The Winner of a $1 Million Philosophy Prize Sees a Silver Lining to Ideas Getting Attacked

For centuries, when nations prepared those destined for leadership, philosophy – the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence – ranked among the subjects in which instruction was not optional. But, in this, the age of information, the standing of philosophy has fallen so far that between 2021 and 2022, 10 different colleges and universities contemplated everything from shrinking to outright eliminating their philosophy programs prompting written pleas from the American Philosophy Association to reverse course. It’s against that backdrop that each year since 2016, the Berggruen Institute has awarded its annual Berggruen Philosophy Prize as well as the $1 million purse that comes with it to a thinker shaping political, economic, and social institutions. 

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This year, the organization has awarded the prize to American sociologist and social theorist Patricia Hill Collins. Collins began working in preschool classrooms at the age of 15 and spent years teaching first very young children, then students working to become educators at Harvard University. She led the Black studies department at the University of Cincinnati for more than two decades before joining the sociology faculty at the University of Maryland. Her writing has identified often overlooked arenas of political action and explored injustice and resistance to it. Beginning with her first book, Black Feminist Thought, in 1990, Collins also helped to establish the concept of intersectionality, what the Berggruen jury described as “a powerful analytical lens through which we can envision the different and intersecting ways in which our material, social, and cultural worlds produce injustice.” While philosophy is often expressed in rarely accessed tomes, Collins has developed a way of thinking, writing, and talking about power that makes philosophical inquiry feel accessible and even urgent. So it’s not surprising that Black Feminist Thought remains in print along with most of Collins’ nine other titles. Her latest, Lethal to Intersections: Race, Gender and Violence, will be published this week.

When I caught up with Collins, 75, last week, she was in her office at the University of Cambridge, preparing to spend the next five weeks teaching at its Centre for Gender Studies. What follows is a transcript of my conversation with Collins edited only for clarity and length.

Let’s start with a big but simple question. How did you get here, to a career in philosophy, the so-called “life of the mind”?

I think you have to invent yourself. That’s what I had to do from an early age because the life of the mind was not in the community around me or in the family around me. But seeds were planted there in terms of how to have confidence about what you love and what you think is right. And in my case, it had to do with reading. 

I had a mother who could not go to college and was a dreamer. She was an artist, and she helped me understand the power of ideas in books by teaching me to read and by taking me to the Philadelphia public library. She turned it into this magical journey. She was one of these parents who can actually get your imagination going, and I thought we were going up the steps of the Capitol building. That’s how big it felt to me when I was 5. I learned to write my name. And Patricia had lots of letters in it, but you could not get a library card unless you could sign your own signature. So what she was telling and teaching me was all about literacy and ideas and the freedom to read and think what you want regardless of what people think. A lot of the time you have to fit in. But a life of the mind and its ability to set you free, I would say started with that moment of reading, becoming a believer in libraries, books, free speech, the power of ideas in public space. 

When you think about your own work, what do you think of as the major themes? 

First would be the power of critical thinking and critical literacy. The ability to read – not just reading the book, but reading the situation, reading the discussion, reading the film. The second idea tied to that is creativity, people having the belief in the power of their own creativity and ability to analyze situations as a source of power, particularly for groups that are on the bottom of the social hierarchy. 

I think Black women are quite foundational for my own work in terms of race and gender. But if you look at the corpus of my work, it has been traveling through various systems of power, race, gender, class, nation, sexuality, and ability, more recently, disability issues, and age, as I become increasingly interested in youth as a really important period of life and saying that ideas matter, particularly for groups that are struggling with issues of social inequality, disenchantment, disempowerment.

Read More: Attacks on Libraries Are Attacks on Democracy

Very often what happens is groups on the bottom are told, “Well, you’re too stupid” or “You can’t read,” or “You don’t have time,” or “You have no creativity, why would we listen to you?” When it’s actually the reverse. When people claim their own narratives, their own discussions, their own music, their own dance, their own philosophy, then that is a rock that cannot be taken away. So my work on Black women lays the foundation for everything I’ve done since. And in that foundation is the idea of intersectionality – that systems of power intersect in the lives of Black women and in everyone’s lives. Not just the life of the individual, but the collective life, the social structures that we are in. 

Now on the front end I had no clue this is what I intended. I make decisions that seem to make sense in the here and now and that hopefully will open more doors, not close them. It’s standing in one location and looking in multiple directions and saying, wait a minute, there’s a race door, there’s a class door, there’s a gender door, there’s a nationality or nationalism door. There are all these various things that are affecting this one location where I am standing now. So what is it that I want to do? Or what is it that we want to do? A lot of my work has really been around collective politics and political activists.  

I am not going to say that it is easy to do. It’s really labor-intensive to do intellectual work. But you have to be focused about why you’re doing it. 

So even if not intentional from the outset, why have these things become your focus?

I’m the first person in my family to graduate from college. I’ve always believed that you might be the first but you don’t need to be the last. And in my own family I have landed first but I have not been the last. In a lot of ways that is how I looked at my work. The work is giving gifts to people and clearing space for people who come after me. That’s what teachers do. They bring something to you that you didn’t know or help you develop a skill that you didn’t have, particularly that critical-thinking skill. Then they say you have to go out into your world with these tools and these skills and this knowledge and what will you do? 

What’s really nice for me right now is I’ve been writing for quite some time and people are finding work for the first time now that I wrote 30 years ago. They weren’t even born when some of these ideas were first published. I was writing to them without my knowing.

You mentioned the essential nature of the skill for critical thinking. That made me think about the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation. Have we reached a nadir of critical thought? 

I recognize that the world is in very difficult straits right now. But it always has been, particularly for people on the bottom. The issue is what is the collective wisdom and history that we take with us? 

This is all very much tied to the book I just finished. I didn’t just look at it as in the life of the mind, I looked at how people manipulated and used ideas in public.

