Are the allegations tru deau? Canada and India’s diplomatic row

Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. You know, one of the perks about having four kids that you know about is actually getting a direct line to the big man up north. And this year he wants you to know the best gift that you can give someone is the gift of Mint Mobile's unlimited wireless for $15 a month. Now, you don't even need to wrap it. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for a three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes if network's busy, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing.

You a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day.

Yeah.

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.

Of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month. Required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow. 135 gigabytes of network busy taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com.

Hello, and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

And I'm Ora Ogumbi. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

The centenary of an enormous earthquake in Japan is a good time to consider how ready the country is for the next big one. We look at all of the preparations that are in place and consider the social factors that may work against them.

And country music has been part of America's identity for decades. Now, thanks to young people and a crop of new stars, it's having a modern moment. First up, though, In June, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen and Sikh separatist leader, was shot dead outside a temple in Vancouver Yesterday, exactly three months after the killing, Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister, made a stunning claim.

Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.

Mr. Trudeau said that credible intelligence linked India to the murder. Shortly after his parliamentary statement, an Indian diplomat was expelled from the country. India's Foreign Ministry categorically denied the allegation before dismissing a Canadian diplomat in New Delhi. Mr. Nijjar was considered a terrorist by the Indian state. Demonstrators in India have been chanting, down with Trudeau. The Indian Canadian relationship has long been fragile, but this spat is a Significant concern for a number of other countries.

This is a devastating accusation. It's highly unusual for the leader of one democracy to accuse the government of another of this kind of murderous attack on its soil.

Anton LaGuardia is our diplomatic editor.

This marks a crisis in relations between India and Canada, relations between whom have been difficult for some time, but potentially could draw in the likes of America and Britain and Australia, which also have large Sikh minorities in their territory.

Anton, you said that relations between Canada and India were already difficult. How so?

I think there's a general tension between India and Western countries that have large Sikh diasporas, particularly where Sikh separatists are active. This has a long history. Sikh separatism has its violent dimension as well as its political dimension. There has been historically, a particularly bloody insurgency in the 70s and 80s by Sikh separatists seeking their own homeland in Punjab, which they call Khalistan. And Canada itself has history here. A bomb that blew up an Air India aircraft in 1985 was flying from Montreal to London. It killed hundreds of people. There is a large Sikh diaspora in Canada. There are about 770,000 Sikhs there, and Sikh voters are courted by all Canadian parties. In general, India accuses countries like Canada, but not just Canada, also Britain and Australia, of being soft on Sikh terrorism. And here, there, there is a difficulty in trying to distinguish between violent and unacceptable forms of Sikh separatism and political forms that advocate an independent homeland for Khalistan, as Sikhs call it, but do so in a peaceful way and therefore in a way that's protected under democratic norms.

And we've seen the public spat between India and Canada play out over the past few days. Do we know what's been happening behind closed doors?

The murder of Mr. Nijar has obviously caused great tension, and there are suggestions that intelligence services have been talking to each other to try to find out what actually happens. His suspicions immediately fell on the Indian government. Canadian intelligence officials are said to have gone to India to discuss it, and Mr. Trudeau himself discussed it with Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the G20 summit. The question is, how much further does this go? The Indians say the accusation is absurd. They completely reject the Canadian allegations. But it's hard to imagine the Canadians making such an accusation unless they felt there were good evidence for it.

So, Anton, how have Canada's allies been responding?

Very cautiously. On the one hand, to ignore the matter would be to abandon an important ally like Canada. On the other, to take the issue up risks alienating India, which is a large and increasingly powerful country. And One which the west has been trying to woo as a counterbalance to Chinese influence in Asia. The White House has said that it hopes India will cooperate with the Canadian investigation. The British government has tried to say very little about this, saying it did not want to comment pending that investigation. So the, the sense at the moment is that all sides want to avoid this crisis from escalating. The United States is mobilizing strong alliances, versatile partnerships, common purpose, collective action to bring new approaches to our shared challenges. In the Indo Pacific, we've elevated our quad partnership with India, Japan, Australia. It was striking yesterday that at the United Nations General assembly, when President Joe Biden spoke, he mentioned India in glowing terms as a part in the so called quad along with Australia and Japan, and made no reference to the crisis with Canada.

And so how do you see this playing out on the world stage over the next couple of days?

