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Tuesday 12th of January 2016 |
Morning Africa |
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Macro Thoughts |
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David Bowie- 03 Moonage Daydream @YouTube Africa |
"Moonage Daydream"
I'm an alligator, I'm a mama-papa coming for you I'm the space invader, I'll be a rock 'n' rollin' bitch for you Keep your mouth shut, you're squawking like a pink monkey bird And I'm busting up my brains for the words
Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe Put your ray gun to my head Press your space face close to mine, love
Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah!
Don't fake it baby, lay the real thing on me The church of man, love Is such a holy place to be Make me baby, make me know you really care
Make me jump into the air
Keep your 'lectric eye on me babe Put your ray gun to my head Press your space face close to mine, love Freak out in a moonage daydream oh yeah!
Freak out, far out, in out
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David Bowie - Fame Africa |
The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time. David Bowie
I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on. David Bowie
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The Arab Spring Began in Hope, But Ended in Desolation Africa |
Arab Spring was always a misleading phrase, suggesting that what we were seeing was a peaceful transition from authoritarianism to democracy similar to that from communism in Eastern Europe. The misnomer implied an over-simplified view of the political ingredients that produced the protests and uprisings of 2011 and over-optimistic expectations about their outcome.
Five years later it is clear that the result of the uprisings has been calamitous, leading to wars or increased repression in all but one of the six countries where the Arab Spring principally took place. Syria, Libya and Yemen are being torn apart by civil wars that show no sign of ending. In Egypt and Bahrain autocracy is far greater and civil liberties far less than they were prior to 2011. Only in Tunisia, which started off the surge towards radical change, do people have greater rights than they did before.
What went so disastrously wrong? Some failed because the other side was too strong, as in Bahrain where demands for democratic rights by the Shia majority were crushed by the Sunni monarchy. Saudi Arabia sent in troops and Western protests at the repression were feeble. This was in sharp contrast to vocal Western denunciations of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal suppression of the uprising by the Sunni Arab majority in Syria. The Syrian war had social, political and sectarian roots but it was the sectarian element that predominated.
It was one of the paradoxes of the Arab Spring that rebels supposedly seeking to end dictatorship in Syria and Libya were supported by absolute monarchies from the Gulf.
The West played a role in supporting uprisings against leaders they wanted to see displaced such as Muammar Gaddafi and Assad. But they gave extraordinarily little thought to what would replace these regimes.
Conclusions
Its a debacle, its fragile and the Break-Up will take the Refugee Crisis 20x.
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Mohammad Javad Zarif: Saudi Arabia’s Reckless Extremism New York Times Law & Politics |
THE world will soon celebrate the implementation of the landmark agreement that resolves the unnecessary, albeit dangerous, crisis over Iran’s nuclear program. All parties hoped, and continue to believe, that the resolution of the nuclear issue would enable us to focus on the serious challenge of extremism that is ravaging our region — and the world.
Unfortunately, some countries stand in the way of constructive engagement. Following the signing of the interim nuclear deal in November 2013, Saudi Arabia began devoting its resources to defeating the deal, driven by fear that its contrived Iranophobia was crumbling. Today, some in Riyadh not only continue to impede normalization but are determined to drag the entire region into confrontation.
Saudi Arabia seems to fear that the removal of the smoke screen of the nuclear issue will expose the real global threat: its active sponsorship of violent extremism. The barbarism is clear. At home, state executioners sever heads with swords, as in the recent execution of 47 prisoners in one day, including Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, a respected religious scholar who devoted his life to promoting nonviolence and civil rights. Abroad, masked men sever heads with knives.
Let us not forget that the perpetrators of many acts of terror, from the horrors of Sept. 11 to the shooting in San Bernardino and other episodes of extremist carnage in between, as well as nearly all members of extremist groups like Al Qaeda and the Nusra Front, have been either Saudi nationals or brainwashed by petrodollar-financed demagogues who have promoted anti-Islamic messages of hatred and sectarianism for decades.
The outrageous beheading recently of Sheikh Nimr was immediately preceded by a sermon of hatred toward Shiites by a Grand Mosque preacher in Mecca, who last year said that “our disagreement with Shiites will not be removed, nor our suicide to fight them” as long as Shiites remained on the earth.