[The Nazis], they were using film. They recognized the power of spectacle. And what they did was they took long-standing ideas that were tropes of racism, sexism, and homophobia, and they recast them with conspiracy theories to explain the problems, in a country that was really fearful about where it was going, to German people who lost World War I. And that they succeeded through democratic means–to me, that is the scary part of it. That party was elected, and once they were elected, they changed the rules to keep them in power.

Read More: Book Bans Aren’t the Only Threat to Literature in American Classrooms

Raw power is just guns and you shoot and you do this, that, and the other. But they had a really carefully orchestrated campaign to snuff out dissent. They had a major book burning in front of a major university in Berlin. So when you burn things, you’re looking at the pile of ashes and you say those ideas are no good and you get people to celebrate that around the bonfire, especially children and young people. You create the space for your own interpretation of the world. 

And we know how that turned out. The situation with all the misinformation and all the fake news going on now, with the conspiracy theories that have risen, they recycle, they don’t go away. A lot of this is tied to political opportunism. And we are very much into that period of time again.

But I think the period of time that we’re in is also one where lots of people have access to information where they didn’t have it before. The question now is do you know how to read the stuff that you have? Do you have the critical literacy around social media? Do you have the critical literacy about understanding political messages? So it is today a major public-education function, recognizing that people don’t follow nefarious conspiracy theories if they aren’t already afraid, if there aren’t issues not being addressed. 

There are people who will always bristle at the work of ideas, at generating philosophy because it is to them esoteric and only concerned with theory and inspiring additional thought. Why were you drawn to it?

I chose theoretical work, because at the heart of Western knowledge is philosophy, philosophy and theology, and these are the idea systems that shaped the rest. So, years later, here I am, saying, I’m so glad I made that decision. Because of that, I could sit down and write this latest book about intersectionality as critical social theory, where I could talk about various philosophical schools. I’ve juxtaposed and put in the same chapter Simone de Beauvoir, who was the sometimes darling of feminist circles, and the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray.

I’m making the case that both of them are in fact making really compelling arguments about freedom. Now to do that, I had to really do some homework and read quite a bit, but I’m willing to do that kind of work to clear space for other people. And that’s what the theory does. Right? That’s what philosophy does. It describes and affects culture. 

The main ideas that I work with have come from philosophy, from pragmatist philosophers, who during a period similar to our culture now, were just thinking big thoughts. So it was very nice for me to take an idea from John Dewey. His idea of community offers a whole discussion of community and democracy. And that allowed me to put in that same chapter Black women’s community work and how it speaks to questions of democracy. But we can actually put those in dialogue, see what comes out. That’s richer.

What do you make of the fact that book bans, and now a threatened book burning, appear to be proliferating? There have been recent reports that Scholastic, a children’s book publisher, has created a sort of easy opt-out for schools that want to remove books about people of color and LGBTQ characters from their book fairs.

I empathize with those who have become frontline actors in this struggle, I don’t necessarily think that people of Scholastic are getting any more or less progressive or whatever. They are afraid and are protecting themselves from the ugliness that can come down the road. But as I go back to the moment that we’re in now, I actually get a little bit of a boost because when an idea becomes effective, that’s what it gets attacked.

Read More: Shuttering Access to History Will Impoverish Us All

When our everything was print media, and it was restricted, and maybe you didn’t know unless you went to your book fair in your teeny tiny town, that’s not the case anymore. These kids are on the internet. The more we digitize stuff, they can get to the general public much more easily. And because the ideas are speaking to bona fide issues that young people have, that is not going to go away no matter how much you try and censor the author. We are not in the era of the book burning in front of the university. 

Some people are actually quite courageous in getting out in front with their ideas. I don’t have that kind of courage. Some authors are taking principled positions in public and just speaking out and just showing up. They are not just going to be quiet in a closet or just go away just because you yelled louder or tried to scare us.

And people will fight for their children. So you have a child who is queer. People will leave their churches. They will move out of the state of Florida if they can’t get health care. They will speak out. This is really a source of deep political commitment on the part of many, many people that often goes unrecognized because it’s often done by women.

So I’m saying we just need to diagnose this moment. And we need to think strategically, get all the emotions out of it, because after a while shock value no longer has the same resonance. Maybe five years from now, people will say, “What was that word again? Intersection, intersectionality?” The same is true for critical race theory. How many of these people up in arms now are really going to hang in there when most of them can’t even define it now? 

You write the stuff that needs to be written, what is going to stand the test of time. I don’t care if it’s popular. I’m not interested in a thumbs-up, share, like thing. That doesn’t mean that you get every idea right, but you are giving a gift to people that they need for their lives. 

You mentioned there is a type of political action that gets undervalued because it’s often performed by women. What are you referring to? 

It is a kind of personal sacrifice. It’s the politics you do on a community level. We start with what needs to be done to survive. The era we’re in is far more narcissistic, transactional. But individual sacrifice, doing something for the greater good, is fundamentally the heart of democracy. 

The book I just finished is about this. I’m looking at violence that really occurs at an intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, etc., people who are vulnerable to death or dying because they live in those intersections. But the issue is, what do they do when they are encountering that kind of violence? An example exists in a place that’s grim: mothers of murdered children. But this is really common, right? People who are the survivors who are left behind and how they respond to that immediately.

It’s a deep wound and it’s a wound to a community to have that happen over and over again. A lot of people have strategies that are not really helpful – addiction, they become violent themselves. But what a lot of mothers of murdered children tend to do is they organize. They organize in Brazil. They organize in this country, again and again, and they organize in Mexico where their children have disappeared. You can take a big movement like that or a tiny movement on your block. We know this exists. They organized in New Zealand, where there was an incident of domestic violence of a young child, to make this amazing film. Or, in some cases, it’s an intergenerational memory, the refusal to forget. It’s often women at the center of efforts to reclaim the histories and whereabouts of Native children, indigenous children who’ve been taken from their families, in this country, Canada, New Zealand, everywhere, right? Memory is an important thing in terms of resisting violence. 

