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The Tyger BY WILLIAM BLAKE Africa |
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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Some facts. @benabyad Law & Politics |
The Gaza Strip is occupied, & Israel is the occupying power.
Israel's blockade of Gaza is illegal collective punishment.
Majority of Palestinian population in Gaza Strip is under-18.
& most are from communities ethnically cleansed by Israel in 1948.
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All S-400 parts on order reportedly delivered to China @asiatimesonline Law & Politics |
Russia may have just finished shipping its ace S-400 Triumf self-propelled anti-aircraft systems to China, after three Russian vessels carrying what were believed to be S-400 regimental core components including a control station, radars, fuel, launch-silo parts and other auxiliary equipment sailed into an unspecified Chinese port last month, according to Russian news agency TASS.
Other than bringing the entire island of Taiwan well within range when launched from the coast of the Taiwan-facing province of Fujian over a strait of 130km at its narrowest, missiles from the S-400 system launched from the northern province of Shandong could also shoot down planes near the Diaoyu Islands – an atoll in the East China Sea that is at the center of a bitter territorial row between Beijing and Tokyo, which calls them the Senkaku Islands – provided that China is able to acquire the very-long-range 40N6 missiles of the system from Russia.
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28-AUG-2017 :: China Rising Law & Politics |
Apart from a few half-hearted and timid FONOPs [freedom of navigation operations], China has established control over the South China Sea. It has created artificial Islands and then militarised those artificial islands across the South China Sea. It is a mind-boggling geopolitical advance any which way you care to cut it.
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Geopolitics of Trump's Exit from Iran Deal Law & Politics |
The US President Donald Trump’s decision on pullout from the 2015 Iran nuclear pact significantly impacts the tectonic plates of world politics. At the most profound level, the weakening of the US’ trans-Atlantic leadership that has been under way may have become irreversible.
Without doubt, the European capitals are in turn angry and disappointed. The support for the 2015 pact runs deep in Europe and the disillusionment with the Trump presidency is widespread in the European opinion. In principle, a “regime change” in Washington in the 2020 poll may somewhat improve matters but then, two years is a long time in politics during which the divide between the US and Europe may further deepen and a new alchemy may radically transform Euro-Atlanticism as such with the growing perception of the US as an unreliable and increasingly malevolent partner.
The European corporations are being forced in the coming six months to decide whether they wished to continue doing business with the US, or whether they would choose to continue to pursue the commercial opportunities in Iran. Europe will resist any US attempt to punish European companies. Importantly, Europe’s search for payment mechanisms that bypass American banks will gather momentum.
But these are early days and any apocalyptic predictions of a crack in the western alliance as such will be far too premature. To be sure, the Trump administration has initiated damage control. Trump telephoned British Prime Minister Theresa May to coordinate efforts to build up Western opinion on “Iran’s destabilizing behavior,” pegging the campaign on “the Iranian regime’s provocative rocket attacks from Syria against Israeli citizens.”
Britain is playing its traditional role as Washington’s gatekeeper in Europe by helping to moderate the French and German condemnation of Trump’s abandonment of Iran deal. The newly-appointed Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Andrea L. Thompson is heading for Paris and London on May 14-18 where she is expected to hold bilateral discussions “on a range of arms control and nonproliferation issues.” Thompson used to be the national security advisor to Vice-President Mike Pence and had previously served as special advisor at the State Department’s Office of Policy Planning. In her new portfolio, Thompson, a retired colonel, is in charge of arms control and international security.
Trump doesn’t seem to think that withdrawal from the 2015 agreement spells the end of all diplomatic options – for the US or for other players (including, perhaps, for Tehran too.) A buffer period of six months lies ahead before Trump would have to make some major downstream decisions. Conceivably, this buffer period may even be his negotiating period. Trump’s Art of the Deal may still provide for a “negotiating process” with Tehran. The coming six-month buffer period would be a critical maneuvering time for all protagonists.
Therefore, there is no reason to anticipate an inevitable expansion of conflict in the Persian Gulf as of now. Trump’s move gives the GCC states and Israel some time to re-group. Israel and Saudi Arabia have welcomed the Trump decision. But in meaningful terms, what benefit would accrue to them remains doubtful. Put differently, Israel and Saudi Arabia will be pushing the US to resort to the use of force against Iran sooner rather than later – especially, if the nuclear deal completely collapses and Tehran steps up the enrichment program.
