Jeddah mind trick: Joe Biden in Saudi Arabia

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. In our South London bureau, I'm Jason Palmer.

And in London for just one more day, I'm John Fastman. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. You may remember giggling nervously through sex education classes at school. And if you don't, your teachers sure do. Sex education may be awkward, but it's really important. And across much of Latin America, schools don't do it very well.

And popular imagination has it that the dinosaurs ruled supreme over the earth a couple of hundred million years ago. But it wasn't always that way. How did they get that apex predator status? They were just dressed a little bit better for the changing weather.

First up, though, Joe Biden lands in Saudi Arabia today on the second leg of a trip to the Middle east that began in Israel. In the West Bank, Saudi Arabia and the United States have been staunch allies for decades. They established diplomatic relations in the late 1930s. Franklin Roosevelt met Ibn Saud, the country's first king, aboard an American warship in 1945.

The Arabian Monarch goes aboard the President's.

Cruiser to be received amid impressive and colorful ceremonies. This conference was no doubt among the.

Most important of these meetings and presumably.

Centered on the vastly important question of.

Oil, the potential American development.

At times the relationship has been rocky, but also it has been enduring and bipartisan. The Saudi government got on unusually well with Donald Trump. But Joe Biden as a candidate lambasted the country for its human rights record. And an American intelligence report found that its crown prince Mohammed bin Salman approved the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, an American based journalist. A charge that the Prince denies. Today, Mr. Biden is expected to meet Prince Mohammed along with the leaders of several other Gulf states. For the crown prince, it will be a welcome visit. But what does Mr. Biden hope to get out of it?

When he was a candidate and then early in his presidency, he really promised to be the anti Donald Trump.

Greg Karlstrom is our Middle east correspondent.

He would re enter the nuclear deal with Iran, which of course was signed under Barack Obama. Donald Trump abandoned the deal in 2018. The Iranians are no longer in compliance with it either. He also promised a different relationship with Saudi Arabia. Of course, Donald Trump was very chummy with the Saudis, particularly with the crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. To the frustration of many Democrats who were angry at the Saudis for their human rights record, for the war in Yemen, various other issues. Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail that he would make Saudi Arabia a pariah. Mr. Vice President, the CIA has concluded that the leader of Saudi Arabia directed the murder of U. S. Based journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The State Department also says the Saudi government is responsible for executing nonviolent offenders and for torture. President Trump has not punished senior Saudi leaders. Would you?

Yes, and I said it at the time, Khashoggi was in fact murdered and dismembered. And I believe in the order of the crown prince and I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them.

We were going to in fact make.

Them pay the price and make them in fact, the pariah that they are.

There's very little. And as president until now, he has refused to speak with Prince Mohammed. And that was part of a broader push, he said, to put human rights at the center of America's foreign policy. And Donald Trump was happy to deal with any ruthless autocrat around the region. Joe Biden said there would be a place for human rights in his Middle east policy.

Greg, later today you and the president are both headed to Saudi Arabia. And Saudi, of course, is the world's second biggest oil producer. Do you think that has something to do with why he's going and isn't his even going quite a turnaround compared to what he said previously?

It's absolutely a turnaround. Yesterday in Jerusalem Biden repeated a line that he said a few times before he said, I'm going to Saudi Arabia to attend a broader meeting with the leaders of six Gulf states, Egypt, Iraq and Jordan. If the Saudi Crown Prince happens to be there, then we'll have a conversation, which is ridiculous. Obviously, of course, the Saudi Crown Prince is going to be there at a high level diplomatic summit in Saudi Arabia. So there is going to be a moment where Biden and Prince Mohammed meet. And that will be an admission of failure for the President, who was never going to be able to treat the Saudis as a pariah like he promised. The country has been a close partner of the United States since 1945. Certainly now oil prices have focused minds.

And so should we take from that that to President Joe Biden at this point, getting the gas price down is more important than human rights?

I think it is. And I think a lot of things are more important than human rights for this administration. I'm sure there will be the requisite condemnations of Saudi Arabia's human rights record when the President meets with officials in Jeddah, just as he's made some token comments on his visit to Jerusalem about the importance of Palestinian human rights and Palestinians being able to live in dignity. But those words are not backed up by anything substantive in terms of policy.