What I am saying is building resistance to violence is political. The dominant narrative is nothing was happening until Black Lives Matter. No. No. No. There is no possibility of Black Lives Matter without all these other things. So talking about various spheres of politics and political action is important. One is community, community organizers; another is social protests. The other is all the people who find ways to enter into organizations and corporations and they say we’re going to work the system from the inside. 

You’ve spoken about giving people the opportunity for teachable moments and told me they “might be something that hits the soul.” Have you seen this happen? 

Oh, yes. Years ago, I was teaching a class on urban Black community development, primarily Black students in the class. And I was teaching about the police. And this one young white woman said very little – she was definitely in there but wasn’t like the progressive young white women who want to say a whole lot in your class. 

But the day I said, “To those of you who are young Black men, how many of you have had an encounter with the police?” Literally every hand went up. One talked about being spread-eagled over the hood of a police car, being forced to lie face down on the pavement, of fearing that this was the moment they would die. And because of that you can make sense of the cumulative, collective damage, the pain of that experience. And this young woman bravely started talking about the police. 

She said, “I think you should know that I’m a third-generation member of a police family. My grandfather was a police officer. My father was a police officer. My brother was in the military.” And she said to the class, “I really had never thought about it this way before.” She thanked them for sharing. She wasn’t defensive. She was open to that moment. But these are the kinds of things that can happen. And this is the way I want to write: critical, informed but where there is space for you to enter.

source https://time.com/6328162/patricia-hills-collins-interview-berggruen-philosophy-prize/

Off-Duty Pilot Accused of Trying to Shut Down Engines of a Horizon Air Jet Midflight

PORTLAND, Ore. — An off-duty pilot riding in the extra seat in the cockpit of a Horizon Air passenger jet tried to shut down the engines in midflight and had to be subdued by the crew, a pilot flying the plane told air traffic controllers.

Authorities in Oregon identified the man as Joseph David Emerson, 44. He was being held Monday on 83 counts each of attempted murder and reckless endangerment and one count of endangering an aircraft, according to the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office.

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The San Francisco-bound flight on Sunday diverted to Portland, Oregon, where Emerson was taken into custody by officers from the Port of Portland. He is to be arraigned Tuesday.

Seattle-based Alaska Airlines, which owns Horizon, a regional carrier, did not name Emerson, but said Monday that the threat was posed by one of its pilots who was off duty but authorized to occupy the cockpit jump seat.

The airline said in a statement that the captain and co-pilot “quickly responded, engine power was not lost and the crew secured the aircraft without incident.” Alaska said no weapons were involved.

One of the pilots told air traffic controllers that the man who posed the threat had been removed from the cockpit and was in handcuffs in the back of the plane.

“We’ve got the guy that tried to shut the engines down out of the cockpit. And he — doesn’t sound like he’s causing any issue in the back right now, and I think he’s subdued,” one of the pilots said on audio captured by LiveATC.net. “Other than that, we want law enforcement as soon as we get on the ground and parked.”

Bailey Beck, who was on the flight, described to SFGate the confusion and stress experienced by passengers.

“It was really bizarre because there was no overheard commotion to alert the passengers. The man walked from the cockpit to the back of the plane by himself, where he was then handcuffed to a railing and didn’t make any disturbance from the rear,” Beck told the news outlet.

Sunday’s incident occurred on a Horizon Air Embraer 175 carrying 80 passengers, including children 2 or younger, and four crewmembers. The plane left Everett, Washington, at 5:23 p.m. local time and landed in Portland an hour later. Alaska said passengers continued on to San Francisco on a later flight.

The FBI office in Portland said it was investigating.

The Federal Aviation Administration, in an alert to airlines, said a jump seat passenger tried to disable the engines by deploying the engine fire-suppression system. The agency said it was helping law enforcement investigations, but declined further comment.

FAA records indicate Emerson has a valid license to fly airline planes. Property records show he owns a house in Pleasant Hill, California, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of San Francisco. The Associated Press tried but couldn’t reach family members.

The Multnomah County sheriff’s office, district attorney’s office and public defender’s office didn’t immediately respond to inquiries about whether Emerson had an attorney to comment on his behalf.

John Cox, a retired airline pilot who is now a safety consultant, said it isn’t hard to activate the fire handles on a jet. “You want them to be accessible in case of an engine fire,” he said.

He said it’s possible to restart the engines once the fire handles are returned to their normal position.

“This is an extremely rare event. In 53 years, I have never heard of a jump seat rider attempting to shut down engines,” Cox said. He said the third pilot can be invaluable in cases where a crew must deal with a complex situation.

Jeffrey Price, an aviation-security expert at Metropolitan University of Denver, said airlines must approve people who sit in the jump seat, but the pilots working the flight can deny access.

The vetting of crew members is based on trust, he said, and the last line of defense is what happened on the Horizon plane — “crew members physically preventing someone from taking over the flight controls. The system worked, fortunately.”

Airlines use the third seat to accommodate pilots who need to get in position to fly a later flight, avoiding the need to bump a passenger off the plane. Many U.S. carriers will let pilots from other airlines occupy the third seat, at least on domestic flights.

“For the amount of times this type of incident happens — almost never — it’s probably not a procedure we need to get rid of,” Price said. He added, however, that Sunday’s quashed threat will lead to an analysis of whether procedures were followed and whether additional safeguards are needed.

Price could recall only one other similar episode — in 1994, when a FedEx pilot who was facing possible termination tried to kill the crew and crash the plane. The crew subdued the hijacker, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

In 2018, a pilot in the jump seat of a Boeing 737 Max operated by Indonesia’s Lion Air emerged as a hero after helping the crew stop the plane’s nose from repeatedly pointing down. Disaster was averted — or delayed until the next flight of the plane, which crashed, killing all 189 people on board.

