceous
before they hit the jackpot. For dinosaurs, though, the jackpot came fast.

The restless Earth

Nothing lasts for ever, even a supercontinent. Convective plumes of hot

rock rise continually from the mantle below Earth’s crust, tearing at the
continents and carrying them around. Some 201m years ago such a plume
tore a huge crack, the precursor of the North Atlantic ocean, across
Pangaea. Out welled more lava, CO2 and sulphur dioxide. Not as much as
when the Triassic began, but enough for a smaller mass extinction. Von
Alberti’s period had run its course.

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The crocodilians did badly. The synapsids, mammals aside, did worse. But
the dinosaurs, along with frogs, lizards and tortoises, sailed through. And
the rest is history—which, in its natural as well as its human version, is
written by the winners.

Nothing lasts for ever, even a supercontinent

Biology, though, is not the Triassic’s only legacy to the modern world. For,
with the breakup of Pangaea came the period’s final, Parthian shot. The
mountainous region which stretches from Anatolia to Afghanistan, Parthia
(as Iran, or Persia, was once known) included, began to rise in the late
Triassic when a small continent now dubbed Cimmeria collided with the
disintegrating supercontinent, squeezing up the seabed sediments between
them.

The Cimmerian orogeny, as this mountain-building moment is called, has

created a natural barrier fortress along the southern margin of what is now
Earth’s largest continent, Eurasia, dividing Asia’s heartlands from Africa
and Europe. This barrier—which includes the Anatolian plateau, the Iranian
plateau and the mountains of Afghanistan—is difficult to pass and difficult
to conquer. Together with its more recent, eastward, extension, the plateau
of Tibet, it has proved to be history’s puppet-master. It has kept humanity’s
three great civilisations—China, India and the Mediterranean-focused
world of the Middle East, north Africa and Europe—apart, and allowed
them, for good or ill, to develop separately, with (until recently) little
intercourse between them.

Woe betide any who would conquer it, too. Alexander the Great tried, but
his empire vanished on his death. The Umayyad Caliphs tried, also. Their
attempt ended equally in failure. In the age of European empires, Russia’s
came shuddering to a halt along the orogeny’s northern margin, and
Britain’s along its eastern one. Even mighty America has been humiliated
by the Cimmerians. Only Persia, expanding from the region’s centre rather
than invading from outside, has ever truly mastered the place. And that was
briefly, two-and-a-half millennia ago.

By a curious coincidence, the span of time that has passed from Persia’s rise
until now is almost exactly a hundred-thousandth of that since the Triassic

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began. The history of man is but an eyeblink compared with that of Earth,
and humans will eventually pass. How that passing happens, though—with
a whimper or a bang—may determine whether the Triassic’s legacy
continues, or is at last replaced by some scurrying, half-regarded extinction-
surviving creatures that fortune’s dice have favoured. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/of-all-the-geological-periods-the-triassic-was-the-most-fabulous

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Really cool jobs

The harsh economics of the Arctic

The world craves polar minerals. But who wants to work in a frozen
wasteland?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Off the Dempster Highway

AS IF THE snow and the cold and the dark weren’t bad enough, a coyote
sneaked into the cooking tent and chewed through the camp’s electrics. It
blew the fuse on the fridge-freezer and ruined months’ worth of food. The
three geologists who were living in the camp, just off the Dempster
Highway, an ice road into Canada’s Northwest Territories, had to get a new
generator. That meant a week-long round trip to the nearest town,
Whitehorse, 900km away.

Hunting for Arctic minerals is rough, risky work. Any slip with heavy
machinery, and medical help may be a three-hour flight away, on a plane
that can’t take off in a blizzard. It is also lonely. Nathan, one of the three

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geologists, works 28 days at a stretch studying a zinc deposit. Lack of light
saps the spirits. In November, when The Economist visited, the camp was
snatching three hours of watery sun a day. “I guess there aren’t many guys
who would like it,” says Nathan.

Governments and investors are increasingly excited about the Arctic. Its
seas and tundra contain oil, gas and a host of minerals critical for green
energy and modern armies. It holds the biggest known deposits of titanium
(in Siberia), plus huge reserves of palladium (Norilsk, Russia) and iron ore
(Nunavut, Canada). Until now these metals have largely remained in the
ground, not because people did not know they were there, but because it
was too costly to extract them.

But climate change and retreating ice are making it “much easier” to mine
in the far north, says Mads Fredericksen of the Arctic Economic Council, a
lobby. The Arctic is now 0.75°C warmer than it was a decade ago. Between
2013 and 2019, summer ice receded by 17% and shipping increased by
75%. By 2035 there may be no ice cover left in the Arctic Ocean in the
summer.

Geopolitics lends urgency to the hunt. All the big powers want to reduce
their dependency on China for “rare-earth” metals, tiny quantities of which
are vital for everything from microchips to sonar systems. Billion-year-old
solidified magma chambers under Greenland contain not only the West’s
biggest deposit of rare earths but also the northern hemisphere’s biggest
stores of nickel and cobalt, essential for batteries.

The atmosphere was frenzied at the most recent annual Arctic assembly, a
talkfest for governments and investors held in October in Reykjavik,
Iceland’s capital. Investors floated ideas for new mines. Officials from
Greenland were so besieged by mining honchos that they barely had time to
eat their canapés. Speculation is rife that Donald Trump, who once
suggested that America should buy Greenland from Denmark, may revisit
this improbable idea.

Yet extracting treasure from the top of the world is not simple. The hardest
thing is persuading people to work there. Pay must be sky-high to
compensate for the hardship. A blue-collar worker in the North American

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Arctic can expect to earn five times the average wage in Vancouver,
according to Dalhousie University. A mechanic at Mary River, an iron mine
on Canada’s Baffin Island, says he earns $170,000 a year—more than three
times what he would make in Quebec.

The farther north you go, the harder it gets. Picture the Arctic Circle itself,
which has a radius of 2,000km. In the 400km-wide band just south of it,
which is not quite so dark in winter, there are 124 operating mines and 9m
residents. Inside the circle, there are a lot more minerals, but just 30 mines.
Most of the circle’s 4m residents support themselves by hunting (caribou
and seals), farming or drawing a government paycheque. Firms that want to
dig or drill must typically import a workforce from thousands of kilometres
south.

Early Arctic explorers routinely died of frostbite or scurvy, or were reduced

to eating their own boots. Those days have passed, but in 2024 miners died
in rock slides and floods in Russia and a plane crash in Canada. The number
of people falling through melting ice sheets has also risen.

No light, no warmth, no women. Good wages, though

Good employers strain to keep workers safe, which is costly. Housing must
often be designed so that living quarters are warm but the foundations are
cool, so as not to melt the permafrost (frozen tundra). Softening it can
trigger slumps (a kind of landslide). In August the Batagay Crater in Russia,
the world’s largest slump, became visible from space. Since opening in the
1960s, it has swallowed surface land the width of 14 Giza pyramids
(roughly 3.2km).

The darkness gets people down. The sun sets on Mary River at the end of
November, and does not rise until the end of January, when temperatures
fall to minus 60°C. “Some guys”, says Alan, a worker, “just get more and
more deflated.” Some mines have installed pools and mess rooms to fight
the claustrophobia and loneliness. But few miners use them, says Alan, as
long shifts leave little time for much other than sleeping and eating. After
12 hours of isolation, another worker says, “You can’t remember how to
talk to people.”

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The pseudo-towns that house miners across the Arctic have a strict no-
alcohol policy to avoid accidents. Staff are searched for contraband at the
airfield. But “a little bootlegging” happens anyway, Alan says.

Arctic employers would love to attract more female staff, but few want to
work in a frozen wasteland. Agnico Eagle, Canada’s biggest mining
company, reckons only 15% of its workforce are women. This normal for
the industry—the atmosphere in Arctic camps is rather macho. Kathy Lane,
a woman who used to work at Deadhorse, an oil complex in Alaska, is
reluctant to get into specifics. “Let’s just say everyone knew who you were,
but the men got to stay anonymous.”

Commercial mine workers are flown in and out every fortnight. (Alan
spends his time off in Florida, gorging on sunshine.) The productivity of
fly-in, fly-out workers is low, however. Canadian Arctic construction
workers are a third less effective than their counterparts down south, found
a study in 2023 from the University of Western Australia. This may be
because the lifestyle makes them glum. And perhaps also because they are
under-managed. Since it is impossible to bring families to the camp, almost
no one’s boss lives on site, so easy fixes often go unnoticed.

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The men in exploration camps, who take samples before commercial
mining begins, are the most isolated of all. Nathan, Connor and Eg, the
three geologists with the coyote problem, were dropped with three
helicopter-loads of kit at a camp in Canada’s Northwest Territories in
March. They have barely left since.

Between the coyote, the storms and the summer wildfires, there have been
plenty of bad days, costing their employer a bundle of cash. But on a good
day, the wilderness is glorious and the mood is lively. The men control their
own timetable, unlike at a tightly scheduled mine, and booze is allowed.
Working here is a little more dangerous, and a little more fun.

Many of these men (and every explorer The Economist met was male) have
been bouncing around remote spots for a long time. “Greenland, Australia,
Zambia, Congo,” says Connor, “and now here.” They bring their own kit,
and can make $300,000 for a long season. Unlike mine workers, few have
families.

All eight Arctic governments prop up polar business. The state is the
biggest employer in Canada’s three northern provinces, and public subsidies
outstrip mining revenues. Greenland gets two-thirds of its income from the
Danish state. Russia subsidises a coal mine to buttress its spurious claim to
parts of Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago.

The Arctic resource rush has, unsurprisingly, affected the nearest towns. In
Whitehorse, the capital of Canada’s Yukon province, property prices have
soared as outsiders pour in. Mining firms, eager to soothe the local First
Nation (indigenous) population, offer lots of jobs but find few takers. At a
job fair run by Kwanlin Dun, a First Nation group, only 20 jobseekers
turned up to meet 200 would-be employers. Most young locals already have
jobs, says Adrienne Hill, a First Nation spokesperson, and few think the
trade-off of more money for grim working conditions is worth it.

Besides, as in previous gold rushes all over the world, there is money to be
made providing services for miners, from selling shovels and steaks to
leasing helicopters and tow trucks. There is an old Greenlandic saying: “We
do not care if they find anything, as long as they keep looking.” They surely
will. ■

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This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/the-harsh-economics-of-the-arctic

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Chinese calligraphy

What a fourth-century drinking

game tells you about contemporary
China
China’s obsession with calligraphy colours its view of itself
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | HONG KONG

SOME TIME in the fourth century, a politician called Wang Xizhi gathered
42 friends at the beautiful Orchid Pavilion on Mount Kuaiji in what is now
eastern Zhejiang province in China. The men floated lotus-leaf cups filled
with rice wine down a stream. When a goblet stopped, the nearest guest had
to drink and write a poem. The drunken Wang was delighted at the ensuing
literary outpouring. So he wrote a preface to the collection. In 324
characters Wang, who was acclaimed for his skill in calligraphy, expressed
joy at the ensemble and melancholy at such fleeting happiness.

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Calligraphy has for two millennia been considered the highest form of art in
China. Wang’s screed is one of the finest and most famous examples. The
original, completed in 353AD, is long vanished. But Wang inspired others,
as he was inspired. Many duplicated his preface, imitating his brushstrokes
precisely. One came up at an auction at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in October,
consisting of copies by Emperors Renzong and Gaozong, Song dynasty
rulers from the 11th and 12th centuries. The endless iterations of the Orchid
Pavilion preface are both an emblem of Chinese culture, and a lens through
which China views its past.

In imperial China, prowess with a brush was a mark of refinement, like

piano-playing in Victorian Britain. But it was also a sign of moral strength.
“Beware a man whose writing sways like a reed in the wind,” Confucius,
China’s most famous philosopher, cautioned in 500BC. But the test was not
just of one’s handling of a brush, but of imitating the master. In this, as
Robert Harrist junior of Columbia University puts it, Chinese calligraphy is
“copies, all the way down”.

Replicating classic works showed your allegiance to Confucian values, key

among them accordance with hierarchy, at the top of which sat the emperor.
Brush work was part of the imperial exams for prospective government
officials. The Orchid Pavilion preface was often the subject. Its use as a
symbol of loyalty extended to the highest office. In the scroll being
auctioned, Gaozong’s work was a gift to a senior minister, to show that,
even as the Song dynasty crumbled and his territory shrank, he was the
legitimate heir to its history.

Each successive owner of the scroll stamped their possession on the front of
the artwork with a crimson seal. What might be considered vandalism on a
Western painting merely adds to the price of this one. The value ascribed to
having a visible chain of owners is a further indication that, when it comes
to calligraphy, continuity and conformity are prized over originality.

Many artefacts and practices of imperial rule were destroyed after the
communists came to power in 1949, but calligraphy endured. Mao Zedong
was proud of his own hand. His four-character calligraphy still stands at the
masthead for People’s Daily, the flagship party mouthpiece. He weighed in
on academic debates about Wang’s Orchid Pavilion preface. In fact, the

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Cultural Revolution was arguably the heyday of popular calligraphy. Red
guards plastered city streets with posters daubed with characters
denouncing fellow citizens, and brush shops thrived.

Strokes of fortune

The importance of calligraphy has only grown, even beyond the mainland,
where China is eager to enhance its soft power. When Erin Chan was
growing up in Hong Kong, in the 1980s, learning English was the passport
to success. Ms Chan says she “did not dare” to tell her friends that she
loved drawing characters. These days her passion stands her in good stead.
She runs classes for students of all ages at the Pinzi Calligraphy Studio, and
teaches in schools. Why is the craft in fashion now? Parents are “very
realistic”, she says.

The revival or invention of traditions often reveals much about the anxieties
of the present. As China’s leader since 2012, Xi Jinping has transformed
calligraphy from an art form to a cultural practice that conforms to and
boosts the version of the country’s history promoted by the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP).

Today children in Chinese schools must study calligraphy from age six to
fifteen. Lessons are called art classes, but self-expression and creativity are
discouraged. In 2018 students taking the gaokao, China’s competitive
university-entrance exam, stopped getting bonus points for maths, sports
and science. They get extra credit only for art, which includes calligraphy.

The elevation of calligraphy is part of a wider government-backed drive to

build what Mr Xi labels “cultural confidence”: a pride in being Chinese that
unites people and presents the CCP as the ultimate defender of China’s
unique qualities. The state broadcaster launched a popular national
programme, “Chinese Spelling Hero”, in which children paint complex
characters. An adult version also aired. Government-sponsored “art”
competitions offer cash prizes.

Calligraphy is used to promote unity outside mainland China, too. In

September the CCP staged a mass calligraphy event in Hong Kong for

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people to express their “heartfelt blessings…for the great motherland”. In a
brazen denial of the CCP’s destructive history, Mr Xi is reigniting Chinese
traditions to secure the party’s role as “faithful heir” to China’s glorious
past and as a protector of its uniqueness against “foreign forces”.

The CCP presents calligraphy as an enduring sign of nationhood. After the

fall of the Qing, China’s final dynasty, in the early 20th century, some
intellectuals proposed abandoning pictographic writing, saying that it held
the new nation back from advancing in science and logic. They failed. The
8,000 characters used in mainland China have been simplified since 1949,
but have stuck. Students still practise the first character of Wang’s preface,
yong, “forever” (pictured). .

And at the Man Luen Choon art-supply shop in Hong Kong, many items
would be familiar to Wang. They include the “four treasures” of Chinese
calligraphy: brush, paper, inkstone and ink. Most of the ink on sale is still
black, as in the fourth century. Beside brushes made from goat-beard, rabbit
hair and “auspicious dragon wolf” sit hard, weasel-hair wands like the one
Renzong would have used a thousand years ago.

Replicating classic works showed your allegiance to Confucian values

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But the CCP’s insistence that calligraphy reflects Chinese unity is a revision
of the past. For most of their history, those who live in today’s China spoke
hundreds of mutually incomprehensible dialects and languages. Steven Zuo,
an expert on Chinese paintings at Sotheby’s, notes that Wang’s preface, if
recited by someone in Song territory, would have been unintelligible to
someone from elsewhere in the empire.

Chinese script was used by scholars to communicate because they would

otherwise have been unable to understand each other. Until the mid-20th
century, the written language, including all forms of calligraphy, replaced a
shared spoken tongue, as Latin did in medieval Europe. And like Latin,
calligraphy was inaccessible to most. When Mao proclaimed the People’s
Republic, only 20% of people in the country were literate, maybe less, at a
time when 97% of Americans and Britons, were and 49% of Brazilians.

The presentation of writing as culture in China has led to an unusual

emphasis on its importance to claims about national heritage. Mr Xi boasts
of “5,000 years of unbroken Chinese civilisation”. Yet the earliest
inscriptions date from the Shang dynasty, around 1600BC. Trying to find
the oldest records, the state has ploughed money into archaeology,
particularly in the past decade. No such traces have been uncovered.

That has left the CCP with two problems. First, the accolade for the oldest
writing goes to the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq), where
cuneiform script was used in around 3,200BC. The second, deeper problem,
is that writing is considered a fundamental part of what denotes a
civilisation: without earlier records, the party’s claim of 5,000 years looks
wobbly.

The answer has been to change the definition of civilisation. The CCP has
done this before. “Democracy” means the party, which perfectly represents
the people. “Human rights” means economic development, not freedom.
“Civilisation” has been given the same treatment. In September a CCP-
sponsored exhibition entitled “The Origins of Chinese Civilisation” opened
in Hong Kong. “What is civilisation?” asks the opening text. Its answer
rejects the “international academic criteria” based on “writing, metallurgy
and cities”. Instead it offers “the Chinese criteria for defining civilisation”,

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which includes population, social stratification and the emergence of class.
Chinese academics have made similar arguments.

In Hong Kong bids for the Song-dynasty scroll reached HK$95m but it did
not make its reserve price. A private buyer may nab it. Across the city the
M+ gallery is showing the work of Qiu Zhijie, an artist from Fujian,
replicating the Orchid Pavilion preface in a video installation. He copies it a
thousand times on a single sheet of rice paper. As Mr Qiu’s brush
progresses, the text becomes illegible, “losing meaning and historical
significance”: a true character statement. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/what-a-fourth-century-drinking-game-tells-you-about-
contemporary-china

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The Japanese art of child-rearing

Why do small children in Japan

ride the subway alone?
The pluses and pitfalls of the world’s most disciplined primary schools
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Tokyo and Mexico City

WHY DOES Ohtani Shohei, a Japanese baseball star, pick up litter after
games? Why do Japanese people queue so politely, and wait for green lights
before crossing the road? Why, in short, is Japan so orderly? Some say the
answer lies in its primary schools.

As the final bell rings, a flurry of six- and seven-year-olds dash out of class
at Minami Ikebukuro Primary School in Tokyo: hats on, water bottles
flying. Four girls are left behind; it’s their turn to clean up. They pull child-
sized brooms from a cupboard and get to work. Four brushes knock
together as they gather paper shreds and dirt. “It always gets dusty here,”

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says Mariya, pointing to grooves in the floor. The others rush over to help.
By cleaning, children learn not to make a mess in the first place, says
Kohashiguchi Megumi, the teacher. They also learn to be egalitarian: no,
“Oh the caretaker will clean it up later.”

At first, small children “act wild, like monsters!” says Satou Hiroshi, the
genial head teacher. “Our job is to prepare them to enter society” by
teaching them to collaborate, take initiative and treat everyone equally. He
calls it hito-zukuri, the art of making people.

The results are impressive. Not only do Japanese children do well

academically; they also show remarkable independence at a young age. Six-
year-olds walk or ride the metro unaccompanied to school. (It helps that the
country is unusually safe.) Sugiura Kouma, seven, walks the ten-minute
route daily. “I get nervous because he has to cross a main road, but people
help him,” says Hiroki, his father. A Japanese reality show features toddlers
going to the shops on their own to buy fishcakes. Contrast this with the
hysterical safetyism sometimes seen in the West, where many parents are
convinced something terrible will happen if they stop hovering over their
children for an instant, and where governments sometimes act as if this
were true. In October Brittany Patterson, a mother in the American state of
Georgia, was handcuffed and arrested because her 10-year-old was seen
walking calmly to the town less than a mile from his home.

Your correspondent takes a particular interest in Japanese education: her

children attended pre-school in Tokyo, when she was The Economist’s
bureau chief there, and are now at a Japanese school in Mexico. Over the
years, she has seen both the strengths of the system, such as imbuing
children with self-discipline and consideration for others, and its flaws,
such as excessive conformity. This article stems, in part, from the debate
within her family about how long to stick with Japanese-style schooling. To
assess the system fairly, she went back to Japan to investigate.

Six-year-olds walk to school on their own

Japan’s approach dates back centuries. During the feudal Edo period (1603-
1868), the samurai class set up schools to train literate, ethical warriors.
Schools in temples trained the peasants; this may be where the practice of

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kids cleaning classrooms began. In the 19th century, after the shock of
contact with the industrialised West, education was centralised and geared
to modernisation. As Japan turned to militarism in the 20th century, schools
promoted imperial fervour. After defeat in the second world war and
American occupation, the curriculum became more democratic.

Schools in Japan today still strive to build character. They stress discipline
and responsibility to others, says Nakano Koichi, a political scientist. Group
harmony trumps individualism. Authority is important. Rules are
internalised, so that scolding is unnecessary.

But the overall approach is much more humane than that bare summary
makes it sound. The education ministry’s slogan is chi-toku-tai: a blend of
chi (academic ability), toku (moral integrity), and tai (physical health). This
means lots of sports and arts. It also means that teachers praise effort, rather
than achievement. Studies suggest this is an excellent idea: it makes
children more resilient, notes Jennifer Lansford of Duke University.

The social context in which Japanese schools operate is in many ways like
the West: Japan, too, is a rich, liberal democracy. But in some ways it is
different. Whereas Americans want their children to be leaders and win
competitions, Japanese parents place greater value on their offspring getting
along with others, surveys find. Relationships with mothers are especially
close in Japan. Most kids share their mother’s bed until they are ten.
Research reveals Japanese mothers typically anticipate their children’s
needs, whereas American mothers wait for requests.

