The Question
Does the United States or Japan have the better candy?
Talking Points
- The anticipated Artemis 1 launch was scrubbed
- Trump offered to pardon Jan 6 rioters if re-elected
- The party hasn't ended yet for Serena Williams
- The meme-ride soured for Bed Bath & Beyond
- China and the US reached a deal on cross-listed auditing
- The UN whacked Beijing over Uyghur abuse
- IAEA inspectors made it to Zaporizhzhia
- Russian war critic "fell" from a window to his death
- Mourners marked Princess Diana's death, 25 years on
- Footballer Paul Pogba embroiled in a bizarre case
Deep Dive
One-third of Pakistan is under water. The usually life-giving monsoon has instead flooded much of the Indus river valley.
The deluge
The Indus river has supported human civilisation for a touch over five millennia. Indeed, one of humanity's first experiments into massed society and agriculture drew its name from the very same Indus valley. The river is fed by glaciers high in the Hindu Kush, Pamir, and Karakoram ranges; cutting a 3,000km swathe down the length of Pakistan, before it ends in the Arabian Sea. It is a seasonal river — every year, the monsoon (April-July) brings the river to its peak. But the Indus today is grotesquely bent out of shape, blocked, and stressed. Mud-brick towns and densely-populated cities are clustered on denuded riverbanks and floodplains . For a riparian (river-dwelling) species, we have been alarmingly successful at turning our natural habitat against ourselves.
This year, the monsoon arrived like a sledgehammer . And it did not let up. The volume of water flowing across the country is scarcely comprehensible. An official from the International Rescue Committee said, "The type of catastrophe we are seeing at the moment is just indescribable. I don't even have the right words to put it in a way that people can visualise". So all we are left with are abstractions: percentages and fractions. Here's one: the rainfall this monsoon season is 780% above average. If you'll pardon a statistical pun, that's not normal. It's been two months since the Indus spilled its banks. Since then, it has swallowed land with an insatiable appetite. Sherry Lehman , Pakistan's climate change minister, offered this — "One third of the country is literally under water". And she does mean literally.
The death toll today stands at over 1,190 . Over 33 million people have been affected by this monsoon. That's one in seven Pakistanis. Roads and bridges have been washed away in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to the West, and in Punjab to the East. The capital, Islamabad, has so far escaped the worst of it thanks only to two gargantuan dams at Tarbela and Mangla.
Sindh, scorched and damp
Historically, Pakistan's two southern provinces, Sindh (and its expansive neighbour, Balochistan) are bone-dry. Much of this region is arid — receiving a mere fraction of the rainfall that the country's northern provinces do. In late s pring and early summer, temperatures in this part of the world rose beyond habitable levels. Jacobabad earned the title of the world's hottest city in May, with the mercury rising beyond 50°C (122°F). This is killer heat; halfway to boiling point. At such extreme temperatures, human blood thickens, muscles lock up, and the brain is starved of oxygen. The body starts to cook. Outside, the roads melt. The streams evaporate.
And yes, a month later, Jacobabad was drowned by rainfall. Roofs collapsed under the weight of the downpour. Most of the city was waist-deep in water — 40,000 of its 200,000 residents crammed into crowded schools and public offices. Most of the people living in Jacobabad were already desperately poor. Now they're exposed to the whiplash of an increasingly violent and unpredictable climate .
In Pakistan, we see both sides of the anthropogenic water conundrum: the excess, and the dearth of it. Water rushes across the surface, cruelly extinguishing lives and livelihoods. But below the surface, the subterranean water table is too low to be feasibly reached with bores for agriculture and other uses. So the river itself remains the first and only option.
Control of this river is of prime concern in Islamabad. Which is why Pakistan's former Prime Minister Imran Khan made the construction of upstream dams a top priority for his administration. But there is a growing perspective among hydrologists that dams may actually be worsening acute floods. By altering the silt make-up downstream, dams can make small floods less frequent while intensifying major flooding events.
Right now, in the huge Tarbela dam, less than two-thirds of the water is usable because of high silt levels. Meanwhile, further downstream , the damage is calamitous.
Maybe it's time the politicians start listening to the scientists.
Worldlywise
Do svidaniya, Gorby
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last of the Soviet leaders, died this week. He is remembered for glasnost and perestroika; efforts to manage the terminal decline of the USSR. For his personal connections to Reagan, Thatcher, and Kohl. For the end of the arms race and the policy of détente. For decommissioning nuclear arsenals and stockpiles of ICBMs. But, for all that, Gorbachev was not a 'great man' of history; he occupied a particular office in a particular moment; at the confluence of historical rapids .
It can be a difficult subject to broach (because few people wake up and decide to reproduce dominant thought) but the news is suffused with the day's embedded or atmospheric ideology. As an essentialising, fact-seeking enterprise, the news is great at conveying information. But it is a beggared tool when it comes to questions of history. To wit; headlines this week overflowed with praise for Gorbachev: the man who ended the Cold War. The real praise was embedded: Gorbachev is a heroic figure in the West mostly because he oversaw the collapse of Communism in Europe. Victory for the nominally democratic capitalist states in the West.
Many of the obits contained more than a hint of high-mindedness over his disputed legacy: he may be exalted in the West but he is loathed by many Russians . Where is the interrogation of this? The Soviet collapse, so cheerfully celebrated as a victory, was also a tragedy. Tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty, robbed of their futures, and died young. The vaguely democratic years of the late 1990s were an unmitigated disaster; the increasing authoritarianism of Putin's era even worse.