There have been crashes that investigators believe were deliberately caused by pilots. Authorities said the co-pilot of a Germanwings jet that crashed in the French Alps in 2015 had practiced putting the plane into a dive.

In 2018, a Horizon Air ground agent stole an empty plane at Seattle’s Sea-Tac International Airport and crashed into a small island in Puget Sound after being chased by military jets that scrambled to intercept the aircraft. The man told an air traffic controller that he “wasn’t really planning on landing” and described himself as “a broken guy.”

source https://time.com/6327909/off-duty-pilot-horizon-air-jet-midflight/

History Suggests Amazon Will Need the Public on Its Side as It Faces the FTC’s Antitrust Suit

On Sept. 26, 2023, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Lina Khan launched an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. The company is an exploitative monopoly, Khan’s case argues, and must be restructured to “restore the lost promise of free and fair competition.” Yet Amazon has said the case is “wrong on the facts and the law.” Her crusade has echoes of her commission’s investigation of monopolies in the electricity industry in the late 1920s.

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Like Amazon in 2023, the electricity companies had built an enormous distribution network that proved popular with customers even while they ruffled regulatory feathers. The FTC’s investigation in the 1920s turned up juicy details of nefarious business practices and underhanded dealings. Newspapers splashed the revelations on the front pages, while a few members of Congress thundered about the “fangs” of monopoly fastened on to the necks of consumers. But for the most part, Americans just shrugged.

Why? 

It wasn’t just because the electricity monopolies offered good electricity service at a reasonable price, although they did. It was because executives had spent two decades courting public opinion. By the time the FTC issued subpoenas, presented evidence, and heard witnesses in 1928, the electricity industry had already won over Americans. And in the mind of electricity executives, that was all that mattered. They were right. This lesson provides clues as to what might determine the outcome of the FTC’s battle with Amazon today.

In the first decade of the 20th century, electricity executives encountered a public relations nightmare. They had treated customers with scorn and gotten caught bribing city councils, which precipitated demands from reformers for strict government regulation of electricity companies or outright government ownership of their networks.

In responding to this crisis, electricity company executives learned from a fatal mistake made by 19th century railroad monopolies. The railroad companies had expressed a “public be damned” attitude, which fueled animosity from Americans and aggressive government interference in their industry.

To avoid any similar limitations on their control of the electricity industry, executives undertook the largest non-governmental public relations campaign the U.S. had ever seen. Their logic was simple—though at the time it was revolutionary. Public opinion now ruled the political economy of the nation, these executives believed. No monopoly operating permit, rate hike, or regulatory structure could survive if it failed in the court of public opinion. “Public sentiment controls the ultimate destiny of every utility company,” declared an electricity executive in 1922.

Read More: Amazon’s Dangerous Ambition to Dominate Healthcare

Accordingly, in 1908, the industry announced a new slogan: “the public be pleased.” This motto encapsulated the insight that customers wanted to at least feel like they were in charge of corporations. To generate that feeling, executives intensively engaged in PR activities.

They compelled their clerks, telephone operators, even linemen to exude “courtesy,” “friendliness,”and “sympathy” toward customers. Managers required “a smile and a pleasant word,” a “friendly feeling,” and “the human quality” from workers. Clerks had to display “a smiling courteous demeanor,” exhibit “a world of patience,” and emit a “ray of sunshine during the entire day.” The idea: if customers received courteous treatment, they would warm up to the idea of corporate monopolies controlling a crucial utility service.

But executives didn’t just tell their employees to mind their manners with customers. Instead, they developed intensive training programs that amounted to huge finishing schools for the working class. This instruction perpetuated and expanded Victorian culture, even as a new consumer culture emerged. To ensure that their staff followed the lessons of these programs, managers sent out mystery shoppers to secretly grade clerks on their customer service. 

The cost to low-level employees was high. Their plastered smiles and scripted pleasantries represented a great loss of emotional freedom and a new level of managerial control.

In addition to courtesy, executives remodeled their customer service offices where customers went to sign up for service, pay their bills, and complain about charges. At thousands of branch offices around the country, workers tore down the iron bars and glass partitions that utilities had inherited from bank designs, and replaced these barricaded offices with new open and inviting layouts. The interiors of these offices now looked like a middle-class living room, while their exteriors resembled the single-family homes in the surrounding residential neighborhoods. 

If monopoly corporations lived here, perhaps corporations really were people.

Electricity monopolies also advertised, of course. But this advertising was mostly intended as a bribe to get editors to publish articles written by electricity managers. These articles—not the ads—would do the real work of convincing Americans that corporate monopolies operated in the customer’s best interest, executives calculated. In many states, between 70 and 95 percent of newspapers participated in this ads-for-articles scheme. 

Executives had once bribed city councils, but muckraking journalists had exposed that practice. So instead, executives simply bribed the journalists. 

The campaign to convince the public of the value of monopolies also included employee speeches at civic clubs, political tracts about the horrors of “communist” municipal ownership of utilities stuffed into billing envelopes, and company-authored textbooks that praised corporate electricity companies. In several states, over 70% of children received instruction from civics books authored by electricity monopolies. 

Finally, electricity companies engaged in diverse community activities aimed at painting themselves in a positive light. These included donating to the local orphanage and YMCA, inviting school groups on field trips to corporate facilities, and producing innovative radio cooking shows.

This massive public relations campaign proved exceptionally effective. Even critics of electricity monopolies admitted by the late 1920s that public opinion toward these companies had dramatically improved. Not even the Great Depression and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s could dislodge corporate electricity monopolies from their privileged position within the American economy.

The success of the electricity monopolies at winning over the public points to what may determine the success of the FTC’s campaign against Amazon: what the public thinks of the shopping giant. 

Crucially, people have complained that Amazon has driven mom and pop shops out of business and mistreated warehouse workers. But despite such criticisms, the company has not seemed to focus much energy on combating that idea.

