Financial Times Europe - 02.11.2019 - 03.11.2019

8 ★ FT Weekend 2 November/3 November 2019

Orthodox Christians

have suffered for their

churches’ domes

The illustration for “The new classics:

Jancis Robinson on Greek wines”

(FT Weekend, October 26) was a

graphic of a man lifting an Orthodox

church’s dome.

Orthodox believe a church’s dome

represents heaven’s vault. Pulling off a

church’s dome to reveal a bottle of wine

may represent heaven to some, but to

the hundreds of millions of Orthodox

Christians it is sacrilegious bad taste.

Orthodox Christians remember

suffering thejizyaanddevshirme—

taxes, kidnapping and child

enslavement — for our domes, both to

the south with the Ottomans or

Caliphate, and in the north with the

Horde. Today we see our domes pulled

down and in flames in Syria and

elsewhere as priests and monks are

tortured while confessing the Orthodox

faith.

You can decide whether your staff

would be more likely to reduce a

synagogue or a mosque as packaging

for a consumer good, or a cathedral

in Scotland or Ireland for a bottle

of whisky.

Orthodox have not given scandal,

we should not be subject to satire. As

penance, please send those responsible

to an Orthodox church to write an

article on the very real suffering (both

historical and present) of Orthodox

Christians largely ignored in your

otherwise wonderful paper. Since a

picture is worth a thousand words, an

article of that length should suffice.

With great love in Christ,

Father Andrew Bushell

Protos, St Paul’s Foundation

Guardian, Orthodox Christian Shrine of

St Nicholas the Wonderworker, Patron

of Sailors, Brewers & Repentant Thieves

Marblehead, MA, US

X-ers dominate extreme

right all over Europe

Janan Ganesh writes that Generation X,

born between the mid-1960s and early

1980s, “delivered no big electoral

shock” in America and Britain (“A

millennial’s hymn to Generation X”,

Life & Arts, October 26).

Not so in continental Europe. The

extreme political right is dominated by

X-ers.

Take Heinz-Christian Strache (1969)

and Norbert Hofer (1971) of Austria’s

Freedom Party. Matteo Salvini of Italy’s

Northern League was born in 1973,

while Marine Le Pen of France’s

National Rally is a child of 1968.

Björn Höcke, leader of the Alternative

for Germany, which won every fourth

vote in the recent election in Thuringia,

is an X-er of 1972. Viktor Orban of

Hungary and Geert Wilders of the

Netherlands were both born in 1963,

on the border between baby boomer

and X-er.

Looking to the political centre we

find Spanish prime minister Pedro

Sánchez (born 1972) and French

president Emmanuel Macron (1977).

The latter certainly would disagree

with Mr Ganesh that he lacked the

political vision of his elders and

juniors.

Tobias Flessenkemper

Düsseldorf, Germany

Thank you for publishing Misha

Glenny’s Prague-centred memoir

“How the east was lost” (Life & Arts,

October 26). I can imagine the joy he

felt as the great and modest Alexander

Dubcek walked past him to address

the crowds in Wenceslas Square.

Although the apparent promise of a

happy ending was not fulfilled, his

memory of that moment can only

remain a great treasure.

I was an early witness of the great

man’s reform programme. I had

retained contacts with reform-minded

diplomats in the Czechoslovak London

embassy built up when I was still an

apparatchik at the Labour party HQ a

year earlier. All too soon, in the early

summer that followed Dubcek’s Prague

spring, along with luminaries from the

Labour movement I joined a

celebratory party at the embassy

and made plans to visit Prague and

witness the exciting developments.

At that party I heard of a striking

parallel with Mr Glenny’s underground

assistance to the dissidents of

Mitteleuropa. Evelyn Jones, wife

of union leader Jack Jones, told me

she had served the anti-fascist

underground in the same region in

the 1930s. She was based in Prague, as

her only possible home: “In a free

country surrounded by dictatorships,”

as she said.

