Welcome. Here’s some of what’s happening in the world this week. Today is Saturday, September 16, 2023.
Today we’re all over the world – Spain, Slovakia and Germany, China and Vietnam, and the Arctic – we’re talking migration, politicians acting tepidly and more. Plus, we have a nice, music oriented selection of further weekend reading.
CHINA INTRIGUE: President Xi is expected to skip the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting next week in New York. He also skipped last week’s G20 summit in Delhi. Mr. Xi may be shunning existing world institutions, perhaps having decided he’d prefer to build a bigger BRICS more to his liking. Or maybe he just has his hands full back home.
Some writers have made, if not quite a career, at least a serious hobby of portraying Xi Jinping as Master of the Universe and Acute Threat to Taiwan, the United States and Mankind. He may in fact be, but he may also not be quite the supreme leader we thought he was inside the Zhongnanhai Chinese leadership compound.
Besides and apart from the substantial economic problems arising from overbuilding that have been in the news over these last months, Reuters reports that Defence Minister Li Shangfu has been missing from public view for more than two weeks and is under investigation in a military equipment procurement scandal.
In the charming way of Chinese politics, Li was last seen in Beijing on Aug. 29 when he gave the key-note speech at a security forum with African nations. By September 3rd his scheduled visit to Vietnam was cancelled because of a "health condition" according to Vietnamese officials.
Recall that Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to the U.S. Qin Gang was abruptly replaced in July, in a move that also remains unexplained. As far as we know, Li and Qin are still two of China's five State Councilors who comprise something called the “Executive Meeting of the State Council,” a decision-making cabinet position. But I guess we’re not sure.
The US Ambassador to China Nick Burns isn’t in a diplomatic position to declaim publicly about all the palace intrigue, but US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emmanuel, who sits at a remove of both the 1300 miles between Beijing and Tokyo and a great deal of Burns’s decorum, apparently is. He has compared Xi Jinping’s cabinet to the Agatha Christie novel And Then There Were None.
•••••
SPAIN: Yolanda Díaz, an acting deputy prime minister, has been in Brussels to meet the Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, hoping to win his Junts party’s support, which would allow the caretaker Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez to form Spain’s next government following a close July election.
Puigdemont fled Catalonia in 2017 for exile in Brussels to head off arrest on sedition charges. On Thursday, a Spanish court dropped those charges but Puigdemont is still charged with disobedience and embezzlement.
Agreement to the Junts party’s terms will be tough; demands include a broad amnesty proposed to “cover more than 1,400 nationalists who have either been convicted or sanctioned, or who are still facing legal proceedings” associated with the 2017 Catalan independence vote. The Constitutional Court of Spain declared that vote unconstitutional.
The meeting in Brussels between Díaz and Puigdemont set off fireworks among Spain’s opposition. From a London Times article: “Today the government is meeting a fugitive from justice in Brussels. They have gone to negotiate an amnesty contrary to the constitution and self-determination referendums,” Alberto Feijóo, leader of the conservative Popular Party, said. “Pedro Sánchez’s interests cannot determine the politics of our country.”
•••••
HIGH NORTH: Two interesting stories from the High North News this week. One questions the efficacy of sanctions against Russia by pointing out that Russia’s natural gas company Novatek continues to receive prefabricated modules from China, apparently for use in liquified natural gas trains for Russian company Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project. LNG trains convert natural gas into LNG, which is a liquid form of natural gas that is easier to transport. As in, to China.
The story claims that Rotterdam-based “Dutch Red Box Group, owner and operator of two ice-capable heavy lift carriers, Audax and Pugnax, has completed several shipments” of these components during 2022 and 2023 despite sanctions. Here’s the story.
It goes hand in hand with the second story: Russia Sends Oil Tanker Without Ice Protection Through Arctic For First Time.
The article reports that a Russian ship named Leonid Loza departed from the Umba FSO anchorage outside Murmansk in the early hours of 11 September 2023 with destination Ningbo, China.
Best I can tell, normally, or at least, up until now, ships have required extra reinforcement to transit the Arctic route, so that if ice floes batter their hulls they might not be penetrated. But in its eagerness to get oil to China, Russia has decided to forego that extra protection, loaded up a tanker with oil and set off. In what the High North News article says:
"will likely become a watershed moment for the Arctic, Russia has dispatched the first-ever conventional oil tanker across its Northern Sea Route.”
