PARIS—If the Apple Watch is going to be the company’s next big hit, it can’t just be sold as a tech gadget—it has to stand on its own as a luxury fashion product, too.
So expect to see more efforts like Apple’s special pop-up today at Paris Fashion Week. The company took over a section of Colette—a cool, high-end concept boutique—for a one-day-only Apple Watch exhibition.
The day started early with a try-on event for fashion VIPs—including the likes of Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld and Vogue editor Anna Wintour—hosted by Jony Ive, Apple’s head of design, and Marc Newson, its newest high-profile design hire.
For the rest of the day, Apple hosted the public in a small section of Colette, offering anyone the chance to see the Watch inside glass display cases. When we arrived in the early afternoon, about a couple dozen people were lined up outside to get in.
Colette is the sort of high-fashion store that many expect to be a key part of Apple’s retail strategy for the Watch, especially the luxury “Edition” version. In its gadget section, Colette sells an unlocked iPhone 6 for €1,500, and fancy jeweled iPhone 5S devices for as much as €3,100.
Apple has two beautiful retail stores in Paris, at the Louvre and in the Opera district. So that it chose to use Colette for today’s pop-up suggests that the company is tailoring its strategy—and gets fashion pretty well.
Still unknown: What exactly the finished Apple Watch will do, or when it will launch. But expect more sightings, especially around fashion and celebrity events.
Well, it finally happened: The US just got its first case of Ebola. Health officials have confirmed that a man recently admitted to a Dallas hospital has come down with the deadly virus, which has already killed more than 3,000 people in West Africa. The patient was admitted based on both symptoms and “travel history“—presumably he had been in West Africa—and is now being held in “strict isolation,” say officials.
Below are excerpts from an earlier Quartz piece on a New York patient suspected of carrying the Ebola virus that explore why Americans would do well not to panic:
If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, news that Ebola might have turned up in Manhattan is freaking out a lot of Americans. “Helpful” bits of commentary include as that it’s “deadly uncurable,” has a 90% fatality rate, and causes “a hemorrhagic fever that eventually leads to a complete bleed-out.” Today’s news merely amplifies the anxiety that’s been building since word got out that two Americans infected with Ebola have been moved to US hospitals for treatment.
There are plenty of people who should be protecting themselves against Ebola’s spread—and they live in West Africa. Those of us who are in the US should feel comforted by the following:
Ebola’s not airborne. It can only be spread through bodily fluids. The virus spreads when blood, semen, urine, vomit, feces, or other bodily fluids of an infected person come into contact with someone else’s mucus membranes.
And it’s not just any infected person—it’s a symptomatic infected person. People can only catch ebola from someone actually exhibiting symptoms. Those include vomiting, diarrhea, and, in some cases, hemorrhaging of mucus membranes, such as nose, nail beds and eyes—in other words, pretty hard to miss.
It isn’t curable, but people survive it. In fact, this outbreak has a 57% mortality rate—much lower than that oft-cited 90%. Victims die of organ failure, not blood loss.
That pig study doesn’t mean anything. Some people are citing a 2008 study showing airborne Ebola transmission from pigs to rhesus monkeys (they were never in direct contact with each other). However, as Aetiology explains, this experiment showed merely that pigs seem unusually good at spritzing the air with coughed-up viruses. Avoid Ebola-infected pigs and you’re fine.
Nearly every hospital in the US is equipped to treat Ebola patients and keep them in isolation. And the symptoms, once they set in, are so aggressive that it’s hard to do much of anything except head to the hospital.
Another reason for all the worry is that the media (Quartz included) has tended to zero in on this outbreak’s rapid spread and its being the “deadliest in history.” While both are true, that says way more about the quality of medical care in war-torn, poverty-stricken pockets of West Africa than it does about Ebola’s virulence.
Scott Z. Burns, who wrote the screenplay for Contagion, notes that Americans tend to freak out about “the monster we can see”—in this case, that would mean the gruesome images of Ebola victims bleeding from their faces—while ignoring more familiar but no less deadly risks. He has a point; thanks to the anti-vaccine movement, measles cases in the US have surged nearly fourfold since last year.
