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Let's Know Things

Let's Know Things

De: Colin Wright
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A calm, non-shouty, non-polemical, weekly news analysis podcast for folks of all stripes and leanings who want to know more about what's happening in the world around them. Hosted by analytic journalist Colin Wright since 2016.

letsknowthings.substack.comColin Wright Política e Governo
Episódios
  • Ethiopia’s Fraying Peace

    Ethiopia’s Fraying Peace
    Oct 6 2026
    This week we talk about Egypt, Eritrea, and Sudan.We also discuss the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, ports, and journalism.Recommended Book: The Infinity Machine by Sebastian MallabyTranscriptIn 2018, Ethiopia reopened its embassy in Eritrea. The two countries had fought a border war in the late 1990s and had spent nearly two decades in a tense state that was not quite war, not quite peace. The reopening was part of a striking reconciliation between Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki. Abiy received the Nobel Peace Prize the following year, in large part for his efforts to end that conflict.At the beginning of October, though, Ethiopia announced that it was re-closing that embassy. It ordered ten Eritrean diplomats to leave Addis Ababa, saying they had engaged in activities that threatened Ethiopian security. Eritrea called the decision astonishing and said it was severing diplomatic ties with Ethiopia in response.Ethiopia also expelled an Egyptian diplomat, and Egypt responded by expelling an Ethiopian one. The African Union urged all three countries to exercise restraint and preserve channels of communication, but all of this was happening as fighting was picking back up in northern Ethiopia, and as explosions were heard in the capital, Addis Ababa. A source connected to an armed opposition alliance told Reuters that the group had launched drone strikes there. But as of early October, there had been no independent confirmation of what caused those explosions. Witnesses and officials confirmed hearing blasts; whether they were an attack, and who might have carried it out, are still open questions.What I’d like to talk about today is how a peace that once seemed to transform this part of Africa fell apart, how Ethiopia’s internal war became entangled with its disputes with its neighbors, and why it’s important to distinguish what’s actually happening from what each side in this simmering conflict says is happening.—Let’s kick things off with a quick refresher of this region’s geography and history, to help explain why this crisis has so many layers.Eritrea sits along the Red Sea, just north of Ethiopia. It became independent from Ethiopia in 1993, which left Ethiopia without a coastline. The two countries initially maintained decent relations, but then they went to war over their border in 1998. The fighting ended in 2000, without any real resolution, and without formally establishing a new, mutually acceptable relationship. That was the long stalemate Abiy and Isaias seemed to resolve back in 2018.Inside Ethiopia, there was another important change during this period. For decades, a political movement originating in the northern region of Tigray, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, had been the dominant force in the coalition that governed the country. Abiy came to power in 2018 and reshaped that governing coalition, and this put even more distance between the central government and the TPLF.In 2020, those political disputes erupted into a war between the Ethiopian federal government and Tigrayan forces. Eritrea fought alongside Ethiopia’s government against the TPLF. This is one of the most striking reversals in the present crisis: the government and its former Eritrean ally are now accusing one another of dangerous interference, while Ethiopian officials allege that Eritrea is helping that same Tigrayan movement they once fought against.This war, which lasted from 2020 to 2022, killed hundreds of thousands of people, according to estimates that vary substantially because conditions made reliable counting so difficult. It also displaced millions, damaged farms and hospitals, and involved absolutely horrific abuses against civilians. International investigators and human-rights groups documented atrocities by multiple parties, including Ethiopian and Eritrean forces and Tigrayan fighters.In November of 2022, Ethiopia’s government and the TPLF signed a peace agreement in Pretoria, South Africa. They agreed to stop fighting, disarm Tigrayan forces, restore services throughout the region, allow humanitarian aid to reach civilians, and to work toward a more stable political settlement. But Eritrea was not a party to that agreement, and that’s because there were two different peace processes.The 2018 reconciliation was between Ethiopia and Eritrea: two states ending a border standoff. The Pretoria agreement was between Ethiopia’s federal government and the TPLF: two parties trying to end a civil war. Neither agreement automatically settled the questions at the heart of the other one, and Eritrea’s role in the civil war made it more difficult for a ceasefire between Ethiopian and Tigrayan leaders to guarantee peace along the Eritrean border.Parts of western Tigray were, and remain to this day, contested by Tigrayan and Amhara authorities. Hundreds of thousands of people displaced from that area have not been able to return home ...
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    19 minutos
  • Canada and Europe