Saudi Arabia and Israel probably hoped to rebuild strategic credibility in the hope that Iran will be constrained by sanctions to reduce its regional military and proxy warfare missions. But on the contrary, the high probability is that Iran, which now feels “liberated” from the seductive lure of the opening to the US and West, may even expand its power projection, given that it now has less reason for constraint.
The plain truth is that new US sanctions would not seriously jeopardize the Iranian economy. Much depends on Iran’s ability to sell oil on the world market. But then, one-third of Iran’s oil exports go to China and it is inconceivable that Beijing will cooperate with the US sanctions against Iran. On the whole, sales to Iran from China and Russia would be unaffected by the U.S. sanctions. The sanctions would almost certainly hasten the denomination of Iranian transactions with foreign suppliers in non-dollar currencies – especially, in yuan/renminbi and Russian rubles.
Considering that Saudi Arabia too is moving toward some denomination of oil sales in renminbi, the era of total domination of the energy market in dollars — petrodollars — is drawing to a close after almost a half-century of total domination of the global economy by the US dollar as the universal reserve currency. Washington may put a brave face on this tectonic shift in the international financial system, but there is a serious erosion of the US influence on global markets getting under way.
Ironically, in the near-term in the Middle East, it is possible that Trump’s decision allows Iran greater latitude in developing its strategic capabilities. Iran would probably stay in the 2015 pact with the other parties to the agreement but, paradoxically, the deal no longer holds the same charm for Tehran as before, without Washington being party to it. In a manner of speaking, Tehran would feel “unshackled.” Lest it be forgotten, Iran’s elite had agreed in the first instance to curtail what had been a rapidly growing capability to create large quantities of fissile materials, in lieu of a constructive engagement with the US.
Indeed, the 2015 pact gave a window of opportunity for the US also to reclaim influence in Iran by beginning a process of normalization. But Washington was disinterested, and arguably, Tehran too failed to take full advantage. Now, it is the historic turn for Russia, China and Turkey to move quickly to fill the vacuum created by the new US sanctions regime. While it is too early to speak of a political alignment, the events are on the one hand pushing together Iran, Russia, and Turkey, while on the other hand putting the European Union and Russia on the same side. Indeed, if US-Iranians tensions escalate, Russia may find itself in an unenviable position to mediate de-escalation. Currently, though, the events are pushing together Iran, Russia, and Turkey, which have had problematic mutual relations.
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14-MAY-2018 :: That makes Africa look more like Italy than China via Economist Africa |
SSA Governments have tapped the Eurobond markets for more than $15b so far this year, which is a record haul for any year ever and its not even June. The IMF in its latest Africa update judged 6 countries to be in debt distress; Chad, Eritrea, Mozambique [they have lashings and lashings of Natural Gas which means there is a Pathway out of this], Congo Republic, South Sudan and Zimbabwe [There is sufficient goodwill for Zimbabwe to exit this position]. Interestingly, the IMF's ratings for Zambia and Ethiopia were changed from moderate to "high risk of debt distress." In Zambia's case, Eurobond yields are nudging double digits and President Lungu is resisting the only option that is really available, which is the IMF.
During the IMF's Release, its Africa Head said “The question I ask is why isn’t a country growing at 6 or 7%?”
Faster Growth is a Panacea. In fact after growing just 1.4% in 2016 [a more than 20 Year Low GDP Print] the IMF is projecting growth across sub-Saharan Africa of 3.4% this year. SSA aggregate figures are driven by the Big 3 Economies of South Africa [about which I am constructive because of the swing from a scenario of vicious Zuma discount to a Ramaphoria premium], Nigeria and Angola. All 3 Countries are bouncing off the bottom. The Proof of the Pudding will be in the Eating, however, and the sustainability of the rebound. The IMF expects that income per person will shrink in all three in 2018, for the fourth consecutive year. That means the Average Individual is empirically worse off for the 4th consecutive year. The Economist correctly concludes
''There is reason to worry, then, when the IMF says that regional growth will hover below 4% for the next few years. Since populations are rising, income per person will creep up by barely 1% a year. That makes Africa look more like Italy than China. Better keep praying''
The Daily Maverick cites Nigeria as an example
''For example, Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy, is home to almost 200 million people. Its population is growing at 2.61% per year, with a median age of 18. But Nigeria’s economy is set to grow by just 2% in 2018. The implications of this are nothing short of disastrous''
Bloomberg's annual Misery Index places six African countries in its top 10 most miserable countries globally in 2018.
