Fishermen's Brexit and the Next Moon Landing: The Week in Global-Affairs Writing
The highlights from seven days of reading about the world
Shifting Current
Matthew Bremner | Roads & Kingdoms
“There are now only 4,000 active fishermen in Scotland, down from 8,000 in 1970. Since 1996, the size of the Scottish fleet has been reduced by more than 219 boats, and where there were once 20 flourishing harbors scattered across its coast, there are now only three. The problem, fishermen say, is the European Union, which has thwarted the British fishing sector since the implementation of the Common Fisheries Policy, or CFP, in 1983. Indeed, what has been for years a divided industry, famous for its ruthless competition and infighting, has united behind Britain’s decision to leave the EU. While 60 percent of Scotland’s population voted ‘Remain’ in last year’s Brexit referendum, more than 90 percent of its fishermen did the opposite.”
How an Entire Nation Became Russia's Test Lab for Cyberwar
Andy Greenberg | WIRED
“In Russia’s shadow, the decades-old nightmare of hackers stopping the gears of modern society has become a reality...And the blackouts weren’t just isolated attacks. They were part of a digital blitzkrieg that has pummeled Ukraine for the past three years—a sustained cyberassault unlike any the world has ever seen. A hacker army has systematically undermined practically every sector of Ukraine: media, finance, transportation, military, politics, energy. Wave after wave of intrusions have deleted data, destroyed computers, and in some cases paralyzed organizations’ most basic functions. ‘You can’t really find a space in Ukraine where there hasn’t been an attack,’ says Kenneth Geers, a NATO ambassador who focuses on cybersecurity.”
One Woman’s Fight to Claim Her ‘Blackness’ in Brazil
Cleuci De Oliveira | Foreign Policy Magazine
“Brazil is well known for its ethnic diversity, and people often speak about its racially mixed population in celebratory terms. In a 2012 interview with Live Science, Stephen Stearns, an evolutionary biologist at Yale University, sought to illustrate how humanity will become more genetically homogenous over time. A few centuries from now, we’re all going to look like Brazilians, he said. In the 1940s, some of Brazil’s leading sociologists advanced the theory that the country was a “racial democracy”—truer to the melting pot ideal than the United States was. But the national pride for the country’s comparatively harmonious relations obscured the brutal history that forged its multiracial people.”
The Next Moon Landing Is Near—Thanks to These Pioneering Engineers
Sam Howe Verhovek | National Geographic
“Nearly 50 years after the culmination of the first major race to the moon, in which the United States and the Soviet Union spent fantastic amounts of public money in a bid to land the first humans on the lunar surface, an intriguing new race to our nearest neighbor in space is unfolding—this one largely involving private capital and dramatically lower costs. The most immediate reward, the $20 million Google Lunar XPrize (or GLXP) will be awarded to one of five finalist teams from around the world. They’re the first ever privately funded teams to attempt landing a traveling vehicle on the moon that can transmit high-quality imagery back to Earth.”
The Spanish Exception
Omar G. Encarnación | Foreign Affairs
“Although much of the West has been shaken by right-wing populist rebellions—from the stunning victory of President Donald Trump in the United States to the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union—one country seems curiously immune from it all: Spain. No electorally viable movement in Spain espouses a nativist, xenophobic, or anti-globalization platform. Indeed, far-right or populist parties in Spain have been unable to get more than one percent of the vote in most recent elections; the Spanish Parliament is one of very few in Europe in which these parties have no representation. Similarly, euroskepticism—the desire to lessen ties with the EU—is weak among Spaniards. A 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center found that, among all Europeans, Spaniards were the least supportive of reclaiming more power for national governments from the European Parliament in Brussels.”