Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business, and cultural news from around the world.

UKRAINE: AUKUS ANNOUNCE HYPERSONICS PROGRAMME

The West has once more ratcheted up financial pressure on Russia in response to atrocities committed in the Ukrainian town Bucha, with a new wave of sanctions targeting Russia’s largest bank Sberbank. At the same time, news broke this week suggesting that a new line of defence against Russia is being explored. Mere days after the Russian Ministry of Defence claimed to have launched hypersonic missiles in its brutal onslaught on Ukraine, Australia, the UK, and US announced that they are to collaborate on a hypersonic weapon programme.

Hypersonic missiles are capable of travelling between 5 and 25 times the speed of sound. Some can alter course mid-flight and can carry payloads of warheads. Russia claims to have deployed Kinzhal (‘Dagger’) hypersonic missiles in Ukraine in March to destroy “a large underground warehouse of missiles and aviation ammunition of Ukrainian troops.”

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, President Joe Biden and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that the three countries would “commence new trilateral cooperation on hypersonics, counter-hypersonics, and electronic warfare capabilities,” including working together to advance development of weapons, as part of the AUKUS pact. The following day, CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reported that the US successfully tested its own hypersonic missile in March. The test was kept a secret to avoid escalating tensions with Russia while President Biden was due to meet with NATO allies in Europe.

While British officials have reportedly denied any connection between these plans and Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the three leaders underscored the “unprovoked, unjustified and unlawful” nature of the invasion in their announcement.

No-one is known to have been killed by Russia’s hypersonic missile. However, news has emerged in recent weeks of atrocities committed by invading forces in Ukraine. The recent mass killings committed by Russia in the town of Bucha prompted President Volodymyr Zelensky, in a video address to the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday, to ask what the UN was for if it could not act in response to the “most terrible war crimes we have seen since the Second World War.” On Thursday, the UN voted to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council.

PERU: PROTESTS & PRESIDENT IN PERIL

Just before the strike of midnight on Monday, the residents of Lima and the port city of Callo found themselves suddenly, unexpectedly unable to leave their homes.

In a televised address, President Pedro Castillo issued an unprecedented emergency decree forbidding residents of the capital and the port city from leaving their homes until 11:59 AM on Tuesday. His authoritarian clampdown came as his increasingly isolated government failed to stem the violent protests over soaring fuel and fertiliser costs triggered by Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

President Castillo claimed that the measures were being enforced to “protect” his people from the “violent acts” of protesters, which include the burning of toll stations and looting of stores. So far, four people have died in connection with the protests. However, the president’s reasoning did little to appease the Peruvians. Protesters were only agitated further by his authoritarian measures, staging a rally near Peru’s Congress as the president met with legislators. Facing the fury of thousands of citizens, he was forced to backtrack. The president cut the curfew short on Tuesday afternoon.

However, the move came too late to quell public discontent.

As dusk fell on Tuesday, violent clashes between police and protesters showed no signs of subsiding. Officers resorted to using tear gas, and people pelted them with rocks in return. Fires were set and looters vandalised buildings belonging to the judiciary, the public prosecutor, and the electoral board.

While the protests eventually ceased, President Castillo remains at the centre of a self-created political crisis. His heavy-handed approach to quelling civil unrest has only made the cacophony of calls for him to step down louder, with many suggesting that his power is hanging by a thread. This is just the latest in a series of wrongdoings that have come to characterise the president’s tenure. In the first eight months of his presidency he has made more changes to his cabinet than any other Prevuian president; shed the support of more than forty-five ministers; faced repeated accusations of ‘moral incapacity,’ corruption, and misgovernment; and failed to propose any meaningful social reforms.

Will President Castillo’s mishandling of the protests break his grip on power once and for all? Or, will he be able to weather the storm? Only time will tell. The Weekend Box will be following his next steps closely - watch this space.

TWITTER JITTERS

Chief Executive of Tesla and SpaceX Elon Musk has become Twitter’s largest shareholder.

Last month, Musk bought a 9.2% stake in the platform through the acquisition of nearly 73.5m shares at a total cost of approximately $2.4bn. After news of his buy-in was made public on Monday Twitter’s shares rose by 27%, making his dividend worth $3.7bn; impressive, though a mere drop in the ocean for Musk whose net worth is reported to be over $270bn.

From one point of view, Musk’s investment makes perfect sense, given his reputation for treating Twitter as a personal playground for courting controversy; whether that is by tweeting a meme comparing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hitler or, memorably, tweeting at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic: “FREE AMERICA NOW.” However, the entrepreneur has remained uncharacteristically silent on his purchase of the platform’s shares. When Twitter collapsed into a frenzy on Monday as it learned the news, Musk posted only a single tweet in response: “oh hi lol.” After that, radio silence. Theories as to why he made his lucrative investment and joined Twitter’s board abound.