Here’s one sweeping takeaway from Nielsen’s new report on snacking habits around the world: The $374 billion global snack industry would seem to owe a lot to the relationship between women and chocolate.
In an online survey of 30,000 individuals from 60 countries, respondents were asked about general snacking preferences and the kinds of snack foods they had recently consumed. Among the 97% of respondents who said they ate snacks, 64% had reached for chocolate in the 30 days leading up to the survey, with women more likely than men to have done so. In fact, women outnumbered men in all snack categories regarding recent consumption: 57% of women had snacked on yogurt, for example, compared to 44% of men.
The second most-common snack around the world was fresh fruit, which 62% of people reported eating between or instead of meals.
When snacking habits are examined on regional scales, chocolate is still either the most or second-most popular snack, although other trends stand out. In Europe, for example, 58% of people snack on cheese. But only 33% snack on cheese in Asia and the Pacific, making it less popular than yogurt, gum, dumplings, and instant noodles there. In Latin America, 64% of people snack on cheese, putting it in the same league as ice cream (63%) and yogurt (66%) and ahead of fresh fruit (57%). North Americans, meanwhile, are most likely to reach for potato or tortilla chips, and a full 44% of them snack on peanut butter—the same proportion of those who snack on vegetables.
The worldwide trend in snacking is “all natural”—those two words are what 45% of consumers rate as “very important” when it comes to choosing a snack. More than 40% also prefer snacks free of artificial colors and flavors and genetically modified ingredients. Only 31% of people said they cared as much about protein content, and even fewer care about calories, carbohydrates, or the presence of high fructose corn syrup.
For a more detailed examination of the Nielsen report, see the Washington Post’s “definitive guide to how people snack around the world.”
Karl Lagerfeld, the creative director of Chanel, often courts controversy with his fashion shows. The Native American-style headdresses he sent down a runway at a Dallas fashion show last year offended some, as did a quilted gold purse shaped like a gas-can in Dubai earlier this year. This morning’s finale to Chanel’s Spring 2015 show at Paris Fashion Week, staged to resemble a feminist rally, was mild compared to some of his previous social commentary.
More important, it was timely and maybe even appropriate—especially given the tenor of the collection itself.
If you ask me, feminism—that is, the belief in the equality of the sexes—is always in fashion. But it seems to be particularly hot right now. Beyoncé gave feminism an endorsement with mass appeal at the MTV Video Music Awards in August; self-avowed feminist Lena Dunham’s first book comes out today; and earlier this month actress Emma Watson addressed the United Nations with a speech to launch He for She, a campaign that urges men to take up the mantle for gender equality.
Kaiser Karl, who some consider to be a first-class misogynist, may not be the first man that comes to mind for that job, but one of the many signs carried by models in today’s show indeed had the message scrawled across it: He for She. (“Boys should get pregnant too,” read another, perhaps less relevant sign.)
Regardless of whether feminists find Lagerfeld’s show flattering or patronizing, it seems they inspired his designs.
How could you not be inspired? At left, Gloria Steinem, 1973. At right, Chanel Spring 2015.AP Photo/Richard Drew, AP Photo/Thibault Camus
Several models wore glasses that unmistakably resembled those worn by Gloria Steinem in the 1970s, and their long, straight, unfussy hair styles recalled the era too. (I contacted Steinem for comment; she declined.)
It was a welcome shift from Chanel’s Autumn/Winter 2014 collection, in my opinion. That show was staged in an artificial supermarket, and the collection included hole-pocked pink leggings, velour jumpsuits, and oversized, soft-shouldered coats that didn’t exactly scream “power dressing.” Frankly, it was kind of ugly.
The clothes on the models who marched “Boulevard Chanel” today, by contrast, included a fair number of pieces this feminist may actually want to wear. A outfit of cuffed pants in soft olive suede with a matching shirt that grazed the thighs was particularly appealing—even with a sprawling butterfly collar.
