Come Hell and High Water

The Rising Tide, A Bitter Sugar Story

We often view rising tides through the prism of predictive computer models; a future for which we need to prepare. In a photo essay in Hakai Magazine, Tommy Trenchard takes you to a small (and getting smaller) island in Sierra Leone, where the rise is swallowing land in realtime. The Water Is Eating the Island. "Returning to Nyangai in 2023, a decade after my first visit, I found the place almost unrecognizable. From a satellite image, I had seen that the island had been split in half by the sea, leaving two bean-shaped patches of land separated by a wide gulf. But as my boat approached, I could see only one: in the time since Google had last updated its satellite image in 2018, an entire village of several hundred people had vanished. 'The water is eating the island,' says Tewoh Koroma, a mother of six who lost her home to flooding in September 2023. 'We already fled from the water once and now we’re getting flooded again. The water is following us.'"

+ Closer to home, Abrahm Lustgarten examines how the Rust Belt could rise again as other swaths of America become less habitable over time. In short, steel cities could soon look like a steal. The Atlantic (Gift Article): America’s Climate Boomtowns Are Waiting. "As climate change brings disasters and increasingly unlivable conditions to growing swaths of the United States, it also has the potential to remake America’s economic landscape: Extreme heat, drought, and fires in the South and West could present an opportunity for much of the North. Tens of millions of Americans may move in response to these changes, fleeing coasts and the countryside for larger cities and more temperate climates. In turn, the extent to which our planet’s crisis can present an economic opportunity, or even reimagining, will largely depend on where people wind up, and the ways in which they are welcomed or scorned." (The advantage of cool places is one of the many reasons I sit on my hill in Sausalito in my windbreaker and laugh at the notion that the Bay Area is in some endless doom loop.)

2

It's Not the Economy, Stupid

One of the most perplexing aspects of current polling is that people seem to think the economy isn't doing that well even though the economy seems to being doing pretty well; and the state of the economy doesn't seem to be mirrored by campaign trends. Last week, we touched on one very under-examined reason people feel bummed during the boom: We're still coping with the pandemic. Everything is not OK. You experienced a global pandemic that completely altered your view of health, safety, politics, and just how aggressively you could move to snag the last roll of toilet paper on the shelf. Sh-t Happened. In an adapted piece from his new book, Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present, my mom's favorite journalist (and she's like me, except she actually reads the articles), Fareed Zakaria looks at some other reasons why the economy isn't helping Biden and many other political leaders across the globe. "Explanations for this disconnect abound. Some say it’s a time lag, others that people are being swayed by social media, still others that residual feelings about inflation tends to trump all else. But I think that the real answer is that politics is no longer fundamentally driven by economics – that our political preferences are today shaped more by issues of culture, class and tribalism than by how much money we make."

3

Enabling Cane

"Archana Ashok Chaure has given her life to sugar. She was married off to a sugar cane laborer in western India at about 14 — 'too young,' she says, 'to have any idea what marriage was.' Debt to her employer keeps her in the fields. Last winter, she did what thousands of women here are pressured to do when faced with painful periods or routine ailments: She got a hysterectomy, and got back to work. This keeps sugar flowing to companies like Coke and Pepsi." NYT (Gift Article) with a bitter look at the modern-day slavery that puts the sugar in our sweets. The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child Marriage and Hysterectomies. This might come as news to you, but it's old news to the companies that benefit. "Sugar producers and buyers have known about this abusive system for years. Coca-Cola’s consultants, for example, visited the fields and sugar mills of western India and, in 2019, reported that children were cutting sugar cane and laborers were working to repay their employers. They documented this in a report for the company, complete with an interview with a 10-year-old girl."

4

Taking a Bite Out of Barkley

"You're totally on your own out there and most races will have checkpoints where they have, you know, some volunteers or checkpoint staff to feed you and give you a bit of a cheer and send you on your way. But this is not like that at all." Jasmin Paris: I ran 'toughest race' to inspire women worldwide. She's "one of only 20 people to have finished the Barkley Marathons in Tennessee, USA, since it was extended to 100 miles in 1989. She crossed the finish line on Friday with 99 seconds to spare before the 60-hour cut-off. The annual race at Frozen Head State Park involves five loops of roughly 20 miles, with 60,000 ft of ascents and descents - twice the height of Mount Everest from sea level." I usually need a nap after walking my beagles up a slight incline. (And they always do.)