The Saudi leadership must now make a choice: They can continue supporting extremists and promoting sectarian hatred; or they can opt to play a constructive role in promoting regional stability. We hope that reason will prevail.
Conclusions
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Saudi Arabia’s dangerous games Law & Politics |
The Gulf monarchies are terrified by the strengthening “Shia arc” in the region.
Although it is difficult to see how far Saudi Arabia would go in its deliberately manufactured confrontation with Iran, it does no longer seem to be possible for it to reverse the geo-political trajectory of the Middle East to its sole advantage.
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28-OCT-2013 @BarackObama and @HassanRouhani The Two Husseins Law & Politics |
Hussein and Hassan are going to cut through a great deal of interference. In this situation, there are powerful vested interests fully invested in the status quo. If the pax Americana in the Middle East were a three legged stool with the US the most important leg, then Israel and Saudi Arabia are the other two legs of that stool. Neither Riyadh nor Tel Aviv are aligned with President Obama’s Iranian rapprochement and Saudi Arabia in particular has become increasingly forthright and is even threatening its own pivot and away from the US.
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German spy agency warns of Saudi intervention destabilizing Arab world Law & Politics |
The BND document entitled "Saudi Arabia - Sunni regional power torn between foreign policy paradigm change and domestic policy consolidation" singled out Saudi Arabia's defense minister, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as trying to strengthen his place in the royal succession while putting Saudi Arabia's relationship with erstwhile regional allies in jeopardy.
"The careful diplomatic stance of older members of the Saudi royal family has been replaced by an impulsive policy of intervention," the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) said.
Since King Salman's succession to power in January 2015, there's been a more forceful response to the regional standoff between Iran and Saudi Arabia largely set in motion by Prince Mohammed. The BND said that this could mainly be observed in Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Yemen as well as its increased support for Syrian rebels in a bid to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The brief report chiefly spoke about Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen and Syria, but also highlighted other countries such as Lebanon, Bahrain and Iraq as realms of growing Saudi interest, saying that Saudi Arabia was "prepared to take unprecedented military, financial and political risks to avoid falling behind in regional politics."
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03-NOV-2014 The Commodity Super-Cycle is Dead in the Water Commodities |
Policy makers need to react with speed but history informs us that policy makers are typically very slow to react to trend changes. The commodity super-cycle is now dead in its tracks. This is a major turning point and represents a major shift away from commodity producing countries and towards global consumers and consumer countries.
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Tokyo takes on Beijing in Africa, claiming quality over speed @FT Africa |
The eight-lane motorway stretching north for 45km from the heart of Nairobi to the industrial town of Thika was hailed as a marvel of Chinese engineering when it opened in 2012 after taking less than four years to build.
“People liked what they saw because of the speed at which it was built,” says Moses Ikaria, the managing director of the Kenya Investment Authority. “The perception here was that roads took a long time to build but the Chinese changed that.”
In the middle of last year Nairobi’s southern bypass, also built by the Chinese, opened to similar fanfare. While less than 30km and only two lanes in each direction, the road is a definite improvement on the wider Thika highway — not least because the speed bumps are signposted.
Sandwiched between the two was the 2013 opening of the “Kileleshwa bypass”, a Japanese road cutting through the Kenyan capital. It is “of an infinitely higher standard than of any other road to be found in Nairobi,” according to Aly-Khan Satchu, an investment analyst in the city.
Although neither side openly admits they are engaged in an “anything you can do, I can do better” competition, the evidence can suggest otherwise. In a speech at the official reception for the Japanese emperor’s birthday, Tatsushi Terada, ambassador to Kenya, said: “A Japanese project might cost more but the life cycle cost in the end is much better because it requires less maintenance.” He did not need to name names for everyone present to know where his comment was directed.
“Many people overestimate what the Chinese are doing in Africa,” said Deborah Brautigam, director of the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. “There are a lot fewer of those big investments than people think. For example many oil investments are just exploration while some announced deals never get to the size that companies expected they might.”
Zanzibar opposition warns of violence if disputed vote re-run http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFKCN0UP1GE20160111
"A re-vote is not a solution to the ongoing crisis and is not acceptable," Zanzibar's Second Vice-President Seif Sharrif Hamad, CUF's presidential candidate, told a news conference.