Let's talk about the rest of the trip.

Also.

He was in Israel and in the West Bank. He started his trip, in fact, in Israel. What was he trying to accomplish there?

He was trying to accomplish 48 hours here without making any news and without doing anything controversial. He was met off the plane by Israel's new centrist Prime Minister, Yair Lapid.

Mr. President, this is both a historic visit and a deeply personal one. It is historic because it expresses the unbreakable bond between our countries.

He has been Prime Minister for only about two weeks now, since the previous Israeli government collapsed. Elections are due in November, which will be Israel's fifth election since 2019. So the trip obviously comes at a political moment in Israel and everyone was looking for a photo op to use in their campaign. So he spent time, time with Prime Minister Lapid on Thursday, also had a brief meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is hoping in November that he can return to the Prime Minister's office. That was really about the substance of this trip. A very brief chat this morning in Bethlehem in the occupied west bank with Muhrab Mas, the Palestinian president. But President Biden had very little to say. The Israeli Palestinian conflict, of course, seems hopelessly deadlocked. There have been no meaningful peace negotiations for almost a decade. You have Israel in political turmoil. You have the Palestinians divided between the west bank and Gaza and in a state of political paralysis. So even if President Biden wanted to wade into the swamp of peace processing, which he doesn't, there's no one to wade in with him. The political circumstances here are just not conducive to it.

Yesterday afternoon, Prime Minister Lapid urged President Biden to tell the leaders of Saudi Qatar, Oman and Qatar, Kuwait, who he's going to see that the Israelis hands are outstretched for peace. Was that the objective of his visit to Israel, to improve ties between Israel and Gulf countries more than it was to improve ties between Israeli and Palestinian leaders?

That is the underlying theme of a lot of America's Middle east policy at this point for a couple of reasons. One is the administration would like its own big achievement, like the Abraham Accords in 2020, when Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco and Sudan all established diplomatic ties with Israel. There's also a belief within the administration that greater cooperation between Israel and Arab states, particularly on defense, on security, on intelligence sharing, would allow America to diminish its military role in the region. So that is something that the president plans to discuss with Saudi officials and other Gulf officials in Jeddah. The Saudis and the Israelis have had quiet ties for a decade now, again really focused on defense and security cooperation. They have a shared hostility toward Iran. They see it as the main destabilizing actor, the main threat in the Middle East. And so they have strategic reasons to work together. But to publicly normalize with Israel would be controversial with some Saudis, with other Arabs around the region. At some point, I believe they will normalize with Israel, but they're going to do that in their own time rather than when Joe Biden wants them to do it.

Greg, you mentioned Iran's role in pushing Israel and the Gulf states closer together. What about Iran's nuclear deal? Biden said it was a mistake to walk away. Do you think that deal is now beyond saving?

I think it's close to that point, but I don't think the White House is going to acknowledge that anytime soon. As you said, Biden has been clear both as a candidate and as president, speaking on Israeli TV just this week about what a mistake he thought it was to leave the deal. Iran has resumed and escalated its nuclear activity. It's launched attacks on American allies in the region. Talks to return to the deal have run aground. So the question now is, what do you do next? How do you deal with Iran's seemingly runaway nuclear program at this point. And that is something that the president has been speaking about with both Israeli officials and Gulf officials on his regional tour.

All right, Greg, travel safe. Thanks for stopping by today.

Thank you.

Many of us will remember a parent or teacher explaining to us how babies are made. At best, it was quick and informative. At worst, it was awkward and uncomfortable. Probably it was a little bit of both. But teaching teenagers about safe sex consent and contraceptives is vital to ensure they can spot sexual abuse and avoid sexually transmitted infections as well as unwanted pregnancies. But in Latin America, this information is often hard to come by.

So sex education in Latin America is on paper, pretty good. Governments in the region tell schools they have to teach their pupils about the birds and the bees, and there are some quite nice textbooks in some countries.

Sarah Burke is the Economist, Mexico City bureau chief.

But the reality is far from that. Sex education is pretty patchy in much of the continent. It's still very Catholic, and that influences. So you see lots of schools that are actually failing to teach their children sex education. At home, it's often not much better. The parents have been through the same system and are unable to fill the gaps because maybe they don't know the answers. There's misinformation. A young Mexican woman I spoke to from Oaxaca told me that adults in her hometown have long taught children they can get pregnant from sitting on a toilet, and some parents are just too squeamish to talk about sex.

