On Fridays I suggest worthwhile weekend 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.
Note to subscribers: I’ve been travelling unexpectedly this week so there won’t be a Saturday column tomorrow. Today’s weekend reading is an abbreviated edition. My apologies.
First, our weekly photo quiz. Here are two photos. Can you name the country? If you can name the country, you can name the city.
The answer is down at the end of this post.
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Now, just a bit of weekend reading:
I like the idea of this Tim Harford column:
Criminal justice has always been a source of knotty problems. How to punish the guilty while sparing the innocent? Trial by ordeal was a neat solution: delegate the decision to God. In the Middle Ages, a suspect who insisted on their innocence might be asked to carry a piece of burning iron for a few paces. If the suspect’s hand was unharmed, God had pronounced them innocent.
Our modern equivalent is called “public policy” - full of ordeal-like interventions: long waits, arduous paperwork and deliberate stigma are all common policy tools. Has 21st century policy gone medieval?
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Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foreign minister Wang Yi delivered a seismic shock in Washington. There he stood between Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, and Saudi National Security Adviser Musaad bin Mohammed al-Aiban. They were awkwardly shaking hands on an agreement to reestablish mutual diplomatic ties.
Juan Cole: China Hangs Washington Out to Dry in the Middle East
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Beijing is blowing up its relationships by backing Russia.
“China’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Russian atrocities has profoundly damaged its credibility in European capitals and undercut its push for European strategic autonomy from the United States.”
China Can’t Have It Both Ways in Europe
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Also on China,
Since the end of the Cold War, which pitted Manila and Hanoi against each other on ideological lines, the two Southeast Asian nations have repeatedly found themselves on the same side whenever China flexed its muscle in the region.
Philippines-Vietnam teaming up on China in South China Sea
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Italian police say eight of a capsized boat’s 21 passengers either currently or formerly served with Italy’s secret service, and 13 had ties with Israel’s. Four died. The agents who survived the sinking left the next day. Two business jets were flown from Israel to Milan, possibly to swiftly return the surviving Israeli guests. Why were Italian and Israeli secret service agents on a boat in northern Italy?
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Thoughtful blog post from a dozen years ago about a trip to Easter Island with some nice photos, from a fellow named Murray Foote: 20th April: Easter Island (Tongariki)
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And a more celebratory blog from around the same time about a trip to Easter Island from an Australian journalist: More than Moai
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Geography lesson: learn about the difference between enclaves and exclaves at The Encyclopedia of World Problems and read about some examples here: enclaves and exclaves, and here: accidental enclaves and exclaves,
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An Illustrated Guide to Mouth Gestures and Their Meanings Around the World
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Pretty much whatever Christopher de Bellaigue writes is worth your time. Like this in The Atlantic: Talk Like an Iranian.
Christopher de Bellaigue also writes frequently in the New York Review of Books, and as a book suggestion, I enjoyed Rebel Land: Unraveling the Riddle of History in a Turkish Town
And while we’re talking books, here are several books about Iran’s neighborhood: there’s Thomas de Waal's richly reported Black Garden (that's what "Karabakh" means), which is set just across Armenia's eastern border in Azerbaijan. Go ahead and polish off your expertise about the southern Caucasus with Bread and Ashes by Tony Anderson, on travels in Georgia. Also in the region, see Towers of Stone by Wojciech Jagielski, reporter for the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza,
The Man who Tried to Save the World by Scott Anderson, about aid worker Fred Cuny in the north Caucasus, Chienne de Guerre by Anna Nivat, incredibly brave war reporting from Chechnya, Beslan: The Tragedy of School Number 1 by Timothy Phillips on the nightmare in North Ossetia, Thomas Goltz's books Azerbaijan Diary and Chechnya Diary, and a primer, another book from Thomas de Waal, The Caucasus: An Introduction. Lastly, one more from Christopher de Bellaigue, In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs, a memoir of Iran.
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The answer to this week’s photo quiz? It’s Panama, capital city, Panama City. That’s Casco Viejo, the old town.
There are a few more photos in the Panama Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
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No Saturday column tomorrow. For the Tuesday travel column, we’ll shake things up with a trip to Côte d’Ivoire for Laundry Day In Abidjan.
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