Reading & Thinking | Totalitarian Leaders Are The Worst Party Guests | Warning From A Googsayer

“I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.” – Warren Buffett

“Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful” – Ibid.

Bringing More Than Just A Bottle Of Wine To The Party: German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier hosted a three-day state visit over the weekend for Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Turkey’s economy is in looming crisis mode, and Erdogan was supposed to be repairing frayed relations with his host country. Instead the autocrat flashed a four-fingered Muslim-brotherhood salute in the heart of Berlin and demanded the extradition of 69 Turkish exiles in Germany, including lawyers and journalists investigating his government. Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared visibly uncomfortable at a joint news conference Friday, rigidly noting “deep-seated differences” between the two countries regarding press freedom and the rule of law. Merkel insisted Erdogan release several political prisoners, including five German citizens being held in Turkey.

The former editor in chief of a Turkish newspaper, Can Dundar, was listed on Turkey’s extradition list. Dundar has been in living in Germany since fleeing Turkey in 2016 when he was convicted of treason for reporting that the president’s Secret Service had delivered weapons to the Islamic State. Dundar’s wife has been prevented from leaving Turkey. On Erdogan’s schedule during his visit was the controversial opening of a new central mosque of one of Germany’s largest Islamic organizations. A number of German lawmakers joined protestors and refused to attend a state banquet held for Erdogan Friday night. Merkel had initially supported the banquet saying dialogue must be kept open to work through differences, but she, too, was conspicuously absent.

Far-Right Returns Front And Center: Currently Germany’s far-right AfD party is the country’s second most popular party with 18 percent support, beating third place mainstream Social Democratic Party by one percentage point. The first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag in over 50 years, AdF is treated as a pariah in the legislature. In early September an AdF lawmaker lambasted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s immigration policies and was accused of being a “right-wing radical” using “tactics of fascism.” Eventually 94 AdF lawmakers walked out, saying that comparisons to Nazis and other insults were “unacceptable.” The party’s popularity has been growing among citizens drawn to its unabashed nationalist rhetoric that stokes frustrations over Merkel’s policy to take in a record number of refugees. (NPR)

Indonesian Earthquake: A 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sulawesi Friday. At least 832 people were killed from the quake and resulting 20 foot high tsunami waves. Strong aftershocks have continued to hit the island, and officials fear the final death toll could be thousands. Hardest hit was the city of Palu, home to 350,000 people; thousands are now homeless. The Red Cross estimates overall more than 1.6 million people have been affected, and the tragedy “could get much worse”. (BBC)

– “A Homage to Chinese Communism Is Destroyed in Taiwan: For the last two years, tensions have been brewing in a sleepy Taiwan village after a contractor hired to expand the local Buddhist temple wound up taking over the site, evicting the nuns and converting it into a shrine to the Chinese Communist Party, the historical rivals of the Taiwan government.” (NYT)

– “Head Of Australian Broadcasting Corp. Quits Amid Editorial Independence ‘Firestorm’: The chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has stepped down amid allegations that he ordered the firing of journalists deemed too critical of the government.” (NPR)

Get Me Pictures Of Boshirov!: Many believed that the identities of the men accused of the Salisbury poisoning would either be accepted at face value (they are who they say they are) or lost to the endless news cycle. However, thanks to some old-school journalism which included tips, online searching, leaked databases, and good old intuition– investigators were able to do the impossible and identify one of the suspects. The Guardian outlines how the use of great journalism and a bit of luck helped uncover the truth that Ruslan Boshirov was actually Russian military officer Col Anatoliy Chepiga. (Guardian)

Additional Read:

– “Pussy Riot’s Verzilov Released From Berlin Hospital, Blames Kremlin For Poisoning Him”

MBGA: Brazil will hold its presidential elections in one week, and the far-right front runner has been unflatteringly called the Trump of the Tropics for his authoritarian tendencies. Jair Bolsonaro returned to his home in Rio de Janeiro Saturday from a three week stay in a Sao Paulo hospital after being stabbed while campaigning. His return was met by protests in all Brazil’s 27 states, which grew from a Facebook group of nearly four million called Women United Against Bolsonaro. Huge demonstrations were held by diverse crowds chanting “not him.” One teacher said “He is sexist. He is misogynist. He is racist.” Her sister added “He wants to go back to the military dictatorship.”

Bolsonaro, a former army captain and veteran lawmaker, is currently leading the polls for the first round of voting on October 7. He will likely face an October 28 runoff against Fernando Haddad, a former mayor of São Paulo who took the place of the popular former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, after “Lula”, as he is called, was sent to prison for corruption. Bolsonaro has built support across Brazil using WhatsApp and social media, espousing a hard-line approach to law and order while attacking Lula’s Workers’ party for its involvement in a huge graft scheme. With an eerily familiar, undocumented claim in a television interview Friday night, Bolsonaro said Brazil’s electronic voting system could be defrauded by the Workers’ party, adding: “I don’t accept an election that is not me being elected.”

Warning From A Googsayer: A research scientist, Dr. Jack Poulson, resigned recently from Google and wrote US lawmakers criticizing the company’s handling of a project called Dragonfly, which intends to build a search engine that would be acceptable to the Chinese government. Poulson said the project was a “catastrophic failure of the internal privacy review process,” with several “disturbing components.” He urged lawmakers to increase transparency and oversight of the company, and the technology industry. Google’s chief privacy officer, Keith Enright, testified Wednesday before a Senate committee about data protection. (NYT)

Additional read: “It’s Google’s Turn in Washington’s Glare: Google executives, after months of mostly avoiding the harsh spotlight put on their internet peers, are being grilled in Washington this week by lawmakers questioning if the Silicon Valley giant is living up to its promise to be a neutral arbiter of online information.” (NYT)

Vote Or Die…Or Maybe Something Worse, Who Knows? I Don’t:President Trump went to a “Make America Great Again” rally in West Virginia Saturday and told the raucous crowd at a hockey rink that “bad things will happen if you stay home” from the midterm elections. Moderate Republicans had forced Trump to order the FBI to reopen an investigation, not to exceed one week, into Dr. Christine Ford’s credible allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after an extraordinary hearing on Thursday. Without mentioning Ford, Trump told his supporters Kavanaugh was suffering, and the delay showed why they needed to vote against “mean and nasty and untruthful” Democrats in the Nov. 6 midterms. (Reuters)

– “Distracted Boyfriend meme is sexist, rules Swedish ad watchdog:Popular image of man ogling another woman deemed degrading and discriminatory” (Guardian)

– “Want to See What’s Up Amazon’s Sleeve? Take a Tour of Seattle: The e-commerce giant uses its headquarters city as a living laboratory, trying out new retail and logistics models.” (NYT)

– “Here’s One Emerging Threat That Could Derail the Bull Run: …the stock market faces a more prosaic but nonetheless powerful threat: increasingly attractive returns on government bonds.” (NYT)

– “Five myths about capitalism: Maybe greed isn’t so good.” (WaPo)

– “The case that Russia is winning the cyberwar: A new book argues that Russian election meddling was decisive — and it’s still ongoing” (Verge)

– “So is it nature not nurture after all? In a new book likely to rekindle fierce controversy, psychologist Robert Plomin argues that genes largely shape our personalities and that the latest science is too compelling to ignore.” (Guardian)

– “The Case For Taking a Walk After You Eat.” (Time) Another health tip we believe is true but find hard to adopt is to not eat right before sleeping at night. This is especially true for people whose metabolism has slowed down.

– “The Rules of Being Good at Sex: Researchers have boiled it down to five core things.” Location, location, location…location, and location. (Tonic)

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