Last week, when Delegates were asked at a @MoodysInvSvc conference in Lagos [via Bloomberg's Paul Wallace] what they thought were the biggest risks for African borrowers. They were not worried about external shocks so much as homegrown ones.
Africa has fully loaded the balance sheet. Notwithstanding a record breaking Eurobond raise in 2018, Its as plain as day that the current scenario is a little like Argentina's Century Bond moment, a last Hurrah! African Governments need to improve their ROI because Envelope space could evaporate momentarily and in a blink of any eye.
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In Ethiopia's bushlands, promised riches of a railway boom turn to dust @guardian Africa |
Ethiopia’s new £2.5bn, 750km (466-mile) line began commercial operations at the start of the year, making it Africa’s first fully electrified cross-border railway. Built and financed by Chinese investors and contractors, and shadowing the route of an earlier French-built track, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway lies at the heart of Ethiopia’s development aspirations. By linking the landlocked country to the sea and lowering transport costs for imports and exports, the government hopes to kickstart industrialisation and transform a poor, agricultural nation of nearly 100 million people into a middle-income one by as early as 2025.
And it is much more than that. “The railway project is a transport project,” explains Dr Getachew Betru, former chief executive of the state-owned Ethiopia Railways Corporation (ERC). “But it is also a hinterland development project.” The plan is for eight railways to eventually crisscross this vast, diverse land, knitting together the relatively fertile highlands with the historically neglected lowlands that are mostly inhabited by nomadic people. New stations, some of which rise incongruously from seemingly empty expanses of barren bushland, are visualised as “transport-oriented development zones”: future temples of commerce boasting malls, hotels, and golf courses.
The story of the railway is a parable of “developmentalism”, the east Asian-inspired model of top-down development championed by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which has ruled the country unchallenged for 27 years. This approach, with its flinty dedication to grand infrastructure projects such as dams, industrial parks, mass housing and railways, has delivered impressive economic growth in recent years. But it has also kindled political tensions, which, since exploding on to the streets in 2014, have threatened to topple one of the continent’s most authoritarian regimes.
Since February, Ethiopia has been under a state of emergency, the second of its kind in as many years. That month the then-prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, was forced to resign, leading to the appointment in late March of Abiy Ahmed, a young reformist who has lately echoed the demands of the protesters for greater democracy and an end to autocracy.
The railway embodies these contradictions. “It’s the physical manifestation of the country’s politics,” says Biruk Terrefe, a graduate researcher at Oxford University who has studied the project. A journey along it eastwards from Addis Ababa takes in some of the most visible signs of Ethiopia’s recent development: new factories, irrigated sugar farms, shimmering rows of giant polytunnels with cut flowers bound for Europe and America. Electrical pylons hug the tracks all the way to the border with Djibouti while the road beside it is mostly smooth and well paved. In the shadow of some stations new towns are being built from scratch, as rural migrants arrive in the hope of work and urban speculators eagerly anticipate the coming boom.
He blames corrupt officials for unfair compensation. “People were intimidated, they were forced to give up their land almost for free.”
His friend Jemal points to a vast, hulking station in the near distance. “All this area was mine,” he says. “They took three hectares but only paid me for one: 100,000 Birs (£2,700) – that’s almost worthless now!”
A local official supports his allegation. “There were committees who estimated the value of the land for the farmers, and presented the price to the railway managers. I believe there was embezzlement by those committees and the managers,” he told the Observer under condition of anonymity. “One farmer’s land was estimated to be worth 250,000 Birs (£6,700) but in the end only 100,000 Birs was deposited in his bank account.”
Biruk, the Oxford researcher, sees in this a fundamental problem for the government and the ERC. “Some locals perceive the railway as an Addis-based elite project,” he says. “A symbol of the regime.”
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American Tower Corporation Set to Obtain 723 Towers from Telkom Kenya Kenyan Wall Street Kenyan Economy |
Telecom provider, Telkom Kenya together with the American Tower Corporation (ATC), a wireless and broadcast communications infrastructure company based in Boston, USA, have announced the signing of an agreement that will see ATC obtain 723 towers from Telkom Kenya.
Aldo Mareuse, CEO of Telkom said the sale will release capital for further investment in the company’s 4G network and a number of IT platforms.
The transaction is expected finalise in the second half of 2018 upon regulatory approval and customary closing.
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