Weekend Box: A Knife Through Rutte, Diplomatic Frustrations & more
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business and cultural news from around the world.
A KNIFE THROUGH RUTTE
A country dogged by rows over immigration, housing shortages, high energy prices and controversial environmental policies tipped into political crisis this week.
No, it’s not the UK, but the Netherlands.
On Monday, long-serving Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte called time on his government after failing to unite his coalition partners behind a new asylum policy. Mr Rutte wanted to curb asylum numbers by prioritising people under immediate threat of persecution against those fleeing war zones. He also proposed limiting the number of family members who could join refugees in the Netherlands. With no agreement in sight, Mr Rutte threw in the towel.
Mark Rutte’s fall from power caps thirteen years steering Europe’s fifth largest economy and acting as an influential voice in EU policymaking. He earned the moniker “Teflon Mark” because government scandals and controversies never seemed to stick to him.
The end of Rutte looks to be another signal of increasing volatility in Dutch politics. Mr Rutte’s VVD party has been closely followed for some years by the right-wing nationalist Party for Freedom. And earlier this year, the insurgent, populist, Eurosceptic Farmer-Citizen Movement (BoerBurgerBeweging, or BBB) won the Dutch provincial elections – roughly equivalent to English council elections – and continues to top opinion polls. The rise of the BBB follows a series of protests by Dutch farmers over government plans to reduce livestock in the Netherlands in a bid to reduce nitrogen emissions.
This leaves things wide open for the general election that will come in the autumn following the demise of Mr Rutte’s government. A country that has a reputation for being one of the West’s most moderate and liberal suddenly shunting rightwards demonstrates the unpredictability of European politics since Covid and the Ukraine war.
ON THE APP, ON THE MAP
Strava strikes again. With an increasing number of stories coming to light over the past 5 years about the perils of location tracking, this week’s news has proven the app may have fatal circumstances when in the wrong hands.
Russian submarine commander Stanislav Rzhitskiy, a second-rank captain in the Russian Black Sea fleet, was murdered in a park in Krasnodar, Russia on Monday morning. Rzhitskiy, who was suspected of commanding the sub during the missile strike on Vinnytsia in Ukraine last year, was killed outright after receiving 8 fatal bullets to the chest and back.
The independent Russian media outlet Baza suggested Rzhitsky’s death was more than likely facilitated by the assailant tracking his movements via the Strava app. They noted he consistently ran the same route, making it easy for the assassin to plan and conceal his attack.
Fear has been growing amongst military leadership about the impact such tracking devices could have on their personnel and operation. In 2018, Wired first reported the sports app was revealing military bases within Afghanistan and Syria by publishing heat maps, showing the exercise routes of officers.
The app has also proven useful for criminals, who have identified cyclists’ home addresses from the routes they have uploaded to the platform and stolen their bikes. Strava now advises that users refrain from tracking their route until they are at least a few kilometres away from their home address.
Living in a world where self-promotion seems to be the norm, for the more reserved amongst us, these incidents beg the question: should an individual’s privacy not be a given, instead of an ‘opt in/out’? Particularly as we begin to see the downside of sharing one’s 5K to the masses.
Image credit/Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street/License
DIPLOMATIC FRUSTRATIONS
A mixed week for aficionados of the art of diplomacy.
While Volodymyr Zelenskiy dominated the summit of an organisation (NATO) of which his country is not (yet) part, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was forced to upbraid one of his own Ministers for some less-than-diplomatic language aimed toward the Ukrainian leader. “People want to see a bit of gratitude,” UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said after Ukraine’s President complained he had not been given a firm timetable for his country’s accession to the Alliance. Wallace also told a private audience on the margins of the summit in Vilnius he had asked the Ukrainians to tone down their demands for more weapons. “We’re not like Amazon,” he said.
The war of words in the Baltic was as nothing though compared to the unique brand of diplomacy on display in the Korean peninsula.
