Going to cede: Armenia and Azerbaijan

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Unfinished wood, Edison bulbs, exposed brick. The truth is, these days, the hidden hipster aesthetic can be found in just about every country, rich and poor. We examine the forces behind hipsterdom's spread and admire some finely trimmed beards along the way. And James Randi was a talented magician, a daring escapologist. But what he's most remembered for is revealing time and again the charlatanism that he so despised. We look back on the life of a brilliant and dedicated debunker. But first, The two capitals erupted at almost the same time this week. There were celebrations in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan. In Yerevan, the Armenian capital, protesters stormed the parliament and the prime minister's residence, demanding his resignation. The cause of both scenes was a peace agreement that took effect on Tuesday. It brings to an end six weeks of fierce fighting and potentially an end to a broader 30 year conflict over the contested region of Nagorno Karabakh. Ethnically Armenian. But inside Azerbaijan, the enclave and seven surrounding areas had been under Armenian control since 1994. But after fighting broke out in September, Azerbaijan gained back much of the lost ground. Now, under the new peace agreement, Azerbaijan keeps the areas it took. Armenia must withdraw from the remaining districts surrounding Nagorno Karabakh, and Russia will deploy 2,000 peacekeepers. But the status of Nagorno Karabakh itself remains unresolved. The region lies in a critical corridor between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. And the agreement, signed under the watchful eyes of Turkey and Russia, marks one of the biggest shakeups there since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At the end of the day, Azerbaijani forces were simply much better equipped, much more powerful.

Arkady Ostrovsky is the Economist's Russia editor.

And Armenia had to capitulate Effectively, it just could not fight anymore. So in some ways, it was inevitable.

But the fact that it was inevitable doesn't make it any easier for the Armenians.

This is absolutely crucial, Jason. I mean, it's a huge trauma. It's a huge humiliation. That's why on the day that the deal was announced, we saw quite big protests, very angry people in Yerevan who feel betrayed. They stormed parliament because this war, and particularly Nagorny Karabakh, cuts to the heart of Armenian identity as a state and of Armenian people. Central to that identity is, of course, the story of persecution and victimhood. Armenia lives with this memory of 1915 genocide by Turkey. And winning that war, unlikely as it was in the 1990s, gave the purpose and some confidence. And now this has been lost. They've lost all the territories they conquered in the 1990s. They've lost control over Karabakh. There is very little, I think, almost no chance that Nagorno Karabakh will get any autonomy of any kind. So this is enormous trauma. And in a way, it puts Armenia in the same position that Azerbaijan was only a few months ago. And that's what makes this peace deal very difficult, ultimately, because to make peace lasting and sustainable, all parties have to buy into it.

And when we've spoken about this conflict in the past, it's outside powers that have figured in intimately. How did they play a role at the end here?

That's right, Jason. So the outside powers being Russia and Turkey that had historic presence in this region's South Caucasus, they're the ones who changed the geopolitics and landscape and calculations. First of all, there was Turkey, much more assertive, wanting to project its power, Turkey decided to weigh in, not just politically backing Azerbaijan, but also provided with military training, with military equipment. Russia has a collective security agreement with Armenia. And in the past, Azerbaijan was very restrained by Russia's presence. What's changed there is Russia has concluded that relationship with Turkey and the relationship with Azerbaijan are much more important to it. And it also was very irritated with Armenia, which had a democratic uprising and revolution in 2018. And in Putin's eyes, any leader who comes through street protests doesn't have legitimacy. And he withdrew, effectively support from Nikola Pashinyan, prime minister, and allowed Azerbaijan to start this war. And the third reason, of course, is the disengagement and withdrawal of the west from the region, which has been very dramatic. And, of course, it became much more dramatic and pronounced in the past four years of Donald Trump's presidency.

And so from your standpoint, what do those Outside powers gain from this Turkey and Russia?