Read More: FTC and 17 States Sue Amazon, Alleging Price Inflation and Overcharging of Sellers

That may be starting to change. Earlier this year, Amazon sent out a glossy mailer to residents of Arlington, Va., the home of Amazon’s second headquarters, filled with pictures of community organizations that received Amazon donations. Next, Amazon began sponsoring the area’s Little League.

Even so, these local efforts are only a trickle compared to the flood of PR activities that electricity executives employed long before their own dust up with the FTC in 1928.

While Amazon is not facing a jury trail, the jury of public opinion is still out. Whether Amazon can get public opinion behind it remains to be seen. If the company’s executives don’t start seeing the link between public relations at the lowest levels of their corporation and political regulation at the highest levels of government, as electricity executives did, America’s long wait for another good old-fashioned antimonopoly movement may come to an end. Perhaps it already has.

Daniel Robert is the author of Courteous Capitalism: Public Relations and the Monopoly Problem, 1900-1930; he holds a PhD in American history from Berkeley. Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here.

source https://time.com/6321896/amazon-ftc-history/

The Long-Symbolic Price Cap on Russian Oil Is Now Being Put to the Test

FRANKFURT, Germany — For months after Ukraine’s Western allies limited sales of Russian oil to $60 per barrel, the price cap was still largely symbolic. Most of Moscow’s crude — its main moneymaker — cost less than that.

But the cap was there in case oil prices rose — and would keep the Kremlin from pocketing extra profits to fund its war in Ukraine. That time has now come, putting the price cap to its most serious test so far and underlining its weaknesses.

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Russia’s benchmark oil — often exported with Western ships required to obey sanctions — has traded above the price cap since mid-July, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars a day into the Kremlin’s war chest.

Read More: The World Has a Russian Oil Problem. Here’s the Best Way to Solve It

With Russia’s profits rising, the Israel-Hamas war pushing up global oil prices and evidence that some traders and shippers are evading the cap, the first signs of enforcement are appearing 10 months after the price limit was imposed in December.

But sanctions advocates say the crackdown needs to go further to really hurt Russia.

Reducing oil profits “is the one thing that hits Russian macroeconomic stability the most,” said Benjamin Hilgenstock, senior economist at the Kyiv School of Economics, which advises the Ukrainian government.

Oil income is the linchpin of Russia’s economy, allowing President Vladimir Putin to pour money into the military while avoiding worsening inflation for everyday people and a currency collapse.

Moscow’s ability to sell more to the world than it buys means it’s weathering sanctions far better than expected. Its economy will grow this year while Germany’s shrinks, the International Monetary Fund estimates.

Still, Russia’s main source of income is at risk from stepped-up enforcement. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned two ship owners last week, while U.K. officials are investigating violations.

Read More: How Putin Cannibalizes Russian Economy to Survive Personally

Since the invasion began, oil sanctions have cost Russia $100 billion through August, said an international working group on sanctions at Stanford University. But most of that, economists say, stems from Europe’s ban on Russian oil, which cost Moscow its main customer.

“There are serious problems with the (price cap) policy, but it can work,” Hilgenstock said. “With some improvements, it can be very effective.”

Vessels owned or insured by Western nations “persisted in loading Russian oil at all ports within Russia” in recent weeks as prices rose above the cap, the Helsinki-based Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air said in a report last week. “These occurrences serve as compelling evidence of violations against the price cap policy.”

Russia’s oil income rose in September to some 200 million euros ($211 million) a day as global prices increased, the think tank said. Less oil available worldwide — with Saudi Arabia and Russia cutting production — pushed prices for Moscow’s key export grade crude to $74.46 last week, S&P Global Platts said. It’s been above $60 since July 11.

The price cap is meant to limit what Russia can earn without taking its supplies off the market. Doing that threatens a shortage that could drive up fuel costs and inflation in the U.S. and Europe.

It relies on a key fact of the shipping industry: many vessel owners, traders and most insurers are based in Europe or the Group of Seven major democracies that imposed the price cap. That puts those companies within reach of sanctions.

To comply, shipping companies need to know the price of Russia’s oil. The cap, however, requires only a good-faith disclosure on a simple, one-page document with the names of the parties and the price. The actual sales contracts don’t have to be revealed.

And that, analysts say, has been an invitation for unscrupulous sellers to fudge — and for some shippers to adopt a see-no-evil approach.

Suspicions about evasion grew when analysts noticed that oil from the Russian port of Kozmino on the Pacific Ocean — responsible for a relatively small share of Russia’s exports — was trading well above the cap. That was even though many of the tankers stopping there were Western-owned, primarily Greek.

There was little sign of enforcement action until last week, when the U.S. Treasury Department blocked a tanker owner in the United Arab Emirates and another in Turkey from dealings in the U.S. They’re accused of carrying Russian oil priced at $75 and $80 per barrel while relying on U.S.-connected service providers.

U.S. officials have warned insurers away from vessels that appear suspicious, a senior Treasury official told reporters last week. The department also issued recommendations to scrutinize transport costs and watch for red flags of evasion.

The U.K. Treasury says it is “actively undertaking a number of investigations into suspected breaches of the oil price cap.”

There’s another opportunity to sidestep the cap: the price is set as oil leaves Russia, not what’s paid by a refinery in, say, India. The oil may be bought and sold several times by Russian-affiliated trading companies in countries not participating in sanctions.

Excessive “transportation costs” may be added. The difference to the end price is pocketed by traders and stays in Russian hands, analysts say.

“The problem is that no one really has any oversight as to what happens after the point of loading,” said Viktor Katona, lead crude analyst at data and analytics group Kpler. “And there’s a reason why the shippers haven’t really complained or haven’t flagged any issues with the oil price cap — because it’s very easily circumvented.”

Russia’s top energy official, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, told Radio Business FM on Oct. 13 that the cap was “not only ineffective, but harmful; it can completely distort the entire market and has only negative consequences, including for consumers.”