5

Extra, Extra

Abstain Strain: "Tensions between the United States and Israel were exposed on Monday when Washington stood aside and allowed the UN Security Council to pass a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza." The US usually vetoes such efforts (and abstained today because there's no insistence that hostages are freed). Israel cancels Washington visit after US allows UN Gaza ceasefire resolution to pass. Related from Politico Magazine: From ‘I Love You’ to ‘A--hole’: How Joe Gave Up on Bibi.

+ Russia Terror Attack: After the killing of more than 130 people attending a rock concert in a Moscow suburb, a Russian court charged four men with act of terrorism. "All four appeared to have been beaten and one was brought to court in a wheelchair. They were charged with committing an act of terrorism. The Islamic State group, or IS, said it carried out Friday's outrage at Crocus City Hall and posted video evidence." But in Putin's Russia, video evidence, advance warnings (including from the US), public claims of credit, and even arrests don't mean a thing. Vox: All signs point to ISIS in a terrorist attack that killed over 130 people near Moscow, but Vladimir Putin is connecting it to the war in Ukraine. NPR: What is ISIS-K, the group that claims it carried out the Moscow concert attack?

+ Hush Fund: Here's the latest from the Trump trials. In the hush money case, the judge has set a firm (and ironic) trial date of April 15. Trump got an unexpected (and slightly unexplainable) break in his fraud case when an appeals court lowered his bond to $175 million. Meanwhile, you can now track Trump's legal and financial fortunes by tracking the shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp, the Trump media brand vehicle that will start trading as DJT on Tuesday. DWAC stock jumps 30% on Trump’s reduced bond, post-merger ticker news. (I can't decide whether to short the stock or short America.)

+ A Sure Way to Ronna Weekend: Over the weekend, NBC News announced its horrible decision to hire ousted RNC chair Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor, setting off a predictable and justified backlash among the network's journalists. Early on, I saw people people comparing the hiring of Ronna McDaniel to that of Michael Steele or Megyn Kelly. No. No. No. It’s not that she’s a Republican or has different views. It’s that she tried to overturn an election and betrayed the nation. When the news first broke, I predicted she'd be un-hired by today. I still think I'll be close.

+ Path Through Hell: "Then, suddenly, the man is out of the car and moving at astonishing speed towards them. As the children stand frozen with terror, he swoops down on Salazar-Hobson, lifting him up and carrying him away. He throws him into the backseat and the car accelerates away, leaving his brothers and sisters screaming in the dust. In just a few hours, the car will have crossed over the border into California. It will be another 24 years before Salazar-Hobson sees his family again." At four, I was kidnapped and sex-trafficked for years. Now I fight for the powerless – and win every case.

+ Shown the Door: "Boeing announced on Monday that its embattled CEO, Dave Calhoun, will step down at the end of year. The planemaker and aerospace company also said its board chairman, Larry Kellner, will not stand for re-election and the president of its commercial airplanes division, Stan Deal, will retire effective immediately." Until they replace these people, they'll just wing it.

6

Bottom of the News

"The contestants warmed up with stretches and squats in front of City Hall, carefully repositioned croissants and glasses on their trays and tightened their aprons as pop music blared from loudspeakers. Then, they were off. On Sunday, for the first time in over a decade, Paris revived a tradition: an annual race of cafe and restaurant waiters." NYT (Gift Article): Ready, Set, Garçon! Paris Waiters Race as Storied Contest Returns.

+ NBC’s Paris Olympics opening ceremony will play on IMAX screens. "This is the first Summer Olympics opening ceremony that will not be held in a stadium. Instead, organizers are sending Olympians down the River Seine on a four-mile-long flotilla of nearly 100 boats."

Thanks,

Dave Pell with the Scoop from the Doom Loop.