Weekend Box: Hell in Haiti, Swift Justice & more
Welcome to the Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
Image credit/United Nations Photo on Flickr/License
HELL IN HAITI
In Haiti, violence is escalating as competing gangs carve up the capital, cholera is spreading, and hunger has reached a catastrophic level. In an unprecedented move, Haiti’s government has called for an international armed intervention to stabilize the country.
There has effectively been no government in Haiti since President Jovenel Moise was assassinated last year, and gangs have moved swiftly to fill this power vacuum. The only seeming authority is US-backed Prime Minister Ariel Henry. However, he is deeply unpopular and has assumed the role of Head of State with no legal or constitutional authority. Investigators also allege that Henry was involved in the July assassination of the former President.
The head of the United Nations has urged nations to consider the Prime Minister’s request for armed intervention, and the United States and Mexico have proposed a resolution in the U.N. Security Council, but so far, the member states haven't made a decision.
While Canada and the US are deploying sanctions against Haiti’s corrupt elites, attempts to put together an international force to intervene have stalled. The Biden Administration is pushing for a multinational security force to intervene, but with elections on the horizon, it does not want to risk being the star of this show.
This hesitation no doubt lies in Haiti’s long and complicated history with foreign intervention. This includes the US occupation in 1915-1934 which led to neither peace nor prosperity and then set the stage for François Duvalier, a brutal dictator that the US sustained. The UN itself also has blood on its hands. Due to faulty construction, in 2010 The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) dumped cholera-infected waste into the tributary of a main river, causing the deaths of more than 10,000 people. Although the body apologised, there were no reparations.
It is therefore no surprise that in Port au Prince and Washington, intervention is unpopular. Haiti protesters are not just chanting "Down with the prime minister!” but “Down with the occupation!" and in a show of anti-US imperialism, they have been waving Russian and Chinese flags at the daily demonstrations. For now, the path ahead for Haiti is uncertain. Some say that foreign involvement will result in more violence, but with the country on the brink of collapse, it may be its only option.
Image credit/UK Parliament/License
LORDS GETS A RUN FOR THEIR MONE
This week in parliament, the Lords seem to be taking quite the whipping.
On Tuesday, Michelle Mone requested a leave of absence. The “break” comes after Mone was thought to have substantially benefited (to the tune of approx. £30m) from PPE Medpro contracts during Covid.
Mone’s spokesperson declared she would take a leave of absence to “clear her name”, but she herself denies the claims. Yet, hours later Number 10 confirmed she had lost the whip – effectively removing her from the Conservative party. Rishi Sunak made his position at PMQs clear, declaring he was “absolutely shocked by the allegations”.
The controversy has come just as the Labour Party released its 40-point plan which looks to transfer power from Westminster to local authorities and calls for the House of Lords to be replaced. Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said that in Labour’s first term the aim is to create a reformed second chamber where members are elected.
Such cries of constitutional change from Labour hardly come as a surprise. The most drastic changes to the upper house have been made with a Labour leader in power. For instance, the 1999 House of Lords Act which reduced the number of hereditary peers by more than 600.
Once again reform is in the air and with peers like Mone as a perfect excuse, the timing couldn’t be better for Labour…
Image credit/Monument to Warsaw Uprising insurgents in Krasinskich Square/Jorge Láscar/License
GERMANY AND POLAND: REPARATIONS ROW
Poland has escalated a recent diplomatic row with Germany over war reparations by threatening to pursue a claim for €1.3tn via the European Union or the United Nations. The claim dwarfs the €74bn in reparations that Germany has paid other countries since the war and is three times their annual state budget. It also contravenes previous agreements, leading to speculation over Poland’s intentions.
The row was triggered in October when Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau, from the ruling nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party, made the demand to his German counterpart Annalena Baerbock on her visit to Warsaw.
Germany immediately refuted the claim, pointing out that Poland previously relinquished all claims to war reparations in 1953, again in 1990 as part of the ‘two plus four’ agreement between the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union, and in further comments in 2004. However, the PiS’s ‘reparations commissioner’ Arkadiusz Mularczyk has persisted, calling on the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe to debate the matter.