Russia does not recognize the cap, and a decree by Putin forbids its inclusion in sales agreements, Novak said.

U.S. officials, on the other hand, point to the losses it has inflicted on Moscow when combined with Europe’s ban on Russian oil.

That boycott forced exporters to send oil on monthlong voyages to Asia, instead of dayslong trips to Europe — essentially doubling Russia’s need for expensive shipping services.

Read More: Russia Wants a Committed Fossil Fuel Relationship. China Has Cold Feet

Another cost is the “shadow fleet” of used tankers that Russia bought to dodge sanctions. It has only a third of the vessels it would need to completely sanctions-proof its oil shipments, said Craig Kennedy, an associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.

That makes it hard for Russia to completely avoid Western-based shipping services.

Combined with the EU oil ban, the price cap has added $35 per barrel in costs for Russian exporters, U.S. officials say — money that doesn’t go to buy weapons and military equipment.

“The price cap is working,” says Nataliia Shapoval, vice president for policy research at the Kyiv school.

But Western allies “should take really urgent measures” to push oil from Russia’s shadow fleet back to mainstream shipping, Shapoval said.

To do that, the Stanford sanctions group says countries should demand proof of Western insurance before letting vessels pass chokepoints — now only recommended by the U.S. Treasury. Tanker owners also could be forced to take shipments only from approved oil traders based in sanctioning countries.

—AP reporter Josh Boak contributed from Washington.

source https://time.com/6327258/russia-oil-price-cap/

Military Spokesman Says Israel Plans to Increase Strikes on Gaza

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Israel’s military spokesman said Israel plans to step up its attacks on the Gaza Strip starting Saturday as preparation for the next stage of its war on Hamas.

Asked about a possible ground invasion into Gaza, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters Saturday night that the military was trying to create optimal conditions beforehand.

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“We will deepen our attacks to minimize the dangers to our forces in the next stages of the war. We are going to increase the attacks, from today,” Hagari said.

He repeated his call for residents of Gaza City to head south for their safety. The border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened Saturday to let a trickle of desperately needed aid into the besieged Palestinian territory for the first time since Israel sealed it off following Hamas’ bloody rampage two weeks ago.

Just 20 trucks were allowed in, an amount aid workers said was insufficient to address the unprecedented humanitarian crisis. More than 200 trucks carrying 3,000 tons of aid have been waiting nearby for days.

Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians, half of whom have fled their homes, are rationing food and drinking dirty water. Hospitals say they are running low on medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide power blackout. Five hospitals have stopped functioning because of fuel shortages and bombing damage, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said.

Israel is still launching waves of airstrikes across Gaza as Palestinian militants fire rockets into Israel.

The opening came after more than a week of high-level diplomacy, including visits to the region by U.S. President Joe Biden and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Israel had insisted nothing would enter Gaza until Hamas released all the captives from its Oct. 7 attack on towns in southern Israel.

Late Friday, Hamas freed its first captives — an American woman and her teenage daughter. It was not immediately clear if there was a connection between the release and the aid deliveries. Israel says Hamas is still holding at least 210 hostages.

On Saturday morning, an Associated Press reporter saw the 20 trucks heading north from Rafah to Deir al-Balah, a quiet farming town where many evacuees from the north have sought shelter. Hundreds of foreign passport holders at Rafah hoping to escape the conflict were not allowed to leave.

American citizen Dina al- Khatib said she and her family were desperate to get out. “It’s not like previous wars,” she said. “There is no electricity, no water, no internet, nothing.”

The trucks were carrying 44,000 bottles of drinking water — enough for 22,000 people for a single day, it said. “This first, limited water will save lives, but the needs are immediate and immense,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.

The World Health Organization said four of the trucks were carrying medical supplies, including trauma medicine and portable trauma bags for first responders.

“The situation is catastrophic in Gaza,” the head of the U.N.’s World Food Program, Cindy McCain, told The Associated Press. “We need many, many, many more trucks and a continual flow of aid,” she said, adding that some 400 trucks were entering Gaza daily before the war.

Gaza’s Hamas-run government called for a secure corridor operating around the clock.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, said “the humanitarian situation in Gaza is under control.” He said the aid would be delivered only to southern Gaza, where the army has ordered people to relocate, adding that no fuel would enter.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken appealed to all sides to keep the crossing open for crucial aid shipments and warned Hamas to not take the aid.

“Palestinian civilians are not responsible for Hamas’s horrific terrorism, and they should not be made to suffer for its depraved acts,” he said in a statement. “As President Biden stated, if Hamas steals or diverts this assistance it will have demonstrated once again that it has no regard for the welfare of the Palestinian people.’’

Guterres gave voice to growing international concern over civilians in Gaza, telling a summit in Cairo that Hamas’ “reprehensible assault” on Israel “can never justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”

Two Egyptian officials and a European diplomat said extensive negotiations with Israel and the U.N. to allow fuel deliveries for hospitals had yielded little progress. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release information on the sensitive deliberations.

One Egyptian official said they were discussing the release of dual-national hostages in return for the fuel, but that Israel was insisting on the release of all hostages.

The release of Judith Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter, Natalie, on Friday brought some hope to the families of others believed held hostage.

Rachel Goldberg, whose son is thought to have been badly wounded before he was taken hostage, said she was “very relieved” by the news.

“We are hopeful that that the people who were behind this wonderful release of Judith and Natalie will keep working night and day. But quickly,” she said. “I think he could be dying. So we don’t have time.”

Hamas said it was working with Egypt, Qatar and other mediators “to close the case” of hostages if security circumstances permit.

There are growing expectations of a ground offensive that Israel says would be aimed at rooting out Hamas. Israel said Friday it does not plan to take long-term control over the small but densely populated Palestinian territory.

