Foreign Policy May - June 2016

DAVID FOLDVARI “At the beginning of an assignment, I’ll draw on anything: sketchbooks, a tablet I have that is basically a digital canvas, and even bus tickets and envelopes. I like to make a lot of little drawings, even if I don’t have a cohesive vision yet, just to see how different combinations of designs, colors, and shadings fit together. The sketches and early drawings often end up in the final, while the polished stuff gets discarded. For this cover, I wanted the tone of the sketch to match that of the man who was profiled, David Vincenzetti. Initially, I hid his face in complete darkness, but in the end that made him seem too menacing. Instead, I retained a bit of the mystery that exists in the article.” Corrections: During 2015,…

Exit the King In Azerbaijan, oil reigns. The country sits atop some 7 billion barrels of reserves. Post-Soviet industrial development, along with surging oil prices, generated monumental economic growth starting in the early 2000s. So prized is black gold that spas in the central town of Naftalan try to treat psoriasis, arthritis, and gout with crude soaks (right). ¶Yet oil’s recent slump has sent Azerbaijan, where energy provides 67 percent of fiscal revenues and 95 percent of exports, into crisis. GDP growth, already down to single digits after the boom years, contracted in 2015 along with barrel prices. To deflect a bailout, the government floated the manat in December and enacted strict currency controls in January. Meanwhile, oil wealth lines politicians’ pockets: Azerbaijan ranks 119 out of 167 in Transparency International’s…

1 Lozenges I go through at least five boxes of 24 lozenges a month. Talking as much as we do, all tutors lose their voices. Being in the classroom is like being on a talk show. I have to be engaging. If the students find me boring, they won’t come back next month. 2 Laptop I hook this up to a projector during sessions and teach using PowerPoint slides. I also use it to occasionally update the center’s Facebook page. It has thousands of followers, and it’s one of the main ways we tutors communicate with students. 3 Red Bull I know it’s a lot, but I have more than 10 of these a day. Coffee doesn’t work anymore. Before we get famous, we have to spend a lot of time studying the exam ourselves…

ON FEB. 28, the cargo freighter Jin Teng, flying the flag of Sierra Leone, arrived in the Philippines. It was using what’s known as a “flag of convenience”—to subvert regulations or fees, shipping companies often register vessels in foreign states. In this case, the device was meant to obscure the fact that the Jin Teng was, in fact, a ship hailing from North Korea, a country recently in hot water for testing nuclear devices and conventional missiles. The ruse was undone days later when the boat’s name turned up on a U.N. Security Council list sanctioning 31 North Korean vessels. About a week after, another North Korean ship, the Theresa Begonia, was detained at a different Philippine port, flying the flag of Tuvalu. ¶ The two boats were the first…

“Daesh is engaged in a destructive frenzy. Through decapitations and massacres, it annihilates people who don’t embrace its vision of Islam. It also sacks antiquities: the splendors of the Middle East, traces of lost civilizations, and imprints of our ancestors. Daesh is spreading terror as the Nazis once did when they murdered en masse, pillaged Europe, and burned art they deemed immoral or decadent. Faced with this barbarism, we feel powerless. As an artist, I am anxious that proof of the past is disappearing, snatched away from future generations. Daesh is imposing a form of cultural Alzheimer’s on the world, clouding collective memory and national identity with the smoke of ruined lives and communities—and leaving behind only ashes.” -THE ARTIST…

Of Mice and Magnets For centuries, the only way to study the brain was postmortem dissection or, worse, lobotomies that often resulted in living patients suffering brain damage. Thankfully, neuroscience has progressed rapidly— and humanely—in recent years, so deciphering the brain’s mysteries doesn’t require so much slicing and dicing. Now scientists at the University of Virginia are throwing decidedly blunt instruments into the mix: magnets. They developed a synthetic gene that links the neuronal activity of dopamine, which creates pleasurable feelings, to the brain’s mediation of iron. They then spliced the gene into six mice and exposed the animals to magnets—causing them to be hit with a whoosh of dopamineinduced happy vibes. Remote magnetic manipulation could revolutionize treatments for neurological diseases. Doctors could one day control misfiring neurons that cause Parkinson’s, schizophrenia,…