She felt more secure than Mr Glenny

could ever have felt; neither secret

nor unsecret police could ever suspect

that this middle-class English woman

striding around Europe in her Burberry

and sensible shoes was working for

leftwing revolutionaries.

I did not achieve my plan to visit

Prague. The massed forces of the

Warsaw Pact invaded three days

before I left. Full of anger and cocky

young bravado I tried to cross the

border anyway. I gave up after being

turned back at two crossing points, but

I did befriend a succession of Czech

refugees and provided accommodation

for some of them in the house I rented.

Some returned to the country even

before 1989.

As I look at Europe now I can only

hope that there will not be a need for

another Evelyn Jones or Misha Glenny

in the near future.

Anthony Murray

Kingston-upon-Thames, UK

The resistance worker in the sensible shoes

Letters

SATURDAY2 NOVEMBER 2019

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Online political advertising, with
troves of personal data allowing mes-
sages to be highly targeted, has become
one of the most powerful tools in the
electoral arsenal. The scope for disin-
formation or outright lies — and the
fact the advertising often falls outside
the regulations applied to television,
radio and newspapers — calls for
urgent oversight.
Twitter’s move to ban political
advertising on its platform this week is
a welcome sign of a company taking a
proactive approach. It is also an
implicit challenge to rival Facebook.
Twitter said it would ban most politi-
cal ads, excluding those aiming to
increase voter registration. Twitter’s
chief executive Jack Dorsey argued that
political ads offer a larger megaphone
to those with deeper pockets than their
opponents and that they have helped
spread harmful content.
By contrast, Facebookexempted
political adsfrom its usual fact-check-
ing procedures, sparking outrage.
Allowing politicians and parties to
make statements without scrutiny
makes Facebook’s anti-disinformation
efforts look hollow. Questioned
recently by congresswoman Alexan-
dria Ocasio-Cortez on whether she
could run false stories on the network,
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuck-
erberg said she “probably” could.
Mr Zuckerberg says people would
not want tech companies to be arbiters
of truth in politics. These companies
have long claimed to be platforms
rather than publishers under the US
Communications Decency Act. But the
spread of political advertising on social
media requires companies fact-check
political ads in collaboration with
trusted, independent organisations.
The very nature of online advertising
also requires further investigation.
Compared to television, social media
companies have far greater control

over what specific audiences see. Plat-

forms have made some efforts to allow

third parties to assess who is paying to

advertise on them. Yet these tools can

be rudimentary. Tech companies

should make sure metrics such as the

audience segments that have been tar-

geted are clear and publicly available.

Official political advertising is only

part of the problem, however. Sites

including Twitter are still grappling

withfake accountswhich can boost the

reach of messages, in some cases

directed from foreign states. Efforts to

detect and remove these accounts

should be stepped up, requiring social

media companies to engage more with

academics and law enforcement.

While online advertising has clear

differences from its traditional coun-

terparts, existing regulation still offers

a blueprint to bring it under control. In

the UK, bodies such as Ofcom and the

Advertising Standards Agency have

clear rules on material that can be

shown on television and radio. By

updating and expanding the power of

national regulators — perhaps with

funding provided by a social media

levy — more transparency around

political ads could be created. In Face-

book’s case, increasing regulation

could also push up the costs of running

political ads without verification. Tech

companies have often shown that com-

mitments to free speech are secondary

to commercial imperatives.

Governments and regulators should

provide clarity on how politicians and

parties can promote themselves on

social media platforms. National regu-

lators should keep the threat of impos-

ing a full-scale ban on political adver-

tising in their arsenal. Social media

companies have often proved resistant

to change. With adivisive UK general

election campaign ow beginning andn

the US presidential election a year

away, the stakes are exceptionally high.