    Canada and Europe
    Sep 29 2026
    This week we talk about EU membership, trade deals, and association.We also discuss Australia, Ursula von der Leyen, and Brussels.Recommended Book: Being You by Anil SethTranscriptJust off the coast of Newfoundland, there’s a small group of islands that belongs to France. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon are close enough to Canada that, at their nearest point, the two countries are separated by only a few kilometers of water.In September, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney met French President Emmanuel Macron on these islands. The two leaders could stand on French territory and talk about a partnership with the European Union, while Canada was visible across the water.A few days earlier, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had made a similar, but possibly more significant proposal. Speaking before the European Parliament, with Carney in the room, she said she wanted to open the door for Canada to become the EU’s first “associate member.”Depending on which headline you read about the statement, this may have sounded like Canada might be joining the EU, joining it partway, or joining an entirely new version of it. Soon after, Australia’s trade minister said his country was “on the same page” as Canada regarding closer ties, and the European Parliament’s president then suggested Australia and New Zealand might follow Canada’s lead.Now, despite all those headlines and interpretations, there’s one problem with all these stated ambitions: the European Union does not have an established category called associate member. No one has agreed on what rights or obligations an associate member country would have, and figuring that out—and getting some kind of resolution passed—would be necessary for anyone, including Canada and Australia, to get closer in that way with the EU.What I’d like to talk about today is why this proposal was made, what it could mean if it eventually becomes more concrete, and whatever happens, what these statements tell us about the way global alliances are changing.—The EU has 27 member countries, but there are already a few different ways to be connected to it.Full member nations help write EU law and send representatives to its institutions. They all participate in the single market, which means goods, services, money, and people can move across member nation borders under shared rules.The single market is distinct from the customs union, which sets common tariffs on goods imported from elsewhere. Both are distinct from the Schengen area, which removes most routine passport checks between participating countries. And nations that use the euro are another group entirely. These arrangements tend to overlap, but they’re not the same thing, and membership in one does not automatically mean membership in all the others.There are also countries outside the EU that participate in some of its systems. Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein belong to the European Economic Area and are part of the single market. To do that they have to accept many EU rules, although they don’t vote on those rules as that would require full EU membership. Switzerland has built its own set of bilateral arrangements with the EU. And Britain, after leaving the union, has also negotiated a special trade and cooperation agreement with it.So there are precedents for a country having a deep relationship with the EU without being a member. But there’s no ready-made ‘associate’ slot that Canada can just step into.There’s a legal distinction here, too. The EU treaties say that a European state can apply to become a member, and Canada is not a European state. The treaties separately allow the EU to make association agreements with countries outside the bloc, and it already has many kinds of agreements with external partners. An association agreement, though, does not make that partner a member of the Union.“Associate member” could eventually become a useful name for a new collection of rights and obligations held by nations outside those existing parameters. For now, though, it’s a political invitation and a negotiating idea, not a defined legal status.All that said, Canada isn’t starting from scratch on this. Its trade agreement with the EU, called CETA, has been applied provisionally since 2017. Most of it is already in effect, though ten EU countries still haven’t completed the ratification required for the whole of the agreement to go into force.CETA removes most tariffs and opens some opportunities for companies on each side, but it doesn’t make Canada part of the single market. A Canadian product can be easier to sell in Europe without a Canadian worker gaining a general right to take a job there. That’s part of the distinction between a trade deal and the sort of relationship people sometimes imagine when they hear the phrase “union membership.”Canada also joined Horizon Europe, the EU’s major research funding program, in 2024. It has a security and ...
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    14 minutos
  • Clean Energy Super PAC