And is this the case throughout the whole continent, or does it vary country to country?

It varies not just country to country, but also within countries, rural areas, urban areas. It's different. Let's take the example of Mexico, which is where I am. The Constitution enshrines secular education, and so the materials are very good. There's a nice textbook I found that shows boys can just take down their trousers to learn about their sexual organs, and girls can use a mirror. In Argentina a few years ago, the Ministry of Education also produced a nice textbook to help parents talk to their children about puberty, masturbation, contraception, and about sexual abuse being a crime. But it's very Patchy. So in 2020, a survey in Brazil showed that only a quarter of teachers had undergone training in how to talk to their pupils about sex, and many didn't feel comfortable doing so. Often, sex education really is just basic biology. It's information about this is this part, it's called this or information about contraceptives. There's less talk about sexual diversity or abortion or other things.

And what's the consequence of bad sex education for people, especially young people in Latin America?

Well, a lot of people feel ill informed and they resort to things like television and the Internet. And many people I spoke to said they thought that boys had unrealistic views of sex because of where they had learned about it from. The other very obvious thing, and it's unclear, the causative relationship is that teen pregnancies are common in Latin America and the Caribbean. I mean, the rate has fallen recently, but some 18% of births in the region are to mothers under 20 only. Sub Saharan Africa as a region does worse. For example, in Panama, the number of girls aged 10 to 19 who became pregnant in 2020 was 8% higher than the year before, maybe because of lockdowns. And Covid schools have been shut for a long time here has also meant that people have had very little sex education. And in some places we're also seeing sexually transmitted disease rising.

And so are there initiatives to change to improve sex education in some countries?

Yes. Lots of the governments really understand that this is important and are trying to do things. Gabriel Boric, who's Chile's newish president and he's only 36, so he comes with a different mindset. He wants non sexist education and as part of that he wants to make it mandatory to teach children about sex, but also sexual diversity and gender stereotypes. He also wants sort of radically, at least for the region to hand out condoms in schools and for sex education to include things such as abortion. In April, the government of Panama introduced a new sex education law that means children now have to be taught how to avoid getting pregnant and about sexually transmitted diseases and also how to find help or ask for help if they need it, especially if they're being abused. The list goes on. So politicians are trying to change things. Often the resistance is actually coming from elsewhere.

What do you mean by resistance?

So there's resistance from society, especially parents who feel that they should have a say in what their children are and aren't taught, be it because they have religious beliefs or just simply quite conservative about things. So last month in Peru, a law was passed that lets parents have of a say in their children's education. And this was aimed specifically at sex education with the idea that parents will try to stop sex education classes when they don't like the content. And if teachers don't take the parents concerns into account, they can also be fired. The lawmaker who promulgated this once blamed floods caused by El Nino on sex education in schools. So you can see the sort of thinking going on in some places there. Similarly, in 2016, the municipal government of Santiago, the capital of Chile, tried to introduce a textbook for teenagers that included segments on the clitoris, how long penises are on average, LGBT people and healthy relationships, not just the fact they exist, but how to have a good one. And conservatives objected, calling it a sex manual. And soon after, it was taken out of circulation. And there's all sorts of false claims about sex education causing people to become gay or other things that are just simply not true. So there's no doubt that for progressive politicians, especially like Chile's president, it's going to be very difficult to not only put on paper, but put into reality comprehensive sex education in schools.

All right, Sarah, thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks, John.

There's always been something about dinosaurs that captures the public imagination. Kids just love them. Hollywood just loves them. The whole Jurassic park is and Jurassic World franchise is built around them.

What is that biggest carnivore the world has ever seen.

Run?

Dinosaurs came to rule the roost for more than 150 million years. How? Well, it turned out they didn't have much competition.

So when dinosaurs first appeared in the middle of the Triassic period, 230 million years ago, there was nothing obviously special about them.

Jeffrey Carr is the Economist's science editor.