Conclusions
Magafuli needs to do a Houdini in the matter of Zanzibar
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Uganda president urges voters to re-elect the 'old man' Yahoo News Africa |
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has said he needs more time to develop the country as he looks to enter a fourth decade in power, urging voters to re-elect the "old man."
As a younger man he said leaders who "overstayed" in power were the root of Africa's problems, but 30 years later he is still in charge and hoping to win a fifth term in elections next month.
"Those who say, 'let him go, let him go', they need to know that this is not the right time," Museveni said at an election rally in the western Ntungamo district on Saturday, according to reports in the Daily Monitor newspaper on Sunday.
"This old man who has saved the country, how do you want him to go? How can I go out of a banana plantation I have planted that has started bearing fruits?"
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Uganda: Intimidation of Media, Civic Groups HRW Africa |
Ugandan government and ruling party officials are intimidating and threatening journalists and activists in an effort to limit criticism of the government, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Uganda will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on February 18, 2016.
The 48-page report, “‘Keep the People Uninformed’: Pre-Election Threats to Free Expression and Association in Uganda,” documents how some journalists and activists are facing increased threats as the elections loom.
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Rand Has Flash Crash as China's Woes Trigger Drop of Up to 9% Africa |
The rand plunged as much as 9 percent, the most since October 2008, to 17.9169 per dollar, before paring losses. It was trading down 2.1 percent at 16.6468 by 10:04 a.m. in Johannesburg, the biggest decline among 31 emerging-market and major currencies. One-month implied volatility surged 4.79 percentage points to 24.69 percent
The rand’s slide on Monday probably came after “a combination of stops and margin calls caused mass capitulation” by Japanese retail investors, Gareth Berry, a foreign-exchange strategist at Macquarie Bank Ltd. in Singapore, wrote in a research note.
“It is hard to see the rand pull back on a sustainable basis,” the Standard Bank analysts said. “In recent weeks we have seen South Africa’s real effective exchange rate fall sharply to levels last seen in 2001 and 2008. We note that in both 2001 and 2008, amid a rand slide, the South African Reserve Bank embarked on a fairly aggressive rate hiking cycle.”
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Nigeria Central Bank Cuts Flow of Dollars to Money Changers Africa |
Nigeria’s central bank stopped selling foreign exchange to money-changers as it struggles to stabilize the naira amid a plunge in oil prices that have hit government finances.
“Operators in this segment of the market would now need to source their foreign exchange from autonomous source,” Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Godwin Emefiele said in an e-mailed statement on Monday. “They must however note that the CBN would deploy more resources to monitoring these sources to ensure that no operator is in violation of our anti-money laundering laws.”
“The naira will be devastated by the ban,” said Aminu Gwadabe, president of the Lagos-based Association of Bureau de Change Operators of Nigeria.“The naira is going to depreciate further; toward the end of this week we might see it reach 300 naira per dollar” on the unofficial parallel market, he said.
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Karuturi Challenges Ethiopia Decision to Cancel Farm Project Africa |
Karuturi Global Ltd., one of the largest investors in Ethiopia’s farm industry, is challenging the termination of its project, claiming the government broke the terms of its agreement with the company.
The Agriculture Ministry’s cancellation last month of the company’s 2010 lease is invalid as it didn’t follow procedure, contravened an investment agreement between India and Ethiopia, and wrongly accused the company of inadequate progress, Managing Director Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi said in an interview Jan. 5 in the capital, Addis Ababa.
“I don’t recognize this cancellation,” he said. The termination amounts to expropriation, which the bilateral investment treaty says must be accompanied by market-value compensation, Karuturi said
The government made the “painful decision” to cancel the contract because of a lack of progress, said Ethiopian Communications Minister Getachew Reda.
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Direct flights between Kenya and the United States could begin as early as May Quartz Kenyan Economy |
Aly Khan Satchu, a financial analyst in Nairobi, says the direct flights will also attract investors to East Africa’s largest economy.
“Nairobi-US direct flights have been seen by many, including myself, as a silver bullet. US investors have been gung-ho about Kenya. Their visits and tourism related activity means this ‘highway in the sky” has legs,” he tells Quartz.
The Kenyan diaspora is another important market. About 102,000 Kenyan immigrants and their families live in the US, most of whom have the means to travel home. Their median household income is $11,000 above the national median, according to a June report (pdf) by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Aspen Institute.
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