As elections loom, the risks from paid disinformation remain high

For those without $250,000 to spend
on a trip to the edge of the atmosphere,
this week’s public market debut of Vir-
gin Galactic may seem of limited inter-
est. Yet while space tourism may
smack of frivolity, it is a niche in a
much wider, fast-growing space indus-
try. Handled properly, the commercial-
isation of space could drive develop-
ments with widespread benefits.
In its purpose statement, Virgin
Galactic quotes its founder Richard
Branson saying it “will open space to
everybody — and change the world for
good”. These are bold words for a com-
pany offering starry selfies to the well-
heeled. The market response has been
muted: on Friday the shares were trad-
ing more than 15 per cent below their
Monday opening. Virgin Galactic last
year recorded a net loss of $138m, but
says it will be profitable in 2021 — pro-
vided flights have started by then.
There are reasons for would-be space
travellers, and investors, to be wary.
The launch of flights has been long
delayed; Sir Richardoriginally envis-
aged that customers would be in space
over a decade ago. The industry as a
whole needs to prove its safety record
as well. Virgin Galactic suffered the
break-up of a test vehicle in 2014,kill-
ing a pilot and delaying testing. A major
accident involving customers could
stop the sector from ever taking off.
Yet it is myopic to view private space
tourism as a wasteful extravagance.
Just as in the original, state-led space
race of the 1960s, technological spin-
offs from the new competition between
the likes of Sir Richard, Elon Musk and
others are likely to be useful elsewhere.
The commercial pioneers have also
restored the sheen to space exploration
— no mean feat in an age when British
and US kids are more interested in
becomingYouTubers than astronauts.
Celestial safaris are just one branch
of a commercial space sector that ana-

lysts from UBS last year predicted

wouldrise in value from $340bn to

nearly $1tn in the next two decades. At

the quotidian end of the spectrum, the

internet of things will demand more

satellite launches to improve connec-

tivity: Elon Musk’s SpaceX sent up 06

satellites n May for that purpose.i

Asteroid mining could also offer

lucrative opportunities for precious

metals and minerals. The space sector

will still have to find ways to reduce its

environmental impact, given the

resources and fuel needed to produce

and power a rocket. Yet digging up

minerals from floating debris rather

than on earth might reduce the overall

environmental costs. The raw materi-

als could then be utilised for in-space

manufacturing, using automation to

produce goods and send them to Earth.

A few have even envisaged that

humanity, faced with a scarcity of

resources and growing population,

might eventually develop colonies off

world. Mr Musk has been the most

vocal proponent of this goal: the Tesla

founder hastalked of living out his days

on Mars. One day, perhaps, but for now

this remains very much in the realm of

science fiction. Other commercial

opportunities are more readily within

humanity’s grasp.

The technical hurdles in the way of

the broader commercial exploitation of

spaceare matched only by the manage-

ment challenges. Governments and

private sector bodies will have to co-

operate at a time of geopolitical ten-

sions. Supply chains need to be devel-

oped to make mining and manufactur-

ing in space feasible. And space explor-

ers will have to do a better job of

cleaning up their junk than they have

in the past.

But beyond our planet, there are

opportunities which we have so far

only glimpsed in passing. nlockingU

them would be a universal boon.

Interstellar opportunities abound beyond flying trips for the rich

Online political ads are in

urgent need of regulation

Tourism is one small step

on our way to the stars

A few years ago, I had lunch with a

New York-based Mexican friend. She

introduced me to her mother, who

was visiting. As we shook hands, I was

struck by a sense that I had seen the

woman before in Tajikistan while

working as an anthropologist.

After chatting, I decided that my

mind had been playing tricks on me.

Cecilia Romo has spent much of her

life in Mexico, building a long career

over four decades as an economist,

model-agency owner and actress. She

has never been to Tajikistan.

A few months later, I met Ms Romo

again and learnt that she was in

Mexican telenovelas, such asLos Ricos

También Lloran “The Rich Also Cry”).(

Suddenly, things fell into place.

In 1991, I was researching in a

remote mountain village in Tajikistan,

a corner of the former Soviet Union.

The people eased their boredom by

watching television on the few sets

available. There wasn’t much to

watch, apart from Soviet propaganda

films or Tajik dancing. But one Soviet

station started broadcastingLos Ricos

También Lloran, badly dubbed into

Russian. So the reason I “knew” Ms

Romo was that I had once stared at

her face as a soap opera from Mexico

was beamed halfway across the world.

