“China's widening curbs on iPhone use by government staff intensified a sell-off in global tech stocks on Friday on fears Apple and its suppliers could take a hit from rising Sino-U.S. tensions and growing competition from Huawei. Apple shares tumbled 6.4% in the previous two days, wiping $190 billion from its market capitalisation, following news Beijing ordered some central government employees in recent weeks to stop using iPhones at work.” (Brenda Goh and Ben Blanchard/Reuters)
“NGŨGĨ WA THIONG’O: But are there languages of power? Of course! The language of power is the language of the ruling nation or the ruling section within a nation. I come from Kenya and my mother tongue is Gĩkũyũ, but in Kenya, English is the language of administration and of education—of power—even though 90 percent of the Kenyan population doesn’t speak it. If you want to get an education or obtain any position in government, you have to reckon with the language of power.Some of these languages of power have criminal relationships to other languages. Colonizers consciously and deliberately kill the language of the people they have conquered—and their own languages are a means of conquest. Spanish missionaries encountered highly advanced civilizations in the Americas, with unique writing systems and histories. The Spanish systematically burned these down, destroying all the written systems and materials of the Maya civilization.” (LaReviewofBooks)
“Archaeologists have long debated exactly how the tennis ball-sized ‘spheroids’ were created. Did early hominins intentionally chip away at them with the aim of crafting a perfect sphere, or were they merely the accidental byproduct of repeatedly smashing the stones like ancient hammers? Research led by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem suggests our ancestors knew what they were doing. The team of scientists examined 150 limestone spheroids dating from 1.4m years ago that were found at the ’Ubeidiya archaeological site in the north of modern-day Israel. Using 3D analysis to reconstruct the geometry of the stones, the researchers determined that their sphericalness was ‘likely to have been produced intentionally.’ The early hominins – exactly which human lineage they belonged to remains unknown – had ‘attempted to achieve the Platonic ideal of a sphere’, they said.” (The Guardian via Agence France-Presse in Paris)
“Xi Jinping has confirmed that he will not attend the G20 meetings in New Delhi next weekend. This is odd; China has been represented by its top leader since the self-styled arbiter of global commerce and cooperation was formed in 1999. Xi has presented himself as a global leader since his January 2017 speech at Davos. Why, then, is he giving New Delhi a miss? He is likely motivated by a mix of factors … Staying away will reinforce the impression which Xi wishes to build in the Global South that China is the natural leader of all nations which view the West as acting against their interests. This impression was strengthened at the BRICs summit held in South Africa and it will be the theme of the Belt and Road Forum that China hosts in Beijing this fall.” (Robert Daly/Wilson Center)
“On Friday, Nikki Haley, a Republican candidate for president, appeared on Fox. ‘The Senate is the most privileged nursing home in the country,’ she said. ‘I mean, Mitch McConnell has done some great things, and he deserves credit. But you have to know when to leave.’ A week later, and the McConnell discourse is still going.” (Betsy Morais/CJR)
“Democracy is hanging by a thread, but the most important question placed before the republic by its billion-dollar-media organizations and their million-dollar imitators is whether poor 80-year-old superfit Joe Biden is too old to serve, when a blob of sweat, sexual abuse, and general crime who eats burnt steak, ketchup, and two scoops of ice cream and purports to golf is his opponent. (Oh, yeah, he’s three years younger…). Do you live on this planet with me?” (Joan Walsh/The Nation)
“Cuban authorities said they arrested 17 people in connection to a human-trafficking ring that allegedly coaxed young Cuban men to fight for Russia against Ukraine. Earlier this week, the Cuban foreign ministry exposed a Russian trafficking operation used to entice Cubans into the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine. Cuba condemned the recruitment racket and the interior ministry said authorities were working to ‘neutralize and dismantle’ the network. On Thursday evening, César Rodríguez, a colonel with Cuba’s interior ministry, said 17 people had been arrested, including the ‘internal organizer’ of the ring, reported Reuters.” (Politico)
“Over the last few months, I have explored the many different campaigns that are being executed by the Ukrainians. Their war cannot, and should not, be seen purely through the lens of combat in southern Ukraine. There is much, much more that is occurring and that can be observed and analysed to provide insights into the war’s progress. Since the start of the Russian invasion, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have planned and executed military campaigns and operations within their borders and beyond. There are seven major Ukrainian campaigns currently being executed.” (Mick Ryan)
“Another notable guest was Mohawk chief and orator Joseph Brant, or Thayendanegea. The celebrated negotiator, the most important Native American of his day, was related to Theodosia Burr through marriage. (Aaron) Burr and his wife were also acolytes of the famed English feminist and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft. Together, they saw to it that their daughter was (uncharacteristically) schooled in the traditional male curriculum of math, history, Greek, Latin, Italian, and French. The Burrs intended for their daughter to prove that women were the intellectual equals of men; her precociousness was touted by observers and mocked by Burr’s enemies. We forget that feminist ideas were considered ridiculous by most of the leaders of America’s founding generation. In the popular imagination, Burr has always cut a tantalizing figure to both those who respected and disparaged him. Burr’s legacy has always been wrapped in myth, whether in his newest incarnation as the rapping villain in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, and the admiring historical fiction of Gore Vidal’s Burr in 1973, and as far back as the anonymous author of an 1861 book of Burr erotica. More fiction has shaped how he is remembered than careful historical analysis.” (Nancy Isenberg/Avenue)