Well, first of all, Russia gains military presence in Nagorno Karabakh and around something it has long craved. Because for Russia, military presence is the main tool of control and leverage. And for Turkey, it's the second part of this agreement. It gets the transport corridor from Turkey through Nekhchivan, Azerbaijan exclave, bordering Turkey and Iran, across Armenia and into Azerbaijan's mainland and the ports on the Caspian Sea into Central Asia. Now, in the past, all provisions to Nihchivan had to be basically flown by air. There was this big rapture between Nihchivan and mainlanders of Ajan. This is really very important because in terms of trade and the geopolitics of trade and economy, this is absolutely transformative deal. It will have a very big impact on Turkish economy, on belt and road, on all trade from China to Europe.

But what will Azerbaijan think about Russian troops being on the ground after all of this conflict where Armenia has been backed by Russia?

Well, on the one hand, Azerbaijan had long resisted the presence of Russian military, prided itself as almost the only country in the former Soviet space that didn't have Russian military base or presence there. On the other hand, actually having Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno Karabakh could be quite beneficial to President Aliyev and Azerbaijan because it will give him an excuse not having to deal with ethnic Armenians who live there. It would prevent ethnic cleansing which he otherwise might not have been able to stop when Azerbaijani refugees return. I don't think he ever wanted ethnic cleansing himself. So this actually helps him not to deal with a very difficult problem.

And do you think this peace will hold? Could this be the end of this longest running conflict in the region?

Jason, this is an excellent question because this is where the weakness of big geopolitical deals comes. Authoritarian leaders of Russia and Turkey who are thinking in terms of their past empires, who are thinking in terms of trade deals, transport corridors, alliances, relationship with the west, have very little concern for a small matter of people. They think that deals can be imposed on them. The devil will be in the detail. All we have is one page peace plan. But there are a lot of people, a lot of villagers living there with their feelings, with their grievances, with 30 years of real hatred and no dialogue between Azerbaijani people and Armenians. I was in Azerbaijan not long ago. I talked to some of the refugees to. It's very clear that there's been a complete dehumanization of people on both sides in the way they talk about each other. So it's very easy to redraw the map. It's very hard to bring people into it. There needs to be massive effort on rebuilding trust and making people in this region see each other as humans rather than enemies.

Arkady, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you. Jason.

Foreign.

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I visited a barber salon called Hare Port. It was modern, plush sofas and big blown up pictures of men with beards and tattoos, all very carefully trimmed.

Daniel Knowles is our international correspondent. Recently he's been visiting some rather fashion forward establishments.

Had this kind of logo on the front which was like skull and crossbows except with a sort of pirate in a tricorn and scissors instead of bones. The sort of thing you'd see San Francisco maybe, something like that.

And so how did you find yourself in this barbershop? How did it take your interest?

Well, the thing about this barbershop was that it was in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. And it's not the only one. You know, if you walk around, there's a few of these sort of barbershops, places that do tattoos as well. Just hip looking places which I didn't really expect. So I went in to Hare Pot and I talked to the owner, a 31 year old guy called Ahmad Zia. He has a very smart beard himself and he opened it in 2018 and he was telling me just how much the market for this stuff has transformed in the last few years.

Market trend has completely changed.

The youth, they are very much interested.

In new styles, new haircuts. So his customers, they're mostly young men who get their ideas from their phones.

They follow actors and they follow them.

On social media, social media and stuff. They spend a lot of time on Instagram, Pinterest looking for styles that they can come in and ask for.

And so all of this is a reflection then of just Western culture spreading on social media?

Pretty much, yeah. It's a sort of globalized hipster culture, I think that's been spreading kind of relentlessly. We talk about the slowdown of globalization and if you look at Things like trade or foreign direct investment. It's true that globalization has slowed down, but I think if you look at it culturally, you look at how people dress, the sorts of things that they want to eat, that kind of thing, it's really spreading faster than ever. I mean, there's very few places in the world, big cities anyway, that you can't go and get a fancy coffee. I mean, I've been to Goma, which is a city in eastern Congo, and they have a cafe called Le Petit Chalet, which serves a quinoa protein bowl as well as the posh coffees that you might expect. So there's just this kind of aesthetic that's spread all over the world.

