Talking points
- 1,400 Egyptians were arrested during rare anti-Sisi demonstrations
- Thomas Cook collapsed after 178 years in business
- Air pollution was linked to cognitive decline, Alzheimer's and death
- Google achieved 'quantum supremacy'
- An earthquake in Pakistan killed dozens and wounded hundreds
- VW's top two executives were charged with market manipulation
- Adam Neumann stepped down from WeWork
- Netanyahu was given (yet) another chance to form government
- The dispute over Ethiopia's enormous Nile dam worsened
- A huge glacier on Mont Blanc threatened to collapse
Deep Dive
"In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President's main domestic political rivals."
Impeachable tastes
The above quote is from a letter, dated August 12, that was delivered to the chairs of the US House of Representatives' and Senate intelligence committees. Its author, an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency officer-turned-whistleblower, was sufficiently concerned with the conduct of President Donald J. Trump and his staff to alert Capitol Hill. The alleged solicitation was made by Trump on a call with Ukraine's President, Volodymyr Zelensky. On the call, Trump appeared to suggest that the delivery of nearly $400m in military aid was contingent on Ukrainian authorities investigating the dubious business dealings of Robert Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden, the former Vice President and leading Democratic contender for America's 2020 election.
In 2014, Biden's son joined the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings. In the same year, Burisma's founder came under investigation for corruption and money laundering. The following year, Joe Biden, who was Obama's Vice President at the time, intervened to have Ukraine's Prosecutor General dismissed. The dismissal was ostensibly requested because of the prosecutor's failure to tackle corruption. However, the prosecutor himself alleges that it was because of the Burisma investigation. In any case, legal proceedings against the company were subsequently dropped, and there has been no allegation of wrongdoing on the part of either Biden.
Hoping, or perhaps imagining, that there was more to the affair, Trump repeatedly asked for an investigation during the phone call, and his counterpart obliged, going so far as to offer assurances that he would replace Ukraine's current Prosecutor General with a more pliant individual. This exchange, according to the whistleblower, led White House lawyers to initiate crisis talks about how to defend what they (according to him) appeared to consider an abuse of office by Trump. The lawyers were apparently cognisant of the implication of Trump's requests, so they tried to bury the call record. But in their rush to expunge details of the conversation, the president's would-be protectors forgot the first rule of a cover-up: don't get caught . It's a tale as old as politics, really.
With the whistle blown, Republicans cried foul play and Trump deployed his usual arsenal of outraged denial, all-caps tweets, and threats of litigation. Needless to say, the Democrats are very exercised. Opposition leader Nancy Pelosi, who appears to have finally secured the support she needed, is directing her erstwhile quiescent colleagues to get the ball rolling on an impeachment investigation.
This old chestnut
And so, for just the third time in its 243 years, the United States is trundling down the hazardous path of presidential impeachment. Both prior efforts (Andrew Johnson in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, and Bill Clinton twenty years ago) resulted in acquittals by the Senate. There is nothing that suggests the result will be any different for Donald J. Trump. You see, there are three components to impeachment: a Congressional investigation into the alleged impropriety, a vote in the House of Representatives on the articles of impeachment, and, if both of these conditions are met, a trial in the Senate. Crucially, a two-thirds supermajority is needed in order to convict the person being impeached.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is a well-designed safeguard against presidential overreach and high crimes. But it is not. Simply put, the ideal of the republic (and the dutiful servants who uphold its laws) is not reflected in today's reality. Requiring a two-thirds supermajority to convict does thwart overbearing majoritarian impulses; but its function also rests on the idea that members of the U.S. Senate will place justice above their party's narrow interests. And without putting too fine a point on it: there hasn't been much evidence of late, that this is the case.
Whatever path this impeachment inquiry takes, we ought to also, in our own good time, ask the question that Trump and Giuliani wanted answered. Why was Hunter Biden drawing a $50,000 a month salary for sitting on the board of a Ukrainian energy company? Was it because he was seen as a useful connection for Ukraine's wealthy to influence American politics? The current occupant of the White House has shown particular proficiency in demeaning his office, but it's precisely this sort of eyebrow-raising grubby soft-peddling of influence that has poisoned the well of American democracy. Trump or no Trump the brutal equation remains the same: money = influence = power.