I think much will depend on the evidence that the Canadians are able to produce either in private or in public, and how India responds. I think the west does not want a fight with India. So I would be surprised if we saw a repeat of the very large mutual expulsions that we saw after the attempt by Russia to poison Sergei Skripal in Britain. Sergei Skripal being a former spy who had been given protection. He and his daughter had been the subject of an attempted poisoning using Novichok, a nerve agent. They both survived, but in the wake of that incident, there were hundreds of expulsions from Western countries and from Russia.

And Anton, if these allegations are true, what does that say about India's intelligence agencies?

It says that they have become bolder and more ready to take risk, perhaps more confident or even overconfident. In a sense, they may be trying to emulate Israel's Mossad, which has a legendary long arm able to strike at foes far and wide. On the other hand, it may end up being cast in the same role as the likes of Russia, which has a very dubious record of trying to silence critics. And India needs to balance its relations with the west with its desire to beat down its foes.

And what might it say about India's approach to the west more broadly?

It is always possible that there is a rogue operation going on, but I think for this kind of thing to be sanctioned, it would probably require approval from the top or near the top. And if it says anything about Indian foreign policy, it is that India possibly cares less about the west than the west cares about India. We have seen, for example, in how India has continued to maintain relations with Russia, that there are these issues of tension between India and the west even as they have moved closer together. This just makes the process more difficult, and the west cannot assume that India is an ally or will be soon.

Anton, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Nice to talk to you. Oregon.

Have you heard? We're launching a new subscription next month and it's called Economist Podcasts Plus.

Don't worry, we're not going anywhere. Everyone will be able to listen to these weekday episodes of the Intelligence. But to enjoy our full offering of podcasts, including our specialist weekly shows like Money Talks or Babbage, and our exciting new show, the Weekend Intelligence, you're gonna.

Need to sign up if you're already an Economist subscriber, thank you. You're already covered by your existing plan, but if you're not a subscriber yet, listen up. You can get a year long subscription for half price, about $2 a month if you sign up for economist podcast plus before October 17th. So come on, head to our show. Notes to.

This month marks a hundred years since a 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck the Kanto Plain in Japan. What would later be and is still called the Great Kanto Quake. It killed more than 100,000 people and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes. It changed the course of Japanese history. Earlier this month, people gathered at a Tokyo Memorial hall to commemorate the disaster. It's a reminder that another big one is, well, inevitable.

Japan is always on the verge of the next earthquake. It's located in one of the most seismically active parts of the planet.

Noah Snyder is our Tokyo bureau chief.

Seismologists reckon that there's a 70% chance of a magnitude 7 or higher quake hitting in or near the capital within the next 30 years. Now, they can't predict, of course, exactly when and exactly which earthquake will hit. These are statistical probabilities, and far fewer people will probably die than during the disaster in 1923, thanks to better technology and urban planning. But millions of lives and the Japanese economy and the global economy could be upended as a result.

So presumably there's plenty of planning going on, given all of that history with earthquakes in Japan.

Absolutely. And every year, in fact, on the anniversary of the Great Kanto earthquake, there's a series of events across the country. It's known as Disaster Prevention Day, and one of the ways that people prepare is by testing it out themselves. There are what they call Life Safety Learning centers in Tokyo where you can go to sit in an earthquake simulator, essentially, and see what a big shake would feel like. And that's what I did just a couple weeks ago. So at these centers, they take you through a whole course, so basically a disaster preparation course. In fact, there's more than just earthquake, but there's also sort of fire drills, escaping smoke, putting out fires. And you come at the end to the earthquake simulator. And suddenly you hear an alert. It's the sound that would blare from your cell phone in case of a big earthquake. And you have just a second really to duck in cover before the platform starts shaking. And it kind of builds up and eventually it reaches a level of over magnitude 7. And at that point I couldn't even begin. I was left basically just clutching the table leg and hoping that it would be over soon.

So you say that it's really just probabilities about both the when and the where of any future big one. But presumably there are some simulations to look at what would happen in various places.

Exactly. And there are really two main scenarios that are worrisome to experts and planners here in Japan. One is a so called Tokyo inland earthquake, which is, is the quake sort of in and around the capital, Tokyo. And a second and perhaps even more devastating one is further south, to the south of Kansai, which is Japan's industrial heartland. And there's a big megatrough, a place where two plates meet. And many experts are concerned that a big Nankai Trough earthquake could hit also in the next few decades. And the danger there is that it would trigger a large tsunami as well. And that might leave, according to official estimates, as many as 323,000 people dead. Quakes of this size could really challenge the survival of Japan as a state. And we're talking really, really massively disruptive events.