And how is this globalized hipster aesthetic expressed in these places?

Well, you know, it's mid century furniture, it's contemporary art. On the walls, it's exposed brickwork, it's wooden table, Edison bulbs and that sort of thing. I mean, you sort of recognize it instantly.

So the trappings then of hipsterdom, both the posh coffees and the exposed brick and all of that, it's getting globalized. I mean, why do you think that is? What has caused it to spread so much? Or is it just a matter of, you know, fashions move round?

I mean, obviously part of it is just that people like these things. But I think there's more to it than that. I spoke to a guy in Delhi, a venture capitalist called Sajith Pai, and what he said is it's like the bastard child of Ikea, Starbucks and Apple. And it's not only that it's fashionable, it's also a signal, you know, if you're setting up a coffee shop, you decorate it like that to signal to your customers that the coffees you'll be selling or whatever you're selling is up to a kind of global standard. You know, it's kind of a reassurance design. So the people who go to these kind of coffee shops, they might not decorate their own homes like that. You know, if you go to sort of wealthy Indians homes, they're not decorated in that kind of Scandinavian way, but they'll go to coffee shops like that because it signals the membership of a class of people who expect particular type of global quality. It's membership of a maybe not quite a global elite, but a kind of global hipster class.

And you reckon that the global spread of this sort of aspirational aesthetic as you describe it, is down to the Internet?

I don't think it could happen without the Internet. I Mean, obviously, you've always had globalization of ideas and things, but the Internet just means that any teenager who's got a mobile phone and an Internet connection can see what's stylish on Pinterest. And anybody who's designing a restaurant can look at restaurants elsewhere in the world and copy it. But it's not only the Internet. You also have a class of globalized people. You have migrants and migrants who have returned to their home country with kind of ideas that they've picked up elsewhere. You have more and more people being educated abroad. So you have a class of people who are more globalized and looking for this stuff as well.

So the way you describe it is not so much about the rising popularity of quinoa or kombucha, but sort of a reflection of a rise of a class of people.

Yeah, I think that's true. If you look all over the world, rich countries and poor countries alike, you have urbanization happening. Cities are only getting bigger, their population's larger, and the kind of people who live in them have access to more specialized jobs, to more opportunities for ways to spend their money. It's part of a sort of global trend of urbanites taking the lead culturally. And they're not always popular. I mean, obviously, in rich countries, we're kind of well aware of all the arguments about gentrification. And people get very angsty when these sort of coffee shops open in a neighborhood that might not have been particularly trendy in the past because people think it will be followed by rent rises and the rest of it. In poor countries, it's a similar sort of thing. I mean, lesser concerns about gentrification, but concerns about changing neighborhoods and the rest of it. I mean, you have this kind of urban, rural divide everywhere.

But in a way, it's sort of surprising that a design aesthetic comes with it. I mean, do you get the sense that hipster culture is the same everywhere?

I think we shouldn't possibly go too far. I mean, these days, if you're in Copenhagen or if you're in London or San Francisco, I mean, it's pretty conformist to be a hipster almost. That's not really the case in somewhere like Kabul, you're still talking about a very small segment of the population that frankly, are quite rebellious, who are taking risks and defying convention when they choose to get a tattoo or to have a particularly outrageous haircut or whatever it is. So it's a different ballgame, I think. And go back to Kabul. Talk to Ahmad Ziya, that barber. He was telling me how, you know, his great fear was if the Taliban return. You know, universities are quite often attacked by militants in Kabul, I mean, there's a lot of bad things still happening. And I think it's quite brave, these acev hips doing Kabul in a way it's definitely not in San Francisco.

Daniel, thank you very much for joining us.

Oh, thank you for having me, Jason.

In Afghanistan, there are the trendy barbershops in Kabul, but also a fraught Taliban peace deal, a curious outbreak of polio. There's always another angle on the countries of the world, and you can find them all in the Economist. Get a great deal on an introductory subscription@Equality.com IntelligenceOffer the link is in the show notes.