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So schools must teach kids to cope with less coddling. This starts at
preschool, where they focus on free play, music, arts and crafts, exercise
and nature appreciation. They are taught to dress themselves and wash their
hands. (There are regular health and dental checks here and in schools, too;
a blessing for busy parents.) Much thought goes into the simplest activities.
Children learn both jumping and turning a skipping-rope for their
classmates, blending exercise, motor skills and group co-ordination.
Origami involves an increasing number of folds at each age. Pencil cases
with a slot for each item teach kids to take care of their things. If a pen is
missing, they notice immediately.

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Once they reach primary school, children should be ready to run a “mini-
shakai” or “mini-society”, says Yonaha Sanae, Minami Ikebukuro’s deputy
head. Each day starts and ends with a class meeting. Children might discuss
the day ahead or which dance to perform at a school event. Daily duties
rotate. At the end of a lesson in Ms Kohashiguchi’s class two children clean
the blackboard, while a third announces the next lesson. After that, another
student announces the end of the lesson; all bow. Now it is time for lunch.
There is clanking and clattering as the children on lunch duty don chef
whites, roll out tables and lay out crockery. The others line up to be served
by their peers, from vats of food delivered to each class by in-house cooks.

Squeaky-clean character factories

Over lunch at their desks, some children read. Others listen to a broadcast
of classical music and announcements from one of the special school
committees. Last week one such committee of 12- and 13-year-olds ran
undokai, an annual festival of sports and dance. Between mouthfuls of
tempura, salad and rice, the children assess how it went. “We didn’t tell
people the choreography for the dance until two or three days before and
that wasn’t enough,” they lament.

All are expected to help each other out: older pupils teach their juniors little
things like where to store their bags. Children are also instructed to help
more at home. Your correspondent’s older daughter was told to start making
her own bento (lunch box) and packing her books every day. She doesn’t.
But she and her younger sister do take pride in their daily jobs at school and
frequently want to replicate them at home.

Manners and rules help the school run smoothly, says Ms Yonaha. Children
place their outdoor shoes neatly in a locker when they arrive, and change
into indoor shoes to keep the place clean. The school recently launched a
campaign to remind children to say “hello” to each other; they were getting
sloppy at it.

Japanese schoolbooks often include precise instructions for writing. Sit with
a straight back, place a fist behind you and one in front to measure your
distance from the desk and chair back; put your non-dominant hand in the

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centre of the opposite page to hold your book still as you write. Also, do
stretching exercises before writing.

An emphasis on group harmony permeates everything. Ms Yonaha was

shocked, during a visit to America, to see children just running around
“having fun” in physical-education classes. “In Japan, sports is also about
learning how to act in a group,” she says.

Japanese schools have dedicated classes for dotoku (moral education). In

one, children discuss the consequences of not doing their daily classroom
duty properly. “You make trouble for other people,” says a boy. When
teachers tell pupils off, it is most commonly for “bothering others”, says Mr
Satou. This sentiment is repeated everywhere: posters, books and lessons
remind children not to “bother” their neighbours.

Morality lessons address realistic situations, such as: what if a borrowed

book becomes a source of misunderstanding between friends? Today, in a
fourth-grade class at Minami Ikebukuro, the topic is jumping to
conclusions. The teacher asks the children to suggest examples. “Even
though he’s a boy he might not like insects!” one child offers. Each child
has to reflect on whether they are quick to judge others and what the effect
might be. “I don’t jump to conclusions as the other person might get hurt,”
writes one girl.

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In the 1970s and 80s scholars looked to Japan for ideas about how to
improve kids’ test scores. Now, foreign visitors are more interested in how
Japanese schools promote character. Countries from Mongolia to Malaysia
have talked to Japan’s government about this, says Sugita Hiroshi, a former
education official now at Kokugakuin University. Since 2014 Singapore has
made students clean their classrooms.

A notable fan is Egypt’s strongman, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. During a trip to

Japan in 2016 he described the locals as “walking Korans” for embodying
Islamic virtues. Egypt has now built 55 schools that combine its own

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national curriculum with Japanese-style classroom duties to foster
discipline and collaboration. Some 30,000 teachers have been trained; the
aim is to extend this Japanese-Egyptian hybrid to all public schools. Mr Sisi
thinks it can help Egypt grow rich. (He may also, conceivably, see an
opportunity to inculcate obedience to himself—handy in a country where
mass protests have been known to topple presidents.)

Back in Japan, liberal-minded parents find some aspects of their system

irksome. Even if they like the way primary schools work, they are often less
enthusiastic about what happens at middle and high school. There is an
emphasis on rote learning—understandable, given the need to memorise
over 2,000 characters, but often excessive, at the expense of creativity. And
“black rules” at some schools enforce needless conformity, from regulating
the length of socks or the colour of hairbands to requiring all pupils to wear
white underwear. In 2017 a girl in Osaka sued her school for ordering her to
dye her naturally brown hair black.

Egypt’s president thinks Japan has “Islamic” virtues

Children learn not to stand out. (Japan has a saying: “The nail that sticks up
gets hammered down.”) Although dotoku encourages the discussion of
different viewpoints, everyone knows the correct answer, says Otani
Nanako, a mother in Tokyo who has one child in an international school and
two in Japanese ones. Children who are different may be bullied. Mixed-
race kids, known as “hafu” (from the English “half”) have an especially
hard time. Absenteeism is growing, not least because nonconforming
children often find school oppressive. According to Unicef, the UN’s
children’s agency, Japanese kids are physically in better shape than those in
any other rich country, but come a dismal 37th out of 38 for mental well-
being.

Lisa Katayama is a half-Japanese, half-Chinese mother of two who lives

near San Francisco and has her children in Japanese schools. When she
goes to Japan, she finds the sense of social harmony “feels good ....like a
nice warm bath”. But “the concern with not causing an inconvenience to
others can be stifling.”

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Many Japanese schools—and the government—are trying to deal with the
downsides. In the 1990s and early 2000s a policy of yutori kyōiku (“relaxed
education”) allowed for a lighter curriculum and a shorter school week (five
days instead of six) to give students more free time. But some
commentators, especially nationalistic ones, blame it for what they see as
slipping standards. Many parents are as desperate as ever for their kids to
get into the right university, setting them up for a job at a prestigious
company.

So from fifth grade many children attend juku, or cram school, to prepare
for college entrance exams. This is anything but relaxed—and violates the
spirit of chi-toku-tai. Ohki Souma describes a daily routine of regular
school, then four hours of homework, then a long evening cramming. He
says he has given up his football club to fit in all the swotting. He is 10.

Other parents seek more of a balance. Sugiura Yumi, seven-year-old

Kouma’s mother, considered enrolling her children in juku but then decided
to let them have more time for their hobbies instead. Kouma likes to swim
and go to insect exhibitions.

Fall seven times, get up eight

The overall excellence of Japan’s schools should not be underplayed.

Japanese 15- and 16-year-olds come third, fifth and second respectively in
the reading, maths and science tests run by the OECD. But as Japanese
society changes, its schools must, too. Not everyone aspires to be a
salaryman these days, individuality is increasingly prized and immigration
is gradually making the culture less homogeneous. Mr Satou says it is “very
hard” to strike the right balance between fostering community spirit and
giving pupils enough space to express themselves freely.

Meanwhile, a few parents are voting with their feet. Ms Otani, for example,
moved her son Luka, now 13, from a Japanese public school to an
international one for secondary education. “It works beautifully until a
certain age,” she says. “Then it becomes about shaping people to fit into the
system.”

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Your correspondent may end up doing something similar. Her kids have
benefited enormously from the self-reliance and wide range of skills that
Japanese schools instil, but it may soon be time to move on. ■

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specials/2024/12/19/why-do-small-children-in-japan-ride-the-subway-alone

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Bakersfield blues

The beginning of the end for oil in

California
What happens to an oil town when the drilling stops?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | BAKERSFIELD

“EVERY ONE OF those wells has a name and a personality,” says Mike
McCoy, the director of the Kern County Museum. He is standing on a bluff
overlooking Bakersfield, Kern’s biggest city, and pointing towards the
oilfield below. “It’s like going to a dance and there’s a bunch of pretty girls,
and every one of them is different.” That one is where so-and-so cut his
finger off. Over there is where he contemplated getting married. When Mr
McCoy was younger, the roughnecks called him “Sunshine” for his golden
locks. Now a baseball cap covers his grey. His father (“Tex”) spent a career
on the pipelines, having moved here back in the days when Texans flocked
to California, rather than vice versa.

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Kern County, California feels as far from the Pacific coast as Iowa. Squint
past the palm trees and foothills, and it resembles the Great Plains. From Mr
McCoy’s vantage point, the horizon is littered with pump jacks, bobbing up
and down, sucking the oil out of earthen canyons like thousands of metal
mosquitoes. Here, oil is not just a commodity; it is part of people’s identity.
If you’re not in oil, you know people who are. California is still the eighth-
largest oil producer among American states, and three-quarters of its oil
comes from Kern County. As recently as 2016 Kern produced more oil than
any other county.

Yet times have changed. California has taken a sharp green turn in recent
decades. It aims to be carbon neutral by 2045; only China, the European
Union and South Korea boast larger carbon-trading markets. Its car-
emissions standards are tighter than the federal government’s. By 2030,
60% of its utilities’ power must come from renewables. Oddly enough, the
Golden State is now both a large producer of oil, and aggressively trying to
end its production. State-issued permits for drilling have become
vanishingly rare.

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All this means trouble for Kern County. As oil production has plunged in
the state (see chart), it has fallen in the county, too, from a peak of 256m
barrels in 1985 to 90m in 2023. Locals fear that their jobs and towns are
being sacrificed. Resentment and anxiety are spreading. As the world shifts
away from hydrocarbons, there will be many places like Kern. So it is
useful to examine how its people respond to the green transition. Will they
push back politically, or adapt economically, or simply up sticks and leave?
What happens in Kern County could offer a road map to other carbon-
dependent places—or a warning.

Historically, Kern has had three big booms. In the 1850s miners came
hunting for gold in the Sierra Nevada mountains. After the American civil
war, southern farmers and homesteaders moved west, and irrigated cotton
became king. The third boom was oil. In 1899 a group of men hacked away
at the dirt until they had dug a well 21 metres deep. They struck black gold
in what would become the Kern River oil field. A small stone monument
still marks the spot.

The sounds of the earth are like music

Towns sprang up in the shadow of towering oil derricks. In Oildale, some

houses are so close to the Kern River field that pump jacks are visible from
backyards and church car parks. The Standard School District there is
named after Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller’s petroleum empire. (When
the Supreme Court ordered its break-up in 1911, Standard Oil of California
was born.) The mascot of Bakersfield High School is the Drillers. Murals of
oilmen decorate its walls. Taft, a small town in the western foothills, was
built with oil money. It was near here that the Lakeview Gusher erupted in
1910. An average of 18,000 barrels exploded skyward from the well’s
mouth each day for 18 months. Workers rushed to stop the river of oil from
surging into a nearby lake used for irrigation. The black geyser became a
tourist attraction, but only for those who didn’t mind getting coated in inky
slime.

In the early 20th century, migrants from the Plains began to roll into the
region, escaping from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. Oildale
became a “Little Oklahoma”. “This was all Okies, Arkies and Texans,” says

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Mr McCoy, driving around the part of Oildale where he grew up, explaining
in his Texas drawl where his parents settled after the second world war.

For decades, oil has meant opportunity

Thousands of migrants ended up as farmworkers. John Steinbeck’s fictional

Joad family in “The Grapes of Wrath” settles in a government-run camp
based, in part, on one that still stands on the outskirts of Bakersfield. Others
found work in oil. “The first three words an Okie baby says is mommy,
daddy and Bakersfield,” says Fred Holmes, who began work in the oilfields
when he was 13. Now 80 (pictured), he owns a drilling firm and swaggers
around wearing a golden belt buckle that depicts the Lakeview Gusher.

These migrants nurtured a distinct culture. The “Bakersfield sound”, a

twangy strain of country music pioneered by local stars like Merle Haggard
and Buck Owens, still rocks the city’s honky-tonk bars. “In the old days
you’d go in some of these places...and get your ass kicked,” jokes Mr
McCoy. Your correspondent meets him at one nonetheless. A singer with a
gravelly voice and a guitar serenades the crowd. No punches are thrown.
Honky-tonks are more respectable now, though patrons may still hear a
song with crude lyrics. Literally. “Loaded with crude oil, headed for town,
the boxcar would tremble from the top to the ground,” warbles Merle
Haggard in “Oil tanker train”, recalling his childhood living in a converted
boxcar in Oildale.

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Long-resident families can remember being mocked for their Oklahoma
roots. “Okie use’ ta mean you was from Oklahoma,” wrote Steinbeck.
“Now it means you’re a dirty son-of-a-bitch.” These days people take pride
in it. Suzanne Garrison gives tours of the old migrant camp where her
mother was born in 1946. “My grandpa said…‘Be proud that you come
from Okies,’” she remembers, “we come from the dirt and the lowest point
of life, and we overcame it.”

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Bakersfield is still hard-up. About 19% of Kern residents live below the
American poverty line of $31,000 a year for a family of four, compared
with 12% of Californians. Oilfield work, though dangerous and gruelling,
offers opportunity. Kenny Pearson grew up in foster care. Back in 2008,
when he was 20, he took a job cleaning the inside of oil tanks. “We would
pop open the manhole covers and crawl in,” he says. He lived in fear of the
rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulphide, a deadly gas. But he made $20 an
hour, more than twice the state’s minimum wage. Many Latinos like Mr
Pearson have found their way into oil work. Now Kern County is around
60% Hispanic.

When the price of oil was high, the county prospered. Tax coffers were full.
Donations from oil firms paid for school sports teams. Local businesses
thrived. The busts hurt, but were quickly forgotten. “We could hunker
down. We would have our money saved, and we could go through it,” Mr
Holmes says. Previous crashes, however, were followed by booms, and he
doubts there will be another. “If I had time to do a little math, I could tell
you the day we’ll be out of business.”

Local drilling faces practical obstacles. Kern’s crude is thick like molasses,
so it must be heated expensively to extract it. However, the main problem,
as drillers see it, is government. Chevron, the successor to Standard Oil of
California, argues there is still enough demand for oil that drilling in Kern
would make financial sense, but the state has imposed a de facto
moratorium on drilling. A decade ago, in 2014, nearly 3,200 new oil and gas
wells were permitted in the county. As of December, just 11 had been
permitted in 2024. California recently banned drilling near homes and
schools, and increased fees on idle wells.

Sometimes the state tries to have it both ways, insisting that oil must be
curbed but petrol must still be reliably available and cheap. In 2024 Gavin
Newsom, the Democratic governor, called a special session of the
legislature to tackle petrol-price spikes when refineries undergo
maintenance and supplies run low. A new law will require them to maintain
emergency oil supplies. Kern residents argue that the state is choking off
production, and trying to put a band-aid over the effects of doing so. Mr

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Holmes texted your correspondent when news of the special session broke:
“The governor is after us again.”

What locals call a “war on oil” has deepened a rift between Kern and the
state government. California is run by Democrats; the county is deeply
conservative. Kevin McCarthy, the former Republican speaker of the House
of Representatives, is a son of Bakersfield. But there are not enough
hydrocarbon-loving Republicans in California to mount an electoral revolt
against Mr Newsom and his party. Democrats don’t have to worry that
harassing oil firms will endanger their majority (though lefties running in
Kern County may suffer).

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Lorelei Oviatt runs the county’s planning and natural resources department
and is the architect of its energy transition. Yet she never says “transition”,
preferring “evolution”. “Climate change is urgent, and now the state of
California’s policies are urgent because they’re going to put us out of
business,” she says, sitting in an office decorated with photos of sunflowers.

Some 13,000 people work in oil and gas in Kern County, 36% fewer than
ten years ago. In 2020 the industry contributed nearly $200m to the budget
via property taxes, says Ms Oviatt. Without that money schools, parks and
police will be squeezed. “We probably have five years to stabilise the
situation here in Kern...and then we may be approaching a cliff that we’re
going to fall off,” she says.

Certain refrains can be heard around the county. California makes the
cleanest oil in the world because of all of the regulations, Kern residents
argue. So why cut drilling here just to import dirtier oil from abroad?
Imagine that you spy a golden nugget in a riverbed and you’re asked not to
pick it up. That, locals insist, is what it’s like being unable to drill in their
backyards.

They won’t be retrained. They’ll move

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The old guard hope the state will be shocked into bringing back oil-friendly
policies by a supply shortage, or that Donald Trump’s election on a platform
of “Drill, baby, drill” will turn the tide. Some younger workers are
optimistic. They understand that when production stops, someone will have
to plug all those wells. That could take years and a lot of manpower. There
is opportunity even in decline.

Advocates of a green transition usually say it should be “just”, and include

re-training or new jobs for fossil-fuel workers. But wages in logistics and
manufacturing, which are growing in Kern County, are paltry compared
with oilfield money. And rather than learning new skills, rig hands and
executives whisper about an exodus to less-regulated states. Workers
“won’t be retrained”, says Ms Oviatt. “They’ll move.”

Tim Paulsen, who oversees Chevron’s San Joaquin Valley operations, says
he has recently transferred a few dozen staff to Texas and Colorado. “How
long do we have?” he recalls them asking. “Can I make it another two years
here before I need to move?” He doesn’t expect to finish his own career in
Bakersfield, either; Chevron is moving its headquarters to Texas.

The American West has hundreds of ghost towns: settlements that died
when a mine or a sawmill closed and residents moved on. Yet it is far from
certain that Kern county will follow that path. Renewables are booming: the
desert is ideal for solar panels and the foothills for wind turbines. Ms Oviatt
hopes carbon, of all things, can be Kern’s saviour. She wants to build a
“carbon management park”, where steel and hydrogen plants, for example,
can store their carbon waste below the oilfields. There is no guarantee the
park will ever be built, but if it is, she reckons it can make up some of the
lost jobs and tax revenue. “I am the bringer of hope,” she declares, a county
planner in a cape.

Workin’ man blues

Bakersfield is big and diverse enough to survive. But storefronts in Taft are
boarded up. Meth, and later opioids, have ravaged Oildale. Homeless
people camp on Beardsley Avenue, “the worst street in Oildale”, according
to Mr McCoy. He points out some neat houses in his old neighbourhood

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that have weathered the hard times, but now sit between trailers and shacks
with tin roofs.

Some residents want Kern to look beyond carbon, and think about what
Chevron’s canyons could look like returned to their natural state. Locals
hope tourists will stop by on their drive north from Los Angeles to the
Sierras. Conservationists have restored a strip of land beside the Kern River
and the oil field that bears its name. Cottonwood trees offer shade. A coyote
yips nearby. The waning sun glints off nearby pump jacks as it dips below
the western horizon. The metal mosquitoes bob up and down, up and down,
in their monotonous rhythm. Until, one day, they will stop. ■
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specials/2024/12/19/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-oil-in-california

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Tales of Odessa

Cancel culture in Ukraine

What happens in Odessa will shape what kind of country Ukraine becomes
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | ODESSA

AT THE TOP of the Potemkin Steps in Odessa, the most famous staircase
in cinema history, a statue of the Duc de Richelieu stands on the corniche of
Primorsky Boulevard. Richelieu, a French nobleman who became a Russian
army officer, was, in 1803, appointed governor of the region and mayor of
the young and then underwhelming city. His reformist zeal, introduction of
duty-free trading and religious tolerance helped the small town transform
itself into an Enlightenment metropolis. Two centuries later his toga-clad
bronze form looks out sternly at the Black Sea.

In March 2022 Odessa’s inhabitants anxiously followed his gaze, scanning

the horizon for signs of an amphibious attack that might open a new front in
Vladimir Putin’s invasion. The acacia-bordered heights of Primorsky

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Boulevard were pressed into service as an emplacement for Ukrainian
artillery. And Nika Vikniansky, an agile man with curly hair and expressive
grey eyes, began to fear for the statue’s safety.

It was not Mr Vikniansky’s job to worry about such things. He is a furniture

distributor. But that spring it was everybody’s job to defend the city and
they put aside all differences to do so. Mr Vikniansky was co-ordinating
volunteers who brought aid to a hipster food-court; he was delivering stoves
to the army. But, as he recalls, “I suddenly thought, what if our duke gets
hit? How are we all going to live?” Soon he had volunteers covering the
monument up with sandbags.

Further down Primorsky Boulevard there is another statue: of Alexander

Pushkin. Statues of the poet are commonplace in the countries which once
formed the Soviet Union, a symbol of Russian cultural primacy. In Odessa,
though, he has a more intimate connection. He lived there in internal exile;
it is the city in which he began to write his masterpiece, “Eugene Onegin”.
His statue, like that of the duke, was paid for by Odessa’s citizenry:
Richelieu’s, in 1828, in gratitude for raising the city up; Pushkin’s, in 1889,
as thanks for celebrating it in verse as European, free and cosmopolitan.
Should Pushkin, too, be shielded from the guns?

Odessa’s identity, its polyphony and its freedom are under threat from
Ukraine’s own officials

Mr Vikniansky thought not. If Mr Putin’s Russia was happy to laud the poet
as a symbol of its nationalism, then the duty of protecting him was theirs. “I
just thought, Putin is not going to risk hitting Pushkin. And if he did, it
would be quite ironic.” Pushkin would have appreciated the irony.

Mr Putin attacked Odessa, claiming its history made it Russian. Mr

Vikniansky turned to history for the city’s defence—getting it listed as a
UNESCO World Heritage Site. He pestered officials who said it was
impossible, exploited friendships and circumvented bureaucracy. And in
early 2023, using an emergency procedure, UNESCO designated Odessa’s
historic centre a place of unique value, “a polyphonic city”, built by Italian
architects, run by French and Spanish subjects of the Russian empire,
inhabited by some 130 nationalities. “It was meant to protect Odessa from

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Russian missiles. I never thought I would have to protect it from our own
vandals,” says Mr Vikniansky.