The issue is highly charged in Poland, where some six million Poles were killed during Germany’s occupation. Former Polish PM Donald Tusk has accused the PiS of pursuing an ‘anti-German campaign’ aimed at boosting support ahead of elections next autumn, by tapping into a majority view that Germany owes Poland while distracting from other issues such as inflation exceeding 17%.
Others point to the EU’s dispute with Poland over judicial appointments. The Polish government regards this as interference in internal affairs, while Brussels sees a repudiation of the rule of law and grounds for withholding EU payments. Arguably, the PiS view sees Germany as a leading EU member driving this imposition of EU values and this is an act of defiance.
How will this end? Germany has an interest in contesting this claim: Greece also has a claim pending and Serbia may follow. Yet some within Germany see a moral and political case for a negotiated settlement, such as was recently agreed with Namibia for around €1bn for wartime atrocities. The €1.3tn might therefore be an opening gambit by Poland, one to which Germany might respond with discreet negotiations towards a more realistic settlement. Informally, this might include related assurances that Germany will soften its approach towards Poland on other EU matters, in the interests of unity as the Ukraine war continues.
Image credit/Jon Sullivan
US TO CASH IN WITH CHIPS
If you’re reading this on your smartphone or tablet there’s a good chance you have the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company to thank.
The company, TSMC for short, produces around 90 per cent of the world’s advanced computing chips – the essential component of a smartphone and pretty much any other electronic device you interact with every day. That makes it perhaps the most important company you’ve quite possibly never heard of.
TSMC’s dominance of the chip market helps to explain why China, which spends more money importing computer chips than it does oil, looks so longingly across the Taiwan Strait at a territory that produces 37% of the world’s supply.
And that in turn perhaps explains why President Biden was in Phoenix this week to laud a $40bn investment by TSMC in a new manufacturing facility there. The President attributes the investment to the CHIPS Act passed by Congress in August in an attempt to ‘reshore’ chip-making capabilities that the US had been happy to offshore for many years. “America invented the semiconductor, but today produces about 10 percent of the world’s supply—and none of the most advanced chips. That needs to change,” President Biden said at the time.
In a world that’s addicted to its smartphones and electronic devices, the ability to produce more and more computer chips is essential; a point made by Chris Miller, Assistant Professor of International History at Tufts University, whose book Chip Wars won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award this week. His definitive account of the history and future of the computer chip demonstrates how this technology is the basis of all power in the modern world. And he explains how the fight for what he calls “the world’s most critical technology” will shape our future.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin once said the country that dominates in AI will rule the world, but even that technology needs a computer chip to work. As Professor Miller’s book makes clear and as history tells us, it’s the ownership of the means of production that matters most.
Imace credit/Ronald Woan on Flickr/License
SWIFT JUSTICE
Not a month ago, ticket sales for Taylor Swift’s 2023 Eras Tour of the US broke the record for most tickets sold in a single day by a touring artist. What briefly seemed like another historic achievement for the world-famous pop artist has ended up with a lot of bad blood, as Swift fans are suing Ticketmaster and senators plan to examine the company’s dominance in ticket sales.
To paraphrase Swift, how did this story end up looking like a tragedy? Anticipating high demand and bots trying to automatically purchase tickets, the Eras Tour initially went on sale in mid-November through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan platform, which asks fans to rank their preferred cities and dates for attendance.
However, Ticketmaster did not anticipate that over 3.5m people would register as ‘Verified Fans’ and that over 2m tickets would sell in this initial sale alone. The demand was so great that Ticketmaster cancelled its planned public sale of tickets, leading to outrage. Now 26 of Swift’s fans – rather than shaking it off, as their idol would – are suing Ticketmaster in a suit alleging the company and parent company Live Nation sold tickets at artificially high prices, encouraging scalpers to buy up tickets rather than deterring them.
Ticketmaster alleges that it was overwhelmed by the high demand and bot attacks. However, after years of complaints from music fans towards the company’s high prices and ticket availability, this may be the straw that broke the camel’s back. The controversy has spurred Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee to announce that a senate subcommittee will examine Ticketmaster’s market hegemony and whether it is doing enough to innovate and improve.
Swift herself wrote on Instagram that she would not “make excuses for anyone” as she had been reassured that Ticketmaster could handle the demand. And despite the opposition the company now faces, if there is anyone they should worry about crossing, it’s probably Taylor Swift…
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.