So do the simulations go as far as to go further in time? What would happen if a quake that big did happen there?

They do. And in the case of the Tokyo quake, recovering basic city functions could take weeks and rebuilding the capital could take years. The direct damage alone is estimated to reach as much as 11 trillion yen, which is about $75 billion. And global supply chains would be rocked as well, so the shocks would be felt far beyond Japan. And again, in the Nankai earthquake scenario, the numbers are even more terrifying. One study by a couple of economists estimated that GDP would dip by 11% after the quake, more than four times the hit that Japan took after the big earthquake in 2011, which of course also led to the nuclear meltdown in Fukushima. And then there's the political impact back in 1923 after the Great Kanto Earthquake rumors started spreading across the country that foreigners, in particular Koreans, had started fires in the wake of the quake, and that led to the massacre of at least 6,000 Koreans living in Japan at the time. Some historians would argue that the disaster hastened Japan's subsequent descent into fascism. So modern Japan is unlikely to take a similar turn, but the political aftershocks could still be pretty nasty.

And on that notion of how modern Japan is different from Japan 100 years ago, surely that's also true for the buildings and infrastructure itself.

Absolutely, and that's really the uplifting part of this story. I mean, it's a story about how to make a society more resilient and less vulnerable to disaster risk. And that begins with understanding those risks more deeply. Let's remember that back in 1923, scientific knowledge in Japan had really barely gone beyond the folk belief that shaking is caused by Namazu, a kind of giant catfish said to live under the surface of the earth. And modern seismology in Japan really dates back to research institutions set up after that quake and reinforced after subsequent disasters in the ensuing decades. And these days, Japan collects a vast amount of data and has world beating seismometer networks and early warning systems in place.

And presumably with that comes some more quake proof infrastructure as well.

Exactly, Jason. So one piece of that is making buildings less vulnerable to earthquakes themselves. So introducing seismic building codes and coming up with engineering solutions that keep buildings standing when the ground is unstable. But it also, for Tokyo, has meant reducing the risk of fire. In fact, the biggest killer in 1923 was fire. Fires started because of the earthquake, and flames killed around 90% of the people who died during that disaster. So the government has been really serious about trying to reduce fire risk by purchasing land to sort of widen key roads and create fire protection belts that would stop the spread of fire by switching to less flammable building materials, from wood buildings to concrete and steel. It's also meant designing better evacuation routes. During the disaster in 1923, nearly 40,000 people died in a single field in East Tokyo where flames closed in from all sides. But if you walk around the city now, you'll see that the neighborhoods have really clearly marked evacuation sites for just about any disaster that might strike.

So it sounds as if Japan is as prepared as it could possibly be in the face of this sort of don't know when kind of scenario.

Well, yes and no. There have been huge improvements, but Tokyo has also become vulnerable in new ways. So for one thing, the city's population has ballooned from around 4 million at the time of the Great Kanto earthquake to about 14 million in the core of the city now. And so while the rate of fire outbreak might be lower, some experts worry that with more households, the absolute risk may in fact be greater. And there are also lifestyle changes that have happened as a result of modernization and urbanization that may make it harder to respond to disasters. For example, people are living alone more often now, and single person households, as surveys here show, tend to be less prepared for disasters. People live in high rise buildings where they don't know their neighbors, rather than in sort of small, intimate communities of the kind that existed back in 1923. And in an aging society, ever more neighbors are going to need extra help to get through a disaster safely. So even with all of the preparations that Japan has taken, there's just no way to know for sure how devastating the next big earthquake could be.

Noah, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you for having me, Jason.

The first songs, branded country, were recorded in Atlanta, Georgia, and sold 100 years ago in 1923.

Claire McHugh writes about culture for the Economist.