Today, though the city is regularly hit by Russian drones and missiles,
Odessa’s identity, its polyphony and its freedom are under a subtler threat.
This is from Ukraine’s own officials, and from a small but aggressive and
vocal group of activists who have seized on a loosely worded law on the
decolonisation of Ukraine which orders the “liquidation of symbols of
Russian imperial politics to protect Ukraine’s cultural and informational
space”. Pushkin’s statue, unshelled, is in their sights. So, too, is that of
Odessa’s best-known literary son, and Mr Vikniansky’s hero, Isaac Babel,
who shaped its Jewish character.

The law on decolonisation was signed by Volodymyr Zelensky in April

2023 and coincided with Ukraine’s counter-offensive to liberate territory
captured by Russia. Most Ukrainian cities and regions complied without
causing consternation. Like the statues of Lenin a few years earlier, the
monuments to Pushkin fell across Ukraine from Uzhhorod in the west to
Kharkiv in the east. Most were indeed part of Stalin’s imperialist policy;
their proliferation began in 1937, the centenary of Pushkin’s death and the
height of the great terror. Mr Putin also conscripted Pushkin to his cause.
When Russian troops entered Kherson, the occupying forces put up
billboards featuring Pushkin and proclaiming that Russia was “here for
ever”.

Breathes and breezes of Europe

But what holds in the rest of Ukraine does not hold in Odessa, because
Odessa is not like the rest of Ukraine. Pushkin’s sojourn did not make it
Russian; his writing celebrated the city as liberal and European. Babel gave
voice to a Jewish population as culturally important as that of any European
city. The problem of decolonising Odessa is not that it is in any way pro-
Russian—it resisted Russia’s attempts to engineer an insurgency there in
2014 and defended itself against invasion in 2022. The problem is that it
was not a colony so much as a world city ahead of its time—a metropolis.

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As scholars and citizens have reflected, it had its own way of speaking and
thinking, its own music, its own humour, its own literature, even its own
gefilte fish. What other city in Ukraine has given its name to restaurants in
Istanbul, New York, Paris and Vienna? Like them, it has also produced a
distinct myth that is bigger than the city itself. Yaroslav Hrytsak, a historian
at the Ukraine Catholic University in Lviv, says that its cultural influence
spread far beyond its own limits or those of whichever country
encompassed it.

At the heart of Odessa’s myth is a joyous idea of freedom and beauty,

enterprise and opportunity, a city built on “the sun-drenched steppes washed
by the sea”, in the words of Babel. Leonid Utesov (born Vaisbein), a singer
and bandleader popular from the 1920s, mixed Yiddish klezmer with New
Orleans jazz. “I was born in Odessa,” he wrote. “You think I am bragging?
But it’s really true. Many people would like to have been born in Odessa,
but not everyone manages to.”

Its climate, free port and religious freedoms attracted traders, merchants,
fortune-seekers, and smugglers and gangsters of every ethnicity: Greeks,
Italians, Germans, Poles and countless others. Jews, who were excluded
from other large cities of the Russian empire, made up a third of Odessa’s
population. Odessa was the melting pot of all melting pots.

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In 1794 Catherine II ordered the construction of “a military harbour along
with a merchant quay” on the site of Khadjibeia, a seaside Turkish village,
but the merchant quay took over. Odessa grew up centred not on a citadel, a
seat of government or a prison, as many cities in the Russian heartland did.
It evolved around market squares. It was built on a human scale and
designed not for intimidation, but for commerce and enjoyment. Its main
landmarks were a neoclassical stock exchange and a Baroque opera house.

In the 19th century it was the fastest-growing city in Europe; its population
soared from 2,000 in 1795 to 400,000 in 1897, larger than San Francisco.
“For most of its history Odessa has earned a reputation of defiance of
Russian imperial and later Soviet law,” writes Patricia Herlihy in her
evocative book, “Odessa Recollected”. Today Ukrainian politicians are
struggling to Ukrainianise Odessa (which they spell with one ‘s’) and to
make it fit into their decolonisation law.

Oleh Kiper, the head of the regional military administration, doesn’t much
care about such complexities. A former prosecutor who served under Viktor
Yanukovych, a Moscow-backed kleptocrat who was president of Ukraine
from 2010 to 2014, he had been barred from official positions, but was
reinstated in 2019. As an unelected bureaucrat he was interested in obeying
orders, not in how Odessans think about themselves. So in July 2024 he
ordered the wholesale removal of the city’s statues and the renaming of its
streets, sparking a cultural war that is tearing the city apart.

The statues of Pushkin and Babel have prompted the biggest controversies
because their writing is so central to the myth of Odessa. Pushkin has been
cancelled as a Russian imperialist; and Babel as a Bolshevik (he was
executed on Stalin’s orders in 1940).

Pushkin spent 13 months in Odessa in 1823-24, after being banished from

St Petersburg for his anti-autocratic poetry. The city was only four years
older than him when he started writing “Onegin” there.

“I lived back then in dry Odessa...

Where all breathes Europe to the senses,
And sparking Southern sun dispenses
A lively, varied atmosphere.”

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He was not allowed to travel abroad, but in Odessa Pushkin felt himself to
be in Europe. He stayed in the Hôtel du Nord (the house still stands). He
sipped Turkish coffee and slurped “plump and living” oysters in a French
restaurant, before strolling to the theatre for the latest Rossini opera.

The liberal city by the sea was a radical one too: “A nest of conspirators” in
the words of Tsar Nicholas I. A secret Greek society plotted the war for
independence from the Ottoman empire. In the late 19th century Ukrainian
students and intellectuals promoted their language and culture. And
revolution became part of the iconography of Odessa with Sergei
Eisenstein’s classic film of 1925, “Battleship Potemkin”, which
mythologised the city’s uprising in 1905. The scene of a pram careening
down the grand staircase gave Odessa’s most famous landmark its place in
history.

When Odessans staged a Euromaidan protest against Mr Yanukovych’s

rejection of closer ties with Europe in 2013, they met by Pushkin’s statue
and used his line about the city’s Europeanness as a slogan. Alexander
Babich, a Euromaidan activist and historian, watched Russian troops
occupy Crimea in response to Mr Yanukovych’s eventual overthrow. He
wrote a Facebook post: “Russians, I will be defending Pushkin’s house in
Odessa from you! [And] Potemkin staircase...!!!! You get this into your
head!!!!”

This was precisely what Mr Putin could not get into his head. Mr Babich
wrote in Russian. To Mr Putin, Russian-speakers were Russian. As Mr
Hrytsak says, he could not, or would not, “understand that Ukraine has
evolved into a civic nation that was defined not by language and ethnicity,
but by people’s readiness to defend its independence”.

A decade later, Mr Babich is at the front, defending Odessa and Ukraine

from Russia, while Ukrainian ethno-nationalists attack Pushkin’s house.
Like Mr Putin, they see Russian-speaking Ukrainians as a deviation. One
ideologue is Oleksandr Muzychko, who teaches history and memory at
Odessa’s main university and sits on a commission that decides which
streets should be renamed and which statues removed.

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Mr Muzychko, a tall man with rectangular glasses, sees the war as a chance
to “purify” Ukraine. “The skeleton of a healthy Ukrainian nation is
ethnicity and language.” Those people who are “holding on to this Russian
language, essentially parts of identity, monuments and street names…
whether they want it or not, help keep the Russian claws in the Ukrainian
body.” The metaphor of a body in need of surgery crops up often and
echoes the worst of Mr Putin’s propaganda.

Mr Muzychko’s companion, Katerina Musienko, a neatly dressed 26-year-

old doctor and activist, reinforces his message. “A Russian-speaking
Ukrainian is a political construct, created by enemy propaganda. It serves as
fertiliser for Mr Putin’s war.” As such, the pair agrees, these people bear the
responsibility for Mr Putin’s invasion because he came to “defend” them.

While Mr Muzychko disseminates his views among students, Ms Musienko

enforces them on the street. She runs a group of “language vigilantes”.
When they hear of a shopkeeper or waiter addressing a customer in
Russian, they go and “ask them to correct it”. If the staff refuse, her
activists inform the authorities and people are fined. And sometimes thugs
turn up.

The result of this de-Russification is fear and polarisation

“The Russian language should be cancelled in public spaces. Anything to

do with Russia, with our main enemy, must be levelled. Without
negotiations or compromises,” Ms Musienko says firmly. But as Maya
Dimerli, an Odessan writer, points out, Russian is not only the language of
the aggressor, it is also the language of the victim. And the victim is now
being shamed for the acts of the aggressor.

The result of this de-Russification is fear and polarisation. What was

marginal is becoming mainstream. On the boulevard, people look away
when asked about the statues. “The fear of speaking gives way to fear of
thinking, until people no longer know what they think,” says Anastasia
Piliavsky, an Odessa-based anthropologist at King’s College London.
Criminal cases against “collaborators” make clear that the threat of being
branded a Russian sympathiser is real.

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What is my name to you?

When Mr Vikniansky was visited by two colonels from the SBU, Ukraine’s
security service, who “prophylactically” warned him not to protest on the
streets, he replied “And what if I did?” “It is unacceptable when people in
my country tell me not to speak.” Defending the statues of Pushkin or Babel
is not a matter of history or language (he is funding a translation of Babel
into Ukrainian), but of freedom and his own existence.

And as a Jew growing up in the Soviet Union, he knows about prejudice.

His father and grandfather grew up speaking Yiddish and Ukrainian.
Babel’s Jewish Odessa was largely destroyed in the Holocaust and drained
by post-Soviet emigration. Mr Vikniansky embodies Babel’s Odessa. He
did not go to shul. But he recites Babel’s autobiographical story like a
portion of the Torah, interspersed with his own commentary.

It is a tale of a frail nine-year-old Jewish boy, who studies feverishly to get

into a school that has a 5% quota for Jews. As a reward, his parents give
him money to buy the dovecote he had been dreaming about. Then an
antisemitic pogrom starts and his loving great-uncle is killed. The boy runs
into a crippled cigarette seller who takes a dove and smashes it against the
boy’s face. “I lay on the ground, the crushed bird’s innards sliding from my
temple. They ran down my cheek, winding, dribbling, and blinding me.”

Perhaps in response to his own experience of a pogrom, Babel created a

gutsy and generous Jewish gangster, Benya Krik, the King of Moldovanka,
a poor part of Odessa. “It was a story of a Jewish kid who fought back,” Mr
Vikniansky explains. These tales gave him solace and courage when boys at
school picked on him and told him he stank, and when a schoolteacher tried
to Russify his name.

Mr Vikniansky’s parents wanted to call him after his grandfather, Naum

Moiseevich Shrabstein, who fought the Nazis all the way to Berlin. But to
give the boy an obviously Jewish name in the Soviet Union was to spoil his
chances. So they chose one that starts with the same letter: Nikolay.
Russians usually shorten it to Kolya. Instead, he was called Nika.

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His Russian teacher did not like it. She would stand him before the class
and say: “Vikniansky, remember, there is no such name in the Russian
language as Nika. Your name is Kolya. You are Kolya.” The boy would cry
and the class would laugh. Mr Vikniansky did not want his name to be
changed. He does not want his favourite writer to be “cancelled”. His name
and Babel make him what he is: an Odessan. ■
This article was downloaded by calibre from https://www.economist.com/christmas-
specials/2024/12/19/cancel-culture-in-ukraine

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Consider the monster

What a 70-year-old firebreathing

lizard reveals about humanity
Each incarnation of Godzilla reflects the fears of its time
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Tokyo

TANAKA TOMOYUKI gazed down at the ocean, and the ocean spoke
back to him. A star producer at Toho, a Japanese film studio, Tanaka was
flying home over the Pacific, pondering a slot that needed to be filled in the
release schedule for 1954. He imagined a creature rising from the depths in
the wake of an underwater nuclear explosion and wreaking havoc on land.
“Mankind had created the Bomb, and now nature was going to take revenge
on mankind,” he later recalled.

On set the monster came to life as an immense beast with scaly skin, spikes
along its back and radioactive breath. The raging, reptilian creature,

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somewhere between lizard and dinosaur, was given a lumbering gait, a long
tail and powerful feet, perfect for crushing buildings; the actor inside the
costume prepared for the role by observing the movements of large animals
at the Tokyo zoo. Its roar, created by dragging a leather glove across a
contrabass and running the sound through an echo chamber, evoked
existential angst. Tanaka referred to it as “the sacred beast of the
apocalypse”. Toho dubbed its new star “Gojira”, a portmanteau of gorira
(gorilla) and kujira (whale); a name transliterated in English as “Godzilla”.

The film smashed box-office records. Nearly 10m people watched Gojira in
theatres, a tenth of Japan’s population at the time. Audiences gasped as
Godzilla trampled Tokyo’s stylish Ginza district and cheered as it stomped
on the Diet, the Japanese parliament. The special-effects team recreated the
city in immaculate miniatures on a scale of 1:25, with detailed interiors so
that even the rubble of buildings looked convincing. For a country still
emerging from the wreckage of the second world war, the scenes were raw.

The plot of Gojira is simple but potent. Japan must defeat the monster
before the monster destroys Japan. The task falls to several individuals: Dr
Yamane Kyohei, a paleontologist who wants to capture and study the
strange specimen; Dr Serizawa Daisuke, a younger scientist who has
created a powerful new device, the Oxygen Destroyer, which could kill
Godzilla, but could also be used as a fearsome weapon later; Ogata Hideto,
a sailor who rallies his comrades to humanity’s defence; and Emiko, the
daughter of Dr Yamane, who is caught in a love triangle between Ogata and
Dr Serizawa. In a poignant climax (spoiler alert), Dr Serizawa takes the
Oxygen Destroyer underwater and detonates it near Godzilla, killing both
the monster and himself and burying the secrets of his technology. Godzilla
has been defeated, the world has been saved.

Less than a year later, however, the monster returned. Much as Dr Yamane
warns in the initial film, if nuclear testing continues, “then someday,
somewhere in the world, another Godzilla may appear.” This year Godzilla
celebrated 70 years of rampaging across movie screens, making it one of
the world’s longest-running cinematic franchises. It has arguably never been
stronger. Godzilla Minus One, the 37th film, became the first ever to win an
Oscar (for special effects) last year. “Godzilla has never been more popular,

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more vibrant creatively and better known...and that sadly reflects a world
that is even more at wits’ end, filled with anxiety and worried about the
future,” says William Tsutsui, the author of Godzilla on My Mind.

The series ranges from profound meditations to cheap schlockfests. The

uninitiated tend to dismiss the monster as unserious on the basis of the
latter. Yet Godzilla’s enduring appeal reveals much about post-war Japan,
its relationship with America, the globalisation of culture and shared fears
of the forces that threaten the modern world.

Every culture and era has its monsters. The Ancient Greeks had Scylla and
the Hydra. Dragons stalked Europe during the Middle Ages, while Jiangshi,
a hopping vampire, haunted China. Such creatures invite both empathy and
revulsion. “The monstrous lurks somewhere in that ambiguous, primal
space between fear and attraction,” writes Jeffrey Cohen, the editor of
Monster Theory, a collection of essays. Monstrum is “that which reveals” or
“that which warns”; the monster is thus a portent, a mirror to collective
anxieties.

For the first director, Godzilla made radiation visible

Godzilla’s story begins with a boat. In early 1954 the Daigo Fukuryumaru
(Lucky Dragon No 5), a hulking tuna trawler, set sail from Japan, bound for
the rich waters of the South Pacific. It proved anything but lucky. On March
1st the ship’s crew saw a bright white flash in the distance; eight minutes
later they heard a guttural boom. White dust soon began raining down. The
sailors had inadvertently witnessed an American hydrogen bomb test on the
Bikini Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. All 23 of them soon came down with
radiation poisoning. Throughout Japan, the incident inflamed memories of
the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki just nine years earlier.

The boat now stands in the hangar of a museum in Yumenoshima Park in

Tokyo. The white paint on its wooden hull has faded and chipped, and its
bolts have rusted. But the vessel remains intact—a monument to its cursed
crew. The American and Japanese governments played down the incident,
loth to upset their burgeoning alliance or to slow the use of nuclear energy
to power Japan’s economic revival. “They wanted to put a lid on the issue,
they wanted the fire to disappear,” says Tanaka Yoshiko, whose father,

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Oishi Matashichi, was a crewman on the ship. The sailors received
compensation, but were feared and ostracised at home. One potential suitor
of Ms Tanaka’s rejected a marriage proposal, wary of the invisible force
coursing through the family.

Honda Ishiro, the director of the first Godzilla film (and seven others), saw
the monster as a way to “make radiation visible”. He had seen the
apocalyptic ruins of Hiroshima on his way home from the war. “Godzilla
represents the anger of the victims of radiation,” says Ichida Mari, a curator
at the Lucky Dragon museum. The film begins with Godzilla attacking a
fishing boat far south of Japan. “This is awful: radioactive tuna, black rain
and now Godzilla to top it off!” one woman on a train complains after it
comes ashore. “I barely escaped the atomic bomb in Nagasaki and now
this!”

Americans, however, saw a different picture. The Hollywood adaptation,

released in 1956 as Godzilla: King of the Monsters!, cut all references to
recent nuclear history and recast the story through the eyes of an American
foreign correspondent in Tokyo. Robbed of its pathos, Godzilla was panned
by critics. The New York Times called it “an incredibly awful film”.

The nuclear core continued to power Godzilla, but it also evolved with the
times. Films released in the 1960s, such as Gojira vs Mothra, introduce new
villains. Rapacious capitalists threaten to destroy humanity with their greed.
Alien races descend, raising questions about the relationship between
people and rapidly changing technology. New monsters proliferate, from
the three-headed dragon King Ghidorah to the winged Rodan. Godzilla
reverses roles, coming to humanity’s defence.

In the 1970s Godzilla turns to the environmental consequences of rapid

industrialisation. In Gojira vs Hedorah, a heady psychedelic-inflected cult
hit, a giant smog monster feeds on pollution and devastates Earth. In an
attempt to appeal to younger audiences, Godzilla is given a son, Minilla, in
Son of Godzilla. The series went on a hiatus in 1974, but returned in 1984
amid fresh nuclear fears—the plant on Three Mile Island melted down in
1982 and Soviet-American tensions were on the rise. The Return of Gojira
harked back to the original film’s plot.

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The monster’s shape-shifting—at times a hero and at others a villain—is a
key to its appeal. “It’s mysterious, people don’t know exactly what it is,”
says Ota Keiji, Toho’s “Chief Godzilla Officer”, who oversees all of the
studio’s Godzilla-related work.

The form has ancient roots. Fujita Naoya, a critic, notes that kami, or Shinto
spirits, traditionally have two sides: a protective, gentle one that can bring
about rich harvests and good fortune—and a wild, destructive one that
begets misfortune.

What hath Godzilla wrought?

Godzilla, like many Japanese beasts and spirits, has a complex relationship
with human language. The monster roars and screeches and stomps. It
pinches its fingers and swings its arms, like an Italian whose favourite
football club has just lost on penalty kicks. But it does not utter a word
aloud. (There is one brief, semi-exception to this rule: Godzilla vs Gigan, a
film from 1972 where Godzilla fights off a monster dispatched by a race of
cockroach-aliens to conquer Earth, features a scene where its words are
rendered in manga-style speech bubbles.)

That silence has helped Godzilla become a global icon. “Godzilla is a figure
that a lot of fantasies can be projected onto, and a big part of this is the fact
that it can’t speak,” says Gregory Pflugfelder of Columbia University. The
films reached both sides of the Iron Curtain during. Godzilla is an “emblem
of globalisation”, Mr Pflugfelder argues, and a reminder that it need not
mean Americanisation. The films made “fantasy and fear” exportable, he
writes, “as much a part of global trade as soybeans and silicon”. (Toho
closely guards the overall economic value of the Godzilla franchise, and Mr
Ota will only say that it is a “treasure”.)

Few characters have inspired such a diverse range of fans, critics and
imitators. Dave Chappelle, an American comedian, once spoofed the
monster with a skit about “Blackzilla”. Joe and Mario Duplantier, French
heavy metal musicians, formed a band called Gojira, which performed at
the Olympic games in Paris last summer. MF Doom, an American rapper,
released music under the alias King Geedorah, a nod to Godzilla’s three-

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headed archenemy. The cinephile North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il
kidnapped a famed South Korean director and forced him to make a
communist Godzilla remake called Pulgasari. Susan Glasser of the New
Yorker recently likened Donald Trump to Godzilla: “the monster very often
wins.”

Serious pundits have long pondered the monster’s deeper meaning. Susan
Sontag, an American critic, saw Japanese science-fiction films such as
Godzilla as emblematic of an age of extremity. “We live under continual
threat of two equally fearful, but seemingly opposed, destinies: unremitting
banality and inconceivable terror,” she writes in “The Imagination of
Disaster”, an essay from 1965. “It is fantasy,” she added, “which allows
most people to cope”.

In Japan many see Godzilla as a metaphor for the country’s war dead.
Godzilla returns to attack Japan time and time again because it is “a
revenant, the returning spirit of the Japanese who died in that war we would
rather forget”, argues Kato Norihiro, a Japanese critic. In these readings, the
monster haunts the survivors who went on to enjoy peaceful, prosperous
post-war lives—and helps them overcome their guilt.

Fans have built communities. One balmy day in late October, a group of
Godzilla-heads from across North America set off on a Godzilla-themed trip
around Japan. J.D. Lees, the lanky, unassuming impresario behind the
journey, bears little outward resemblance to the monster, but he is arguably
the King of the Fans. A retired teacher from Manitoba, Mr Lees began
producing “G-Fan”, a Godzilla fanzine, by hand in 1992. It grew and
eventually spawned an annual convention—“G-Fest”—and the tour series
—“G-Tour”.

