Monocle on Saturday, November 4, 2023: Georgina Godwin hosts with Latika Bourke on Anthony Blinken’s visit to Jordan today, the Australian PM Anthony Albanese’s historic visit to China, and the mushroom murder case in Australia that is cripp;ing the world.
Also, Monocle’s Robert Bound speaks to the founder of C2C festival taking place in Turin this weekend, and Honestly Tasty’s co-founder, Michael Moore, proves that vegan can, in fact, be very tasty.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel appeared to rebuff the Biden administration’s request, saying that any cease-fire would be contingent on the release of Israeli hostages taken by Hamas.
Fears are rising that the conflict could spread to the occupied West Bank, where tensions are soaring among Palestinians angered over deadly Israeli airstrikes in Gaza.
Ballot questions have been a winning strategy for abortion rights, even in red states. But complicated ballot language and misinformation have some abortion rights supporters worried.
The Times asked all 50 states how they manage groundwater. The answers show why the country’s aquifers are in trouble.
The Globalist Podcast (November3, 2023) – Sari Bashi, programme director of Human Rights Watch in West Bank, and journalist Robin Lustin join Georgina Godwin to discuss the leaked Israeli government proposal for Gaza and the new emergency radio station for the territory.
We also examine public trust in the Ukrainian government and why Latin America’s aviation industry is booming. Plus: Andrew Mueller’s wry musings on the past week.
An Israeli military spokesman said that Israeli soldiers had surrounded Gaza’s largest city. White House officials said they would urge Israel to “pause” its bombardment on humanitarian grounds.
A raid at the home of Eric Adams’s chief fund-raiser was part of an inquiry into whether foreign money was funneled into his mayoral campaign, a search warrant shows.
Once a celebrated actress in Israel, Noa Tishby has emerged as a leading pro-Israel voice on U.S. TV, on social media and in print.
The case against the founder of the failed FTX exchange had come to symbolize the excesses of the volatile cryptocurrency industry.
The world economy is defying gravity. That cannot last. Threats abound, including higher-for-longer interest rates
Even as wars rage and the geopolitical climate darkens, the world economy has been an irrepressible source of cheer. Only a year ago everyone agreed that high interest rates would soon bring about a recession. Now even the optimists have been confounded. America’s economy roared in the third quarter, growing at a stunning annualised pace of 4.9%. Around the world, inflation is falling, unemployment has mostly stayed low and the big central banks may have stopped their monetary tightening. China, stricken by a property crisis, looks likely to benefit from a modest stimulus. Unfortunately, however, this good cheer cannot last. The foundations for today’s growth look unstable. Peer ahead, and threats abound.
Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is taking a terrible toll. But unless Hamas’s power is broken, peace will remain out of reach
Trade wars: episode II
You may think his worst ideas won’t get far. Sadly, on trade he has been singularly influential
Israel’s current war seems to be as much a brutal insistence on the collective punishment of the Palestinian people as an offensive against Hamas.
The scenes of devastation in Israel’s south on October 7 were almost beyond description. Children killed in their beds, babies taken from their mothers’ arms, the elderly slaughtered in their kitchens. Kfar Aza, a kibbutz close to the separation barrier with Gaza, was burned nearly to the ground: a charnel house. Between a quarter and a third of nearby Kibbutz Nir Oz’s residents were killed or kidnapped. Roughly 10 percent of Kibbutz Be’eri’s population was murdered. At least a dozen of tiny Kibbutz Holit’s two hundred members are dead. The streets of the city of Sderot were littered with bodies. At an outdoor rave near Kibbutz Reim, more than 260 young men and women were gunned down as they tried to flee.
Most of Albert Camus’s evaluations from his promotional trips across the Atlantic are superficial or laughably snotty. What’s intriguing is how quickly he demands that things make sense.
Travels in the Americas: Notes and Impressions of a New World by Albert Camus, edited and with an introduction by Alice Kaplan, translated from the French by Ryan Bloom
Nothing in a professional writer’s life more resembles the life of a traveling salesman than the literary book tour. The superficial difference between writers on tour and salesmen on the road is that writers are encouraged to imagine themselves prized personae whose pitch is eagerly awaited by the anonymous crowd, whereas salesmen know themselves to be an intrusion, albeit one with an edge. While both are beggars at the gate, each one singing for a bit of supper, salesmen are independent entrepreneurs, pretty much calling their own shots; writers, on the other hand, are performers in someone else’s show—a talk at ten, a class at twelve, a panel at three, a reading at seven, and oh, did I forget the ten or twelve interviews tucked in at every break in the day?—all the while being dragged around by people otherwise known as “handlers” who every half-hour tell them how much they are loved, how much their work is prized, how many lives it has changed, and yes, they know how tired you must be by now, but would you mind giving just one more very small interview, this guy’s been waiting all day to talk to you.
The Globalist Podcast (November 2, 2023) – International Crisis Group’s Palestine analyst, Tahani Mustafa, joins Georgina Godwin to discuss the purpose of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s second visit to Israel and the reported increase in settler violence in the West Bank.
Plus: we explain the biggest challenges addressed at London’s AI Safety Summit and why Switzerland is handing out iodine pills.
Hundreds of people, including a few Americans, left the besieged territory for Egypt, the first group allowed across the border since the war began.
The Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel and a surge in acts of antisemitism have awakened a repressed horror in Jewish populations across the continent.
As the Mideast war escalates, the party’s politicians and activists are casting antisemitic incidents and progressive protests as part of a larger cultural battle over education.
The increases were particularly stark among babies born to Native American, Alaska Native and white mothers in 2022. Rates among Black infants remained highest of all.
The Guardian Weekly (November 3, 2023) – The new issue features Bletchley Park, the main center of allied second world war codebreakers, and it’s no coincidence that the English country house was chosen as the venue for this week’s landmark summit on safety in artificial intelligence. The age of AI brings opportunities but also significant risks, as a number of experts in the field outlined in an open letter last week.
Global technology editor Dan Milmo discusses the pros and cons with one of the technology’s leading thinkers, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, who says the rise of AI must be thought of as seriously as the climate crisis. Then, Observer columnist Sonia Sodha argues that calling for AI to be reined in is not simply a sign of luddism.
As Israeli forces entered Gaza this week, Bethan McKernan and Rory Carroll report for us on the increasingly unbearable nature of life in the besieged enclave, and there’s expert analysis and commentary from Julian Borger, Peter Beaumont and Jason Burke.
The Globalist Podcast (November 1, 2023) – The World Health Organization warns that civilians in Gaza face a looming health crisis, Ursula von der Leyen continues her Balkans tour and we hear from The Netherlands’ ambassador for the Arctic.
Plus: is the future of the pharmacy in jeopardy and how is climate change affecting cheesemakers?
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