If the collapse of a state cannot be dealt with in the media, with sensitivity and curiosity, how can we expect to understand the revanchism that fires so much contemporary thought?
Five Eyes wide shut
On February 15, 2015, three young girls from Bethnal Green boarded a plane in London. Shamima Begum (15), Amira Abase (15), and Kadiza Sultana (16) weren't holidaying — they had answered the call of Islamic State in Syria. Their path was well trodden. The girls landed in Turkey, and were smuggled across the border into the freshly-blooded caliphate. Within weeks, each of them had married fighters. At home, shock turned to opprobrium: how had this happened? Like many other young Muslims the Bethnal Green trio had seen their future in Syria. Instead they would only find ruin; by the time they arrived on the scene, ISIS had already reached its bloody zenith and was charging towards a violent end.
Sultana was killed by a Russian airstrike in 2016. Less is known of Abase — her family believe she died some years ago. ISIS crumbled under the combined forces of Kurdish and Shia militias (and ruthless Western airpower). Begum, the last survivor of the Bethnal Green trio , ended up with thousands of other ISIS brides, and their children, in a Kurdish refugee camp. She's had three children since leaving Britain — all have died in infancy. The camps are bleak; a too-hard-basket full of people whose citizenships have been revoked. Begum's attempt to return to the UK sparked a legal fracas and ended with a Supreme Court denial.
But this week, the sorry saga took a fascinating turn. A newly-published book, The History of the Five Eyes, describes how ISIS go-between Mohammed al-Rashed ferried the girls from Istanbul into Syria. It also identifies al-Rashed as an asset of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. While British intelligence was scrambling to find the girls, their own close ally was aiding their excursion.
Extraordinarily (or perhaps not), when the British found out, they covered this little embarrassment up. It turns out the Brits may owe Shamima Begum a little more than the pontificating politicians and pundits care to admit.
The Best Of Times
Big dinosaur alert
Portuguese paleontologists presume (say that 10 times quickly) that their newfound sauropod is the largest of its kind ever discovered in Europe. Around 150m years ago this specimen was once a 25m long, 12m tall herbivore with an adorable and slightly humorous figure: chunky legs and a tiny head. We just love a big dinosaur, don't we folks?
Chitin electrolytes
A battery-powered crab? A trifling matter for children. But a crab-powered battery? Now you're cooking with gas. Chitin — the versatile chemical that makes up the crusty bit of crustaceans — already has proven uses in biomedical engineering and medicine. Now, this shell-stiffener has been transformed into an electrolyte membrane to create far more energy efficient batteries. Thank you, little scuttlers. Now, someone pass the mallet. I'm just joking. Don't write in to complain.
The Worst Of Times
We cooked it
Last week, Californian electric vehicle owners rejoiced in the fact that the state was banning the sale of gas-powered cars from 2035. A vindication for leading the way on EVs. This week, those very same EV owners were asked to not charge their cars , as the grid falters amid a blistering heatwave . It's almost as if the infrastructure needed to be worked on a decade ago instead of fluffing about arguing about the underlying science.
Never ever post about Saudi Arabia
Two weeks ago, we touched on the Saudis handing Salma al-Shehab a 30-year sentence for posting some mean Tweets. This week, the Kingdom has outdone itself. Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani was slapped with a 45-year term for "using the internet to tear the social fabric". We hope someone asks Cameron Smith a question about this at the next LIV golf tournament. Don't even bother with Norman.
Highlights
The Image
La Tomatina. Say no more. Photo supplied by The Telegraph .
The Quote
"Bro, how the fuck did I get raided and Boris Johnson is here? Let me put Boris on my phone. Wagwan, Boris? Ha ha ha."
– British rapper Splinter Sales awoke to police battering his door on Wednesday. Whether the raid was anticipated is between Splinter Sales and his conscience, but a guaranteed rude shock was seeing Prime Minister Boris Johnson there among the officers. Thank your lucky stars he caught it on video .
The Numbers
25 years old
- Leonardo DiCaprio (47) and Camila Morrone (25) broke up this week. This isn't standard fare at inkl but the latest split adds to a fascinating body of evidence: Leo will simply not date women older than 25. Over more than two decades the actor has called it quits with eight different partners — none who made it beyond a quarter of a century. If you want to do some sleuthing at home we'd suggest Googling "what age does the human brain fully develop?"
Two cups of tea a day
- It will lower your risk of mortality by 9-13%. Doctors orders . Statistics was never our strong point but these numbers seem to suggest that 20 cups of tea per day is the elixir of life.
The Headlines
"Potholes are getting worse... and now you can blame Vladimir Putin" — The Telegraph
"The E-Bike Is a Monstrosity" — The Atlantic
The Special Mention
We can't go past Micky Dolenz this week. The Californian musician of Monkees fame is suing the FBI for access to a file it kept on his band. It takes a discerning listener indeed to catch the subversive lyrics and revolutionary undertones of 'Porpoise Song', 'Pleasant Valley Sunday' and 'Daydream Believer'.
The Best Long Reads
- Businessweek watches white terrorism on YouTube
- Financial Times is left sicker by long Covid
- Foreign Policy visits battleground Sāo Paulo
The Answer...
Japan number one ! No competition. Sorry, America: a poor showing from the nation that's gorging itself on high-fructose corn syrup.