Toys and collectibles have helped keep Godzilla’s spirit alive in between
film releases. For Nabe Yakan, a Japanese comedian, the obsession begins
with Godzilla’s image. “The story comes second, for me it’s really about
how Godzilla looks: the scaly skin, the scary face, the fiery breath—it’s just
so cool!” Mr Nabe gushes. His house has a room dedicated to Godzilla
memorabilia, from the heads of Godzilla costumes to old film scripts and
scores of toys, lined up on shelves like jewellery. Some people even treat
Godzilla merch as an investment. “Rich people buy and sell them like

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paintings,” says Kizawa Masahiro, the owner of “Gojira-ya”, a Godzilla-
themed toy shop in western Tokyo. Mr Nabe reckons his collection is worth
around $1m—but he has no plans to part with it.

The monster’s revival has come with rising geopolitical tension

Deviations from the monster’s ideal form are frowned upon. Mr Ota’s team
offers detailed guidelines on how the monster should look and behave. It
ought to have spikes on its back and four fingers on its hands. It should “stir
the soul with its overwhelming life force”.

TriStar, a Hollywood studio, acquired the rights to make “Godzilla”, a film

released in 1998. But the American directors turned the monster into a
whimpering animal that runs from attack. Fans “turned on it like an angry
mob,” Mr Lees recalls. “The TriStar Godzilla didn’t look like our Godzilla,
didn’t act like our Godzilla.” The film featured an all-powerful American
military laying the monster low, a snapshot of America’s hubris when it was
the sole superpower.

With the Cold War over, nuclear anxiety receded, and fearful fantasies were
supplanted by cute ones, from Pokemon to Hello Kitty. Godzilla’s recent
revival has coincided with the return of geopolitical tensions and a
heightened awareness of existential risks, from nuclear accidents to climate
change. And as fears have grown again, Godzilla has grown bigger (see
chart).

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
In 2011 an earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear meltdown at a power
plant in Fukushima. “These are not problems from a distant past:
Fukushima and the Fukuryumaru are linked,” Ms Tanaka says. Shin Gojira,
released in 2014, took the disaster head-on, skewering Japan’s doddering
bureaucrats for their indecision during the crisis. The film resonated with
viewers who had recently been reminded that “there is still this massive,
destructive force that can wipe out humanity,” Mr Fujita says. “Prior to that,
people had this post-modern sense of not needing to be scared.”

A world riven with new conflicts has also given Godzilla new relevance.
Godzilla Minus One, released in 2023, pays homage to the original Gojira,
nodding to the original train scene. As Godzilla descends, an American
general tells Japan to fend for itself. As Roland Kelts of Waseda University
in Tokyo notes, “The depiction of America abandoning a Japan in crisis
speaks directly to Japanese anxieties today.” Godzilla Minus One broke
box-office records in both Japan and America. As Mr Tsutsui puts it,
“Godzilla tends to resonate most when fear is closest to the surface.” ■
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Home for the holidays

A network of volunteers is rescuing

dogs and cats by bringing them
north
Tens of thousands of animals are moved to new states each year, so they can
find homes
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | ATWATER, DALLAS AND SPOKANE

IT WAS A crammed flight. Most of the passengers squirmed. Some

whimpered. A few even cried. One barked complaints in the direction of the
cockpit. In some ways this was not unlike a cut-rate trip on a budget carrier;
in others it was exceptional. Everyone within eyeshot stared intensely at
your correspondent, as if looking for an answer and assurance about what
would happen next. The smell—a mix of dog and cat hair, urine, faeces and
stress—was overpowering.

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This was a rescue mission. Crates carrying 101 animals—45 dogs and 56
cats—had just been loaded up at an airstrip in Atwater, in California’s
Central Valley, an agricultural breadbasket-turned-economic wasteland. The
small private plane, with a cargo hold where seats might have been, was
about to fly to Washington state.

Nearly 1m cats and dogs were euthanised each year from 2016-2019

“All these dogs and cats would be euthanised” were they to stay in the
Central Valley, says Sharon Lohman, who is standing on the tarmac with
Liberty, a small, silver, Washington-bound mutt with traces of schnauzer, in
her arms. Liberty had been abandoned in an almond orchard on a piece of
cardboard for weeks. “When you see an animal who stays in the same spot
day after day after day, it’s been dumped, because it’s waiting for the owner
to come back,” she explains.

Ms Lohman, who worked at Disney before founding New Beginnings, an

animal-rescue charity, did not want to see these animals die because no one
local would adopt them. She called Ric Browde (pictured here with
Liberty), a former music producer who runs Wings of Rescue, a charity that
flies animals likely to be euthanised to places where they can find a home.
He phoned contacts in Washington to see if they had space for any new
animals. The answer was yes, so these lucky pets were set to travel some
1,500km (around 930 miles) by air with volunteer pilots, a husband-and-
wife team based in Oregon, who own a plane and average around three
rescue flights a month.

In America an average of nearly 1m cats and dogs were euthanised each

year from 2016-2019, according to Shelter Animals Count, a database.
There were too many animals for the number of willing adopters. However,
for the past two decades volunteers have been trying to reduce this death
toll by banding together to whisk dogs and cats to safety. They function a
bit like an “underground railroad” for pets, ferrying dogs and cats mostly
from the South to the North.

Some of these efforts are informal: shelter staff post notices on message
boards asking pilots and truck drivers to help provide “freedom flights” and
“rides to rescue” for animals in need. Others are more co-ordinated. The

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largest initiative, run by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals (ASPCA), relocates around 30,000 dogs and cats a year by truck
and plane, including chartered flights each weekend; 43 people work on its
programme. Wings of Rescue will organise around 50 flights this year:
Liberty was the charity’s 75,000th pet to be taken to safety.

Volunteers have formed bonds of trust and something approaching

friendship. They often organise for handoffs to happen halfway to reduce
each other’s travel burdens. The first stop on your correspondent’s flight,
two-and-a-half hours after leaving Atwater, was Arlington, Washington.
Volunteers from the Northwest Organisation of Animal Help, a charity,
were waiting on the tarmac and greeted the pilots and Mr Browde with hugs
and handshakes. Coos of admiration met the 38 cats and kittens, who were
put in the back of a van. Liberty stayed on the plane.

Another take-off. The animals were adjusting to the jet-setting and were
quieter. Most slept. Liberty was curled up in her carrier. The next stop was
Oroville, near the Canadian border. The tiny airstrip had only a small shed,
which doubled as US Customs and a toilet. A jaunty Canadian, Jeneane
Rucheinsky of Our Last Hope Animal Rescue Society, was waiting. She
could take only seven dogs. One, still wearing its pink collar and tags with
its former owner’s details, looked morose as it was loaded into the boot of

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her van. Ms Rucheinsky double-checked the paperwork; she was driving to
British Columbia and would have to report her passengers to Canada’s
border patrol.

Another 30 minutes by air, and Spokane was the final stop. The rest of the
animals were taken out of the cargo hold and loaded onto a truck, bound for
SpokAnimal, the local shelter. All would be spayed and neutered, and most
would be adopted within a week.

With the animals off, the pilots prepared to depart. “There are so many
things in life that rob you of this or that, and this is one of those things that
fills everybody up—everyone involved,” explains Kale Garcia, one of the
pilots. “It gets you hooked.”

Two days later, Theresa Fall, who has had eight dogs during her 48-year
marriage, came to see Liberty. She had watched Wings of Rescue’s
Facebook video, recorded in Atwater. It was not love at first sight: Liberty
bit her. But Ms Fall understood Liberty had been “so traumatised” by being
abandoned that it was not personal. What Liberty needed was a home; Ms
Falls offered her one. Rescue animals “come with quirks and fears, but you
just love it out of them,” she says. “And they become the most wonderful,
thankful dogs. You can’t buy pedigreed dogs like rescue dogs.”

Hear that howl?

Hurricane Katrina, which lashed New Orleans in 2005, flooded the public
with news of human suffering, as well as images of displaced pets. Shelters
across the country banded together to place homeless dogs and cats in other
states. It gave people the idea that relocation could help “save animals
across the country”, says Karen Walsh of the ASPCA. Now charities often
fly in before storms hit, to take animals elsewhere for adoption and free up
space for newly displaced ones.

Relocation is now key to non-profits’ and shelters’ strategies to help

animals survive. Take the Humane Society of Cedar Creek Lake, a shelter
in rural east Texas. Half of the 1,000 or so animals they take in each year
are transferred to another shelter, mostly out-of-state. “This would be a

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miserable job, if we did not have transport,” says Jennifer Miller, who
works there.

Transports are logistically complex. Animals require health certificates to

move across state lines; certain states mandate specific vaccinations and
even quarantines. Relocation is also costly and so hard to scale. Operation
Kindness, in Dallas, will spend about $1m to transport around 1,500 dogs
and cats this year; in 2023 it spent $600,000 to move 1,000. Does anyone
object to such high costs or the carbon footprint of rescue flights? Not
really. “It’s puppies,” quips Mr Browde. No constituency of vocal
environmentalists or fiscal hawks lobbies for them to die instead.

From 2005 to 2020, the story was almost a fairy tale, with furry
protagonists whisked to safety in the north. However, covid presented a
dark plot twist. Shelters closed temporarily, and many spay-neuter
procedures were put off for that reason, as well as a shortage of
veterinarians and rising costs. The pandemic contributed to a deficit of more
than 2.7m spay-neuter procedures, according to one academic study. Dog
and cat populations have ballooned. “It’s easy to have an animal boom in a
very short period of time. I think we’ve proved that,” says Ms Walsh of the
ASPCA.

The cost-of-living crisis in America has also forced people to make

uncharitable decisions about fur babies. Large dogs have been the hardest
hit. Many landlords have imposed weight restrictions and bans on certain
breeds. Animals are being dumped more often.

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Shelters in the North that once took truckloads of animals from the South
can accommodate fewer today; they have no space. The ASPCA will move
around a third fewer animals this year than in 2019; Wings of Rescue’s
flights are down by more than half. “Everything’s so rough in animal
world” that shelters are jostling for space on transport missions and relying
heavily on the hope of relocation to save their animals, says Ed Jamison, the
boss of Operation Kindness.

Dogs and cats offer a Rorschach test for human nature: do you focus on the
positive or the negative? The bleak view is that people treat animals
callously, abandoning them to starve or be hit by cars. Anji Kealing-Garcia,
one of the volunteer pilots for Wings of Rescue, encountered a dog that had
been surrendered at a shelter after a woman redid her living room’s
upholstery and decided the colour of her dog clashed.

People can be impulsive and faddish. Whole breeds come in and out of
style. People rushed to adopt the spotted canines after the release and
subsequent remakes of Disney’s “101 Dalmatians”. Today shelters are
crammed with Siberian huskies. After “Game of Thrones” featured dire
wolves, which are extinct, breeders and buyers decided huskies were the
next best thing, only to find they require huge amounts of care, exercise and
grooming.

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But shelter pets can also serve as a testament to human compassion and
generosity. Americans will spend more than $150bn on their pets this year,
around two-thirds more than they did in 2018. (That is more than the gross
domestic product of around two-thirds of the world’s nations.)

A dog was surrendered at a shelter after a woman decided it clashed

with her living room’s upholstery

At Operation Kindness, your correspondent briefly pitied a small dog

recovering from surgery after one eye was removed, only to be told that
one-eyed dogs are adopted faster. “Everyone thinks they’re cute, and
everybody feels bad for them,” says Colton Jones, a veterinarian. But “one-
eyed dogs and tripods”, three-legged dogs, “are the first out the door.” Dogs
and cats evacuated from hurricane zones are also adopted quickly. People
empathise with their ordeals—and like to have pets with a unique story.

Liberty certainly came with one. It took her a few days to settle in at the
Falls’ home, eased by the calm companionship of another rescue dog,
named Gus. “I sit back and think about all the people who made it possible
for me to get this little dog,” says Ms Falls. She sends photos and updates to
Ms Lohman in California to keep her posted on Liberty’s milestones, such
as her first hike in Washington. (Liberty loved it.)

It will take years, most agree, to deal with the fallout from this recent
population boom. It leaves rescuers with a feeling of urgency. “Every time
the door closes, you get this sense of joy. And you go ‘Oh wow, we did
something cool’,” explains Mr Browde, after the daylong trip from
California to Washington. “And then you think about the ones that didn’t
make the flight, and you’re back in the doldrums again and think, ‘I’ve got
to work harder next time’.” ■
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them-north

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International
Is the age of American air superiority coming to an end?
Air cower :: The growing effectiveness of air-defence systems could blunt the West’s most
powerful weapons

Why warriors should welcome laws of war

The Telegram :: Lessons from a 17th-century thinker on preventing crimes against humanity

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Air cower

Is the age of American air

superiority coming to an end?
The growing effectiveness of air-defence systems could blunt the West’s
most powerful weapons
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

ON AUGUST 26TH the skies over Ukraine filled with the roar of 230
missiles and Shahed explosive-laden drones. It was Russia’s biggest such
attack and it ought to have been devastating, since the largest missiles each
carried as much as 700kg of explosives. Yet it soon became clear that
Russia had failed. Ukraine claimed it shot down 201, or 87%, of the
missiles, a stark example of how little effect air power has had in Europe’s
biggest war in more than eight decades.

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The inability of Russia, which has Europe’s biggest air force with roughly
600 warplanes, to operate freely over Ukraine has caused consternation not
just for Vladimir Putin’s generals. It has also sparked concern among
Western strategists, who have long planned on the assumption that they
could gain and maintain control of the skies, protecting friendly troops and
raining down bombs and missiles to defeat far larger enemy ground
formations. During the two Gulf wars, for example, coalition aircraft
penetrated Iraq’s integrated air defences and tore apart Saddam Hussein’s
armoured divisions well before they could engage American or British
ground troops. Yet now that anti-aircraft missiles have grown more
effective, and at the same time small and cheap drones have proliferated
across battlefields, some worry that the West’s dominance of the air may be
coming to an end.

“In my three and a half decades in uniform, I do not think I’ve seen a more
challenging strategic environment,” said Sir Richard Knighton, the head of
the Royal Air Force (RAF). “We largely enjoyed air supremacy…That is
not going to be the case in the future.” This is of particular concern should
America and its allies have to fend off an attack by China to take control of
Taiwan or by Russia on a member of NATO.

China and Russia both field complex, multilayered air-defence systems that
stitch together a variety of advanced sensors and surface-to-air missiles
(SAMs). Although such layered air defences date back to the cold war—and
proved brutally effective in downing Israeli jets in the Yom Kippur war of
1973—newer digital technologies that allow radar to operate across
multiple frequencies have improved detection ranges, including against
stealthy aircraft. Longer-range missiles equipped with better guidance
seekers can now threaten aircraft hundreds of kilometres away.

The smaller ones can stop, set up, fire and leave in a matter of minutes.
Western air forces have struggled to defeat mobile air defences in the past.
In 1999 dispersed Serbian SAMs proved a thorn in the side of NATO
aircraft, even downing a stealthy American F-117 Nighthawk. But now,
rolling back air defences “the size, depth and complexity of those of Russia
or China would most likely take weeks and possibly months of full-scale

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warfighting”, argues a report from the Royal United Services Institute
(RUSI), a think-tank in London.

To be sure, no defences are impenetrable. In October Israel is thought to

have used stealthy F-35s to destroy Iran’s Russian-made SAMs, allowing
strikes from missiles fired by non-stealthy planes. In a fight in the Pacific,
America would probably defang Chinese air defences by assembling large
“strike packages”. These would contain electronic attack planes and F-35s
that would jam or hack radars and SAM systems, opening a temporary
corridor for long-range missiles or stealth bombers like the B-2 Spirit and
the new B-21 Raider. Fighters would have to circle protectively. Yet
America can no longer count on gaining “ubiquitous air supremacy for days
and weeks on end”, said General David Allvin, the head of the US Air
Force (USAF), earlier in 2024. Instead, strategists talk of gaining brief
“windows of dominance”.

Even this would be beyond the capabilities of most other Western air forces,
which are short of radar-homing missiles and the intensive training needed
for suppressing enemy air defences. Were America to be distracted in Asia,
or to refuse to come to Europe’s aid, Europe’s air forces would struggle to
“establish air superiority over territory contested by Russia or any other
state-opponent with mobile SAMs”, argues Justin Bronk of RUSI.

Grounded

Equally worrying is whether Western aircraft would even survive the

opening strikes of a war to get into the air to fight. Although outmatched in
the air by Russia, Ukraine has nevertheless been able to use cheap drones to
destroy Russian planes on the ground nearly 600 kilometres from
Ukrainian-held territory. In October Iran lobbed ballistic missiles at Israeli
air bases, damaging buildings, taxiways and runways. Finland and Sweden
practise operating from dispersed and rugged bases, but their model is hard
to copy. Many NATO forces fly planes designed to operate from well-
equipped bases.

The threat is particularly acute in the Pacific, where America has

consolidated many of its planes at a small number of bases, such as Kadena

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in Japan or Andersen in Guam. A war game by the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, an American think-tank, found that in a war over
Taiwan, Chinese missiles would probably destroy hundreds of American,
Japanese and Taiwanese planes on the tarmac. America wants to disperse its
planes. But that would complicate logistics by requiring people, fuel and
parts to be shuttled around the vastness of the Pacific.

If they do get airborne, America’s fighters, bombers and support aircraft

would then have to contend with a stiff opponent. China’s air force is now
thought to churn out stealth fighters faster than America does. Although the
quality of Chinese pilots is debated, the radar and weapons bolted to their
aircraft are increasingly seen as top-class. China fields “long-range air-to-
air missiles that have a greater range than American missiles and continues
to develop even more advanced capabilities,” notes the China Aerospace
Studies Institute, a research arm of the USAF. China’s PL-17 for example, a
400km-range air-to-air missile, is designed to strike well beyond the front
lines, turning American “enablers”, such as aerial tankers or command-and-
control planes, into juicy targets.

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All these threats come at a time when Western air fleets are stretched thin.
NATO air forces have shrunk since the end of the cold war (see chart). In
theory, aircraft and the weapons they carry have become far deadlier, so
fewer of them may be needed to strike a given number of targets. But many
air forces, in a bid to cut costs, have followed that logic to the extreme, says
David Hiley of Renaissance Strategic Advisors, a defence consultancy.
“One of our greatest vulnerabilities is…too few aircraft [and] too few
people to fly them.”

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Between the end of the cold war and 2022, the number of fighters in the
USAF fell from 4,321 to about 1,420, reckons the Mitchell Institute, a
think-tank. That is well below what is needed, reckons General Mark Kelly,
the recently departed head of USAF’s Air Combat Command. The Air Force
is also weakened by dismal “readiness”, a measure of how many planes can
fly. Decades of hard flying in the Middle East on constrained budgets have
led to planes being cannibalised for spare parts. “We literally ate the muscle
tissue of the air force,” the general lamented.

Squeezed defence budgets in Europe have cut air forces to the bone. A
British parliamentary report from 2023 starkly noted that the “UK simply
[has] too few combat aircraft to credibly deter and defend against
aggression.” European air forces have also been tight-fisted about training
for high-intensity missions. Some pilots fly a mere 80 hours a year, though
NATO stipulates that pilots need at least 180. The lack of a serious threat
since the cold war’s end means exercises often emphasise “flight safety at
the expense of pushing aircrew, aircraft and weapons systems to their
limits”, notes Mr Bronk.

Meanwhile, the costs of buying and operating high-tech aircraft have

ballooned. America’s F-35 programme, key to the modernisation of many
NATO and allied forces, is now more than a decade delayed and some
$209bn over budget, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Even souped-up versions of older models are pricey. The F-15EX, the latest
variant of a fighter designed in the 1970s, will cost $90m compared with
around $60m (adjusted for inflation) in 1998. Some worry that the cost of
programmes in America and Europe to build sixth-generation fighters may
be so prohibitive that only small numbers are bought.

Drone troopers

Some argue that stealthy jets are too expensive and should be replaced by
swarms of cheap drones. Less drastic are plans to build cheaper uncrewed
systems that could accompany a crewed fighter into battle. In April, the
USAF awarded the first batch of contracts for its Collaborative Combat
Aircraft (CCA) programme, which will produce more than 1,000 advanced
drones. Such drones ought to be what military types call “attritable”,

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meaning that they are cheap enough that they can be lost in large numbers.
Their first iterations will probably perform basic tasks, such as scouting,
refuelling planes or hauling air-to-air missiles that fighter jets would guide
to their targets.

But the costs of even these seem to be inexorably rising. CCAs need to be
fast and have long ranges in order to keep up with crewed fighters. They
probably also need some stealth to avoid detection. And they will need
robust communication links that are not easily jammed. None of this is
cheap. For now, the USAF wants to keep the price below $30m each,
around a third of the cost of an F-35. That might be considered attritable—
but only just.

Others think the West should instead embrace the small-drone revolution.
The war in Ukraine has shown that small drones can challenge traditional
notions of air power, wresting parts of the air away from manned aircraft,
albeit at lower altitudes, contesting what some strategists are calling the “air
littoral”. That might work over cramped battlefields in Europe or the
Taiwan Strait, but small drones would lack the range to cross the Pacific,
for instance.

Western air forces are still the best in the world. But they should brace for
change. “The way air forces once looked at air superiority is no longer
applicable,” cautions Greg Malandrino, a former US Navy fighter pilot now
at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an American think-
tank. “The epic age of Western air dominance…has closed.” ■

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The Telegram

Why warriors should welcome laws

of war
Lessons from a 17th-century thinker on preventing crimes against humanity
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THIS IS A perilous moment for all who seek to regulate conflict with law.
From Europe to the Middle East and the Horn of Africa, brutal acts by
violent men are challenging the international order founded after 1945, in
response to the horrors of industrialised, racialised world war.

At the apex of that post-war order, the UN Security Council is increasingly

paralysed by divisions between Russia and China, on one hand, and
America and Western allies on the other. Solemn principles, whether they
ban the wanton targeting of civilians or the use of starvation as a weapon,
are being tested with seeming impunity. Organisations that claim moral

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authority over belligerents, from the UN to the International Criminal
Court, face defiance from governments accused of wrongdoing. At the same
time, international law is being harmed by partisans. Notably in the Middle
East, rival camps want opponents condemned as barbarous and illegitimate,
while paying too little heed to the right of all peoples to peace and security.