Israel has also traded fire along its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militants, raising concerns about a second front opening up. The Israeli military said Saturday it struck Hezbollah targets in Lebanon in response to recent rocket launches and attacks with anti-tank missiles.

“Hezbollah has decided to participate in the fighting, and we are exacting a heavy price for this,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said during a visit to the border.

Israel issued a travel warning Saturday, ordering its citizens to leave Egypt and Jordan — which made peace with it decades ago — and to avoid travel to a number of Arab and Muslim countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain, which forged diplomatic ties with Israel in 2020. Protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza have erupted across the region.

An Israeli ground assault would likely lead to a dramatic escalation in casualties on both sides in urban fighting. More than 1,400 people in Israel have been killed in the war — mostly civilians slain during the Hamas attack.

More than 4,300 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry. That includes the disputed toll from a hospital explosion. The ministry says another 1,400 are believed buried under rubble.

At the summit Saturday, Egypt President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi called for ensuring aid to Gaza, negotiating a cease-fire and resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which broke down more than a decade ago. He also said the conflict would never be resolved “at the expense of Egypt,” referring to fears Israel may try to push Gaza’s population into the Sinai Peninsula.

King Abdullah II of Jordan told the summit that Israel’s air campaign and siege of Gaza were “a war crime” and slammed the international community’s response.

“Anywhere else, attacking civilian infrastructure and deliberately starving an entire population of food, water, electricity, and basic necessities would be condemned,” he said. Apparently, he added, “human rights have boundaries. They stop at borders, they stop at races, they stop at religions.”

Over a million people have been displaced in Gaza. Many heeded Israel’s orders to evacuate from north to south within the sealed-off coastal enclave. But Israel has continued to bomb areas in southern Gaza .

A senior Israeli military official said the air force will not hit the area where aid is being distributed unless rockets are fired from there. “It’s a safe zone,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to reveal military information.

source https://time.com/6326885/israel-gaza-strikes-increase-plans/

Bobby Charlton, Manchester United and England Soccer Great, Dies at 86

MANCHESTER, England — Bobby Charlton, an English soccer icon who survived a plane crash that decimated a Manchester United team destined for greatness to become the heartbeat of his country’s 1966 World Cup-winning team, has died. He was 86.

A statement from Charlton’s family, released by United, said he died Saturday surrounded by his family. An extravagantly gifted midfielder with a ferocious shot, Charlton was the leading scorer for both United (249 goals) and England (49 goals) for more than 40 years until being overtaken by Wayne Rooney.

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“Sir Bobby was a hero to millions, not just in Manchester, or the United Kingdom, but wherever football is played around the world,” United said. “He was admired as much for his sportsmanship and integrity as he was for his outstanding qualities as a footballer; Sir Bobby will always be remembered as a giant of the game.”

Alex Ferguson, who managed United from 1986-2013, said before Charlton’s death that he “is the greatest Manchester United player of all time — and that’s saying something.”

“Bobby Charlton is absolutely without peer in the history of the English game,” Ferguson said. Charlton was also renowned for his humility, discipline and sportsmanship. He was never sent off in 758 appearances for United from 1956-73 or 106 internationals for England from 1958-70.

Charlton played with George Best and Denis Law in the so-called “Trinity” that led United to the 1968 European Cup after surviving the 1958 Munich crash that wiped out the celebrated “Busby Babes” team. He won three English league titles at United, and one FA Cup.

“For a footballer, he offered an unparalleled combination of grace, power and precision,” said former United defender Bill Foulkes, another survivor of the Munich air crash.

“It added up to a greatness and something more — something I can only call beauty.” FIFA President Gianni Infantino described Charlton as a “football legend whose impact on the game spanned generations.” United great David Beckham said Charlton was “truly a national hero.” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called him ”one of the game’s greatest players.”

Charlton’s England scoring record stood for 45 years until Rooney scored his 50th goal for the national team in September 2015. Three of his England goals came in the World Cup in 1966, during which Charlton played every minute for the team and stood out especially in the semifinals when he scored twice against Portugal to lead England to a first major final.

England beat West Germany 4-2 after extra time in the final. Although Ryan Giggs beat Charlton’s appearance record for United in 2008, his scoring record for the club lasted another nine years. It was only in 2017 — 44 years after Charlton last wore the famous red jersey of England’s most successful club — that Rooney scored his 250th goal for United.

After retiring in 1973, Charlton went into coaching and founded a youth scheme that included Beckham among its participants. After brief spells in charge of Preston, Wigan and Irish side Waterford, Charlton returned to United in 1984 as a director and persuaded the board in 1986 to appoint Ferguson, who delivered 38 trophies during nearly 27 years in charge.

Knighted in 1994 by Queen Elizabeth II, Charlton remains a mainstay at Old Trafford, featuring alongside Best and Law on a statue outside United’s stadium.

Charlton avoided the controversies and distractions that damaged the career of Best, with his style and demeanor bringing a popularity that transcended the tribalism of club and international football.

“I felt he could be a bit aloof,” the late Best said in a 2001 magazine interview. “We were never at each other’s throats, we simply didn’t go and have a pint together.”

In November 2020, it was announced that Charlton had been diagnosed with dementia, the same disease that afflicted his brother Jack — who died in 2020 at age 85 — and another World Cup winner, Nobby Stiles.

Charlton’s death left Geoff Hurst, who scored a hat trick in the 1966 final, as the only surviving member of that England team.

“We will never forget him and nor will all of football,” Hurst said of Charlton on X, formerly known as Twitter. “A great colleague and friend, he will be sorely missed by all of the country beyond sport alone.”

Robert Charlton was born Oct. 11, 1937, in the coal-mining town of Ashington, northeast England, and his talent was obvious from a young age.

“We realized Bobby was going to be a bit special as a player when he was about 5 years old,” said Jack, his older brother. “He was always kicking a football or a tennis ball against a wall and when it bounced back it stuck to him like a magnet.”