Last week, NASA released time-lapse photos, taken by its Terra satellite, that show the drying over time of the Aral Sea in Central Asia—once the world’s fourth largest lake. The time-lapse, taken from August 2000 to August 2014, shows to devastating effect the disappearance of a massive body of water.
The back story of the Aral Sea’s vanishing into the earth is complex, but it’s generally agreed to be a man-made phenomenon. The story begins in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union undertook a massive diversion water project in the arid plains of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. The Soviets needed more fertile farming land to harvest crops and feed its population.
The task was to divert water from the region’s two major rivers, the Syr Darya and Amu Darya; in the process, a desert transformed into a lush farming area. However, the Aral Sea, which at one time was situated between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was deprived of its crucial water basin. As NASA notes, “although irrigation made the desert bloom, it devastated the Aral Sea.”
Climate change began accelerating the drying process in the 2000s, most prominently from 2005-09 when the area experienced a prolonged drought that cut off the flow of the Amu Darya into the lake. The local fishing-based economy (pdf) of the surrounding towns and villages collapsed.
In a last-ditch attempt to save the lake just before the drought, Kazakstan built a dam in 2005—to no avail. The lake could not be saved. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon toured the area by helicopter in 2010, calling the lake’s disappearance one of the planet’s “worst environmental disasters.”
Correction (6:46pm ET): The original version of this story incorrectly implied that the Aral Sea was created by the Soviets in the 1960s. The wording has been changed to clarify the story.
Movie directors are swarming to the small screen, where networks are allowing them to have more and more creative control with which to imbue TV shows with their distinctive styles.
Consider what Steven Soderbergh is doing with the turn of the century medical drama The Knick on Cinemax. The series looks, feels, and sounds like Soderbergh in the best possible way—he directs and edits every episode, operates the primary camera himself, and employs frequent musical partner Cliff Martinez to bathe The Knick with an electric, synthy score that is synonymous with Soderbergh’s films.
And now, with the news that David Fincher—one of the most extolled film directors on the planet—will direct every episode of the upcoming HBO thriller Utopia, it has officially moved beyond a mere industry trend into something close to a revolution.
Television used to be film’s graveyard: Aging actors and failed movie directors would use the small screen as a place to prolong their careers. Fincher’s decision to focus on Utopia in 2015—and, ostensibly, forgo directing any films—speaks volumes for how much TV has changed. It’s no longer a graveyard for Hollywood players—it’s a playground, and big-time filmmakers are using TV as their personal laboratories to tell stories deeper than what the time constraints of a movie allow.
The phenomenon didn’t begin with True Detective, but Fincher and others probably wouldn’t consider experimenting with TV had that series not been as good, or as successful, as it was. Cary Fukunaga directed every episode and proved that the auteur model could fashion a series as captivating as anything else on TV.
Fincher is betting that lightning will strike twice for HBO (which seems to be leading this revolution). It’s a very good bet.
One reason why the auteur structure works so well on TV is aesthetic consistency. Episodes of True Detective (or The Knick) bleed into one another, so what you’re getting is, essentially, a very long film. The binge-watching experience is likely to be enhanced by that visual stability. But even week-to-week watchers benefit from a single director—each week you’re brought back to the same world you were in the week before, like you’re picking up a novel right where you left off.
Fincher directed the first two episodes of House of Cards but then took a back seat to a slate of other directors who carried out creator Beau Willimon’s vision. These directors didn’t necessarily mimic the feel and tone that Fincher introduced, but it’s obvious they tried to give the show a unified look. But what better way to achieve that goal than to have the same person direct every single episode? Fincher fans will find out with Utopia.
There are a number of other major film directors involved with TV, but fall short of controlling an entire series: Guillermo del Toro with The Strain, Martin Scorsese with Boardwalk Empire, Peter Berg with The Leftovers, J.J. Abrams with…everything.
Who will be next? Danny Boyle, Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coen brothers—television is calling your names.