In these unhappy times, some may wonder whether laws of combat are a
naive dream. Those tempted by gloom should study history. The world
order has been in worse shape before. Indeed, many modern laws of war
have roots in periods of violence and insecurity. Most important, some
pioneers in the field were intensely practical in their approach, appealing to
the self-interest of rulers and military commanders.

In search of perspective, The Telegram headed to the handsome, canal-filled

Dutch city of Delft. Hugo Grotius, a lawyer, historian and diplomat, was
born there in 1583 to a family of Protestant scholars and high officials. He
is buried in the city’s New Church, beside Dutch kings and queens. His
homeland was fighting for independence from the Spanish empire, and was
wracked by war throughout his 62 years on Earth. The late medieval world
was crumbling and a modern Europe of nations had yet to be born.
Institutions, from the Roman Catholic church to the Holy Roman Empire,
were losing authority.

Grotius was a child prodigy, composing Latin verse aged eight and entering
university at 11. But he was a man of action, not a bystander. He was
sentenced to life imprisonment in a dispute over religious tolerance. Dutch
schoolchildren learn that Grotius escaped in a chest used to bring him
books, carried to freedom by unwitting guards. A time-blackened wooden
chest, bound with iron hoops, is displayed at the Prinsenhof museum in
Delft. It is “most likely” to be the original, a label cautiously says. The tale
is quaint but the times were grim. The same dispute saw Grotius’s patron
beheaded. The chest is reached by climbing a medieval staircase in the
Prinsenhof. Bullet holes on the wall, preserved under glass, attest to the
assassination there of a Dutch prince at the urging of the Spanish monarch,
the year after Grotius was born.

In that age of tumult, old codes of warfare and chivalry were no longer
reliable guides. Traditional church teachings focused on lawful and

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unlawful reasons for resorting to war, absolving sovereigns and their armies
of sin if they began a “just war” to uphold justice and avenge a wrong. The
church was less focused on the conduct of war. Those fighting for justice
faced few limits, while unjust opponents had no inherent right to use force
at all. Wars pitted good against evil, and could not be just on both sides.

Tidy distinctions were a poor fit for a messy age, in which every
belligerent, whether monarch or rebel, Catholic or Protestant, claimed to be
doing God’s work. In his treatise “On the Laws of War and Peace”,
published in 1625, Grotius offered a solution. Because the identity of the
just party may never be known, at least to mortals, wars should be fought as
if all sides are upholding justice, with each belligerent guided by identical
duties and responsibilities. In the words of a modern editor, Stephen Neff of
Edinburgh University, Grotius wished to correct the “very serious error”
that no law regulated the conduct of war. To this end he argued that armies
in the field belong to “a common moral community” governed by “eternal
and immutable ideas of right and wrong”, as well as prevailing customs and
laws agreed to by states.

War is inevitable, seek to limit its harm

In his treatise, Grotius notes tactics and weapons commonly deemed

barbarous by European rulers, from the enslavement of prisoners
(demanding ransom for prisoners is the civilised way, he advises) to the use
of poison-tipped javelins. But the bulk of his work dwells on fundamental
norms, such as the principle of necessity. Foreshadowing modern debates
about proportionality in war, Grotius endorses the use of such force as is
necessary to defeat an enemy, but no more. If it is sure to end a war swiftly,
a city filled with civilians may be bombarded, Grotius writes. But gratuitous
harm to women, children, religious figures or prisoners-of-war will not
hasten victory and is prohibited. Rape is outlawed for the same reason. At
times, Grotius could be talking to present-day leaders. He calls extreme
brutality a form of self-harm, advising that campaigns of absolute
devastation may radicalise an enemy, inducing such “despair” that
opponents become harder to defeat. He considers whether neutral countries
may be attacked for delivering arms to an enemy (yes), peaceful goods such
as Bibles (no), or dual-use items such as food and ships (maybe).

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Modern lawyers are uneasy with Grotius’s emphasis on necessity,
preferring to prohibit certain tactics and weapons in all circumstances. But
his influence remains large and his moderation and practicality—striding “a
middle way, between the warmonger and the pacifist”, as Professor Neff
puts it—suited the “brutally imperfect world” of 17th-century Europe. The
times are troubled now. Grotius’s injunction to fight as if you are the one
upholding justice, though you may never know for sure, is a fine guide. ■

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Business
Why Louis Vuitton is struggling but Hermès is not
Luxed out :: Worries that the luxury business is peaking are overblown

Workers love Donald Trump. Unions should fear him

Labour under false pretences :: The president-elect is no friend to organised labour

Can Lego remain the world’s coolest toymaker?

Toying with new ideas :: And get greener too?

A tie-up between Honda and Nissan will not fix their

problems
Honda’s accord :: Speed, not scale, is what they require

The business of nicknames

Bartleby :: When they help brands and employees. And when they hurt

Meet the most ruthless CEO in the trillion-dollar tech club

Schumpeter :: Hock Tan of Broadcom is less Jensen Huang or Tim Cook and more Jack Welch
on steroids

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Luxed out

Why Louis Vuitton is struggling

but Hermès is not
Worries that the luxury business is peaking are overblown
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Milan

THERE WILL be fewer designer handbags and high heels under Christmas
trees this year. Spending on personal luxury goods is set to fall by 2% in
2024, according to Bain, a consultancy. Sales of fashion and leather items at
LVMH, the world’s biggest luxury conglomerate, have tumbled. Kering,
which owns Gucci, has issued a string of profit warnings. Anyone who
receives Versace goodies from Santa may feel a little less flattered than
usual. The luxury brand is selling 40% of its products at a discount.

These travails follow an extraordinary rise for the luxury industry. For two
decades it expanded smartly as brands reached new customers. In 2023

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global sales of personal luxury goods hit $400bn, up from a little over
$100bn in 2000, according to Bain. The combined market capitalisation of
the ten most valuable Western luxury firms approached $1trn, compared
with around $300bn in 2013. Over the past 12 months, however, their value
has fallen by more than a tenth and growth has reversed. Can luxury
recapture its lost allure?

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Two trends fuelled the growth of the luxury business. The first was
globalisation. Brands that began life catering to Western elites in places
such as London, New York and Paris increasingly turned eastwards for
growth—and to China in particular, for good reason. In 2000 there were
39,000 dollar millionaires in the country, according to UBS, a bank; by
2023 there were 6m, more than anywhere else other than America, and
twice as many as in Britain, the third-biggest home for millionaires. The
Chinese market made up around 15% of global personal-luxury-goods sales
in 2023, about five times its share in 2000.

The second trend propelling growth was what industry types call
“democratisation”. To serve the merely affluent, as well as the stinking rich,
luxury brands began selling a selection of items at less lofty prices. Gucci,
for example, started peddling white socks, which will set you back a mere
$200 (a steal compared with a $3,600 Gucci handbag). Brands from Armani
to Valentino launched cheaper sub-brands, often focused on more casual
attire. “Until 30 years ago, luxury had no adjectives attached to it,” says
Brunello Cucinelli, who runs the luxury brand that carries his name. The
industry now talks of “aspirational” or “accessible” luxury. According to
BCG, another consultancy, shoppers who spend €2,000 ($2,100) or less a
year on luxury goods and services—a trifling sum by industry standards—
account for nearly two-thirds of total sales.

Those two engines of growth are now sputtering. Middle-class shoppers in

the West have been squeezed by high interest rates and cooling job markets,
leaving them with less to splurge on the finer things in life. Luxury
spending in China has been crimped by the combination of a housing crisis
and a government campaign against showy displays of wealth. Rather than
monogrammed totes, Chinese youngsters now carry their belongings around
in plastic bags to flaunt their frugality.

Hefty price increases over the past few years have also irked shoppers.
HSBC, another bank, reckons luxury products are 54% more expensive
today than in 2019. A mid-sized Dior Lady Bag now costs €5,900, up from
€3,200 in 2016. Andrea Guerra, the boss of Prada, another luxury brand that
raised prices sharply in the past few years, now describes the increases as “a
blatant mistake”.

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Some in the industry fret that the days of heady growth may not return.
There are, after all, only so many middle-class shoppers willing to spend
$200 on a pair of socks. And no emerging market will add as many affluent
consumers in the decade ahead as China did in the decade past.

Yet the pessimism may be overdone. For one thing, China’s luxury
slowdown is not as bad as it seems. True, luxury spending in the country
will fall by 26% in 2024, estimates Bernstein, a broker. But that is partly
because many Chinese shoppers now spend more during trips abroad,
particularly to Japan, where the currency has weakened against the yuan.
Bernstein reckons that luxury spending worldwide by Chinese shoppers will
be down by only 3% in 2024. “When people ask: What is the next China? I
say: It is still China,” notes Laura Burdese, deputy chief executive of
Bulgari, a maker of high-end jewellery.

Moreover, not all brands are equally exposed to middle-class shoppers—

and, by extension, to the economic cycle. Even as less wealthy consumers
feel the pinch, the ranks of the world’s very rich continue to swell. UBS
reckons there will be 86m millionaires in the world by 2027, up from
around 60m currently. Forbes, a magazine, counted 2,781 billionaires in its
annual tally for 2024, pipping the previous record set in 2021. These
cashed-up shoppers tend to vary their spending less with the ups and downs
of the economy.

That explains why luxury brands that remain focused on the very rich have
continued to grow handsomely. Brunello Cucinelli, which sells $6,000
cashmere sweaters, increased its sales by 12%, year on year, in the first nine
months of 2024. Hermès, maker of the world’s most coveted handbags,
notched up revenue growth of 14% over the same period.

What about the brands that have embraced the masses? Many are now
searching for ways to get consumers excited again. Miu Miu, which is
owned by Prada, has pushed boundaries with new products (think
sequinned knickers) and clever campaigns (one involved giving a big-
spending septuagenarian customer a strut down the catwalk). Its approach
seems to be working: sales doubled in the first nine months of 2024,
compared with the same period a year before. Bottega Veneta, Celine,
Chanel and Givenchy have all brought in new creative directors in recent

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months. Their effect, though, can take time; Bernstein calculates that a
brand’s earnings peak five years after a new creative director is installed.

Perhaps the biggest question for these brands, however, is whether they can
appeal to the very rich while continuing to flog most of their wares to the
wider population. In 2021 Valentino killed off its cheaper sub-brand, Red
Valentino. Others have followed different strategies to avoid eroding their
cachet. Rolex produces its more affordable watches in limited volumes to
manufacture scarcity. Chanel and Dior segregate pricey fashion from
cheaper beauty products. As Luca Solca of Bernstein puts it, the luxury
industry today sells not exclusivity but “perceived exclusivity”. For some
brands, that perception may need to be rebuilt. ■

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Labour under false pretences

Workers love Donald Trump.

Unions should fear him
The president-elect is no friend to organised labour
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

AMERICA’S UNIONS have had a banner year. In November 33,000

machinists returned to their stations at Boeing having won a 38% wage
increase over four years. Their victory followed a seven-week strike that
brought the planemaker to its knees. A month before, 47,000 dockworkers
walked out for three days at some of the country’s busiest ports. And on
December 19th the Teamsters union announced a nationwide strike against
Amazon, just in time for Christmas deliveries.

According to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, 29 work stoppages involving

more than 1,000 employees each began between January and November

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(the total in 2023 was 33, the most since 2000). The National Labour
Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency tasked with resolving labour
disputes, says petitions to hold a vote to unionise are up by more than a
quarter compared with last year.

America’s unions are asserting themselves in other ways, too. United

Steelworkers loudly opposed the purchase of US Steel, a rustbelt icon, by
Nippon Steel, a Japanese competitor (both Joe Biden and Donald Trump
have committed themselves to blocking the deal). This month a court
blocked the merger of Kroger and Albertsons, two big grocers, putting some
weight behind the Federal Trade Commission’s argument that the deal could
weaken the hand of union workers, as well as raise prices. Despite—or
perhaps because of—all this action, unions’ approval ratings are at their
highest since the 1960s, according to polling from Gallup.

What will Mr Trump’s second term mean for this momentum? American
conservatism is certainly edging closer to the country’s workers. Mr Trump
has promised “historic co-operation between business and labour”. Yet his
inauguration is also likely to bring unprecedented cosiness between the
White House and billionaires such as Elon Musk. The populists and
plutocrats who make up Mr Trump’s uneasy coalition have vastly different
ideas about the future of the labour movement. American workers, unions
and industry cannot help being caught in the middle.

Unions have notched some early wins. After the 2016 election, Mr Trump
horrified organised labour when he nominated Andrew Puzder, a fast-food
boss, as labour secretary. (Mr Puzder later withdrew.) This time he tapped
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union congresswoman. “It shows that he
considers those interests a part of his coalition,” says Oren Cass of
American Compass, a conservative think-tank. Sean O’Brien, boss of the
Teamsters, who addressed the Republican convention in July, praised the
choice. Some free-market conservatives are “losing their minds” over it, Mr
Cass says.

Other company kept by Mr Trump, however, is cause for picket-line panic.

Mr Musk, who has been chosen to run a new Department of Government
Efficiency, is a threat to organised labour. He has resisted unionisation at
Tesla, his electric-vehicle company, which has helped it best the legacy

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carmakers of Detroit. Along with Amazon, Mr Musk’s firms have
challenged the authority of the NLRB in court.

There are more reasons to expect a decline in union power. The conditions
of high inflation and near-full employment that gave leverage to striking
workers during Mr Biden’s term have softened. Few think Mr Trump’s
picks to lead antitrust authorities will be as keen as their predecessors to
consider workers’ interests when assessing deals. “Whether the labour
secretary will have any influence within the White House remains to be
seen. She would have to go through layers of advisers to the president to get
anything done, and they will be very unsupportive of labour,” says Thomas
Kochan, a professor of industrial relations at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Talkin’ bout a revolution

America’s dockers are already testing the strength of Mr Trump’s pro-

worker rhetoric. The port strike was stopped in October when workers
agreed to a pay rise of more than 60%. But unions and port operators are
still at loggerheads over automation, with a deadline of January 15th for a
deal. Whatever the efficiency gains automation might bring America’s
plodding ports, a strike would cost the economy dearly. After meeting union
bosses last week, Mr Trump has, for now, backed the dockers. Knowing
“just about everything there is to know” about the subject, automating ports
isn’t worth the cost to society, he declared on Truth Social, his online
megaphone.

Not all unions, however, can count on the same support. “I think there’s
going to be a lot more attention paid to the concerns and issues raised by
unions in manufacturing sectors,” says an official from the first Trump
administration. Much of the growth in union activity, though, is coming
from workers in service industries. Baristas at Starbucks are one example.
Workers at Amazon, who Mr O’Brien says are treated in an “un-American”
way by the company, are another.

To secure Mr Trump’s favour, unions may have to adapt politically. Many

have taken to championing views on topics irrelevant to the livelihoods of

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those they represent. Earlier this year, for example, a coalition of unions
demanded cessation of military aid to Israel. They will need to rein in their
campaigning.

After all, wooing workers and courting unions are not necessarily the same
thing. J.D. Vance, the incoming vice-president, and Marco Rubio, the
presumptive secretary of state, both of whom are currently senators, have
introduced a bill that includes provisions for direct worker representation on
corporate boards to bypass “big labour”. America’s unions should brace for
competition. ■

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Toying with new ideas

Can Lego remain the world’s

coolest toymaker?
And get greener too?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | BILLUND

THE VENUS DE MILO; “Mona Lisa”; 250 skulls on a mirrored wall; a

six-metre Tyrannosaurus rex. You can see all this and more at “The Art of
the Brick”, a touring exhibition currently in Berlin. It is the work of Nathan
Sawaya, a former lawyer. His chosen medium? Lego bricks.

Lego guards its bricks jealously. Early in Mr Sawaya’s artistic career, the
Danish toymaker sent him a cease-and-desist order. (Now a “Lego certified
professional”, he builds with the firm’s blessing.) At Lego’s headquarters in
Billund, in Denmark, “master builders” work behind tinted windows,

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hidden from prying eyes. This year the EU’s General Court ruled in Lego’s
favour in a trademark dispute with a German company.

“We are the most reputable brand in the world, so we want to be super-
careful with our reputation,” says Niels Christiansen, Lego’s chief
executive. When you are the world’s biggest toymaker, that reputation relies
on keeping your customers—young and old—enchanted. Mr Christiansen
also believes it will depend on making Lego’s billions of plastic bricks in a
way that is friendlier to the planet.

Lego did not begin with plastic. Its founder, Ole Kirk Kristiansen, started
the firm in 1932 as a maker of wooden toys, truncating leg godt, Danish for
“play well”, to form its name. He patented his plastic bricks in 1958 (and
died later that year). Two years on, after a fire destroyed its wooden-toy
warehouse, Lego chose to stick with only plastic bricks.

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Lego nearly went under in 2003-04 after branching into too many areas,
such as children’s clothes and dolls. Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, who became
chief executive in 2004, sold its theme parks and refocused the firm on
bricks and articulated “minifigures”. Under Mr Christiansen, who took over
in 2017, Lego has continued to thrive, while most rivals have struggled with
the toy business’s ever-shifting fads.

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Over the past 20 years the company’s revenue has grown ten-fold, reaching
DKr66bn ($9.7bn) in 2023 (see chart). A decade ago it became the world’s
largest toymaker by revenue. Today its sales are greater than those of its
two biggest rivals—Mattel, creator of Barbie, and Hasbro, maker of Nerf
guns—combined. In 2023 it opened 147 shops around the world, taking its
total to 1,031, and built factories in America and Vietnam. Sales in the first
half of 2024 were up by 13%, year on year, even as the global toy market
shrank. In 2004 the company was loss-making; in 2023 its net profit was
DKr13bn, implying an enviable margin of nearly 20%.

Playing to win

Can the toymaker maintain its success? “We need to stay relevant for kids
and adults,” says Mr Christiansen. New sets keep coming; nearly half the
products in its range in 2023 were released that year. The firm also makes
more than 140 elaborate sets, some with thousands of pieces, for adult fans
of Lego (AFOLs), who now account for one-fifth of sales.

But competing with the online world for time is hard. On average,
American children aged 8-12 spend 4-6 hours a day watching screens of
various types, from smartphones to televisions, according to the American
Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. That is why in 2022 Lego
invested in a partnership with Epic Games, maker of “Fortnite”, a popular
video game, to build “engaging digital experiences for kids of all ages”.
Their arrangement has proved lucrative.

So far Lego’s attempts to find a green alternative to plastic, the company’s

other big challenge, have been less successful. Still, Mr Christiansen plans
to make bricks entirely from sustainable material by 2032. Lego has started
manufacturing some pieces with a new plastic made using renewable
energy and recycled material. Renewable resin is up to 60% dearer than
plastic made of fossil fuel, but Mr Christiansen says he is prepared to
absorb the cost. By buying lots of it, he hopes to create a market for the
material and push its cost down. He intends to reduce Lego’s carbon
footprint by 37% by 2032 (compared with 2019) and be carbon neutral by
2050.

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Family ownership allows Lego to take the long view, Mr Christiansen says.
(A foundation owns a quarter of the firm; the Kristiansen family owns the
rest.) After 2032 the path to carbon neutrality will be steeper, he admits, but
“we serve kids”—the inheritors of the planet. And, he surely hopes,
tomorrow’s AFOLs. ■

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Honda’s accord

A tie-up between Honda and Nissan

will not fix their problems
Speed, not scale, is what they require
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

HONDA PUT nostalgia to the fore on December 18th when it announced

that the Prelude, a nameplate last produced some 25 years ago, now being
relaunched as a hybrid-electric, would come with the option of a system
that simulates gear changes and combustion-engine noises. The message,
however, was quickly drowned out by news with far more bearing on the
Japanese carmaker’s future. It is considering merging with Nissan, a
floundering domestic rival, to create the world’s third-largest carmaker by
sales, behind only Toyota and Volkswagen. Yet joining together will not fix
the problems of a duo stuck in the past.

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Both firms have struggled with the upheaval in the car industry. Keeping
pace with Chinese rivals in their home market and, increasingly, around the
world requires rolling out electric vehicles (EVs) and investing heavily in
software while continuing to sell the petrol cars that will finance the shift.
Donald Trump’s threats to levy tariffs when he re-enters the White House,
and the possibility of retaliation, has added uncertainty. Honda and Nissan
seem to have concluded that a partnership to develop EVs unveiled in
March will not be enough.

Nissan in particular is dangerously weak. Operating profit plunged almost

90% in the six months to September, compared with a year before. Its
market share has dwindled in North America, its most important market,
and sales have gone downhill in China. Although it announced 9,000
layoffs and a 20% cut in manufacturing capacity in November, investors
remain unconvinced that it has a clear strategy for EVs or hybrids, which
are growing in popularity with car buyers.

An enlarged group made up of Honda, Nissan and probably Mitsubishi, a

smaller carmaker in which Nissan has a controlling stake, could invest more
in technology to catch up with rivals. The news of a potential tie-up has
been greeted with glee by shareholders in Nissan and Mitsubishi, as well as
France’s Renault, which holds a 36% stake in Nissan (it might sell some of
this to Honda or else convert it into a stake in a less troubled car firm).
Honda’s investors, though, seem wary; its shares fell on the news.

A deal would undoubtedly mean cost savings through factory closures and
job losses, even in Japan, where restructuring is frowned upon. The ministry
which oversees the car industry called the reports “a positive development”.
That is probably because the alternative—a foreign takeover—is even more
unpalatable to the Japanese government.

Rumours have swirled that Foxconn, a Taiwanese contract manufacturer

that wants to become as dominant in the production of cars as it is in
consumer electronics, was talking to Nissan about a takeover that would
have allowed it to acquire skills in designing and producing hardware such
as chassis and suspension systems. Chinese carmakers might also be
interested in buying Nissan for its production facilities in America, which

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would help them sidestep punitive tariffs on imported EVs. Foxconn’s
approach is likely to have accelerated talks between Honda and Nissan.