One of the first people James Randi rumbled was an evangelical Christian healer called Peter Popoff.

Fiametta Rocco is our culture correspondent and writes for our obituary column.

Popov used to hold these heels. Huge prayer meetings.

Back off, devil. Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

And he liked to summon forth individuals from the congregation and say to them in this lacerating voice, they should throw away their crutches and throw away their wheelchairs and walk.

Burning this arthritis right out of your body.

God had told him that they would be healed.

Oh, glory to God.

She's not gonna need that walker anymore.

God's just putting new strength.

On the Tonight Show One night, Mr. Randy played Johnny Carson, the presenter. A clip in which Mr. Popoff appeared to know what each congregant was called.

Is it Gould? Alice Gould.

And also what ailed them, even though he'd never actually seen them before.

God is touching that thyroid condition right now.

Brandi played the clip again with the sound turned up and showed using an electrical scanner, that Mr. Popoff was actually wearing a secret earpiece.

She's about to get rid of the rocker.

You want to get rid of this walker sister?

And being fed information from his wife who was backstage.

My name is James Randi. I'm not a chemist, I'm not a physicist. I'm not a medical person. I'm not a geologist or an astronomer. My field is very narrow right here. All it has in it is two elements. How people are fooled and how they fool themselves.

He was born in Toronto. He was the eldest of three children. He was a very precocious child with an IQ that was said to be higher than Einstein's had been. Just before he left school, he was hit by a car while out riding his car, and he spent 13 months in a full body cast in bed. He got over the boredom by Teaching himself magic. And later his speciality became escapology. In 1956 he appeared on television submerged for 104 minutes, well over an hour and a half in a sealed metal box at the bottom of a swimming pool. This earned him his first entry in the Guinness Book of Records.

Now let us watch one man attempt his ultimate challenge.

Later he also wriggled out of a straight jacket while suspended in the deepest midwinter over the Niagara Falls.

Only a few have dared to defy this awesome chasm.

When he was almost 60, he gave up turning tricks on his own to focus on another line of work that he'd been developing all along, which was looking with his insider's eye at how other people worked their magic.

It's a very dangerous thing to believe in. Nonsense. First thing you know, you're giving your money to the charlatans. You're giving your emotional security and in some cases you're giving your life to them.

Grandy always insisted that magicians were the most honest people in the world. They said they would trick you and they did. It was the hucksters who really made him mad. Peddlers of Woo Woo, he called them. His most devoted adversary was Uri Geller, a tall, handsome Israeli who arrived in America in the early 1970s. He claiming to be able to bend spoons using psychokinesis or mind power. All sorts of people tried to catch him out, but even the Stanford Research Institute was taken in.

Would you welcome please, Uri Geller.

Johnny Carson again asked Mr. Randi for advice on how to test Mr. Geller's claims. Randy said, use your own props. Nothing that Mr. Geller could have had access to beforehand.

Right now I'm feeling being pressed and then I can't.

Well, I'm not trying to press you. I'm really not.

No, you're only telling me, well, will you try that? Or that?

As the cameras rolled and Mr. Geller slowly realized that he was about to be put on the spot. Any paranormal abilities that he might have had simply disappeared.

I'm having a hard time with you.

I don't mean to be Yuri, I really don't.

Just keep looking.

Randy didn't like to be called a debunker. He only thought that people should be open minded and willing to question what they saw before them. He offered a million dollar award to anyone who could produce evidence of paranormal ability under scientific control conditions.

If they say they can defy gravity, step over to the window, step out, and if you don't fall, hey, you win.

He never paid out a cent. Nor did he lose a single libel action brought against him by the angry and the thwarted, of which there were many. Mr. Geller never forgave his tormentor. And you know, he never forgot when Randy died, he tweeted, how sad that Randy died with hatred in his soul. Love to you all. Looking back on Randy's long life, it seems to me that such pious, almost indecent glee would really have delighted the magician with the twinkling eyes.

Fiametta Rocco on James Randi, who's died aged 92. That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here on Monday.

Sam.