Crypto investor Maya Zehavi theorises that Musk will leverage his power on the Board to “make sure that Twitter doesn't try to apply more restrictive censoring rules” than are necessary. This hypothesis is supported by a poll Musk recently published on Twitter, asking his 80m followers if they believe Twitter “rigorously adheres” to the principle that “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy.” He has also expressed ‘concern’ about the ramifications Twitter’s algorithm will have on public discourse, and in another poll, asked his followers if the algorithm should be made publicly available as open source code.

Yet, for all that he positions himself as a champion of free speech with the power to now preserve it, it is notable that freedom of speech has never been a problem for Musk; it certainly was not when he posted a derogatory tweet about the British diver who helped rescue the boys trapped in a Thai cave. The only problem he has ever had to face is the backlash his unfiltered comments have understandably received.

While his investment is a “passive” stake, meaning he is not trying to take the reins of the company, what is to stop Musk from exerting his power as the largest shareholder to direct the future of Twitter? A future where Musk can post controversial tweets to his heart’s content, safe in the knowledge that he can delete and silence his critics, surely looks attractive to him.

POP BY THE BRITISH POP ARCHIVE

Debates about ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture have raged in one form or another for decades. Nowadays they often amount to dressing-downs of pop culture, and pop music especially, for being ‘low’. The University of Manchester hopes to change this by putting all things ‘pop’ on a pedestal at the soon-to-launch British Pop Archive.

The University describes the British Pop Archive (BPA), which will open at its John Rylands Research Institute and Library, as a “national collection dedicated to the preservation and research of popular culture.” In part, the Archive has been shaped by the stewardship of the University’s recently appointed Professor of Popular Culture, renowned music journalist and culture writer Jon Savage. Professor of British History and Director of the John Rylands Research Institute Hannah Barker have praised the BPA as a vital resource for “a growing range of research and teaching at the University.” For Christopher Pressler, a Librarian at the Research Institute, the BPA is a means for the public to engage with contemporary history through its cultural artefacts, showing where the ‘popular’ belongs in the timeline of human history. It is noteworthy that the BPA is to be held in a library also housing a Shakespeare first folio, breaking down perceived barriers between the ‘high’ and the popular, or ‘low’.

The BPA will launch in May with Collection, an exhibition focusing on the cultural heritage of its home city. Mancunian cultural titans Joy Division, New Order, and DJ Carl Cox will be represented through exhibits, as will the legendary club and nexus of Manchester’s dance music scene The Haçienda.

For those excited about the launch, there is even more to come in the future. Savage has stated that while the BPA is “launching with Manchester-centric collections,” “the intention is for the BPA to be a national resource encompassing the whole of the UK: it is, after all, the British Pop Archive.”

APPLEBEE’S EXEC’S ROTTEN PROPOSAL

March saw gasoline prices in America soar to a record high of $4.17 a gallon, dealing another blow to the country at a time of rising inflation. While many saw the gravity of the situation, with President Joe Biden announcing plans to release barrels of oil to contain prices, one franchise executive saw it as an opportunity. His less-than-inspired response to the crisis has landed the restaurant chain Applebee’s deep in controversy.

Two weeks ago, an internal email to executives penned by Wayne Pankratz, an executive for American Franchise Capital (AFC) which owns multiple Applebee's Neighbourhood Grill + Bar restaurants, was leaked onto Reddit. In the email, titled ‘Why gas increase is good for hiring,’ Pankratz urges the executives to “[hire] employees at a lower wage” to take advantage of the fact that they will have to work longer to “maintain their current level of living.” In his words: “The labor [sic] market is about to turn in our favor.”

The email’s leak had a twofold effect. Its appearance on Reddit led to a storm of bad press online and an ongoing controversy. After leaking, the email was forwarded to the Applebee’s location at Lawrence, Kansas City, which AFC owns. Here, as Vice reports, manager Jake Holcomb printed out multiple copies of the email and distributed them throughout the restaurant, sparking a mass resignation of employees. Holcomb told Vice that customers in the restaurant on the day received their food for free.

Scott Fischer, a spokesman for AFC and its subsidiary Apple Central LLC which operates the Lawrence restaurant, has claimed that Pankratz’s attitude does not reflect the company’s: “this in absolutely no way, shape, or form speaks to our policies or our culture, or anything like that with our brand.” Applebee’s COO Kevin Caroll confirmed in a statement that Pankratz has since been fired.

Despite Fischer’s defence of AFC and Applebee’s at large, those who look at the leaked email on Reddit will see a damning chain of responses to Pankratz by execs praising his “Great message” and “Words of wisdom.” What their attitude means for Applebee’s, and what will come of their replies being exposed, remains to be seen.

And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audley.uk.com.

For now, that’s the weekend box officially closed.