North Korean despot Kim Jong Un beamed like a schoolboy as he tested a new intercontinental ballistic missile that eventually landed in the sea a few hundred miles from Japan. The test was widely interpreted as a warning to America after US spy planes were seen to be operating in the area. The Americans argue they have done nothing wrong, but the message was clear. The missile’s long-range means it could in theory threaten the mainland United States.
It comes as news website Politico published excerpts of a new book by a Trump homeland security official who says the former President’s rhetoric towards North Korea left officials seriously concerned there would be nuclear war. (Trump would regularly call Jong Un “Rocket Man” who responded by calling the US President a “dotard”).
Asked if the risk of nuclear conflict was real, one official replied: “there was certainly a sense that there was a non-zero chance”.
A ‘non-zero chance’. Now there’s a diplomat in the making.
Image credit/Brett Jordan on Flickr/License
EMOJIS: A NONWRITTEN LAW
Some five years after Aretha Franklin's death, this week a court delivered a verdict over the distribution of her $6m estate. The delay was caused by a lengthy legal battle disputing whether a scribbled piece of paper signed with a smiley face, found down the back of Franklin’s sofa and dated 2014, should override a 2010 will.
The document named the Queen of Soul’s sons Kecalf and Edward as executors of her will, whereas the 2010 document awarded this responsibility to a third son, Ted White II, and Franklin’s niece. It took the jury in this unusual trial less than an hour to determine the scrap of paper was valid, raising interesting questions about what can and cannot be taken as evidence in a court of law.
For example, earlier this month a judge in a Saskatchewan court ruled that the thumbs up emoji amounted to a binding contract. The dispute, between a farmer and a grain buyer, centred on whether the emoji response to a text reading “Please confirm flax contract.” should be taken as a legal commitment, much as a signature would be.
The judge stated, “This court readily acknowledges that a 👍 emoji is a non-traditional means to ‘sign’ a document but nevertheless under these circumstances this was a valid way to convey the two purposes of a ‘signature’.” Damages of c. $61,000 were awarded.
Language – both spoken and written – is a constantly evolving beast. New words are invented daily, others fall out of parlance, and technology has enabled a return to a visual, quasi-hieroglyphic means of communication via emojis, gifs, and memes.
Historically, this has been combated by revision and republishing of dictionaries (today, the entire OED database is republished online every three months, with new words added and older entries revised). But as technology increasingly infiltrates and dominates our communication systems, our legal and regulatory systems must find ways to keep up.
Image credit/LittleT889/License
SPHERE’S LOOKING AT YOU
If it happens that you were in Vegas in the last week and saw a colossal eyeball swivelling on the skyline, don’t worry, you weren’t having a Hunter S. Thompson moment. It was the recently-unveiled MSG Sphere, reportedly “the world’s largest spherical structure” and one of the more architecturally unique approaches to an entertainment venue.
The MSG Sphere, or simply ‘The Sphere’, has made waves online even though the Las Vegas venue is not yet open to the public, and for good reason. At 366 feet tall and 516 wide, the colossal structure would already be eye-catching without the feat of engineering on its exterior. The so-called ‘Exosphere’, a 580,000-square-foot wraparound screen comprised of 1.2 million LEDs, has been used to light up Vegas’ night skies and capture the world’s attention with stunning and strange animated imagery. For example, The Sphere has appeared to take the form of the planet Earth, a gigantic basketball, and as we suggested earlier, in a less awe-inspiring and more ‘Ahh!’-inspiring example, an uncomfortably realistic human eyeball.
The Sphere was designed by architecture firm Populous, whose portfolio includes multiple Olympic Games venues, and was created by the partnership of Sphere Entertainment Co. with a company tied to another iconic American venue, Madison Square Gardens Entertainment. It is reported to have cost $2bn to construct.
Currently there are two events planned for Autumn of this year to mark The Sphere’s opening to the public: an immersive experience directed by Darren Aronofsky of ‘Requiem for a Dream’, ‘Black Swan’, and ‘Mother!’ fame, and an anniversary content by none other than U2.
But, will it beat London’s ABBA Arena? The Weekend Box will keep you posted.
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@audleyadvisors.com.
For now, that’s The Weekend Box officially closed.