Meanwhile:
GREENLAND: It had the promise of a tense race-against-time thriller. Ship aground on Monday is such a remote place the closest help wouldn’t arrive for days, and even that was only weather permitting. Then word came Tuesday that two passengers were in isolation with coronavirus.
As it turned out, by Thursday a fishing vessel had pulled the ship free.
Having once visited east Greenland, I can testify that Tasiilaq, the most populous community on the eastern coast with about 2000 inhabitants, is as remote as you might want, an hour’s flight across the north Atlantic from Iceland, and Alpefjord, where the Ocean Explorer is stuck, looks six or seven hundred miles further north, “240km from the closest settlement, Ittoqqortoormiit, which itself is nearly 1,400km from the country’s capital, Nuuk.”
About getting to Tasiilaq, here’s a short excerpt from one of my books:
“You can’t fly to Tasiilaq, the biggest town on the eastern side of Greenland, for lack of sufficient flat space for an airstrip. So we have flown to a gravel strip called Kulusuk Airport. To get to Tasiilaq we must traverse the mouth of the Ammassalik fjord. We booked that online and all we know is, get to Kulusuk and ask for Robert.
We can see our destination twenty kilometers across the fjord behind a few icebergs and a coastline of precambrian rock thrust from the sea long before humanity, possibly even contemporaneous with the first life on Earth.
We invade and insult the silence with our prissy roll aboard carry-on bags, scraping and skipping the damned things down the rough gravel. Show more respect and stand still, and the quiet closes up around you as a vehement, absolute thing.
A man from Cologne with a massive backpack walks ahead of us. He has arrived with no itinerary beyond walking for two weeks. His pack reaches up past his head, bulging with two weeks of freeze-dried food and powdered milk.
Once he walked from Ilullisat to Sisimiut in western Greenland, and that is far, far farther than from here to Tasiilaq and then clear around the island, but that time he was advised that there was no danger of polar bears and he has yet to be so advised here. His itinerary may have to be revised based on local information. Right now he plans to circumambulate Ammassalik Island. He puts great store in the advice of Robert, but none of us know how to find him.
Airport to harbor, perhaps a twenty-minute walk. No boats in sight. Either side of the gravel path, just rock and a little but not much tenacious flora. Our destination across the water is low and bare with mountains rising snow-capped, glaciers embedded toward the top. Clouds tease the ridges but do not suggest a threat of rain. In between individual icebergs, not a field, rise like several-story buildings.
It turns out that two tiny Danish-built fiberglass Poca speedboats, so low slung that the dock hides them both, bob in the sea beyond the dock. Two Greenlandic men stand down there on the shore below the dock, neither in so much as a jacket, enjoying the northern summer.
We ask, “Robert?” and the younger man, with no English, shakes his head no, “Christian.” We and the backpacker, who is expecting the same ride, are at a bit of a loss until we work out, through gestures and goodwill, that Christian is here on behalf of Robert. For us, that is good.
The dock is too high for the boats, and so we scramble down onto rocks to climb aboard and Christian takes the backpacker, Mirja and me screaming across the fjord toward a similar spot on the far shore. Christian, hair stood up to a greased crown, drives standing, and stops us dead in the water alongside this iceberg, then that one, so we can take photos.
We clamber out on a rock where there is no dock at all. Christian motions without words, “up that way,” and makes no move to leave the boat. So off we scramble, not having paid anybody for anything, off to find someone who wants our money. Robert, maybe.”
•••••
VIETNAM: As we discussed last week, the US president traveled to Hanoi last weekend to elevate the US/Vietnam relationship to what they’re calling a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Vietnam and the U.S. only established postwar relations in 1995, and Vietnam counts only four other nations on the level of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. They are China, Russia, India and South Korea.
In the long joint statement issued by the White House, the two leaders did a whole lot of underscoring fundamental principles, supporting dialogue and reaffirming commitments. The Vietnamese leader called it a "momentous occasion" and the U.S. president marveled at "how far and how fast we’ve come."