Political movements often conjure images of passionate university-goers championing progressive views they learned on campus. But the long, storied history of Hong Kong’s student-led political movements is taking a different turn: The most prominent student leader of the territory’s pro-democracy protests is only 17 years old.
Sporting heavy black glasses and a bowl cut, Joshua Wong Chi-fung doesn’t exactly cut a menacing figure. But his activism against what many in Hong Kong perceive to be the Chinese Communist Party’s encroachment onto their freedoms has already attracted Beijing’s attention. Mainland authorities call him an “extremist.” A party document on national security identifies Wong by name as a threat to internal stability. Pro-Beijing newspapers in Hong Kong, meanwhile, accuse him of working for the US Central Intelligence Agency to infiltrate Hong Kong schools. (Wong denies the charges.)
Wong at a 2012 sit-in protesting “national education” in front of government headquarters.AP Photo/Kin Cheung
Wong got his start in 2011, when he and fellow students founded a group called “Scholarism,” which they thought was catchier than the direct translation of the Chinese, meaning “scholarly trends.” Wong and Scholarism rose to prominence in 2012, when the Hong Kong government tried to roll out Communist Party-approved “patriotic” education in Hong Kong’s public schools, to replace civics classes. The curriculum included textbooks like one titled “The China Model,” which characterized China’s Communist Party as “progressive, selfless and united,” and criticized multi-party systems like Hong Kong’s while avoiding major (unflattering) events—notably, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square massacres of 1989—reports the New York Times (paywall).
The curriculum characterized China’s Communist Party as “progressive, selfless and united,” and criticized multi-party systems like Hong Kong’s.
One Hong Kong journalist likened the move to a Trojan horse that dissolved Hong Kong’s identity; Wong called it “brainwashing,” an attempt to require students to “develop an emotional attachment to China,” as he put it in this video by the South China Morning Post (paywall). In Sep. 2012, Wong and Scholarism mobilized more than 120,000 people to demonstrate (paywall) against the education program, including a slew of students who went on hunger strike. Within days, the Hong Kong government scrapped the plan for mandatory implementation.
Wong’s next battle: “universal suffrage”
But Wong and Scholarism knew that as long as Hong Kong lacks representative government, both the education issue and the Chinese government’s failed 2003 attempt to impose US Patriot Act-style rules on Hong Kong would eventually resurface. So they began researching the controversy that’s now galvanizing the Umbrella Revolution: universal suffrage.
This issue is really confusing—and, as even Wong admits, “really boring.” The background goes something like this: Hong Kong is governed by what’s called the Basic Law, which legal scholars from the then-British colony and the mainland wrote up prior to the 1997 handover. The law promises Hong Kong a “high degree of autonomy” until 2047, when it will merge with the People’s Republic of China for good. It also indicates, although vaguely, that the ultimate objective is for the chief executive and the congress to be elected by universal suffrage by Hong Kong’s seven million people.
That’s not how it is at the moment. Hong Kong’s chief executive is currently chosen by an “election committee” made up of 1,193 members selected to represent “functional constituencies,” such as business and labor groups. Beijing controls who is on the committee, and, in turn, whom the committee elects; the committee also decides who runs. Ultimately, since the Chinese government still has to officially “appoint” the chosen candidate, it has veto power over the chief executive.
In 2007, the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, promised that by 2017, Hong Kong’s chief executive “may be implemented by the method of universal suffrage.” Some in Hong Kong read that to mean by 2017, they’d have fully democratic elections. But the NPC, evidently, had something else in mind: that each and every Hong Kong citizen would be allowed to vote—but only for one of three candidates selected by the (Communist Party-picked) “electoral committee.”
Civic nomination vs. Communist Party nomination
What’s bizarre is that many ostensibly pro-democracy politicians in Hong Kong accept this policy—including, most prominently, Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, according to Suzanne Pepper, who blogs on Hong Kong politics.
The leader of the Democratic Party once asked Wong during a radio show, “Do you really think Beijing will accept public nomination?”