Worldlywise
Water and ice
Greta Thunberg did not disappoint in New York. The world's most-recognisable environmental campaigner stood before world leaders and lambasted them for stealing her childhood. It was a particularly moving speech that ended, oddly, in raucous applause from the dignitaries she was giving an earful to. All too predictably, some quarters of the conservative press took offence. Newspapers around the world published screed after screed – mostly penned by men of a certain vintage and ethnicity – going after her.
While Op-Ed page potshots from ageing columnists are bemusing, we've got bigger fish to fry (namely, stopping our bigger fish from cooking in the seas they swim in). On Wednesday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the world's oceans and cryosphere . It makes for troubling reading. In great detail the report reveals how our oceans have soaked up 90% of the heat that we have trapped in the atmosphere – but at a devastating cost. Unless the push to decarbonise economies is sharply accelerated, we'll see a meter of sea-level rise by 2100. This would make countless cities, not to mention entire low-lying and island nations, uninhabitable . In India, the populations of Mumbai and Kolkata are projected to reach 67m and 50m each by 2100. That may prove difficult, as both cities will likely have to be abandoned as the sea-level rises.
Consider this a weekly exhortation that we all have the power to make changes – particularly with our votes and purchases – and ameliorate at least the worst effects of climate change.
If you want to be forgotten, move to France
In 2014 European Union courts ruled that citizens had the right to request that search engines remove outdated and potentially embarrassing information from search listings. Old news stories about minor criminal convictions, or websites containing deeply personal identifying information, were to be decoupled from searches of an individual's name. It was a fascinating legal question that tested our notions of what we can reasonably expect (or deserve) to have control over on the internet.
After the adverse ruling was handed down, Google insisted that it only applied to searches made within the EU. France's digital privacy watchdog, the Comm ission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL), took exception to this. In 2015 CNIL took Google to court to force the company to extend the right to be forgotten globally. This week Google won. On one hand, the ruling creates a scenario in which people can still search and see information that otherwise may have been 'forgotten' by simply using a VPN tunnel to another country. This was obviously of lesser consideration than the legal precedent that it would have set.
The Best of Times
Buzzing, then silence
A laboratory in Guangzhou is breeding millions of mosquitoes each week with the aim of turning them into genetic suicide agents. Each of the males is infected with a type of bacteria that interferes with reproductive abilities. They are then let out into the wild to breed with females – but the resulting eggs will never hatch. In a region replete with deadly tropical diseases, this seems a fantastic experiment. However, a note of caution must accompany any celebration here - environmental engineering at this scale is not only ethically ponderous, it is also very new, and as such its unintended consequences are still unknown.
Something else for the recycling bin
The reason you can't recycle your shampoo bottle is because it's made of the tricky plastic polypropylene. It's difficult to break down, and produces an awful smell when melted down and reformed. In some small (bright) news this week, a scientist at Proctor & Gamble believes he's found away to recycle the polypropylene into readily-useable plastic pellets. That's one more item out of the dump.
The Worst of Times
Suppressing the truth
A huge story out of France: 4,000 people have taken a pharmaceutical lab and the French drug regulator to court over a diet pill with killer side-effects . At least 500 and possibly up to 2,000 people have died after being prescribed the amphetamine-based drug as a diet suppressant. It's alleged that the company and the authorities knew about the drug's side-effects for years but did not halt its sale.
Inside a besieged Kashmiri neighbourhood
We urge you to read this story .
Weekend Reading
Quote of the week
"War is always a last resort. It is always proof of failure. It is always the worst of solutions, because it brings death and misery."
– In 2003 then-French President Jacques Chirac was one of the few Western leaders to take a principled stand against the invasion of Iraq. He died this week, leaving behind an international community that has forgotten how to say no to violence.
Headline of the week
Disneyland visitor on LSD falls into lake then turns up naked after 130-person search – The Independent
Special mention
Boris Johnson, because it takes a lot nerve to lie to the Queen. In any other decade a Prime Minister would resign on the spot if they were found to have knowingly misled the Queen in a scheme to unlawfully suspend parliament. Luckily for him it's not any other decade!
Some choice long-reads
- Businessweek meets the Genghis-Khan-idolising president of Mongolia
- Financial Times finds the limits of the pursuit of profit
- Foreign Policy visits a country that doesn't actually exist
Tom Wharton