This is, on one level, just an

example of the serendipity that many

of us occasionally encounter. But there

is a bigger point too. Today we live in

an age when the idea of “globalisation”

is under attack.

However, the usual debate about

globalisation tends to miss a trick. The

increasing flows of traded goods and

money is what dominates the debate.

But flows of people and information

are crucial too, and the latter may be

driving globalisation most forcefully

now.

An index compiled by DHL, which

tracks those four factors, suggests that

since 2001, global flows of trade and

capital have risen about 10 per cent.

Flows of people have risen steadily, by

almost 20 per cent. However,

information flows have leapt 80 per

cent.

If this was extended back in time by

a decade or two, you might see a

similar pattern, as technological

innovations spread data, ideas — and

Mexican telenovelas.

In our lifetimes alone, the impact of

this has been striking. Arriving in

Tajikistan in the early 1990s felt like

landing on Pluto, since it seemed so

cut-off from my home. Of course, a

historian would contest this: the fact

that I, a British student, was in

Tajikistan was only because the Soviet

Union was opening up in the time of

glasnost. The appearance ofLos Ricos

También Lloran as another sign ofw

this.

However, back then, most Tajik

villagers had scant idea of life beyond

the Iron Curtain. Few travelled, except

for the men who had done Soviet

military service. Even the elite rarely

left the republic; simply talking on the

phone to someone outside the region

was difficult.

Today, things are different. Tajiks

can watch so many movies in cyber

space that a Russian-dubbed

telenovela no longer holds much

appeal. Some are travelling: the

granddaughter of my host family

recently lived in my New York home

because she had an internship in

Manhattan. She constantly chatted on

social media with her brother, an

internet entrepreneur in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, since leaving Tajikistan,

I have built a career so utterly

dependent on the movement of

people and information that I usually

take this for granted. That is until I see

a Mexican face in New York that I

once stared at in a mountain village in

Tajikistan — and realise how

connected the world has become.

Last week I dropped an email to Ms

Romo in Mexico City, where she is

now working in a new soap opera,

asking if she had known about her

cultural impact in Tajikistan. She said

that she hadn’t.

“It is very good that the world is

connected thanks to culture or social

networks today,” she replied. “We can

reach and understand more cultures

and places around the world — and

that’s wonderful.” To which I say,

“Amen” — with a prayer that we all

remember to appreciate it and fight to

prevent this going into reverse.

[email protected]

What a Mexican

soap star taught

me about

globalisation

Notebook

by Gillian Tett

The electric dream has

been pursued since the

dawn of the last century

You are right to counsel caution in

anticipating that electric vehicles will

supersede the conventional kind any

time soon (“End of the traditional car

is still an electric dream”, editorial,

October 26). This particular dream has

persisted since the dawn of the

century: not this one but its

predecessor.

In April 1899 La Jamais Contente,

driven by the Belgian Camille Jenatzy,

became the first vehicle in history to

exceed 100kph. It was powered by two

direct-drive 25kw motors developing

about 68bhp.

At that time petrol-engine cars

were complicated, unreliable and

noisy; in old age Queen Victoria

described them as “horrible machines

... I am told that they smell
exceedingly nasty and are very shaky
and disagreeable conveyances
altogether.”
Electric carriages had obvious
advantages: they were quiet, free of
smell and vibration and simple to
drive. But there were serious practical
limitations. In 1902 the editor of The
Automotor Journal pointed out that the
size and weight of the battery in
proportion to its storage capacity and
to the power output of the motor, as
well as the time needed to recharge it,
meant that their use outside towns was
severely restricted.
It is true that in the past century or
so significant progress has been made
in addressing these problems. But the
designers of conventional cars have
also taken great strides to improve
refinement, efficiency and reliability to
the present pitch, so the gap between
the two forms of motive power remains
wide.
While it is not impossible that the
electric tortoise may yet overtake the
petrol-fuelled hare, there is still a long
way to go.
John Boothman
St Lawrence, Jersey, Channel Islands