•
While there, the administration made whatever hay was to be made of 80 year old President Biden’s having taken a five day trip around the world, as evidence of his vitality. To get all that way in five days the president would have been far too busy to stop and enjoy the street scene in Hanoi, as Barack Obama and Anthony Bourdain did at Bun Cha Huong Lien restaurant there in 2018. (By the way, the restaurant owners encased the table where they sat, and its settings, right down to the beer bottles, in glass.)
That’s too bad for the president because Vietnam is a fabulous, exotic, vibrant place to visit, with engaging people, vibrant culture, unique geography and delicious cuisine.
Striking a pose as an eighty year old who feels not a day over, say, 67 (well, maybe 68 some mornings) is politics, but as to the strategic value of the visit, I’m going to fall in more behind the CSIS’s Huong Le Thu, who wrote on Tuesday that rather than a fundamental departure in relations, it’s more of a hedge by the Vietnamese leadership.
Vietnam is expecting visits from Chinese leaders in the next few weeks. Foreign Minister Wang Yi is scheduled to visit next week, September 21st and 22nd to discuss strengthening bilateral relations and cooperation on further trade and investment. Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan is also expected to visit in the coming weeks.
There are a thousand more photos in the Vietnam Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
•••••
If you’re reading this as an email your provider may clip this post before the end. Try clicking on ‘view entire message’ to see the whole thing, or you can always read all content at Common Sense and Whiskey online.
•••••
AfD: A hard right extremist named Jörg Prophet captured 42.1 percent of the vote for mayor of the central German town of Nordhausen last weekend. He faces independent incumbent Kai Buchmann, who trailed with 23.7 percent, in a runoff on September 24th. A victory in the town of 42,000 would make Prophet the first Alternative für Deutschland mayor in Germany.
Director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation Jens-Christian Wagner has said that Prophet “would be barred from attending commemorative events out of respect for the victims.” Buchenwald is about thirty miles south of Nordhausen.
•••••
SLOVAKIA: Within the span of the next six weeks we may see two populist electoral victories in central Europe. Parliamentary elections in Slovakia are September 30th, and in Poland on October 15th. I’ve written at some length about the Polish race, so let’s have a quick look at Slovakia.
All evidence points to a victory by the party known as SMER, fronted by former Prime Minister Robert Fico. Fico may be in tune with majority Slovakian opinion just now. He tilts pro-Russian on the war. Fico has promised “to end military aid to Ukraine and veto ‘pointless’ European Union sanctions on Russia.” He has promised that, “if elected, he would — as a matter of policy — refuse to meet Slovakia’s NATO obligation to spend 2% of its GDP on defense, and would block Ukraine from joining NATO.”
In a poll by a Bratislava think tank called Globsec, Slovakians voiced the lowest support for Ukraine in the region, as we see here:
Slovakia most recently became sovereign in 1992 when it separated from Czechia (from what was then Czechoslovakia), in the so-called Velvet Divorce. It shared an uncommon circumstance with the countries of former Yugoslavia, namely that its sovereignty suddenly elevated a provincial town without much diplomatic experience, or representation, to the status of national capital.
Anyone who has visited Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, for example, will know what I mean; a sleepy town is suddenly remade into a national capital. Even smaller capitals of older European countries – Helsinki and Lisbon come to mind – have benefitted over time from the local diplomatic presence and representation of other cultures. Plus, ethnic food is way better.
One would think Bratislava, in Slovakia’s case, would benefit from its close train connection to Vienna (the fastest trains take just over an hour) and its pretty location on the Danube River. But Bratislava isn’t a big tourist destination and it’s the capital of a mainly rural country. As such Slovakia maintains a lingering influence from the east.
•••••
MIGRATION: “Migration — and the West’s reaction to it — is one of the defining stories of our age. At the moment, it’s a tale of disaster and death, cruelty and complicity. We urgently need to find a better approach.”
The quote comes from a opinion piece by Sally Hayden in the New York Times. The problem is, migration is a losing issue for democratic governments everywhere and with the overlay of climate change, there is just about no scenario in which that will change.
The problem of mass movement of humans is essentially insoluble. As people flee increasingly uninhabitable places, migration will only increase, handing demagogues, xenophobes and populists an enduring, ready made issue.