Charlton wrote in 2007 that his family sometimes relied on illegally caught salmon or rabbit to ward off hunger, while his father — also named Robert — gathered coal washed up on local beaches and sold it to bolster his income.

His father’s commitment to his mining colleagues meant that in 1966 he missed Charlton scoring both goals against Portugal in that World Cup semifinal because he didn’t want someone else to have to cover for him in the pit. He was, however, persuaded to attend the final when the Charlton brothers lifted the trophy.

Charlton’s playing career began far from home in Manchester after leaving school at 15, making his United debut three years later against Charlton in 1956.

Within two years, tragedy struck the tight-knit group of United players whose relationship was forged as trainees in austere conditions. The team was still celebrating winning at Red Star Belgrade to secure a place in the European Cup semifinals when their plane caught fire on its third attempt to take off in heavy snow after a refueling stop in Germany.

Charlton miraculously emerged from the smoldering wreckage with only light head injuries and picked his way through the wreckage to help survivors. Spotting manager Matt Busby groaning in agony on the smoke-shrouded runway, Charlton rushed to help the father-figure who had promoted him to the first team.

But eight members of the “Busby Babes” team packed with bright prospects were among the 21 fatalities. They included Duncan Edwards, considered one of England’s most talented players at 21. “Sometimes it engulfs me with terrible anger and regret and sadness — and guilt that I walked away and found so much,” Charlton wrote in 2007.

Charlton became driven by a lingering obligation to preserve the memories of the Munich dead, returning to action less than four weeks later and helping a hurriedly assembled team of survivors and stand-ins reach that season’s FA Cup final.

Busby rebuilt his team around Charlton, adding the 1965 and 1967 English league titles to the championship they won in 1957.

“There was always one great hope — the return to greatness of my beloved club,” Charlton said. The biggest prize of his club career arrived in 1968 as United became the first English club to become champion of Europe. Charlton scored twice in a 4-1 extra-time win over a Benfica team containing Portugal great Eusebio.

But Charlton is perhaps best known for being part of the England team that won the World Cup. It remains England’s only major title in men’s soccer.

Charlton and his brother fell out over Jack’s public assertion that Bobby’s wife caused him to become estranged from his mother. But the pair reconciled and Jack presented Bobby with a lifetime achievement trophy at the 2008 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award.

“We have had our public disputes, proving that in any family discord can sometimes disrupt the force of love and blood, but throughout that time I never lost the sense of wonder and gratitude that we were together in 1966 on such a great day in the history of our nation’s sport,” Bobby Charlton said.

Charlton was rarely seen in public in the final years of his life after being diagnosed with dementia. He was never forgotten, though.

“This man, from day one, was everything I wanted to be,” United striker Marcus Rashford wrote of Charlton after hearing about the diagnosis. “Kind, professional, caring, talented.”

Another former United player, Phil Neville, said Charlton deserved to stand alongside the likes of Pele, Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi as a soccer great, because of what he achieved and the way he did it. “He’s up there with those players,” Neville said on NBC on Saturday.

He is survived by his wife, Norma, whom he married in 1961, and his two daughters.

source https://time.com/6326873/bobby-charlton-england-soccer-player-dead/

Pakistan’s Self-Exiled Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif Returns Home Ahead of Vote

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s thrice-elected former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif returned home Saturday on a chartered plane from Dubai, ending four years of self-imposed exile in London as he seeks to win the support of voters in parliamentary elections due in January.

He is expected to face tough competition from the party of former premier and his main rival, Imran Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April 2022 and is currently imprisoned after a court convicted and sentenced him to three years in a graft case.

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Sharif has been a fugitive since he failed to appear before a Pakistani court in 2019 following his conviction and sentencing of 10 years in prison on corruption charges. Khan, at the time, allowed him to travel abroad to receive medical treatment after complaining of chest pains. Sharif later prolonged his stay in London, saying his doctors were not allowing him to travel.

Two days ago, a Pakistani federal court granted him several days of protection in graft cases, clearing the way for his return home from self-imposed exile in London. At the Islamabad airport Saturday, legal advisers and senior members of his Pakistan Muslim League party gave him a warm welcome.

He is expected to address a massive homecoming rally in the eastern city of Lahore later Saturday and his return comes as Pakistan experiences deepening political turmoil and one of its worst economic crises.

In Lahore, Sharif’s supporters decorated the city with his photos and party flags. “Today I am going to Pakistan after four years and I am feeling very happy with the grace of Allah,” Sharif told reporters before leaving for Islamabad from Dubai. He had arrived in the United Arab Emirates on Friday from Saudi Arabia after traveling there last week from London.

He said Pakistan’s economy and political situation both declined in recent years, according to multiple videos shared by his Pakistan Muslim League party on X, formerly known as Twitter.

But he added: “As I have said earlier, I leave everything to God.” He said he made more than 150 court appearances after his ouster in 2017.

Thursday’s decision by the Islamabad High Court that allowed for his return was a major boost for Sharif and his party, which is struggling to counter the popularity of Khan who remains the leading opposition figure.

Sharif is also facing multiple legal challenges. In 2020, an anti-graft court in Islamabad issued a warrant for his arrest after he failed to return home. The same court on Thursday suspended that arrest warrant until Oct. 24. Another federal court has granted Sharif bail until Oct. 24, giving him protection from arrest until then.

Last month, Sharif claimed that the country’s former powerful army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa and spy chief Faiz Hameed orchestrated his ouster in 2017. He had troubled relations with the military.

His party became hugely unpopular after Khan’s removal when Nawaz Sharif’s brother Shehbaz Sharif replaced Khan, a former cricketer turned politician.

Shehbaz, whose tenure ended in August, failed to improve the economy, though he saved Pakistan from default. A caretaker government is currently in power and it will hold the vote in January.

source https://time.com/6326824/pakistan-former-prime-minister-nawaz-sharif-returns/