Would a deal secure the future of the firms involved, though? Pooling
resources would help. Yet the biggest advantage Chinese firms have is not
scale but speed. New models are developed in three years or fewer, half the
time it takes foreign firms. Software is updated in the blink of an eye. No
legacy carmaker from Japan, America or Europe has yet worked out how to
match the pace at which Chinese carmakers are innovating. Bringing
together two ponderous Japanese giants, whose best years may be behind
them, is unlikely to be the answer. ■

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Bartleby

The business of nicknames

When they help brands and employees. And when they hurt
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THE CAN OF HAM cannot find a buyer. It may be hard to see the Gherkin
because the Walkie-Talkie and the Cheesegrater get in the way. London’s
skyline is made of glass, steel and nicknames. Sometimes these names start
out as criticism: the city’s tallest building got its name when it was
described as a “shard of glass through the heart of historic London” by a
heritage group. But in time, they denote familiarity and, often, affection. On
December 13th the City of London approved plans for a new skyscraper
that will be as tall as the Shard; the chances are high that it will eventually
wind up with a sobriquet based on its shape.

There are good reasons why buildings acquire monikers. The Bottle Opener
resonates more than the World Financial Centre Shanghai; the Lipstick

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Building is easier to remember than 885 Third Avenue. Consumers give
brands nicknames, too. BMW owners in Britain drive “beamers”; in
America they might be at the wheel of a “bimmer”. If you’re a high-roller,
you might wear a Rollie on your wrist. You probably would not shop at
Tarjay, an ironically Gallic pronunciation of Target, a mass-market retailer.
Athletes’ nicknames can become brand-like. LeBron James, a basketball
star, successfully opposed an attempt by a cruise liner to trademark “King
James”.

Brand nicknames are not always flattering: Neiman Marcus, another

retailer, was once christened “Needless Markup”. But usually they suggest
that consumers feel a genuine connection to a product. In a recent paper
Zhe Zhang of Western University in Canada and Vanessa Patrick of the
University of Houston looked at how people react to the use of nicknames
by other consumers. In one experiment participants saw an online review of
a new menu item at McDonald’s; some saw a version in which the chain
was referred to by that name and others saw one that called it “Mickey
D’s”. The chances that the review would be reported as fake were much
lower when the nickname was used. A nickname also made other people
more likely to buy a product or pass on the review to a friend.

Mr Zhang and Ms Patrick tested whether these same beneficial effects

would also materialise if the firm used its nickname in its own
communications (by showing people messages in which, among other
things, Walmart referred to itself as Wally World). The benefits disappeared.
Nicknames that seem to genuinely reflect consumers’ fondness for a brand
can send a positive signal. But companies referring to themselves in this
way feels inauthentic. Imagine someone called John saying that people call
him “J-Dawg”, and you can understand why.

Nicknames are part and parcel of many workplaces, too. In a new paper Mr
Zhang and Shuili Du of the University of New Hampshire found that 87%
of the employees they surveyed had encountered nicknames at work. Some
occupations are awash with banter: one guide to Australian building sites
has a long list of common nicknames that includes “wheelbarrow” (only
works when pushed), “broken arrow” (doesn’t work but can’t get fired) and
“deck chair” (always folds under pressure).

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Workplace nicknames are sometimes unpleasant. But even if a nickname is
meant as a mark of affection, it matters who coins it. The difference
between monikers among friends and nicknames at work is that companies
are hierarchies. In their paper Mr Zhang and Ms Du look into the
differences between upward nicknaming, when workers christen a boss, and
downward nicknaming, when the reverse happens.

In one experiment, they asked participants to imagine a scenario in which a

worker refers to their boss as “Panda” because of a tendency to dress in
black and white. Other participants were told to imagine a boss calling an
employee by the same nickname for the same reason. People associated the
use of this nickname by the boss with a lower concern for employee welfare
and less psychological safety, among other things; when the nickname was
given to a manager, it was associated with a greater sense of well-being
among staff.

For managers, the lessons ought to be apparent. Nicknaming is a natural

habit; it can often be a positive one. If the new skyscraper in London does
not get a moniker, it will almost certainly be because it is boring. But the
best nicknames emerge from the bottom up. Brands should be careful about
using them. Bosses should stamp on them if they are causing distress—but
otherwise leave the name game to others.■

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reader correspondence.
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Schumpeter

Meet the most ruthless CEO in the

trillion-dollar tech club
Hock Tan of Broadcom is less Jensen Huang or Tim Cook and more Jack
Welch on steroids
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THE BOSSES of America’s trillion-dollar technology giants represent two

CEO archetypes. First, the eccentric visionary founder: Mark Zuckerberg of
Meta, Elon Musk of Tesla and Jensen Huang of Nvidia are obsessed with
their products; wield untrammelled power thanks to the strength of their
will, the size of their shareholding, or both; and make questionable sartorial
choices. Second, the caretaker: Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella of
Microsoft, Andy Jassy of Amazon and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, Google’s
corporate parent, are low-key, sensibly attired hired guns who mostly take
great existing products and turn them into fabulous businesses.

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Hock Tan of Broadcom, which joined the trillion-dollar club on December
13th, does not fit neatly into either category. The company’s market value
surged by 40% in a week owing to brighter-than-expected prospects for its
line in designing custom artificial-intelligence (AI) microprocessors for
clients such as Google and Meta. This immediately drew comparisons to Mr
Huang and Nvidia, whose own AI chips have propelled its market
capitalisation to $3.4trn over the past couple of years. Yet Broadcom is, true
to its name, much broader than that. And Mr Tan cuts a distinct figure in the
world of big tech.

Besides the sexy AI processors, Broadcom sells everything from worthy but
dull wireless-networking chips to equally worthy and duller “virtualisation”
software for managing company IT systems across in-house servers and the
computing cloud. Whereas most other tech titans play up the links between
their various units, Broadcom is a proudly disjointed conglomerate. Asked
in an interview in 2023 whether he had an overarching strategy for its 23
divisions, Mr Tan responded with characteristic candour: “The answer, I
hate to say, is ‘no’.”

Mr Tan is unlike his fellow 21st-century technology bosses in a number of

revealing ways. He was born in Malaysia, not exactly a hotbed of global C-
suite talent. He is a decade or so older than Messrs Cook and Huang, the
eldest of the Magnificent Seven’s CEOs, and three decades Mr
Zuckerberg’s senior. You will be hard-pressed to find a photograph of him
wearing anything but a starched shirt and a sober jacket.

His method is likewise singular—for despite his professed lack of strategy

he is nothing if not methodical. William Kerwin of Morningstar, a firm of
analysts, likens it to that of the buy-out barons who first recruited Mr Tan in
2006 to run what was then Avago, a privately held chip-designer. Identify a
mature business, ideally one that is critical for customers. Buy it at a decent
price. Cut it to the bone by reducing the workforce, eliminating less
lucrative products and slashing research-and-development budgets. Jack up
prices for captive clients. Harvest the cash. Fork lots of it out to
shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, which big tech tends
to shun. Take what is left and repeat.

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Mr Tan recoils at comparing Broadcom to private equity. True, his penchant
for takeovers ($150bn-worth since Avago went public in 2009), an
obsession with cashflow and an impatience with underperformers recall the
buy-out industry. But above all, in the words of Doug O’Laughlin of
SemiAnalysis, a research firm, he is a “capital-R ruthless” operator, getting
down and dirty in ways that pinstripe-suited financiers do not.

A more apt comparison than private-equity moguls may be Jack Welch,

who ranked, yanked and dealt his way to becoming an icon of late-20th-
century capitalism at General Electric. Except that Mr Tan is a much more
disciplined dealmaker than Welch, who strayed so far from GE’s industrial
bread and butter as to buy the NBC television network and make a reckless
foray into finance that ultimately brought GE low under his successors in
the 2000s.

“Neutron Jack”, so nicknamed after the neutron bomb that kills people but
leaves buildings intact, also looks like Mother Teresa next to the pink-slip-
happy Broadcom boss. After the acquisition in late 2023 of VMware, which
makes virtualisation programs, he sacked several thousand staff, narrowed
the product range and raised prices for what remained as much as ten-fold.
In the latest quarter VMware’s sales were nearly double those in the first
quarter of 2024. Its operating margin is an enviable 70%.

New buyers of Broadcom’s AI chips, which are rumoured to include

OpenAI, a leading builder of cutting-edge AI models, and ByteDance,
TikTok’s Chinese owner, should brace for similar treatment. In early
December, while accepting a lifetime-achievement award from the Global
Semiconductor Alliance, a trade body, Mr Tan chastised his industry for
being “naive” in accepting a 20% decline in chip prices every year even as
car prices rose 10%. “We are really complicit in creating this rather
distorted expectation of paying less for more,” he declared.

In hock to Tan

Broadcom’s customers will almost certainly, like VMware’s, grumble but

pay up. They all want to reduce their dependence on Nvidia, whose
graphics-processing units are not exactly cheap and more power-hungry

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than Broadcom’s at a time when energy is becoming a constraint on the
growth of AI. Mr Kerwin of Morningstar expects custom chips to account
for 20-25% of the market for “accelerated computing” by 2027, up from
perhaps 10-15% today. Mr Tan’s company will grab a lion’s share of that.

Mr Tan, for his part, will want to reduce Broadcom’s reliance on AI chips.
Having been stymied by Donald Trump’s first administration from buying
Qualcomm, a large chip-design rival, in 2018, he may steer clear of
semiconductor deals and instead spring another software surprise. One
thing, though, will not change. In Mr Tan’s tech-dom, cash will remain king
—as well as queen, prince, princess and the rest of the royal household. ■

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Finance & economics

Ukraine is winning the economic war against Russia
Staying power :: Whether that lasts depends on its ability to overcome acute shortages of
power, men and money

Conflict is remaking the Middle East’s economic order

The other war’s winners and losers :: Iran is boxed in as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey
look to capitalise

The search for the world’s most efficient charities

GiveSmart :: What the data say about doing good well

Why Brazil’s currency is plunging

Nuts in Brazil :: Fiscal and monetary policy are now pitted against one another

Don’t count on monetary policy to make housing

affordable
Free exchange :: Unless housebuilding picks up, neither cheap nor dear money will bring relief

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Staying power

Ukraine is winning the economic

war against Russia
Whether that lasts depends on its ability to overcome acute shortages of
power, men and money
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | KYIV AND PRYLUKY

EVERY BUSINESS in Ukraine has a reference point. For Mykhailo

Travetsky, a farmer in Pryluky, it was the first six weeks of the all-out
invasion. As a Russian column stalled on a nearby highway, his farm
became no-man’s land. Locals fought gun battles to keep the Russians off it.
Shells whizzed overhead. And Mr Travetsky milked his cows twice a day in
body armour, automatic rifle cocked at his side.

Since then the farm has constantly adapted to new difficulties. When Russia
first bombed Ukraine’s energy system, rendering fridges and milking

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machines unusable, Mr Travetsky pivoted to making soured-milk products
and cheeses with longer shelf lives, like feta. When wealthy families
disappeared, he cut his prices and started supplying the pensioners who
remained, who needed their milk delivered.

Ukraine’s economy at large has reinvented itself to navigate wartime

realities. It remains one-quarter smaller than in 2021. Yet for the first time
since 2022, the start of the all-out invasion, it is healthier than its enemy’s
in some key respects. Ukraine’s central bank forecasts GDP to grow by 4%
in 2024 and 4.3% in 2025. The currency is stable and interest rates, at
13.5%, remain near their lowest in 30 months. Contrast that with Russia,
where rates should soon hit 23% to arrest the rouble’s fall, banks look
fragile and GDP is set to grow by just 0.5-1.5% in 2025. But Ukraine faces
strong headwinds: the uptick of war, the downtick of domestic resources,
and Donald Trump. How long can its economy hold out?

Ukraine’s economic history since 2022 has had three phases. In the first,
amid heavy fighting, the country scrambled to put out fires. Martial law was
introduced and 14m people fled their homes. Russia blockaded Black Sea
ports, choking off Ukraine’s exports. The central bank’s actions were
subordinated to military objectives. In the first half of 2022 it financed half
of the public deficit. It imposed strict capital controls and flooded banks
with liquidity. Inflation soared and GDP shrank by a third (see chart 1).

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The second phase began after Ukraine repelled Russia’s advances in the
country’s south, in mid-2022. As confidence improved, GDP stabilised. A
UN-brokered deal allowed Ukraine to ship grain again. The central bank
went back to fighting inflation. In early 2023 Ukraine signed a package
with the IMF; the central bank stopped monetising the budget deficit. As aid
flowed in, foreign-exchange reserves recovered. Capital controls were
eased.

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The return of macroeconomic stability allowed the government and firms to
war-proof their operations. One priority was to protect productive assets
against Russian missiles. Industrial parks were built in safer western
regions. Businesses invested abroad to war-proof their income. Expatriates
have generated income from abroad, too: last year one in ten new firms in
Poland was set up by a Ukrainian.

Another task was to reallocate resources towards the needs of a protracted

conflict. Public spending has more than doubled, and now accounts for two-
thirds of GDP, up from 41% in 2021; defence and security alone account
for nearly 30% of GDP. Some state firms have overhauled themselves.
Naftogaz, the country’s hydrocarbon champion, named a supervisory board
in 2023, staffed with independent directors from European blue-chips. It
posted 79bn hryvnia ($2.4bn) in losses in 2022 but pocketed 24bn hryvnia
in profit in the first half of 2024, thanks to increases in gas output and
green-energy investments.

Private firms have pivoted, too. After Mariupol, a key port on the Sea of
Azov, was obliterated in the spring of 2022, Vitalii Lopushanskyi, an
entrepreneur, created UADamage, an AI outfit that parses satellite images
to build interactive maps featuring every building, road or bridge that has
been destroyed. He has since mapped more than 200 cities. He also teaches
drones to spot mines and guide robots on the ground to disable the devices.

The last piece was to keep hard currency flowing in. In July 2023 Russia
refused to renew the grain deal. Ukraine responded by opening its own
maritime corridor, securing it through a remarkable campaign of sea
deterrence by drones and missiles. That allowed it to resume shipments of
not just grain but also metals and minerals, its second-biggest export.

These measures, together with Western aid, have prevented Russia from
robbing Ukraine of the resources and morale it needs to keep fighting. Now
a third phase is beginning, during which the country’s economy faces its
biggest threats yet: acute shortages of power, men and money.

Take power first. In 2022 and again this spring and summer, Russia
relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s grid. Despite continuous repairs, the country
can count on less than half of the 36 gigawatts (GW) in generation capacity

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it could tap before the war. And lately Russia’s campaign has resumed. On
December 13th it sent 93 missiles and nearly 200 drones to transmission
assets and thermal power plants. Twelve missiles got through, forcing
blackouts. On November 27-28th, in a reckless escalation, Russia had
already struck transmission facilities alongside nuclear power stations. That
cast a darker shadow over Ukraine’s wintertime energy capacity, around
70% of which comes from nuclear power.

On a more positive note, the country has become better equipped to absorb
such shocks. In December it expanded its electricity-import capacity from
the EU by almost a quarter, to 2.1GW. Many food producers ferment
residues from their operations into biogas that they use on-site. A lot of
farmers also have diesel generators. Mid-sized firms often have natural-gas
plants, which they sometimes pair with wind and solar power. Industrial
firms use all these, together with imports, to avoid catastrophic outages.

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Coping strategies and ongoing repairs will contain the country’s average
power deficit to 6% of total demand in 2025 and 3% in 2026, says Andriy
Pyshnyi, the governor of Ukraine’s central bank. Heavy users complain of
multifold increases in power prices since the start of the war, even when
there are no shortages. Timofiy Milovanov of the Kyiv School of
Economics reckons electricity problems could shave up to one percentage
point off GDP growth next year.

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The second problem—and the thorniest—is the lack of labour. Since 2022
mobilisation, migration and war have caused the workforce to shrink by
over a fifth, to 13m people. Demand is strong: the number of job openings
has reached 65,000 a week, up from 7,000 during the first weeks of the war
—but the average opening attracts only 1.3 applications, compared with
two in 2021. Wages are rising. The economy and defence ministries are
locked in a tug of war over mobilisation: where to strike the right balance
for the country’s future. Ukraine’s civilian leadership has so far declined the
maximalist demands of military leaders, to the detriment of the front line.

There are no easy fixes. Now even industries deemed critical can protect
only half of their workers from the front line. Hiring many more women is
tricky: there are nearly as many of them who have migrated abroad as men
who are at the front or have come back from it unable to work, says Hlib
Vyshlinsky of the Centre for Economic Strategy, a think-tank in Kyiv.

It does not help that money is scarce—the third problem. Small farms and
firms struggle to borrow enough to finance their operations. Financing long-
term capital spending is virtually impossible. The soaring costs of doing
business have hit profits. Companies with domestic customers are passing
through some of the increases, pushing up inflation. Exporters, which
compete in global markets, do not have that option. Mauro Longobardo,
who runs ArcelorMittal’s local branch, says he has burnt $1bn in cash since
the war started—just to keep his facilities maintained. Half his steelworks
are down.

The government, too, is spending much more money than it pockets. In

2025 its budget deficit is projected to near 20% of GDP. In principle nearly
all of it—$38bn—will be financed from external sources. In June the G7
agreed to a $50bn debt package for Ukraine, to be repaid from interest
generated by Russia’s €260bn-worth ($273bn) of sovereign assets frozen in
the West. In early December America transferred its $20bn share to a World
Bank fund that Ukraine can use for non-military purposes, though Mr
Trump could try to make it harder for Ukraine to access the money.

Ukraine can probably survive without American funds in 2025 anyway.

Together with an €18bn tranche the EU agreed to provide under a previous
programme, contributions from other G7 members would plug the gap left

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by Uncle Sam, says Dimitar Bogov of the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development. Ukraine also has healthy foreign-
exchange reserves. These are projected to grow to $43bn—five months’
worth of imports—by the end of 2024. Were America to pull out, however,
Ukraine could run out of road in 2026. Cash-strapped and politically weak,
EU governments may struggle to foot another big bill. And Ukraine’s
ability to collect more at home is limited: a proposal to raise taxes by 4-5%
of GDP was withdrawn this summer after strident opposition.

Military developments could cause a crunch before 2026. Yet businesses are
cautiously optimistic. Mr Travetsky says he turned a small profit this year,
the first since taking on the farm. He is thinking about starting a new line in
parmesan cheese. “I’ve done the training, and I know the recipe,” he says.
But the obstacles remain daunting: “Try making it when you don’t have
electricity 12 hours a day.” ■

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The other war’s winners and losers

Conflict is remaking the Middle

East’s economic order
Iran is boxed in as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Turkey look to capitalise
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THE LIQUIDITY crunch could not have come at a worse time. Usually,
most of Hizbullah’s budget arrives on a plane in Damascus, the Syrian
capital, with the country’s Iranian ambassador. The cash is then transported
across the Lebanese border to the Shia militia. But on December 8th, just
weeks after Hizbullah stopped fighting with Israel in Lebanon, Bashar al-
Assad, Syria’s president and Iran’s ally, was overthrown. Iran evacuated
officials and soldiers in Syria. Already financially emaciated, Hizbullah
faces rebuilding deprived of its surest cash flow.

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Iran has long vied with Gulf states for influence over the Middle East,
despite being under American sanctions. Its financiers and traders have
outfoxed Western officials with a labyrinthine economic system, built
primarily across friendly countries, which funded proxies, traded arms with
Russia and took oil payments from India and China. That was, at least, until
October 7th 2023, when Hamas’s attack on Israel plunged the region into
chaos and started to blow holes in Iran’s networks. A year on, the Islamic
Republic looks like the war’s big economic loser. Saudi Arabia, the United
Arab Emirates (UAE) and Turkey, all jostling to pick up lost trade and
influence, are its likely winners.

To dodge sanctions, many of the supply chains Iran relies on to move

capital and goods abroad criss-cross through allies (legitimately) as well as
less friendly countries (often disguised). A weapons shipment destined for
northern Russia, for instance, may pass through Syria and then be smuggled
into Turkey before travelling by sea around Europe. Other big Middle
Eastern economies, such as those in the Gulf and Turkey, which trade more
in the open, can take simpler routes and have more options when war makes
transport tricky. But Iran’s trade, banking and aid, the backbone of its
regional outreach, are more furtive by necessity, and therefore more
vulnerable.

Take trade first. Homs, in central Syria, was a trading outpost for Iranian
goods under American restrictions. Iranian firms directed enough goods
through Syria, according to an American official, to make Iran one of the
world’s biggest arms manufacturers. Chemicals and mechanical parts were
also shipped through Syria. The big buyers were Belarus and Russia, as
well as Mr Assad himself. Iran now needs at least one new customer, and a
way to reach it.

The loss of financiers in Damascus and Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, is also a

headache. As much as half of Iran’s revenues come from oil exports in a
typical year, despite the American sanctions. Payments flow through a
series of correspondent banks and small exchanges, registered to
international aliases and allies. One of many such arrangements made use
of Hizbullah’s supporters in Lebanon’s diaspora, who, through companies
affiliated with the militia, took payments for Iranian oil from countries

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ranging from Turkey to Senegal, and kept some profit for themselves. But
Muhammed Qasir, the man who ran the network, died in October in an
Israeli air strike. According to Israeli officials, Iran has had a hard time
getting things going again in his absence.

Such losses could be disastrous for Iran’s remaining supporters in the

Middle East. With Hamas and Hizbullah greatly weakened, and Mr Assad
in exile, only the Houthis, the proxy over which Iran has the least influence,
fighting for control over Yemen, are not in disarray.

Iran is now struggling to get weapons or cash to Beirut and the Palestinian
territories to replenish forces, as much materiel arrived through Syria. The
alternative is moving supplies covertly, but that limits the size of shipments
to what can be hidden and takes longer. Extra cash is desperately needed.
Al-Qard Al-Hassan, the financial institution at the centre of Hizbullah’s
banking network, was targeted during Israeli air strikes in October. Though
Hamas’s finances, run out of Istanbul, are stable, it is difficult to get any
cash into Gaza, according to one official in Turkey.