If governments everywhere are stuck with a permanent, losing issue, with no prospect of it easing, in fact with the only prospects being that conflict around the issue will be stoked by populist rhetoric, democratic governance looks to remain under strong populist pressure as far into the future as we can squint.
•••••
POLITICIANS ACTING TEPIDLY:
Kier Starmer is criticized for lack of charisma. Rafael Bahr says it’s because “quiet but ruthless opposition appears to be in tune with this cynical age.” That’s one way of looking at it. It may also be that the Labour leader sees the trouble ahead for the UK and knows he can’t keep any grandiose campaign promises.
Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas wasn’t sure how to frame her scandal until she decided on ‘witch hunt.’ It seems her husband’s company is still doing business in Russia while she heads a staunchly pro-Ukrainian Estonian government. This week she settled on the defense that it’s political opportunism by her opponents. “It is an excuse to waste time in parliament and obstruct our progressive agenda,” she said.
Justin Trudeau had a tough G20 (1, 2). Relations with summit host Narendra Modi are chilly right now. India is critical of Sikh separatists in Canada and has even had to deny involvement in the murder of a Sikh independence campaigner in British Columbia in June.
The last place the Canadian P.M. would want to be stuck for two days is in India, but that’s what happened when his Royal Canadian Air Force CC-150 Polaris broke down and a technician had to be flown in with the part to fix it. “How he's filled the last two days is unclear. With no further diplomatic engagements, he's thought to have spent the time at his hotel, according to media reports.”
•••••
FINALLY: What do you call a fly without wings? A walk.
South African scientists John Midgley and Burgert Muller have found a flightless fly called Atherimorpha latipennis near the Afriski mountain resort in Lesotho. More here.
•••••
WEEKEND READING
Every weekend I suggest worthwhile reading that’s guaranteed to improve your posture, your online dating prospects, and make you an all around better person. Read a dozen articles, lose five pounds. Here we go:
•
It's a spy thriller that has the potential to change the course of international politics: A year ago, a secret commando blew up the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Since then, investigators have been searching for the perpetrators. The leads they have found are extremely politically sensitive. Kyiv did it.
•
For centuries, the ability to pick up Irish stones had deep practical and spiritual meaning. Stones was used in tests of manhood, at funerals, at weddings in celebration of the couple, and used, sort of, in job interviews. What happens when you don’t have enough toys.
•
Veteran broadcaster Alan Whicker reveals his globetrotting tips. A well-travelled man.
•
Dear Duolingo: Are any words the same in all languages?
•
Even those of us who can’t play a musical instrument or lack a sense of rhythm can perceive and enjoy music. Are we alone? Are Humans the Only Musical Species?
•
It may be that beat keeping in the animal kingdom is much more widespread than previously thought. Meet Ronan.
•
Is music an exclusively human thing? A new study says no.
•
Look beneath the surface of Bach’s music and you will find a fascinating hidden world of numerology and cunning craft. Maestro of more than music.
•
Let’s say that you’re a young composer and an orchestra decides to commission you. You spend six months, you haul ass to the concert hall, the concert happens, you see above the stage a few dangling microphones, so you should be able to hear a recording? Not true. Struggling to hear your own music.
•
Researchers believe that artificial intelligence may allow us to speak to other species. Can We Talk to Whales?
•
The ship on Gilligan’s Island got its name from the former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow: ‘Gilligan’s Island’: How the SS Minnow Got its Name.
•
An in-depth, meaty explainer on the state of Spanish politics. It’s complicated. “Thus, as conservative and liberal Spanish newspapers alike ruefully note, the fate of Spain’s government led by PSOE depends on successful negotiations with a fugitive from justice who wants to dismember the country.”
•••••
Thank you for reading Common Sense and Whiskey. This post is public so feel free to share it.
While you’re here, why not sign up for a subscription? You get three posts a week and subscriptions start at the entirely reasonable rate of free.
Something like 20,000 of my travel photos, currently from 113 countries and territories, are on EarthPhotos.com. And join 2,100 people who follow my constantly updated Twitter list of 200 experts whose job it is to follow Russia’s War on Ukraine.
Tuesday’s travel tale is titled Explorers, and Where to Explore.
Good weekend. See you then.