🔎 Picks of the Week — September 4
New Lebanese PM, Taliban Return to War, China Detains Another Journalist, Russian Opposition Leader Poisoned, Hoboken Oil Lawsuit, Facebook Bans Political Ads
Hello! Happy Friday and welcome to another edition of Picks of the Week. Today we travel to Lebanon where a new prime minister has been appointed to lead the country out of its crises, to Afghanistan where new research suggests that former Taliban prisoners have resumed fighting, to China where an Australian journalist has been detained and likely tortured, to Germany where the leader of the opposition in Russia is recovering in a coma after being poisoned, to New Jersey where Hoboken has become the first city in the Garden State to sue in the name of climate change, to Silicon Valley where Facebook has finally decided to ban fake political ads, to Slovakia where a businessman has been cleared of the murder of an influential journalist, and to France where a philosopher has disowned his philosopher son, but not because the son stole his father’s mistress. Wait, what?
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New Lebanon PM
We start this week in Lebanon where a new prime minister has been appointed, almost a month after the warehouse explosion ripped through the city killing 190 people (and counting) and injuring more than 6,500. Mustapha Adib was a relatively unknown ambassador to Germany just 24 hours before his appointment by four former Lebanese prime ministers, all Sunni Muslims. Lebanon’s sectorial power-sharing agreement between its three largest religious groups — Shia Muslims, Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims — means that the speaker of parliament is always Shia, the president always Maronite and the prime minister always Sunni. Adib must now form a government to lead a country in crisis on many fronts. Lebanon’s economy has been in turmoil for several years, while Hezbollah’s power and influence in parliament continues to strengthen, all amid soaring Covid-19 cases in a country that barely had the medical resources to cope before the pandemic.
Taliban Prisoners Return to Battlefield
Moving to Afghanistan now where a new confidential report suggests that the majority of Taliban prisoners released as part of an agreement between the Taliban and the U.S. are returning to the battlefield to resume their jihad against the U.S.-backed Afghan government. While the study conducted for the Afghan Peace Dialogue Project at Queen’s University in Belfast only profiled 108 former Taliban prisoners, the researchers found that two thirds of them have recommenced active roles within the insurgency, and many of them have carried out revenge assassinations. On a more positive note, 24 percent of the former prisoners said they “will categorically not re-join the conflict”, mainly because they want to return to civilian life.
Why the Taliban can’t be defeated
China Detains Australian Journalist
Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei has been detained in China, while the Australian government have yet to be told why she’s been held. Cheng has been a business news anchor for China’s English-language state media channel CGTN for the past eight years. She’s reportedly been taken into “residential surveillance at a designated location”, a form of detention classified by the UN as a type of enforced disappearance. One UN human rights expert told The Guardian “Once [Cheng] breaks the 15 day [mark] she’ll technically be a torture victim. She’s not at risk of being tortured, she is technically being tortured.”
Russian Opposition Leader Poisoned
From one autocratic regime to another as the leader of the opposition in Russia is making a recovery after being poisoned two weeks ago. Alexei Navalny is currently in a coma in a German hospital after reportedly being slipped the lethal Novichok nerve agent, which has been used on multiple Russian nationals, perhaps most infamously on Sergei Skripal in 2018, who had provided the UK’s MI6 intelligence agency with secrets from his time in the Russian military. The BBC has pieced together the events that led up to Navalny’s poisoning. The focus now narrows on whether the Kremlin ordered the attack.
Hoboken Sues Oil Companies
In New Jersey, the city of Hoboken has become the first in the state to sue ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, and other large oil companies. The city alleges that in order to protect profits, the institutions intentionally gave consumers, investors and the general public false information about the grave damage oil causes to the environment. Like we’ve covered in this newsletter before on the opioid crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s often left up to individual cities and states to take the lead because of inaction at the federal level. And Hoboken’s move is just the latest after D.C.’s attorney general sued four of the world’s largest oil and gas companies in June.
ExxonMobil misled the public on climate change
Facebook Bans Political Ads
Staying in the U.S. as Facebook has announced it will ban new political ads in the week before the U.S. general election on November 3. Mark Zuckerberg warned yesterday that confusion and deliberate misinformation are more likely because of the Covid-19 pandemic and deep political divisions. Thanks to Zuckerberg’s proactiveness, the move comes about a year too late, after he appeared on Capitol Hill in October to answer questions about this very issue. In his feisty exchange with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congresswoman masterfully highlighted how she could post a false ad on the platform about how her Republican opponent supported the Green New Deal, and explained how corrosive this was to democracy. While it’s good that he’s now publicly accepted this, it’s far too little and far too late.
AOC grills Zuckerberg on Facebook allowing false political ads
Slovak Tycoon Cleared of Murdering Journalist
Slovakia’s March election was dominated by public anger over the 2018 murder of investigative journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova. Mass protests led to former prime minster Robert Fico and the country’s police chief stepping down. But six months later and a court has found businessman Marian Kocner not guilty of ordering the hit, though another man has been imprisoned for 25 years for his part in the murder. Kocner appeared in leaked police documents from 2005 that linked him with organized crime. Kuciak dedicated his career to investigating Slovakia’s most powerful, focusing on tax fraud and corruption that made many of the country’s elite business tycoons extremely uncomfortable. The last article Kuciak wrote for Aktuality, titled “Italian Mafia in Slovakia; Its Tentacles Reach As Far As Politics”, shed light on how people close to one of Italy’s most powerful mafia groups, ‘Ndrangheta, had settled in Slovakia and embezzled EU funds aimed at improving living standards in poor areas in eastern Slovakia.
French Philosopher Disowns Philosopher Son
We end in France with one of the stranger pieces of news as a famous philosopher has disowned his also famous philosopher son, after the son aired some family secrets in his new autobiographical novel. But the juicier story is how seventy-one-year-old Jean-Paul Enthoven was once the partner of singer, supermodel Carla Bruni, who also happens to be currently married to former French President Nicholas Sarkozy. In between her dealings with the father and the president, Carla left Jean-Paul for his son Raphaël. I’m exhausted after that one. See you next week for some more election coverage and world news!