Wong highlights that this cynical pragmatism plays to the mainland’s bullying, recalling that Albert Ho, leader of the Democratic Party, once asked him during a radio show, “Do you really think Beijing will accept public nomination?”
Only when the people select the candidates—or when they select the people who select the candidates—can suffrage truly be universal, says Wong. He and Scholarism have championed the idea that civic nomination was essential to create a truly representative democracy. When the Hong Kong government’s working group on the election issue called for public recommendations, Scholarism’s joint proposal with the Hong Kong Federation of Students was one of only two that insisted on public nomination of candidates for the election of chief executive, writes Pepper.
At demonstrations in Jun. 2014.Flickr user Pacific Chillino (image has been cropped)
This careful analysis of the murky laws that govern the relationship between the mainland and its wealthy capitalist territory is what’s landed Joshua Wong at the center of the showdown with the Communist Party. And, for that matter, his role in the protests erupting in Hong Kong’s downtown thoroughfares. Along with 12 other student activists arrested on Sep. 26, the Hong Kong police dragged a screaming, bleeding Wong away as he and others demonstrated outside government headquarters. Many were soon freed. Wong, however, remained in custody until Sep. 28, when a Hong Kong high court ordered his release, citing a lack of legal grounds for continued detention, over objections from government lawyers (paywall); the judge also quashed government efforts to attach conditions to Wong’s release, said his lawyer.
Wong’s recent arrest nonetheless symbolizes what makes Hong Kong different from the mainland: its rule of law.
Scuffling with the police is the type of thing that usually leaves Hong Kong citizens wary of “politics.” But the students are now winning the sympathy of broader Hong Kong society. And regardless of how his approach to civil disobedience comes across, Wong’s recent arrest nonetheless symbolizes what makes Hong Kong different from the mainland: its rule of law.
Separation of powers allowed the court to overrule government wishes to detain Wong for longer and release him conditionally. The court’s decision was based on a writ of habeas corpus, which guarantees the right to have a judge decide whether the authorities have lawful grounds for a person’s arrest.
Those protections don’t exist in mainland China, where rules are not conducted by law, but by government fiat. That said, mainland China relies heavily on Hong Kong as an international center of finance and commerce, which is only made possible by its strong property and contract rights. Unless Wong and his fellow students prevail, that rule of law the mainland depends on could soon disappear.
HONG KONG—On any given business day, Hong Kong’s 7.2 million people take 12.4 million journeys on public transport, many of them coming into and out of the area of the city known as Central.
The neighborhood is home to finance giants including Bank of China, HSBC, and Citigroup, as well as the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It’s also the local headquarters of companies including Rolex and the law firm Clifford Chance, along with the city’s main government buildings and China’s People’s Liberation Army Force.
But since Hong Kong’s mass protests started, a daytime visit to Central or Wan Chai, the two neighborhoods abutting the agitation’s epicenter at Admiralty, has offered up glimpses of a post-apocalyptic Hong Kong. Because protesters have blocked roads and some businesses are keeping employees home, the neighborhoods during the day are eerily empty, with abandoned avenues and overpasses that normally teem with many of Hong Kong’s 18,000 taxis, 163 trams, thousands of buses, and half a million cars.
For the past two nights, the streets have filled up with protestors, but during the day it is possible to find yourself practically alone in the middle of a highway in one of the world’s most crowded cities.
The solitude has offered a unique glimpse of some of Hong Kong’s modern buildings. The streets outside the I.M. Pei-designed Bank of China Tower, which has distinctive, diamond patterned sides, are normally snarled with traffic; getting a clear picture of the 72-story tower from anywhere but the sidewalk below is normally difficult. Not today, though:
Ditto for the Lippo Center, a twin-towered complex across the street, designed by American architect Paul Rudolph, which attracted intrepid tourists who snapped once-in-a-lifetime selfies today from the road.