“How does someone come to sell a kidney? In Indonesia, the answer to that question can be complex. The thorny issue of organ donation has once again come to the fore as a result of a case involving police and immigration officers accused of working with human traffickers to send as many as 122 Indonesian nationals to Cambodia, where their kidneys were harvested for sale. The case, which first hit the news in July, has now resulted in some 12 people being arrested in an effort to break a large transnational human trafficking syndicate. The victims apparently included teachers, factory workers, executives, and security guards, who all allegedly agreed to sell their kidneys in exchange for cash.” (Aisyah Llewellin/TheDiplomat)
“(Buffett) slowly built an audience, on the basis of the songs and his ease and charm at performing them. It was the experiences of that time in Key West that created the fodder and the spirit for a vast body of work and eventually a Parrothead empire. It was an essential metamorphic stage in his splendid and uniquely American journey from Mobile, Alabama, and the bars of New Orleans to his own mega-Margaritaville, his version of which ultimately involved boats and planes and friends in high places. He seems to have left no ill will in his wake.” (Nick Paumgarten/TNY)
“As someone who lived in China and studied Chinese culture, the Chinese have a very sophisticated understanding of conflict and struggle. We in the West are black/white, yes/no people. We think: We're at war--or we're not at war, in the kinetic physical sense. But Chinese [leaders] believe that they can prevail in a confrontation with the United States through non military, non directly-kinetic means. This is a different kind of struggle. This is the kind of struggle in the we have never witnessed as Americans. They are seeking to penetrate our IT systems and our organizations to steal technology on a massive basis. We think that it is their goal to be able to monitor and surveil key decision-making apparatuses in the United States so that they can anticipate what we might do. A final piece of the strategy is to place malware in critical infrastructure.” (James Fallows)
“Hours after Rolling Stone published a deeply reported story painting an ugly portrait of the culture at ‘The Tonight Show,’ I'm told the late-night host apologized to staffers who were summoned for a Thursday evening call. ‘I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,’ Fallon said. ‘I never set out to create that type of atmosphere at the show. I think sometimes I’m working with the best of the best, you guys are the top of the game.’ Whether the apology is enough to quell the furious fallout stemming from Rolling Stone's Thursday story remains to be seen. The story, written by reporter Krystie Lee Yandoli, contained a number of allegations that depicted the show as having a toxic culture ‘far outside the boundaries of what’s considered normal in the high-pressure world of late-night TV.’” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“Ukrainian forces said they had penetrated the ‘first line’ of Russian strongholds in the Zaporizhzhia region, in a sign that Kyiv is edging closer to Moscow’s sprawling network of fortified trenches along the southern front. The Ukrainian military claimed its forces were pushing towards the village of Novoprokopivka east of Robotyne, a village in Zaporizhzhia that Kyiv secured last week amid a grueling counteroffensive that is yielding incremental gains. ‘They have been successful, are consolidating their positions, inflicting artillery fire on the identified enemy targets, and conducting counter-battery operations,’ the military’s general staff said on Friday. Ukrainian soldiers have said they expect battles for control of high ground to the south and east of the village as they approach the next layer of Russian defenses. Ukraine has the long-term goal of breaking Russia’s ‘land bridge,’ which links territory it holds in the east with annexed Crimea.” (CNN)
“Moreover, unlike the Sahelian countries, Gabon’s natural resource wealth classifies it as a middle-income country, albeit an extremely unequal one with approximately one-third of the country’s 2.4 million people living below the poverty line. Its vast oil, manganese, and timber resources have attracted substantial investment, enabling it to issue several Eurobonds since 2007. Just recently, the country had negotiated a ‘debt-for-nature’ swap where $450 million of its debt was to be transferred to an eco-friendly blue bond. How and whether a military government would uphold commitments to the deal, or how possible sanctions against the country would affect interest rate repayments, remained unclear, leading to a slide in the value of the Eurobonds immediately after the coup. Thus, while previous coups mainly worried the security, humanitarian, and governance communities, the Gabon coup is the first in the region to have serious implications for financial markets.” (Danielle Resnick/Brookings)
“The migrant issue is ‘shaping up to replace crime’ as the central issue in New York's elections next year that could determine which party controls the U.S. House, Semafor recently reported.• Meanwhile, President Joe Biden's relationship with Adams has reportedly deteriorated as a result of the migrant issue, and the White House recently pushed back on criticism from local officials that it hasn't done enough to help. Immigration will also likely be a central issue in next year's presidential election.” (semafor)