Talking Points
- Barbados became a republic and honoured a homegrown queen
- Xiaomara Castro became the first female president of Honduras
- Tabloid royal drama results: Meghan Markle 2 – The Mail 0
- Messi won his 7th Ballon d'Or over 53-goal Lewandowski
- Kyiv accused Moscow of attempting to foment a coup
- The WTA boycotted China over Peng Shuai's 'coercion'
- Uganda sent troops into the DRC to hunt militias
- Omicron reinfection was shown to be three times more likely
- A scare in Aberdeen raised concerns about rusty pilots
- Twitter's Jack Dorsey stepped down (for good this time)
Dive deeper
Ghislaine Maxwell has finally got her day in court. America is still grappling with the aftermath of billionaire child abuser Jeffrey Epstein's death. This week we warily re-entered the sordid and perplexing affair of child-trafficking right under the noses of the country's elites.
Lolita flights
It's a little too early in the 2020s to be throwing around "trial of the decade" but we can be certain that this one will make the short-list. This week Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial opened in New York. The court is packed—as are the overflow rooms.The British socialite heiress is facing eight charges relating to the recruitment and transportation of underage girls on behalf of the late Jeffrey Epstein. The Thurgood Marshall Courthouse may tower over its street in lower Manhattan, but it is presently cast entirely in Epstein's shadow. The billionaire child abuser's name was all over the indictments – Maxwell's trial is in some ways the stand-in for the trial Epstein's victims were robbed of after his untimely death. The nature of those relationships is at the very heart of this case.
Prosecutor Alison Moe's opening argument portrayed Ghislaine — daughter of the world-historically suspect figure of Robert Maxwell — as Epstein's top lieutenant. A predator who pimped out underage girls to guarantee her own jet-set lifestyle. The 'lady of the house' presiding over a den of iniquity. The details are galling. Two 14-year-olds, a 16-year-old, and a 17-year-old. Each met Maxwell and Epstein between 1994 and 2002, were promised mentorship (and money), and were groomed for sex. Maxwell's defence was crystallised in Laura Menninger's opening statement, "Ever since Eve was tempting Adam with the apple, women have been blamed for the bad behaviour of men." In this version of events, Maxwell was indeed a long-time confidante and former lover. But she was also, first and foremost, another victim of Epstein's manipulation. A hapless figure then, a scapegoat today. The case, the defence argued, was about memory, manipulation, and money .
Unanswered questions
'Jane' was the first of Maxwell's accusers to give evidence. Her story, given in great detail, was one of a 14-year-old child groomed by a pair of adults at a music fair. She was gently offered inducements to spend time at Epstein's Palm Beach residence for coaching and mentorship — sessions which developed over time into sexual abuse. Maxwell was not only present during the abuse but on some occasions also participated in it. It was fairly damning.
Late in the week, Menninger took a blowtorch to those claims. Under withering cross-examination 'Jane' conceded her current testimony stood in conflict with earlier, misleading statements to the authorities. In those interviews she had not been certain that Maxwell was ever present at the time of abuse. The defence found multiple discrepancies with the timeline. It is worth pausing here to remember that while we don't know everything about this case, we do have plenty of evidence about what happens when children are sexually abused. It is common for memory functions to be compromised in what is believed to be a cognitive trauma response. A forensic examination of memory through the tabling of various documents and statements is imperfect at the best of times and nonsensical at the worst.
Still to come are the testimonies of three more accusers and dozens of witnesses. It will be a slog of drawn out legal manoeuvring and pugnacious cross-examination. What does justice even look like in a case like this? Moe may convince 12 jurors that Maxwell was Epstein's right hand, or Menninger might sway them by shredding the accusers. A result either way will not lay this matter to rest. It is part of the culture war – a symptom of the malaise afflicting America's upper crust. There are those who believe America is run by evil paedophile billionaires. And for them, this is an open-and-shut case: a child-abusing billionaire who hung out with presidents, princes, and movie stars . But you don't need to be an unhinged conspiracist to be fascinated by the unanswered questions in this case.
Worldlywise
Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization
Jackson Women's Health Organization, known locally as the Pink House , is the last abortion clinic in the state of Mississippi. It is ground zero in the war over reproductive rights in America. The clinic is regularly besieged by anti-abortion/pro-life activists with megaphones. They see the Pink House as anathema to their religious beliefs. On the sidewalk, 'clinic escorts' try to usher in clients unmolested. In 2018, Mississippi's state legislature passed a ban on abortions at or after 15 weeks – a direct challenge to Roe v Wade protections which safeguard the procedure until viability (roughly 24 weeks). In the not-too-distant future, far from the standover tactics on a street corner in Jackson, in a mahogany and marble finished room in Washington, a bigger challenge looms.
A fifty-year dispute over abortion rights, religious freedom, and constitutional law may shift rapidly in the coming months. The overwhelmingly conservative Supreme Court bench has shown its strongest willingness yet to whittle down or kill off Roe v Wade entirely. By upholding the 2018 Mississippi law, the door will be flung open for dozens of other states to push for even stricter restrictions on abortions. There is plenty of good analysis about, try the following from conservative , liberal , and libertarian publishers.
What is inarguable is that, regardless of the legal and moral considerations of abortions, they are procedures that are best suited to clinical environments. Decades of data from around the world prove that more stringent restrictions on abortions produce worse health outcomes for women and children.