It does not help that Iran’s finances have also been hit by debts that must
now be written off. Its government has lost billions of dollars in loans to Mr
Assad, which propped him up while Syria was shut out of global markets.
Officials suggest a combination of personal loans to Mr Assad and credit
lines for oil came to $5bn a year.

Meanwhile, the Gulf and Turkey are hoping to scoop up lost influence. As
America has grown less willing to spend in the Middle East, Gulf states
have become the biggest external financiers to its poorer countries. Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and the UAE lent $34bn across the Middle East and North
Africa in 2021-22, compared to $17bn in 2019-20. Their loans are also
lubricating economies that Iran previously helped finance, including
Kuwait. Long friendly with Iran, even as it enjoyed good relations with the
West, Kuwait has recently become less willing to trade with the Islamic
Republic, Iranian officials complain.

Gulf of expectation

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The UAE and Saudi Arabia are negotiating with America to pick up some
of the reconstruction bill in Gaza in return for a Palestinian state. In Syria,
Turkey hopes to profit from its support for Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the
biggest presence in the new government. Some Western officials worry that
Syria under the thumb of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, would
be little better than it was under a leader loyal to Iran and Russia. But on
December 18th the Iranian rial plunged to its lowest ever level against the
dollar. The Syrian pound, meanwhile, has soared by 25% in two weeks. The
market, at least, disagrees. ■

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GiveSmart

The search for the world’s most

efficient charities
What the data say about doing good well
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

GIVING IS BIG business. In 2023 Americans alone handed $557bn to

charities, according to the Giving USA annual report. So identifying which
charities are the most efficient in terms of good done per dollar given is
important. GiveWell, a charity evaluator, tries to do just this, and currently
recommends giving to four worthy organisations. How is this
recommendation put together, and how good is it?

Determining which charities get more bang for their buck comes with
challenges. One is data. Any rigorous assessment of efficiency requires
someone to catalogue both money spent and outputs achieved. It also

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requires data on how outputs (such as teacher training) translate into
outcomes (such as learning).

Any effort to assess how different charities fare relative to each other must
also grapple with the fact that they seek to do different good things: some to
cure blindness, others to preserve natural parks. To compare them means
these goods must be compared, too—a moral judgment with no correct
answer.

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Social Media Pakistan 0342-4938217
Despite these difficulties, outfits like GiveWell argue that with sufficiently
good data, and reasonable assumptions about moral considerations, it is
possible to try to identify the most efficient ways to give. GiveWell uses a
mix of academic scholarship, impact evaluations, site visits, reviews of
financial documents, interviews with experts and other data to identify its
top charities. To compare charities doing different things, it uses a system of
moral weights. For instance, doubling the consumption of 100 people is
valued roughly the same as averting the death of one person in their 30s.
Averting the deaths of young children is valued most highly.

No surprise, then, that GiveWell’s four top charities all focus entirely or
largely on saving children’s lives. Two focus on preventing malaria, which
kills 600,000 people, mostly children under five, every year: the Malaria
Consortium delivers preventative medicine, at a cost of $7 per prevented
infection; the Against Malaria Foundation delivers bednets, at about $5 per
net. The other two give vitamins and vaccines: Helen Keller Intl delivers
vitamin A supplements (about $2 per child per year); New Incentives gives
cash handouts for child vaccinations ($155 for a full course).

How efficient are they? According to GiveWell’s calculations, the number

of children’s lives saved by its four favoured charities ranges from 1.6 to
3.1 per $10,000 donated—a solid return on investment.

But how does this stack up against other approaches to giving? A natural
comparison would be with the practice of simply handing over money to
the very poor. This is also the comparison favoured by GiveWell.
GiveDirectly, a charity that despite the name is not related to GiveWell,
does just that: for every dollar donated to it, 80 cents ends up in a poor
person’s pocket. Recipients then use it as they see fit, with studies showing
rising incomes, better health and lives saved as a result.

GiveWell argues that its top picks win out. According to its own
calculations, and using its moral weights, its four favoured charities provide
between 3.7 and 5.8 times the benefit of GiveDirectly’s unconditional cash
transfers, per dollar given. Several past external reviews have found such
GiveWell estimates to be reasonable.

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GiveWell’s analysis might make sense, but those who contest its rankings
prefer to focus on its priorities. GiveWell’s moral weights heavily prioritise
saving lives over other outcomes. In addition to averting deaths, the top
charities do also help many more people avoid terrible, non-lethal disease.
But if you care about literacy or political rights as a good in itself, then you
would apply a different set of moral weights to charities.

GiveWell also does not give any weight to the preferences of those in need;
some might rather have more cash in their pockets than better health. Those
preferences may be better assessed by smaller local organisations, and
better met by simply handing over cash. The debate about which approach
is best will go on. Data alone, as GiveWell admits, cannot provide the
answer. But it is a good start. ■

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Nuts in Brazil

Why Brazil’s currency is plunging

Fiscal and monetary policy are now pitted against one another
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THE BRAZILIAN real holds an ignominious title this year: it is the worst-
performing major currency, down by more than 20% to a record low of
almost 6.3 to the dollar. The situation has grown even uglier over the past
week, with the sell-off accelerating despite several interventions by the
central bank.

The slump is fuelled by panic about fiscal plans. In November the

government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the left-wing president,
announced a long-awaited programme to curb spending, including earnings
caps for public-sector workers. At the same time, though, the finance
minister, Fernando Haddad, promised extensive tax cuts for low- and
middle-income workers. Investors took the announcement as proof of

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insufficient commitment to fiscal discipline. Given Brazil’s budget deficit
of almost 10% of GDP and gross debt of nearly 90% of GDP, jitters are
understandable.

On December 17th the central bank sold over $3bn in currency reserves in a
failed attempt to prop up the real. It has already raised interest rates three
times since September, including a surprise increase of a full percentage

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point on December 11th. Even as many emerging-market central banks
have begun to cut rates, taking their cue from the Federal Reserve, investors
expect more monetary tightening in Brazil over the coming year. The
country’s two-year government bonds now yield more than 15%, up from
just under 10% at the end of 2023.

But monetary hawkishness is not cutting the mustard. Financial markets are
clamouring for a fiscal U-turn, which the government is reluctant to offer.
“We know exactly how we got here, so we know how to get out of here. We
need to walk backwards,” says Alberto Ramos, head of economic research
for Latin America at Goldman Sachs, a bank. “The more you wait, the
higher the risk that things will be done the hard way, and the market will
force the correction. The symptoms of a crisis are there.”■

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markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter.
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Free exchange

Don’t count on monetary policy to

make housing affordable
Unless housebuilding picks up, neither cheap nor dear money will bring
relief
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

WHY IS HOUSING so expensive? Explanations have tended to fall into

two camps. One emphasises a gummed-up supply side: a range of
restrictions on land use and NIMBY campaigners have stymied
housebuilding across the rich world. The other camp focuses on demand: a
long-term fall in real interest rates has bid up the prices of all assets.
Cheaper credit means more expensive housing. Yet even as interest rates
rose across the rich world in the early 2020s, prices barely budged. Why? A
range of recent papers suggests that the interaction between fixed supply
and changes in demand explains the puzzle.

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For most people, a house is a home. To economists it is an income-
generating investment. Both are right. On the one hand, for landlords that
income is rent. On the other, owner-occupiers receive their income in kind:
the consumption of the “housing services” a home provides. Either way the
price is largely the same; in essence, both receive rent. For the purpose of
inflation statistics this is known as “owner equivalent rent” (OER), and is
the main way in which housing shows up in consumer-price indices. OER
accounts for about a quarter of the American inflation measure.

All else being equal, lower interest rates ought to lead to higher house
prices. The ratio of rent to a house’s price is similar to the yield on a bond.
Both can, in turn, be compared to the interest rate the central bank sets on
money. Across financial markets the rates of return on different assets,
adjusting for different levels of risk, should converge—otherwise a landlord
could sell their portfolio of houses and lock in a higher return in the
stockmarket or vice versa. A cut in the central-bank rate raises the market
price of bonds, shares and houses in the same way to keep the rates of
return in sync. Some economists used this principle to identify a housing
bubble before the crash of 2007 as the ratio of house prices to rents rose
above what could be justified by interest costs.

In its latest quarterly review, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)
examines what a gummed-up housing market means for monetary policy.
Ideally, developers should respond to the higher prices brought on by lower
interest rates by building more houses and hiring more workers, generating
inflationary pressure; higher rates should have the opposite effect. That
response has been diminishing over time. During the 1970s, the authors
calculate, a 1% increase in home prices produced a 6% increase in new
construction; by the 2000s this had dropped to 4%. The authors put this
down to a combination of stricter land-use regulation and falling
productivity in construction. Rather than stimulating investment, monetary
policy works through other channels: fewer new homes are built, and
existing ones become more expensive.

Whereas many asset prices adjust almost immediately to changes in

monetary policy, the housing market takes longer. It can take months or
even years to buy or sell a property. The BIS researchers find that in areas

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where the supply of homes responds to higher prices there is a one-off shift
in house prices: over about a year they rise by about 1.5% following a one-
percentage-point cut in interest rates; the rents-to-prices ratio falls and then
stabilises. When construction is slow to respond, however, house prices just
keep on rising. The authors think this might be because would-be
homeowners extrapolate that house prices will continue to rise in the future,
which could compensate for a lower yield. Rather than boosting
construction, homeowners get a windfall and spend more, generating
inflationary pressure through a different channel. They could, for instance,
splurge on restaurants and holidays, pushing up wages in those industries.

That does not mean frustrated young renters should hope for an increase in
interest rates to bring prices down and homeownership within reach.
Monetary policy changes the appeal of owning a home. A paper by Daniel
Greenwald of New York University and Adam Guren of Boston University
looks at how the rental and house-buying markets interact with each other.
In theory, as house prices rise, landlords should be willing to sell to
wannabe homeowners. Bringing more sellers into the market relieves some
of the upward pressure on house prices after a fall in the cost of credit. It
also means the rate of homeownership can increase even if not many new
homes are built. Yet in reality this effect is not borne out. The rental market
and the homeownership market are almost entirely segmented.

Heads homeowners win, tails renters lose

When rates rise, and mortgages become more expensive, renting becomes
more attractive. That increases demand for the relatively fixed number of
rental properties. At the same time, landlords are offered higher risk-
adjusted yields on other assets and need to be compensated for missing out
on them. A paper focusing on Ireland by Juan Castellanos of the European
University Institute and Andrew Hannon and Gonzalo Paz-Pardo of the
European Central Bank finds that higher rates actually tend to push rents
up. In the same vein, a paper by Daniel Dias of the Federal Reserve and
João Duarte of the Nova Business School, focusing on America, finds that
tight money can increase “shelter” inflation.

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That helps explain some of the recent puzzles of the housing market. Higher
rents mean that house prices do not have to fall so far to maintain the yield
differential between housing and other assets after monetary policy is
tightened. Shelter inflation, meanwhile, has been one of the most stubborn
components in the last mile of disinflation for the Federal Reserve. Deniz
Igan of the BIS calculates that for potential buyers, who care about home
prices, their income and mortgage costs, housing is more unaffordable than
at any time since the meltdown of 2007. As long as housebuilding remains
weak, neither cheap nor expensive money will bring relief. ■

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which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and
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Science & technology

Earth is warming faster. Scientists are closing in on why
2023, WTF? :: Paradoxically, cleaner emissions from ships and power plants are playing a role

Academic writing is getting harder to read—the

humanities most of all
Hot air :: We analyse two centuries of scholarly work

Giving children the wrong (or not enough) toys may doom
a society
Clear and present danger :: Survival is a case of child’s play

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2023, WTF?

Earth is warming faster. Scientists

are closing in on why
Paradoxically, cleaner emissions from ships and power plants are playing a
role
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | Washington, DC

GAVIN SCHMIDT, a leading climate modeller and the boss of NASA’s

Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS) in New York City, is not noted
for his humility. Nevertheless, writing in Nature, a journal, in March 2024,
he confessed to being humbled by his inability, and that of his colleagues, to
understand the extraordinary year through which they had just lived—2023
had been around 0.2°C (0.4°F) hotter than had been expected.

Not just humbled: worried, too. If climate modellers’ accumulated

knowledge and spiffy models could not explain what had just happened, it

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might mean that climate change had pushed the workings of Earth into
“uncharted territory…fundamentally altering how the climate system
operates”. Both the speed of climate change and the workings of the climate
might be changing. The future might look even worse than it used to.

Nine months later, in Washington DC, Dr Schmidt and his colleagues

returned to the subject at a recent meeting of the American Geophysical
Union (AGU), the world’s largest annual gathering of Earth scientists. The
sessions that took place on the topic felt at times like a murder inquiry, with
the evidence for one suspect or another gone through meticulously. The
probable verdict is now clearer than it was in March; some suspects have
been ruled out and new clues have emerged which point to some others.
The conclusion looks likely to be that the world can expect somewhat
higher rates of warming. But the case is still not closed.

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It was always going to be hot in 2023. Climate change forced by
greenhouse gases means that all years can now be expected to be warm by
past standards; in 2021 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put
the rate of warming at 0.2°C a decade. What is more, the second half of
2023 saw an El Niño get under way.

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El Niños are the warm phase of a seesaw of winds and ocean currents in the
tropical Pacific called ENSO (El Niño-Southern Oscillation). The extra heat
that such events can add to the overall warming trend means that El Niño
years often set records for global temperatures. Because the El Niño that
began in 2023 carried on into the following year, 2024 has therefore ended
up being even hotter than the last year (see chart).

Whodunnit?

But if not the hottest year on record, 2023 still ranks as the strangest. For
one thing, records were tumbling well before the El Niño kicked in in the
second half of the year. For another, the scale of the warming compared
with the year before was beyond what anyone would normally expect from
an El Niño. For a third, the pattern of warming across various ocean basins
was very peculiar.

At the time, several additional “forcings” were discussed. The underwater

eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano in the South Pacific in
January 2022 had put a huge amount of water vapour into the normally
desiccated stratosphere; water vapour is a greenhouse gas, and in the
stratosphere it sticks around for a long time. The Sun was reaching the peak
of its 11-year sun-spot cycle; during such “solar maxima”, it provides
around 0.05% more light than it does on average and its spectrum skews
into the ultraviolet. And in 2020 new rules imposed by the International
Maritime Organisation (IMO) had slashed the amount of sulphur allowed in
the fuel of ships on the high seas.

Sulphur in ships’ fuel turns into sulphate particles rising from ships’
funnels. Some of those particles end up blowing ashore; producing fewer of
them cleans the landlubbers’ air and saves lives. But the particles also
encourage the formation of clouds, brighten clouds already there and reflect
away sunlight even if the air is too dry for any clouds at all: all these effects
cool the sea’s surface.

As soon as the IMO rules went into effect there were climate scientists keen
to see what they did to temperatures. 2023’s spike added to the excitement.
At the AGU Andrew Gettelman of the Pacific Northwest National

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Laboratory in Richland, Washington, presented an overview of studies of
the phenomenon. Observations show that the distinctive lines of cloud—
known as “ship tracks”—that can stretch out behind vessels burning
sulphur-rich fuel are indeed much rarer now. Modelling suggests that,
overall, this means something like 1.2 more watts per square metre of
sunshine are warming the ocean.

That is enough to have a significant effect, but not enough to provide all the
necessary warming for 2023. Nor can the concerted action of all the initial
suspects suffice. The solar effect is smaller than the fuel effect. The
volcano’s effect seems to point the other way. Volcanoes, too, throw sulphur
up into the atmosphere. According to Mark Schoerberl, of the Science and
Technology Corporation, the long-lived sulphate particles created in the
stratosphere after the eruption of Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai more than
counterbalanced the warming provided by the water vapour, providing a
small net cooling.

Evidence against different culprits comes from work published recently in

Science. Helge Goessling and his colleagues at the Alfred Wegener Institute
in Bremerhaven used satellite data and weather records to show that over
the course of this century Earth has gradually been reflecting less sunlight
back into space than it used to. 2023 was the dimmest year to date. This was
apparently due to paucity of cloud cover, particularly in the northern mid
latitudes.

Part of this could be down to the new IMO rules, but the dimming is too
strong to be explained by that alone. Bjorn Samset of CICERO, a
Norwegian climate research institute, points to another possibility: the lack
of sulphate emissions is not a result of cleaner ships, but of cleaner Chinese
coal-fired power plants. Since 2014 China has been making progress in
reducing sulphur emissions by closing particularly noxious power plants
and scrubbing sulphur out of the flue gases at others. New data leads Dr
Samset and colleagues to think the cleanup is having a marked effect across
the North Pacific, where cleaner air and fewer clouds will mean more
warming.

A lung-sparing dearth of sulphates may not be the only thing making Earth
less reflective. As the climate warms, its workings change in all manner of

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ways. One is that the tropics expand, and the tracks of storms in temperate
zones narrow. Narrower storm tracks mean less cloud. This sort of shift
could be another reason why Earth is growing less reflective, and thus
warming more.

Both the sulphur stories and the changing cloud patterns suggest that
increased warming may be here for some time to come. Models expect
warming to speed up as annual emissions get larger, which they continue to
do, and as sulphate emissions fall, which they continue to do. Dr Schmidt’s
predecessor as the boss of GISS, James Hansen, goes beyond what many of
his colleagues are comfortable with when he argues that this effect is
already apparent and large. That said, warming over the decade to 2023 was
0.26°C; not as high as the 0.32°C a decade rate that Dr Hansen thinks is the
new normal, but well above what it used to be.

At the end of the AGU sessions Dr Schmidt felt that there had been real
progress on the various possible culprits. In the next few weeks he expects
modellers at GISS and elsewhere to start trying to pull them all together
into a coherent narrative in new climate-model runs that use the most up-to-
date data on both sulphur emissions and the reduction in reflected light.
Picking over the results may allow scientists to say with some certainty
what actually happened. ■

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Hot air

Academic writing is getting harder

to read—the humanities most of all
We analyse two centuries of scholarly work
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

ACADEMICS HAVE long been accused of jargon-filled writing that is

impossible to understand. A recent cautionary tale was that of Ally Louks, a
researcher who set off a social media storm with an innocuous post on X
celebrating the completion of her PhD. If it was Ms Louks’s research topic
(“olfactory ethics”—the politics of smell) that caught the attention of online
critics, it was her verbose thesis abstract that further provoked their ire. In
two weeks, the post received more than 21,000 retweets and 100m views.

Although the abuse directed at Ms Louks reeked of misogyny and anti-

intellectualism—which she admirably shook off—the reaction was also a

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backlash against an academic use of language that is removed from normal
life. Inaccessible writing is part of the problem. Research has become
harder to read, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Though
authors may argue that their work is written for expert audiences, much of
the general public suspects that some academics use gobbledygook to
disguise the fact that they have nothing useful to say. The trend towards
more opaque prose hardly allays this suspicion.

To track academic writing over time, The Economist analysed 347,000 PhD
abstracts published between 1812 and 2023. The dataset was produced by
the British Library and represents a majority of English-language doctoral
theses awarded by British universities. We reviewed each abstract using the
Flesch reading-ease test, which measures sentence and word length to
gauge readability. A score of 100 roughly indicates passages can be
understood by someone who has completed fourth grade in America
(usually aged 9 or 10), while a score lower than 30 is considered very
difficult to read. An average New York Times article scores around 50 and a
CNN article around 70. This article scores 41.

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From “asymmetric allylation of aldehydes” to “pneumatological and
apocalyptically eschatological foundations”, PhD abstracts had an
unmistakably scholarly aroma. We found that, in every discipline, the
abstracts have become harder to read over the past 80 years. The shift is
most stark in the humanities and social sciences (see chart), with average
Flesch scores falling from around 37 in the 1940s to 18 in the 2020s. From
the 1990s onwards, those fields went from being substantially more
readable than the natural sciences—as you might expect—to as

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complicated. Ms Louks’s abstract had a reading-ease rating of 15, still more
readable than a third of those analysed in total.

Other studies of academic writing have similar findings: scientific jargon

and acronyms are on the rise. The blame does not fall solely on authors.
Specialisation and advances in technology require more precise
terminology and a doctoral thesis often covers some of the most obscure
research topics. With millions of views, Ms Louks might lay claim to one of
the most-read PhD abstracts of all time. She has since posted, “I love that I
have somehow equipped everyone with new terminology and frameworks!”
But surging interest in olfactory ethics aside, the trend towards illegible
academic writing stinks. Clear prose would be a breath of fresh air. ■

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technology/2024/12/18/academic-writing-is-getting-harder-to-read-the-humanities-
most-of-all

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Clear and present danger

Giving children the wrong (or not

enough) toys may doom a society
Survival is a case of child’s play
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

GIVERS OF EDUCATIONAL gifts, rejoice: despite the eye-rolls you may

receive on Christmas morning, you are part of a long and valuable tradition.
In cultures around the world, toys have been used to teach children what
they need to know about the society they live in. When the toys teach the
right skills, the children are prepared for adulthood and thrive. When they
do not, calamity beckons.

And how. New work led by Mathilde Meyer, a PhD student at Aarhus
University in Denmark, and Felix Riede, her supervisor, reveals that giving

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the wrong toys probably played an important part in dooming the Norse
settlers who came to Greenland from Iceland in 985.

Greenland was mostly covered in ice when the Norse made the journey,
save for a thin strip of fertile land along the coastline where they could
farm. The settlers flourished for a few hundred years but, as the world
entered a cold period (known as the Little Ice Age) in 1300, records show
that they started to struggle. Summers became drier, temperatures dropped
and storms strengthened. By 1400 the Norse were forced to abandon the
settlements. Even so, the island remained inhabited: the Inuit people of
northern Alaska arrived on Greenland in 1000 and endured long after the
Norse gave up.

