Monocle on Sunday, January 21, 2024 – Georgina Godwin, Charles Hecker and Latika Bourke on the weekend’s biggest talking points. We also speak to Monocle’s editorial director, Tyler Brûlé, in Paris and Monocle’s correspondent, Mary Fitzgerald, reporting from Granada, Spain this week.
Category Archives: Politics
Saturday Morning: News And Stories From London
Monocle on Saturday, January 20, 2024: What are the key takeaways from the interview with German defence minister, Boris Pistorius? Which country is the common link in the recent Middle Eastern conflicts, and why?
Join Georgina Godwin and Austrian journalist Tessa Szyszkowitz for this and more from the week’s news and culture. Plus: Monocle’s Lilian Fawcett visits Singapore’s international art fair, ART SG, to find out how Singapore is trying to establish itself as a global art hub.
The New York Times Magazine- January 21, 2024
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 19, 2024): The new issue features ‘The Whale Who Went AWOL’ – How do you solve a problem like Hvaldmir?; How Group Chats Rule the World – They quietly became the de facto spaces to share dumb jokes, grief or even plans for an insurrection…
The Whale Who Went AWOL
Hvaldimir escaped captivity and became a global celebrity. Now, no one can agree about what to do with him.
By Ferris Jabr
On April 26, 2019, a beluga whale appeared near Tufjord, a village in northern Norway, immediately alarming fishermen in the area. Belugas in that part of the world typically inhabit the remote Arctic and are rarely spotted as far south as the Norwegian mainland. Although they occasionally travel solo, they tend to live and move in groups. This particular whale was entirely alone and unusually comfortable around humans, trailing boats and opening his mouth as though expecting to be fed. And he seemed to be tangled in rope.
How Group Chats Rule the World
They quietly became the de facto spaces to share dumb jokes, grief or even plans for an insurrection.
By Sophie Haigney
I am texting all the time. I am, at the very least, receiving texts all the time, a party to conversations in which I am alternately an eavesdropper and an active participant. This is because I am in a lot of group chats — constant, interlinked, text-message-based conversations among multiple friends that happen all day long. I dip into and out of these conversations, on my phone and on my computer. Sometimes I will put both away for two hours and return to find 279 new messages waiting.
News: Pakistan And Iran Border Missile Strikes, Somalia-Ethiopia Dispute
The Globalist Podcast (January 19, 2024) – We discuss the regional fallout following Pakistan’s retaliatory strikes in Iran.
Plus: the Somalia-Ethiopia dispute over the Somaliland maritime deal, media freedom in Ukraine following reports of press intimidation and a special interview with Alexander Payne, the director of ‘The Holdovers’.
Politics: The Guardian Weekly – January 19, 2024
The Guardian Weekly (January 18, 2024) – The new issue features ‘State Of Emergency’ – How drug cartels upended Ecuador; Why Houthi anger could spread war; Are aliens already among us?…
Not long ago, Ecuador was chiefly known for its volcanoes, wildlife and eco-tourism. It’s an image that may now need some rehabilitation after chaos and bloodshed sparked by the prison escape last week of Adolfo Macías, the country’s most notorious gang leader and drug lord.
With cartels from Peru and Colombia routinely funnelling narcotics through Ecuador’s ports en route to Europe, Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports on a rising problem that threatens to tear apart the once-peaceful Andean state.
In the Middle East, Yemen’s Houthi rebels could stymie the increasingly slim chances of preventing a regional war. With the US and UK bombing Houthi bases in response to attacks on commercial shipping, diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour recounts the Houthis’ rise and why military strikes against them may not lead to the desired outcome.
News: Pakistan Hits Iran Targets In Retaliation, China Economy Falters
Commentary Magazine – February 2024 Preview
They’re Coming After Us
‘IHAVE NEVER FELT LIKE THIS BEFORE’
I have lost count of the number of times the phrase “I have never felt like this before” has been spoken in my ear, texted to me, or sent to me in an email, in the three months since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
When I talked with Israelis on a trip in November, the phrase described a gut emotion few under the age of 50 said they had ever experienced—the sense that they were personally vulnerable to outside attack in a manner more like an extended military invasion than a terrorist blow. They had lived through years of ineffectual rocket fire that was all but magically extinguished by the Iron Dome and Arrow anti-missile systems.
The Likely Lab Leak and the Covid Cassandra
Enola Gay, or, How the Media Imploded When It Came to Harvard’s President
Views: Novelist Margaret Atwood On Democracy – “Is It Fragile Or Resilient?”
This animated monologue is the first of four films examining the state of government, representation, rights and freedom.
Read more at https://www.ft.com/democracy
News: Gaza War Widens As Iran Strikes Iraq & Syria, North Korea-Russia Ties
Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – February 2024
Israel’s War Within
On the ruinous history of Religious Zionism
In August 1975, I stood outside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, witnessing a fevered demonstration against Henry Kissinger, then the American secretary of state. Thousands of young men in knitted kippahs chanted and danced in circles, their arms wrapped around one another, their voices echoing off the stone building. They were mainly West Bank settlers, I was informed, part of a fledgling movement called Gush Emunim—in effect, the Young Guard of the National Religious Party (NRP).
Lost Highway
The trials of trucking school
“If you have to change friends, that’s what you gotta do,” our instructor, Johnny, told the twelve of us sitting in a makeshift classroom in a strip mall outside Austin. “They’re gonna be so jealous, because you’re gonna be bringing home so much money. Encourage them to get their CDL, too.”
A CDL is a commercial driver’s license, and if you pay attention, you’ll find variations on the phrase cdl drivers wanted everywhere: across interstate billboards, in small-town newspapers, on diner bulletin boards, on TV, and, most often, on the backs of semitrucks. Each of us had come to the Changing Lanes CDL School to answer that call.
Boomers Daily 