You can almost hear the excitement from Democrat fundraisers at the chance to have their 2022 campaigns bolstered by a hot button issue like reproductive rights. Indeed, some GOP talking heads grumbled that a win in the court could harm their chances at winning congress outright next year. But the decades-long effort to stack the court with conservative justices may have spiked their cannons. The Democrats can concede that the process of selecting judges is hopelessly compromised — but then what? There's little political will among liberals to stack the court as it would be an admission that constitutional adjudication is essentially a function of political power. Winning the social argument is not much use if you keep losing the legal one.
Resigned to the generation wars
In 1914, all it took was cigarettes, football, and humanity to win the Christmas truce on the Western Front. A century later, we've seen another truce, this time in the generation war between boomers and millennials. This truce too is built on a shared interest: no one wants to go back to work. There is a global worker shortage, and phenomena at either end of the career ladder are worsening it. On the top rungs, Baby Boomers are riding surging stock and house prices all the way to an early retirement. On the bottom, millennials are asking whether, in the words of Miley Cyrus , it’s really all about the climb.
First, the Baby Boomers. So far, 3 million have taken an early retirement, according to analysis published last month . Many were unable to find employment again after being laid off, while others left the workforce to limit their risk of infection. But a surging stock market and rising house prices have also given many better-off workers a financial cushion for early retirement. Take Monique Hanis , 60, who retired from her communications executive role in Washington D.C. in July. She has already had an offer to return to work but she and her husband (also retired) want to “do things while we still can.”
At the foot of the career ladder, millennials are questioning whether they want to hop on at all. Five years ago Lua Huazhong , 31, quit his factory job in China, rode his bike 1,200 miles to Tibet, and has lived on USD$60 a month ever since. In April he wrote a blog post called “Lying Flat Is Justice” and Chinese millennials saw his story as an allegory for their times, where many are pushed to exhaustion by China’s brutal ‘996’ work culture. The tang ping or ‘lying flat’ movement is a silent resistance against Beijing’s prosperity narrative. But it’s not just Chinese millennials who are ‘chilling’.
Young workers in other economies are enjoying a rare thing: bargaining power. In August, a record 4.3 million Americans voluntarily quit their jobs, including 1 in 14 workers in hospitality (a sector primarily staffed by young people). Employers are trying everything they can to lure and keep staff, including $75,000 ‘stay bonuses’ for managers. Is this the dawn of a workers' economy? Growing union membership in the U.S. and a global trend towards flexible working arrangements may signal a shift in power. But by ‘lying flat’ today, millennials might be foregoing the investment riches carrying older generations to early retirement (assuming that would be an achievable goal to begin with). On the bright side, remote work has allowed some cunning millennials to pull in a double income by moonlighting two jobs . Fake it till you make it.
The best of times
Wall Street coral pickers
A clever team from the University of Queensland has applied a Nobel-winning economic model to direct resources towards at-risk coral reefs. Modern portfolio theory has been around for yonks, but this is the first time its been used to maximise survivability, rather than returns. Most of our coral reefs won't survive our warming oceans, but this team has identified the 50 best candidates for conservation efforts. Is this what they call ESG?
22 hours in a leaky boat
Lucky. Sodden. This 69-year-old Japanese fisher was pulled from the waters off the coast of Kagoshima 22 hours after his boat flipped over in heavy weather. The coast guard that found him clinging to the propeller of his capsized vessel described it as a miracle.
The worst of times
The price of defending land
A well-known Chilean environmental activist who campaigned against major dam projects was found murdered this week. Javiera Rojas, who helped successfully block the Tranca dam in 2016, was bound, killed, and dumped in Antofagasta region. More land defenders and environmental activists are killed in Latin America than any other region.
Australia outdoes itself
Australia is committing to selling fossil fuels for another generation to come with the development of a massive gas project. The exploitation of the Scarborough gas field some 375km off the coast of Western Australia will produce 1.3bn tonnes of CO2 over its lifetime. That is three times more than the country's annual emissions.
Weekend Reading
The image
The quote
"In the last five years the bee population has dropped by a third. If bees were to disappear from the face of the Earth, humans would have just four years left to live."
– A plaque at a South Australian shopping centre attributed this shocking quote to David Attenborough . In the local parlance, this is what we call "putting a bit of mayo on it". Not only is the quote over-exaggerated, Attenborough didn't even say it. This week the famed conservationist wrote to the Tea Tree Plaza centre to have it taken down.
The numbers
20% disappears in a week
- The Turkish lira has crashed . It's shed nearly half its value in 2021 and lost a fifth last week alone! Monetary interventions to lower interest rates were intended to spark growth but have detonated what little remaining faith there was in the currency.
$1,900,000,000,000 in lost revenue
- The global tourism industry missed out on a fair few coins in 2021 according to this report .
The headline
"The ostentatious story of the ‘young pope’ Leo X: his pet elephant, the cardinal he killed and his anal fistula" – The Conversation .
The special mention
This 'mythic' white sperm whale was spotted off the coast of Jamaica this week. It's Moby Dick. Really. That or the spirit of the British royal family got lost on the way out of Barbados.
A few choice long-reads
- Fantastic reading from The Atlantic on a story that any film lover knows intimately: America is running out of ideas.
- This is like a deceased lot auction at maximum scale. Meet the companies buying whatever is in abandoned cargo containers. A great read from Businessweek.
- Here's The Economist with a read we all need: what Omicron means for the world economy.