The short stretch of road known as Queensway normally is packed with multiple lanes of honking traffic and dinging trams. Today, a few pedestrians walked along the tram tracks:
Hong Kong’s abandoned streets also have proven a great place to shoot wedding photos. That’s the Chinese army’s headquarters with the inverted pyramid base, in the background on the left.
Just a couple of months ago, American online travel company Priceline (NASDAQ:PCLN) invested US$500 million into Ctrip (NASDAQ:CTRP) in the form of a convertible bond. The agreement allows for Priceline to simply collect interest on the bond, cash it in, or use it to buy Ctrip shares, although it cannot buy more than 10% of the company.
Now, Priceline’s Schedule 13D filing for September has made it clear that it has an even deeper interest in the Chinese online travel behemoth. In addition to converting the US$500 million bond into 6,145,350 ADSs of Ctrip stock, Priceline has also picked up another 2,171,170 ADSs, for a total market value of nearly $135 million. That means that at present, Priceline has invested about $635 million into Ctrip, and owns a 5.84% share.
(For those looking to diversify their portfolio, an ADS is an American Depository Share: a share of a foreign company that can be purchased at dollar value on American stock markets.)
In addition to Priceline’s share of Ctrip’s shares, the companies also have a commercial partnership that was significantly expanded as part of the initial US$500 million investment agreement. That agreement gives Ctrip customers access to some of Priceline’s offerings, like hotels and rental cars.
Kenya’s economy grew by roughly 25% today, when government statisticians decided that its annual output was worth 4.76 trillion shillings ($53.3 billion), instead of the 3.798 trillion shillings it had reported before.
The large jump was as due to a statistical update of GDP data known as rebasing. And although 25% is a big revision, a similar exercise in Nigeria earlier this year showed the economy there was a whopping 89% larger than previously estimated. That rebasing suddenly transformed Nigeria into the largest economy in Africa, surpassing South Africa.
The impact of the Nigerian statistical shift was much larger than Kenya’s because it was far more overdue. Prior to Nigeria’s revamp in April, it had been using 1990 as the base year for which it calculated economic growth. Not only did that mean prices were presented in 1990 terms, but GDP also didn’t properly account for fast-growing industries that developed largely since 1990, such as mobile communications. When Nigeria upgraded its statistics, it chose 2010 as its base year.
For its part, Kenya chose 2009 for its new base year. And it significantly boosted its estimates for a number of sectors of the economy, including communications, real estate, and financial services. It also increased the 2013 growth rate of the economy to 5.7%, up from the previously reported 4.7%.
So what does this mean to your average Kenyan? Pretty much nothing. (For the record, Kenya’s poverty statistics are also out of date, but 2005 numbers showed that roughly 20% of the country lived on less than $1.25 a day.)
The change in numbers merely reflects the government’s view that the economy is actually worth more than previously thought. This is not merely a statistical quirk, as larger GDP figures can make a country more appealing to foreign investors—for one thing, it can make a country’s debt burden look less daunting. It also has implications for eligibility for international aid and lending programs.
It’s finally happening: eBay is officially spinning PayPal off as a separate company. And it comes at a crucial time, just as the budding mobile-payments industry—which many see as the future of payments and commerce—is getting interesting.
While PayPal has very done well for itself—payment volume grew 29% from a year earlier in the June quarter to $55 billion—things are about to get more competitive.
Apple is about to enter the market with Apple Pay, a simple and well-designed system that lets iPhone owners buy things in person and in apps using their phones. Importantly, Apple Pay props up the existing payments infrastructure—including the major credit card companies that PayPal has been trying to get around.
Google, where ambitions have no limits, failed in its first few attempts to conquer payments, but has proven itself willing to spend many billions of dollars to achieve its goals. As some have suggested, perhaps Google will try to acquire Square or Stripe (a fast-growing payments processor for developers.)
There are certainly a lot of players and potential combinations chasing this market.
And with the mobile-payments market expected to more than double over the next few years—to more than $700 billion in transactions—PayPal just can’t sit still.