Why the Inuit survived while the Norse did not has baffled archaeologists
for decades. One idea was that the Norse did not eat more seafood (as the
Inuit did) when farming conditions deteriorated. But this is not backed by
evidence. Isotope studies of Norse teeth show that they were turning to the
ocean for food. Archaeologists agree that the Inuits adapted successfully
while the Norse did not, but nobody knows why.

To try to answer that question, Ms Meyer and Dr Riede looked at as many

toys as they could find that had once been played with by the children of
either culture. The Norse settlements yielded 72. The Inuit settlements,
located in similar environmental conditions, yielded 2,397. For the
researchers, this staggering difference implies that the Inuit gave their
children more toys than the Norse did.

Ms Meyer and Dr Riede then assigned each toy to one of five categories.
These included toys of weapons (including harpoons, arrows and swords),
tools (cooking pots, lamps and saws), forms of transport (boats and
sledges), for social play (dolls and figurines) and for skill play (tops and
balls). They also determined approximate times for when the toys were
made, either between 1000 and 1200 or 1200 and 1400.

The categorisation process revealed that the Inuit children not only had
more toys available to them, but that these toys were more diverse. For
example, though the Norse children had access to only toy arrows, axes and
swords, the Inuit children also had toy bows, crossbows, darts, harpoons,

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harpoon mountings, lances and much more. Most important, Ms Meyer and
Dr Riede found that the differences in the number and diversity of toys
grew dramatically over time.

Not just fun and games

They report in the European Journal of Archaeology that, although eight

social-play toys were found among the Norse settlements and 23 social-play
toys were found among the Inuit settlements between 1000 and 1200, over
the next 200 years the gap grew to 11 social-play toys for the Norse and 158
social-play toys for the Inuit.

A similar trend held for all the other categories of toy. As the years went by,
toys associated with hunting at sea (a category including harpoons as well
as figurines of seals and fish) became more common among the Inuit, but
the Norse continued to give their children figurines of horses and birds. In
essence, say the researchers, the Norse were adapting their lives to their
new environment but continuing to gift old-fashioned toys.

Though the lack of toys may indicate that Norse society was less creative
from the start, the researchers argue that their tendency to give irrelevant
toys compounded any initial lack of creativity and ultimately sabotaged
their survival. In contrast, the Inuits’ preference for diverse and relevant
toys paved the way for their children to be more innovative and adaptive. A
parable for parents if ever there was one. ■

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society

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Culture
There is more to Hanukkah gifts than meets the eye
Festival of lights, stars and stripes :: How American Jews reshaped an ancient, minor holiday

Christmas films are cheesy, mindless and widely loved.

Why?
The snowball effect :: The obviousness is part of the appeal

“Babygirl” and the trouble with equality

Back Story :: In Nicole Kidman’s new film, a female CEO has an affair with an intern. Boo or
bravo?

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Festival of lights, stars and stripes

There is more to Hanukkah gifts

than meets the eye
How American Jews reshaped an ancient, minor holiday
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午 | New York

THIS YEAR, for the first time since 2005, the start of Hanukkah falls on
December 25th. (The next time will be in 2035.) The two celebrations will
both involve lights—strung around trees and homes for Christians, kindled
in a nine-branched menorah for Jews—and festive foods (usually a roast
meat for Christmas, and oil-fried bites, including potato pancakes and jam-
filled doughnuts, for Hanukkah).

Both holidays also entail the exchange of gifts, but this is more recent and
controversial for Hanukkah than Christmas. That may seem surprising,
considering how Hanukkah presents abound. A search on Amazon, the e-

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commerce Goliath, for example, turns up tens of thousands of results,
including books, candles, gift wrap, latke-servers, pyjamas, socks and even
a yarmulke that resembles Santa’s red and white hat. The story of how a
commercial marketplace for Hanukkah gifts came to be—and how
exchanging presents for Hanukkah became widely accepted—is a classic
immigrants’ tale of a battle between assimilation and distinctness,
adaptation and tradition.

Liturgically, Hanukkah is a relatively minor holiday. Work is not forbidden,

as it is on the Sabbath and for the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur. It commemorates events that took place in the second century BC,
after the death of Alexander the Great.

Hanukkah means “dedication” in Hebrew, and it refers to the victory of

Jewish fighters, who succeeded in expelling occupying Greek forces from
the Temple, then the heart of Jewish religious practice in Jerusalem. A tiny
flask of oil, enough to last just a single day in the Temple’s menorah,
miraculously burned for eight days, the story goes: hence the length of the
holiday.

However, aside from coins (gelt in Yiddish) given to children with the
expectation that they would slip them to their teachers—a practice that first
emerged in Poland in the 17th century—gift-giving played no role in the
holiday for most of its history. That started to change after Jews began
emigrating en masse to the United States in the late 19th century.

Between 1880 and 1924, the Jewish population in America grew from
around 250,000, mainly from Germany and central Europe, to 2m, mostly
from eastern Europe. The earlier German-Jewish immigrants had
assimilated quickly and generally embraced Christmas as an American
holiday, gifts and all.

Newly arriving Jews, however, tended to be more religious and spoke

Yiddish rather than German or English. But they were not restricted from
practising their faith, nor forced into ghettos to keep them away from
Christians, as they had been in Europe. That meant they could see, with
more intimacy than ever before, how their non-Jewish countrymen lived.

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This was happening at a time when Christmas celebrations were changing
and becoming more commercial. Christmas festivities and decorations are
now an integral part of December in America and much of the world, but
that is relatively recent. For years the Puritans banned Christmas when
Massachusetts was still a British colony. (“They for whom all days are holy
can have no holiday” was their pious belief; the Puritans are not renowned
for their sense of fun.)

Congress, now notorious for its long recesses, was in session on Christmas
Day in the early 19th century; Christmas did not become a federal holiday
until 1870. That was just a decade before waves of Jewish emigration
began, and right as American industrial might expanded, which made
producing and buying gifts more affordable and prevalent.

Ads for Hanukkah gifts—both Jewish-themed, such as menorahs, and other

religious and household items to use throughout the year—began appearing
in the Yiddish press in the 1890s and became staples by the 1920s. Crisco, a
vegetable shortening first sold in 1911, proved especially popular. Religious
dietary laws forbade serving milk and meat at the same time, which meant
Jews tended to use schmaltz (chicken fat) when cooking meat, requiring a
messy process. Scooping cooking fat from a can, therefore, was appealing.

Gradually, Hanukkah became as much a marketing opportunity as

Christmas. Hallmark began selling Hanukkah cards in the 1940s; soon
afterwards, Barton’s Candy began producing chocolate gelt, now a mainstay
of Hanukkah celebrations.

The market took off after the second world war, but focused mainly on
Judaica: menorahs, Seder plates and other religious goods. Gradually, pop
culture began making inroads: Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, rather than
biblical scenes, started appearing on menorahs, and dreidels—the spinning
tops used for Hanukkah games—got bigger and could be filled with sweets.

Yael Buechler, a rabbi who follows the Hanukkah marketplace and founded
a company that makes Hanukkah-themed stickers for fingernails, says that
thanks to fast fashion, “Things exist today that didn’t exist even five or ten
years ago.” Big retailers can make lines of Hanukkah items quickly, while

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individual artists and small businesses have more outlets to sell and market
their goods.

No time like the presents

All this has made Hanukkah, despite its humble beginnings, probably the
best-known Jewish holiday to non-Jews. Chabad, a Jewish revivalist and
social-service organisation, holds public menorah lightings around the
world. Yitz Landes, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, says that Hanukkah “feels like a national holiday” and has
become “a symbol of how Jews can be Americans [that is] also legible to
non-Jews: it works with other winter holidays”.

But Hanukkah presents are given less often outside America. Israel’s Jewish
population numbers around 7.5m, about the same size as America’s. But
since 2004, online searches for Hanukkah gifts in Israel have been around
100 times less than in America, according to Google Trends. Some
traditionalists still oppose gift-giving; Mr Landes recalls that in the
Orthodox community in which he grew up, he never received presents on
Hanukkah.

But Ms Buechler, the rabbi, notes that Jews are commanded to publicise the
miracle of the oil, which is why lit menorahs are usually placed in
windows: so passers-by can see them. “The more ways we can find to
publicise” Hannukah, “the better.” She starts decorating her family’s home
for Hanukkah in early November.

Mr Landes says that when his children see a cartoon featuring characters
making latkes and lighting a menorah, “and someone mentions Hanukkah,
they feel seen”. Feeling welcomed and accepted, after so many centuries of
being neither, may be the best gift of all. ■

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meets-the-eye

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The snowball effect

Christmas films are cheesy,

mindless and widely loved. Why?
The obviousness is part of the appeal
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

THE STORY is set in a town called Hope Springs—your first clue to the
film’s schmaltz—which hosts an annual snow-sculpture contest. A local
Michelangelo has sculpted a snowman with a chiselled face and rippling
muscles. On a whim, a young widow drapes a red scarf over the frozen
figure; naturally, magic brings the ice-cold hottie, shivering, to life.

Recently released on Netflix, “Hot Frosty” is a truly absurd Christmas film.

No one in Hope Springs seems perturbed by a snow sculpture becoming a
fully sentient being; one person simply shrugs: “It’s Christmas.” Nor do
viewers seem to mind the movie’s outlandish premise. Subscribers spent

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nearly 52m hours watching the film in the three weeks after its release; it
has been one of the most popular movies on Netflix, enjoying nearly 35
times the demand of an average film in America, according to Parrot
Analytics, a data firm.

“Hot Frosty” points to a hot area of entertainment: lighthearted, generally

predictable, sometimes terrible Christmas films that people nonetheless
love. In 2023 144 of them were released worldwide—seven times more
than in 2000.

That was the year when Hallmark’s cable-television network started making
festive fare in earnest; in 2024 it is releasing 32 films as part of its annual
“Countdown to Christmas” event, in which at least three new films are
broadcast every weekend, starting in October. The most-watched film made
for cable TV this year was Hallmark’s “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love
Story”, loosely inspired by the relationship of Taylor Swift, a pop star, and
Travis Kelce, an American-football player.

A large majority of Hallmark films—over 90%—are romances with punny

titles such as “To Have and to Holiday”. Brandon Gray and Daniel
Pandolph, two of the hosts of “Deck the Hallmark”, a podcast, have
analysed around 1,000 Christmas films and observe that they “typically
have some sort of baking scene” and “a big decision that has to be made by
Christmas”. Around 80% of them feature a decorating scene involving
homes, gingerbread houses and more. Most feature a montage, a hammy
film-making technique that is otherwise out of style year-round.

For a long time, Hallmark had the holiday season wrapped up. But Netflix
and other streamers are getting in on the festive action, tempted by the low
budgets—the films generally cost less than $5m—and high returns. In 2023
Hallmark released 40 original Christmas titles, according to Ampere
Analysis, a research firm; meanwhile viewers could stream more than 70 on
Netflix (a mix of new offerings and back-catalogue fare). The platform is
focusing on romance titles at the expense of productions aimed at children
or families. Another of the new releases in 2024, “Our Little Secret”, has
accumulated nearly 95m hours of viewing. Starring Lindsay Lohan, it
follows a couple who split up years ago but meet again, unexpectedly, via
their new partners.

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Who likes such sparkly fluff, and why? Adult Christmas films are mostly
watched by women, from millennials upwards. Many are busy preparing
presents and food; few have time to sit down and give a film their full
attention. The predictable plots, then, are an advantage. “You know what’s
going to happen,” Mr Gray says, “and so you can still do the things that you
need to do, while also getting into the Christmas spirit.” Mr Pandolph adds
that after a couple of glasses of mulled wine, it does not matter that the
story is naff: in fact, “Your enjoyment of these movies goes up
exponentially if you’ve been drinking.”

Russell Hainline, the writer of “Hot Frosty” and other holiday flicks, says
that films such as his offer wish-fulfilment. “‘Harry Potter’ has wands and
‘The Lord of the Rings’ has hobbits. Christmas movies have good people
having good things happen to them all the time.” The world would be a
nicer place, he suggests, if it “was even a little bit more like a Christmas
movie”. It is a cheerful idea. In fact, it sounds like a perfect line in a holiday
film. ■

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Back Story

“Babygirl” and the trouble with

equality
In Nicole Kidman’s new film, a female CEO has an affair with an intern.
Boo or bravo?
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

PLAYED ELECTRICALLY by Nicole Kidman, the protagonist of

“Babygirl” is a glamorous high-flyer with a secret woe: sexual frustration.
But “at the end of the movie, that problem is fixed,” observed Antonio
Banderas, who plays her husband, at the Venice Film Festival, where the
erotic thriller had its premiere. “Maybe,” Ms Kidman shot back.

Which goes to show that responses to “Babygirl”, out on Christmas Day in

America and elsewhere in January, may vary between the sexes, and,
probably, between generations. Back Story is a middle-aged man with Gen-

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X ideas about feminism and fairness. For him, a provocative film that
aspires to be radical winds up seeming oddly reactionary.

Ms Kidman is Romy Mathis, the boss of a logistics firm with a glitzy

headquarters in Manhattan. The company does something with warehouses,
though exactly what is unclear: those are not the sort of logistics this movie
is most interested in. Romy is glimpsed in a lift, surrounded by men, like
Margaret Thatcher with her cabinet. She has a palatial apartment and a
swish country house, which she shares with her two teenage daughters and
Jacob, her handsome nice-guy spouse.

Alas, there is a wrinkle in superwoman paradise (even if there are none on

Romy’s Botoxed face). In bed with Jacob, she fakes every climax, then puts
on one of her deluxe camisoles, scoots down a marbled corridor, cranks up
her laptop and gets her kicks from brutal porn. Ms Kidman has starred as
monied matriarchs in a run of recent TV shows, from “The Undoing” to
“The Perfect Couple”. Romy is their kinkier sister.

Enter Samuel (Harris Dickinson), a swaggering and impertinent intern. As

well as being Romy’s underling, Samuel is a bit of rough. You can tell by
the chain he wears and, when he gets his kit off, his tattoos. On brief
acquaintance he spots a proclivity that, despite their decades-long
relationship, Romy’s doting husband has missed. “I think you like to be told
what to do,” Samuel says. Chalk it up to his male intuition. Or maybe it’s a
lucky guess.

Fleetingly Romy clings to the human-resources argot of “inappropriate” and

“unacceptable” behaviour. But soon the pair are rendezvousing in seedy
hotel rooms and toilet cubicles. She crawls around on the floor, eats from
Samuel’s hand like a dog and laps milk from a saucer on all fours. “You
know things,” she purrs. “You sense things.” “Sometimes I scare myself,”
Samuel replies modestly.

“We all have a beast living inside of ourselves,” Halina Reijn, the writer
and director, said in Venice. If, like Jacob, you are inclined to think that
“female masochism is nothing but a male fantasy”, her film will try to
persuade you that your ideas about sex and desire are outdated. Whereas, in
“Fatal Attraction” and other adultery dramas of yore, women tended to

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suffer for their lust, Ms Reijn didn’t “want any of [her] characters to be
punished”.

But perhaps Romy deserves some punishment (not just the kind she
enjoys). For if the movie’s cinematic context is Glenn Close’s bunny-
boiling and the grisly antics in “Basic Instinct”, the real-life background is
#MeToo. Given the imbalance between her and Samuel in age and status,
Romy knows the liaison is risky or even wrong. “I genuinely believed that
women with power would behave differently,” laments a colleague who
rumbles the affair.

Ultimately, though, “Babygirl” glosses over these qualms. In a choice

between exploring workplace ethics on one hand, and celebrating orgasms
on the other, it plumps for the redemptive power of getting your rocks off. It
takes sex seriously as an issue of self-expression but trivialises it as a
political one. If the story has a feminist streak, it is mostly the personalised,
sex-positive sort espoused by some younger people.

True, unlike the miscreants of #MeToo, Romy is a woman. She is only

acting as countless entitled men have before her. You don’t, however, have
to be a monster of the manosphere to wonder how much of a difference that
ought to make to moral judgments. After all, some forms of parity are less
desirable than others. When it comes to, say, their propensity to commit
violent crimes or binge-drink, it would be good for men to cut back, less so
for women to catch up.

“Babygirl” grants Romy another licence which, in the past, was

overwhelmingly a male preserve. A powerful woman has a fling with a
striving subordinate—and the audience is invited to cheer her liberation.
You might call that role-swap a kind of equality or rough justice. You
wouldn’t call it progress. ■

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Economic & financial indicators

Economic data, commodities and markets
Indicators ::

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Indicators

Economic data, commodities and

markets
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

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financial-indicators/2024/12/19/economic-data-commodities-and-markets

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Obituary
Brother Harold Palmer lived alone in the wilds by choice
The work of prayer :: The Northumbrian hermit died on October 4th, aged 93

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The work of prayer

Brother Harold Palmer lived alone

in the wilds by choice
The Northumbrian hermit died on October 4th, aged 93
12月 19, 2024 09:37 上午

SOMETIME IN 1970 Brother Harold Palmer, then living in a house of the

Society of St Francis, received a strange parcel in the post. He never knew
who had sent it. It contained a mason’s trowel, a set square, a plumb-line
and a surveyor’s measuring tape. Plainly, he had building to do.

Up until then he had been undecided. He had seen a possible site, called
Shepherds Law, on top of a gorse-thick hill in Northumberland with views
as far as Scotland. But it was still not ideal. In fact, it was ruins: bits of an
18th-century cottage, two triple-arched arcades and an almost-gone

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pavilion. Not worth a visit, his guide had said. The arcades had probably
been part of a folly long ago. There was no point in starting a new one.

Probably not. But Brother Harold had been looking for a long time, and all
over the place, for somewhere he could found a skete: a tiny monastic
community where he would live alone and a few chosen brothers would
live close, in separate cells. They would tend a communal garden, eat and
do chores together, and most vitally build a little chapel where they would
sing the Divine Office seven times a day. That too was work: Opus Dei, the
work of God. And after a while it would become an exercise in joy.

An Anglican priest, Father William Sirr, had tried to set up a skete at

Glasshampton in 1918; sadly, no one had joined him. Perhaps Brother
Harold’s counter-cultural dream could catch on in the modern age. People
often said how much they longed for silence and stillness, and a life of
prayer, solitary or almost so, was all about that. This was what had struck
him most strongly when he visited Mount Athos and wandered among the
sketes there: a stillness that if suddenly broken by a swallow, or a boat
engine, immediately redescended like a presence. It had been a feature, too,
of the lives of the earliest saints of Northumbria. St Cuthbert was said to
have stood so still in the sea, praying by night, that his feet froze, and two
otters came to him to lick them warm. In those days the Christian church
had been undivided. He longed fiercely for it to be one body again.

Since 1960, when he became a member of the SSF (the Anglican version of
the Franciscans), he had lived in several SSF houses. But he couldn’t settle.
He did not enjoy community on that scale, disliked being regimented, and
hated the principle of enclosure. All in all, a difficult brother. He was
happiest at the Alnmouth house on the Northumbrian coast, where the friars
had to go down to the beach to gather sea-coal for the freezing rooms, and
where railway trains, his passion, steamed past on the east-coast main line.
In order not to miss them he would hitch his robe into his girdle, seize his
situp-and-beg bike and race madly towards the smoke. He loved to be out
and doing. He also loved to constantly acknowledge God around and within
him, in song or silence, and alone.

St Francis had faced that dilemma. He ordered his followers to preach in

towns, and did so himself. But he also made a habit of retiring to pray in

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remote and rocky places. Each Franciscan had to ask, as Francis did,
whether he belonged in the world or not. The Northumbrian saints had a
similar mission to the laity but also treasured solitude, as Cuthbert did when
he fled to the Farne Islands. Brother Harold definitely needed both, and
when he first went to live at Shepherd’s Law, in 1971 in a cold caravan
wrapped in straw-bales containing rats, he often wondered what on earth he
was doing. He made sure to get a mobile phone.

He had decided to raise money for his hermitage-house by working in a

geriatric ward, tending frail old men who steadily died around him. But at
Shepherds Law fellow-friars and local people, from the village of
Eglingham and round about, soon lent a hand. Traditionally, hermits and
anchorites always drew visitors. Clearly most locals liked having this
curious solitary nearby. As he built his hermitage—thick walls of local
stone and concrete, clay pantiles on the roof—donations of material kept
coming. Since sanitation for years was a slop-bucket and an Elsan, he
exchanged dog-walking for baths. His letterbox was at the bottom of the
hill, to save the postman trouble. Villagers would leave cakes and other
offerings there. The Friends of Shepherds Law were set up to raise funds for
him. Over his 50 years of hermithood he became a village character:
smiling, scruffy, missing a front tooth, and devoted to his Thomas the Tank
Engine woolly hat with earflaps.

His purpose there, though, was prayer. Prayer both Anglican, from the Book
of Common Prayer, and Catholic, since in 2004 he had turned to Rome. He
loved, and used, both liturgies together. At first there was nowhere to pray
but in the biting wind; then in a lean-to against the ruined wall, roofed with
corrugated iron. Money from his mother, after she died, paid for a beautiful
Romanesque chapel in local stone, dedicated to St Mary and St Cuthbert,
with icons and stained glass and a relic of Cuthbert under the altar. The
walls contained fragments of brick gathered from the beach at Lindisfarne,
his Holy Island. Seven times a day, for the canonical hours of matins,
prime, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline, Brother Harold would ring a
medieval bell and enter to sing the Psalter. He had spent hours unearthing
and translating Latin liturgies from archives in Durham and elsewhere,
fitting them to Gregorian chant he had composed himself on the backs of
envelopes. Chant, like his icons, pointed to the Mystery.

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Usually he was alone. He had built four well-equipped cells for visitors,
each with its upstairs oratory; quite a few stayed, but no one stayed for
good. Perhaps they disliked the smell of paraffin lamps, or objected to the
meals of cold baked beans. It didn’t matter too much. As long as he himself
remembered God continually, as he did, and addressed Him on behalf of the
world and its troubles, and allowed God to enter his heart and dwell there,
all was well. Between the verses of the Psalms, sheep bleated outside. He
was perfectly still. ■
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