Useful compilation of foreign affairs and world politics
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Foreign Affairs updates - 31st July 2021
- EU versus Amazon: The European Union fined Amazon €746m ($886m) for failing to comply with the bloc’s data-protection rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The penalty is the latest blow in a few days of rough news for the firm. The e-commerce giant’s share price fell in aftermarket trading after it revealed that sales growth had slowed by more than expected.
- Dark profits: Oil supermajors reported bumper second-quarter earnings after suffering billions of dollars in losses in 2020 because of lockdowns that shrank demand for fossil fuels. ExxonMobil’s profits reached $4.7bn while Chevron recorded $3.1bn. Neither of them plans to increase their capital expenditure. The reopening of economies has caused prices per barrel to surge to the highest levels in two years.
- British journalist sued by oligarchs: When “Putin’s People” was published, it received rave reviews. In it Catherine Belton, a former correspondent for the Financial Times, sets out a web of connections between the Russian state and wealthy Russians in the West. Some of the people mentioned in the book are suing Ms Belton and the publisher, HarperCollins, for defamation. Two Russian businessmen have settled out of court. But Rosneft, an oil giant, and Roman Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, seem intent on seeing the cases through. Mr Abramovich is angry about the suggestion that his purchase of Chelsea Football Club in 2003 was intended “to corrupt the UK political elite”.
- Fleeing from horror - “Sabaya”: The horrors that were inflicted on the Yazidis, a religious minority, in the wake of Islamic State’s invasion of northern Iraq in 2014 are being widely told. “Sabaya”, a new documentary named after the word IS used to refer to its sex slaves, was released in America. It follows the efforts of a group of volunteers to rescue enslaved women from the perilous Al-Hol refugee camp in Syria. They have few resources beyond their wits, a van and a handgun, but are helped by former sabaya who smuggle the targets out of the camp under cover of night. In “The Last Girl”, a book published in 2017, Nadia Murad described being sold as a sabaya before fleeing to Germany in 2015. She is campaigning to bring the leaders of IS before an international court. Where there is horror, there is also great courage.
- Gilgamesh - A step towards repatriation: The epic of Gilgamesh, one of the world’s oldest works of literature, only exists in fragments today. These bits of text were found written on clay tablets, at least one of which has gone through its own epic journey. A federal court in America ordered that the so-called Gilgamesh Dream Tablet be forfeited to the government on the basis that it had been smuggled into the country. Discovered in modern-day Iraq, the artefact changed hands several times before 2014, when it was sold to Hobby Lobby, an American arts-and-crafts company. The tablet subsequently went on display at the Museum of the Bible, founded by Hobby Lobby’s evangelical Christian president. (The story of Gilgamesh has long intrigued Bible scholars and enthusiasts for its parallels to the Hebrew Bible.) Millennia after it was written, Gilgamesh may finally be finding its way home.
- AMD led by a dashing lady CEO: Tech is a man’s world. And nowhere more so than in the part of the industry that churns out the microprocessors that power the world’s devices. Which makes Lisa Su’s achievement remarkable: the turnaround of AMD, a once troubled chipmaker based in California. If further proof of the revival were needed, Ms Su, who became the company’s CEO in 2014, delivered it on July 27th with another set of stellar quarterly results. Compared with a year ago, revenue almost doubled to $3.85bn and net income jumped by 352% to $710m—both records for the firm. Born in Taiwan in 1969, she moved to America as a toddler and grew up playing the piano competitively, but was also good at fixing things. So she ended up studying electrical engineering at MIT and went on to work for several American chipmakers, including 13 years at IBM. After years in crisis, Intel, AMD’s big Silicon Valley rival, seems to be getting back on its feet under its latest boss Pat Gelsinger, who recently announced an ambitious plan “to fight for every socket”.
- Israel versus Iran: Israel claimed that Iran was behind a deadly attack on one of its oil tankers in the Arabian Sea. Two crew members—a Briton and a Romanian—were killed when the MV Mercer Street was apparently targeted by drones. The details of the attack remain murky, but if Israel’s accusation proves correct the incident will heighten tensions in the region.
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