While it has grown tremendously in all aspects under eBay’s ownership, it now seems better off on its own. (That is, if it doesn’t get swallowed up by a Google or a legacy payments giant.)
Many see the PayPal product as one from a bygone era—cumbersome user interface, frustrating limitations, and generally lacking innovation. Under its new president, former American Express executive Dan Schulman—who also previously worked in the mobile industry—the company can let go of its legacy baggage and act like a disruptive startup again. Or at least it can try.
Who owns the DAX, Germany’s pre-eminent equity index?
Not many Germans, it turns out. According to fresh research from the Bundesbank, the share of domestic ownership of the index—which comprises the 30 largest public companies in traded in the equities markets—fell from 44.1% in 2005 to 36.3% in 2014. Meanwhile, the foreign ownership share rose from 55.9% to 63.7%.
The share of private household ownership, included under the category of domestic, fell from 14.4% to 12.9% over the same period. Likewise, the share owned by German institutional investors and investment funds also declined over the same period.
Interestingly, the Bundesbank notes while German households are apparently uninterested in the large, global companies that make up the DAX, they do have some appetite for equities. “Domestic households have a particular preference for the shares of smaller enterprises, which the Bundesbank economists believe might be partly explained by households’ bias towards local firms with which they are familiar, and for which they are even prepared to accept potentially inferior returns,” analysts from the bank wrote.
The local licensee of FedEx in Pakistan, Gerry’s Group, has terminated the services of Arjumand Hussain, whose activism to evict two politicians from a commercial airline made him a social media hero in the subcontinent.
On 15 September, angry passengers barred two Pakistani politicians from boarding a Pakistan International Airlines flight from Karachi to Islamabad after it became evident that they had held up the flight’s departure by 2.5 hours. A video of the event allegedly filmed by Hussain, who worked as General Manager, FedEx-Gerry’s Group, was posted online and subsequently went viral.
The clip was played on loop by television stations in India and Pakistan, and people across the subcontinent identified with Hussain’s rallying cry from the video: “we have taken this for 68 years and we will take it no more”. People in both countries are all too familiar with traffic jams and flights being held up for ministers and other so-called very important persons, or VIPs.
While the airline had said that the flight was delayed by two hours because of a technical error, the passengers onboard the flight learnt from crew members that the flight was being held for Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Rehman Malik and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)’s Ramesh Kumar Wakwani. Both were forced to leave the aircraft before it took off for Islamabad.
I don’t have evidence of political interference and obviously no one will come forward and accept it.
Hussian’s troubles started shortly after.
Speaking to Quartz from Karachi, Hussain said he was told on his return from Islamabad after that incident that the company was doing away with his position and he should resign. He worked as vice president for corporate development.
“I don’t have evidence of political interference and obviously no one will come forward and accept it. But they said it was a performance-related issue, which i’m sure is not the case as it was never a problem till that day,” Hussain said. He had been working at the company for a year by then.
The company has issued a clarification on its Facebook page saying the sacking was unrelated to politics. “Recently there has been flood of tweets and comments on Facebook backlashing Gerry’s Group in response to sacking of Mr. Arjumand Hussain, Former General Manager Fedex Gerry’s Group who played protagonist against VIP culture on PIA flight. We feel it is very important that we convey to people the other side of story.” The company says the decision was taken on merit.
Hussain’s supporters are now posting comments on Gerry’s Group’s Facebook post threatening to boycott the company.
This article is a part of Quartz India. For more, follow this link.
HONG KONG—While tens of thousands of students continue to paralyze Hong Kong’s financial and commercial districts for a third day to demand free elections, across Victoria harbor in Kowloon the pro-democracy movement is starting to look a little different. In Mong Kok, a dense working class neighborhood, demonstrators are older, quieter, and in some ways, a little more cynical.
“The politics here are so bad. That’s why we have to fight for democracy,” 78-year old Li Kon-wah tells Quartz. Li says Hong Kong’s top official, the chief executive CY Leung answers only to Beijing, a government that he remembers most for having ordered a violent crackdown on nonviolent democracy protesters in 1989. “I was so angry. I cried,” he says, after carefully taping a sign onto a nearby bus that reads, “Blood bath Tiananmen Massacre.”