The artist was an old time musician known as Fiddling John Carson, and he played the little Old Log Cabin in the Lane. It's a song about an old man who you presume is a former slave growing old in a ramshackle wooden shed. In the century since, Americans have donned Stetsons and boots and danced, stomped and sung to country music. But while country music has long been a part of America's identity, today the genre is breaking new records. Last month in August, country songs claimed the top three slots on the Billboard Hot 100. It's the first time that a trio of country songs have held such prime real estate since the singles chart was launched 65 years ago. Among the hits is a country infused cover of Tracy Chapman's Fast Car by Luke Combs, a singer songwriter from North Carolina. So country music, a century old genre whose appeal is partly rooted in tradition, is having a modern moment. Today, country is even more popular in America than hip hop and R and b. When you think of a country music fan, you might picture an older, conservative American, perhaps someone who lives in an area where wealth is measured in heads of cattle. But today's country music boom is being fueled by young fans who tune in via streaming services and social media, and they're making their mark. So far this year, 36% of the streams of Spotify's top 50 in America have been country songs. In 2016, it was just 2%. Meanwhile, this year on TikTok, views of videos tagged CountryMusic have risen by 75% in America. TikTokers now set videos of proms and weddings to country anthems. Good Times Go By Too Fast by Dylan Scott is a favorite to set underneath video clips of school graduations.

It seems like yesterday we were cutting up in class no worries in the world except chasing girls and burning gas the good times go by too fast.

But what's interesting is what's driving this boom in country music. A sizable chunk of it is thanks to a single artist, Morgan Wallen. He is a baby faced millennial heartthrob from Tennessee, and he is probably the biggest star that many people have never heard of. His track Last Night, which came out in February, dominated the singles charts longer than any other country song in history.

Last night we let the liquor talk I can't remember everything we said but we said it all you told me.

That you wish I was Around A third of his fans are women aged 18 to 24, and interestingly, he is more popular among urbanites than rural Americans. My colleague Rebecca Jackson went to one of his concerts in Boston on his first international tour. She found herself in a crowd of mostly Gen Z's. I'm a journalist, my name is Becca. And in the noisy queue for hot dogs, she asked them why they enjoy Mr. Wallen's music and country music more broadly.

I love country music because it expresses everything about a Friday night. Everything that like envelops the idea of a Friday and Saturday is really embodied in country music. Just the idea of relaxing in like an Adirondack chair, drinking a beer. It's entirely developed in a country song. I listen to country music because it.

Makes me feel at home and at peace with myself.

It's just like the songs are like relatable, like about like heartbreak and falling.

In love and all that stuff.

For these youthful audiences, Morgan Wallen's music represents joyful escape, the freedom of life outside the city without the inconveniences of rural life. But a shift in the tone of country songs is piquing listeners interest too. A decade ago, artists such as Florida Georgia Line and Luke Bryan ushered in the Bro country era. Back then, men who sung about moonlit sex, gas station beers and trucks were dominating the airwaves. It's not exactly what you want your teenage daughter to listen to.

Cause I cuss on Sunday.

But you, you can't say I ain't country.

But as these musicians aged, a new set hit Nashville. And in the past few years, Bro country was replaced by Beau country, which has less beers and more sunsets. Young country artists like Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs and Zach Bryan started singing ballads about loyal women, sobriety and their love for their family. Morgan Wallen even wrote this startlingly wholesome musical ode to his mum, which he called Thought yout Should Know what's Going On, Mama?

Something just dawned on me. I ain't been home in some months.

Yeah, I know you've been worried about me.

You've been losing sleep since 93.

I thought you should know that these.

Country stars are relatable. Morgan Wallen paints himself as a simple man chasing big dreams and seems surprised by his own success. Nashville insiders say that he still looks startled when bachelorettes swarm him at bars. Part of country music's recent success may also come down to its changing sound. Lately, country is sounding less like hillbilly blues and more like pop. This may be down to the influence of Taylor Swift, who was a country singer until she launched a pop career in 2014 with hits like Shake It Off. It's a song where there's not a smidge of country twang to be heard, but she proved to Nashville just how lucrative crossing from country to the world of pop could be. As for Morgan Wallen, he draws on a range of musical influences. A chattering hi hat often heard in Trap, which is a type of rap, kicks throughout a song called Wasted on youn. Some of his other tracks, such as Last Night, share hip hop's syncopated beat, And it works. These songs really get stuck in your head. Purists may sniff at these hybrid tracks, but I was struck by country music's capacity to evolve. Even as the genre clings to tradition a century on from its first recordings, country is reinventing itself for a new era. And if the charts and TikTok videos are anything to go by, it seems to be a winning formula.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence don't forget Economist Podcasts plus launches next month. If you already have an Economist subscription, you don't have to do anything.

But if you don't already subscribed to the Economist, you'll need to sign up to listen to all of our offerings. And until October 17, it's half price, about $2 a month. To find out more, follow the link in our show notes and we'll see you back here tomorrow.