There were a lot of other similar sized reptiles on Earth at the time, many of them belonging to the same group that modern crocodiles do, although they didn't all look like crocodiles and a lot of them were vegetarian. And then at the end of the Triassic, something happened. Conditions changed in a way that favored the dinosaurs over the other groups. The other groups largely disappeared and the dinosaurs took over.

So what happened at the end of the Triassic?

Well, if you look in the rocks, there was a series of massive volcanic eruptions. And with volcanoes, you get a lot of gas going into the atmosphere. One thing about the late Triassic was it was already very warm. There's no evidence of ice caps, which is unusual. There was a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. So the volcanoes put a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A preponderance of paleontologists think that it was this extra carbon dioxide which heated the Earth even more, that caused a climate change which somehow caused a mass extinction. Although they're a bit hand waving about how that happened. However, volcanoes also put out sulfur dioxide. And sulfur dioxide has the opposite effect. It turns into sulfuric acid and forms little particles which reflect sunlight back into space and cools things down. So there Are models which suggest this may have happened in pulses. And you've got pulses of quite cold weather. And that would favor animals that could survive in the cold.

So you're suggesting there that dinosaurs were simply better able to deal with the cold?

Yes, there is evidence that dinosaurs could handle cold better than the other creatures around at the time. One is that dinosaur fossils are most abundant and most diverse in parts of the world which were then near the poles. They're not necessarily there now because of continental drift. Whereas the crocodile like organisms, they tended to be diverse and abundant near the tropics. So there's a suggestion there that dinosaurs are better able to handle the cold. There's also the increasing evidence that probably all dinosaurs, or at least most of them, had down like coverings, which in one group turned into the feathers with which they fly. That's the birds. But if they all had this down like covering, it would act in the same way that hair does in mammals, and it would insulate their bodies, retaining the heat and making it easier for them to live in cold climates. Some of the dinosaurs then definitely did have these danlight coverings, because you can see it in their footprints in strata that were left by ancient lake shores in what is now Xinjiang in northwest China, which at the time was much closer to the North Pole than it is now. So there were Arctic conditions there.

So this downy covering, these proto feathers and feathers essentially made the difference for the dinosaurs. They stuck around and a lot of other things did not.

Yes, that's correct. The theory is that the sulfur dioxide outbursts suddenly cooled the planet as much as 10 degrees Celsius in a very short order. That's a big change for an animal to cope with. And the other thing that the researchers in this particular paper found was on these lakes where you can find the footprints on the shoreline. There's also evidence that there was ice on the lakes in winter. So you definitely had dinosaurs there. The dinosaurs definitely had feathers. And we're pretty sure that the lakes were getting frozen in winter, so we know it was cold.

So the presence of this feathery jacket then, during a period of unexpected chilliness, changed the trajectory of what life form survived on Earth?

Yes, absolutely. Everybody knows that the dinosaurs went out in a mass extinction when the Earth was hit by an asteroid. And that was 66 million years ago. The end of the Triassic was also a mass extinction. The dinosaurs went out and mammals, including our ancestors, were able to profit by the disappearance of the dinosaurs. There'd been mammals around for a long time, but they never got anywhere because the dinosaurs were much more successful. Something similar seems to have happened at the end of the Triassic. The dinosaurs had been around for tens of millions of years, and, yeah, they were moderately successful, but they were dominant. And then suddenly their competitors, the crocodilians, vanish because they haven't got these downy, feathery coverings, so they can't survive the sudden temperature drops and the density have time to evolve, to survive them. They're just wiped out over the relatively short period of time. Their part of the planet is left uninhabited by large vertebrates and the dinosaurs just say whoopee, and off they go. They were able to move into the tropical areas which they'd previously been excluded from. They were able to diversify, they were able to grow, they were able to turn into the creatures which are beloved of naturalistic museums and of film producers alike.

Until the asteroid came.

Until the asteroid came and all of the dinosaurs were wiped out, except for the ancestors of the small feathered ones that we see around today, which we refer to as birds.

Jeff, thanks very much for joining us.

Thank you, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors are Marguerite Howell and Chris Impey. And our sound engineer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Sam Westrin, Jack Gill and John Jo Devlin. And our creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Rory Galloway, Alize Jean Baptiste and Kevin Kaners. And assistant producer Abasoy Osundairo. With extra production help this week from Elna Schultz, we'll all see you back here on Monday.