Li Kon-wah points to a bus decorated with signs supporting Occupy and calling for chief executive CY Leung’s resignation on a bus in Kowloon, Hong Kong.Quartz
What started as a pro-democracy movement mainly among the city youth—sparked by student activists as well as another pro-democracy group, Occupy Hong Kong—is starting to capture a wider cross-section of the city’s population of seven million. The majority of these residents initially opposed Occupy’s strategy—to disrupt the city’s economy and force the government to withdraw electoral reforms that give Hong Kongers direct elections in 2017 but allows Beijing the ability to vet candidates for the city’s top office.
Now, news reports and footage of police clashing with students, as well as tear gassing or pepper spraying them, have brought more people into the streets. In Mong Kok, thousands of demonstrators, including students, retired local residents, and workers have overtaken Nathan Road, a main thoroughfare. They are decorating streets with chalk drawings of umbrellas—the latest symbol for the demonstrations—and plastering signs on a row of buses that had to be abandoned when drivers couldn’t move in crowds that descended on the street late Sunday.
Elderly demonstrators like Li mill around the area listening to speeches, handing out yellow ribbons and leaflets. Another retiree, Chan Kin-hoi, 76, wears a hat with a sign that reads, “Oppose the communist party, save Hong Kong.” Chan says: “I’m here because I support universal suffrage.” Local workers, like delivery drivers have volunteered to bring goods to demonstrators.
Young and middle-aged professionals are also joining the protests during work breaks or after work. Grace Fu, 22, who works at an office nearby, is under no illusion that the protesters’ demands will be met. Chief executive Leung said again today the government will not change its stance on how Hong Kong elections will be run, despite the spread of “illegal” protests.
But, says Fu, “Even if this [movement] doesn’t change anything, it’s good that people can now know what’s going on in Hong Kong. That would still be worth it.”
Protesters at a rally in Mongkok today.Reuters/Tyrone Siu
Other segments of society are joining, too. Teachers in at least 31 secondary schools are boycotting classes, and Hong Kong’s Professional Teachers Union (PTU)—80% of the city’s primary and secondary school teachers are members—has pledged its support to the movemet. Instead of teaching classes, teachers are holding “civic lessons” for students to learn about Hong Kong politics and activism, according to Fong King-lok, head of computer development at PTU.
And though many of Hong Kong’s construction workers, drivers, small shop owners and others are apolitical, at least one organized group of workers is participating—a development that labor observes say could eventually be similar to the support workers gave gave pro-democracy student activists in China in 1989. One of the city’s most influential trade groups, the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, has called on workers to strike and demonstrate at protest sites. Support from other unorganized workers has trickled in as well: 200 delivery workers at a Coca Cola plant have also gone on strike.
Chan Kin-hoi, 76, in Kowloon wears a sign on his shirt that says, “People rise up to defend Hong Kong, support Occupy, and student strikes.”Quartz
These workers may have even more reason to push for genuine direct elections than students, many of whom feel their economic and career prospects have been compromised by the current government. Collective bargaining for workers is weak—workers often have to accept poor terms and can be let go for striking.
“Organized workers as a group feel that they have as much at stake as anyone,” says Rick Glofcheski who teaches labor and employment law at Hong Kong University. “The thin blanket of protections workers are offered has to do with lack of accountability of the government in Hong Kong. The workers have a strong conviction about that.”
Activists have said they plan to keep protesting until Leung steps down; Leung himself says he expects the protests to last “quite a long period.”
By early evening today, more people had started streaming in to Nathan Road to support the demonstrators. A 63-year old woman who would only give her surname, Li, sat along a traffic barrier, chatting with her sister and other neighbors. Asked why she’s come, Li says: “It’s our responsibility as Hong Kongers. If we don’t come out today, when will we?”