    Clean Energy Super PAC
    Sep 22 2026
    This week we talk about lobbying, renewables, and the NRA.We also discuss implied threats, midterm elections, and political action committees.Recommended Book: Sunward by William AlexanderTranscriptFor much of the late 20th century and the first few decades of the 21st, one of the most feared interest groups in US politics was the National Rifle Association, the NRA.Its power came from a large and politically engaged membership, a mailing list, a grading system that reduced complicated voting records to a letter, and a reputation for ending political careers over specific votes.Once it attained that reputation, the NRA didn’t have to defeat every politician it disagreed with. Members of Congress only had to believe it could defeat them, and that belief shaped races in which the group spent nothing; politicians went out of their way not to anger the NRA. Money can buy an advertisement or a meeting. What tends to change a vote is the expectation that one choice will be rewarded and another will carry consequences.The NRA’s influence has declined following internal scandals, financial trouble, and the growth of well-funded gun-control groups. But its model remains potent: pick a few visible fights, and allow your reputation to do a lot of the work for you, in the future.In 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, alongside a related appeals-court ruling later that year, helped create the modern super PAC: a political committee that can raise and spend unlimited sums advocating for or against candidates, so long as it does not coordinate that spending with their campaigns.This did not eliminate the effort and resources required to build influence, but it meant a few wealthy donors, a competent team, and some carefully selected races could establish a reputation in months rather than decades.In 2026, solar, wind, and batteries are projected to account for about 93% of new utility-scale electrical generating capacity added in the United States.That doesn’t mean they provide 93% of the country’s electricity—natural gas remains the largest source in the US—but these technologies are now the overwhelming majority of what the industry is building.Despite that growth, in 2025 Congress passed a law that sharply rolled back federal support for much of the clean-energy industry, and most of the politicians who voted for those rollbacks appeared to suffer no political consequences for doing so.What I’d like to talk about today is the effort to build a feared clean-energy lobby, how it has influenced a series of Republican primaries, and what its early successes do and do not tell us about the role of money in American politics.—The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OBBBA, was signed into law on July 4, 2025.For wind and solar projects, the new law generally ended production and investment tax credits for facilities placed in service after December 31, 2027, unless construction began within twelve months of the bill’s enactment.That twelve-month window closed in July of 2026, and a subsequent executive order directed the Treasury Department to adopt a stricter definition of when construction actually begins, further clamping down on entities hoping to benefit from those now-defunct credits.Tax credits for electric vehicles and residential efficiency upgrades ended in 2025, while support for clean hydrogen was curtailed. Other technologies, including batteries, nuclear power, and geothermal energy, were treated differently, so it would be misleading to say the law eliminated every federal clean-energy incentive, though it did severely curtail a lot of renewables-oriented industries and construction in the US.Republicans have generally been more supportive of fossil-fuel production and more hostile to federal wind and solar subsidies, while Democrats have generally taken the opposite position. There are important regional exceptions, especially among Republicans whose districts have attracted manufacturing plants, wind farms, and other energy investments. Several Republican lawmakers have even written letters asking party leaders to preserve some of the credits, in part because projects and jobs in their districts depended on them. When the final vote arrived, though, nearly all congressional Republicans voted for the bill.Tom Matzzie, the founder of the retail electricity company CleanChoice Energy, previously worked for Democratic campaigns and served as the Washington director of the progressive organization MoveOn.org, so he was familiar with electoral campaigning as well as the energy industry. In the wake of the passing of the OBBBA, he posed a question to Canary Media, possibly alluding to the success of political interest groups like the NRA when he said, “Are we someone that people can hurt without consequences?”Matzzie recruited Chris Larsen, the billionaire co-founder of the blockchain company Ripple and an investor in clean energy, and Michael Brune, the former executive ...
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    19 minutos
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