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If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox as your Browser. 0930-1500 KENYA TIME Normal Board - The Whole shebang Prompt Board Next day settlement Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.
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Damon Baehrel, after its presiding wizard and host, who served as forager, farmer, butcher, chef, sous-chef, sommelier, waiter, busboy, dishwasher, and mopper @NewYorker Africa |
Around Christmas in 2013, a friend of Merrihue’s alerted him to a Bloomberg News piece about an unranked contender, which Bloomberg called the “most exclusive restaurant in the U.S.” It described a gourmet operation—in Earlton, New York, a half hour south of Albany—in the basement of a woodland home. Once called Damon Baehrel at the Basement Bistro, the place was now simply called Damon Baehrel, after its presiding wizard and host, who served as forager, farmer, butcher, chef, sous-chef, sommelier, waiter, busboy, dishwasher, and mopper. Baehrel derived his ingredients, except meat, fish, and dairy, from his twelve acres of yard, garden, forest, and swamp. He made his oils and flours from acorns, dandelions, and pine; incorporated barks, saps, stems, and lichen, while eschewing sugar, butter, and cream; cured his meats in pine needles; made dozens of cheeses (without rennet); and cooked on wooden planks, soil, and stone. He had christened his approach Native Harvest. The diners who got into the restaurant raved about it online. But at the time it was booked through 2020. “We spend our lives looking for places like this,” Merrihue said.
The brother arrived early. The gate to Baehrel’s property was closed. Once the others had arrived, the gate swung open. The driver left them and headed into the nearby village of Coxsackie for some pizza. They walked up a driveway to a house on a hill. Around back, they came upon a manicured entrance to the basement. Baehrel, in an apron, greeted them enthusiastically.
He told them that he had just served a fifteen-course lunch to fourteen diners. Over the next seven hours, he served Merrihue and his companions twenty-three courses. “I hate long meals,” Merrihue recalled. “But we couldn’t believe it—it just flew by.” In the end, they paid around four hundred and thirty dollars a head, including a corkage fee. (They’d brought their own wine.
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10-JUN-2019 :: Hugh Masakela said "I want to be there when the People start to turn it around" Law & Politics |
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” said Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
The ''Zeitgeist'' of a time is its defining spirit or its mood. Capturing the ''zeitgeist'' of the Now is not an easy thing because we are living in a dizzyingly fluid moment.
Charles Onyango-Obbo @cobbo3 tweeted
''Police teargas Malawi protests against Mutharika’s election “theft [aka the ''Tippex'' solution] In Liberia demos against corruption –Weah shutters internet. In Sudan military slaughter 100 in continuing pro-democracy protests – weeks after Bashir fell. In Algeria Bouteflika ousted by protestors. What's up?''
Indeed What's up?
Lets start in Khartoum. The ''zeitgeist'' of the Revolution was as intoxicating as the Oudh that the Saudi Arabian Ambassador once gave me and I found myself semi delirious intoxicated on my own perfume. The exquisite murals, the composition of the crowds, the element of Girl Power which spoke to hope and a Future. As I watched events unfold it felt like Sudan was a Portal into a whole new another Normal. David Pilling in the Financial Times captured the Essence by quoting William Wordsworth, who wrote of the French Revolution:
OH! pleasant exercise of hope and joy! For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood Upon our side, we who were strong in love! Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!-- Not in Utopia, subterranean fields, Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,--the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all!
And then Darfur came to Khartoum, he concluded or was it Tiananmen and Tahrir Square? And now we have two visions of the Future. One Vision played out on our screens, the Protestors could have been our Wives, our Children, our Daughters and Sons. The Other Vision is that of MBS, MBZ and Al-Sisi and its red in tooth and claw. Vladimir and Xi backed the Gulf and America is below the radar.
Hugh Masakela said ''I want to be there when the People start to turn it around'' Sudan is a Masakela Pivot moment,
Down South The Rand crossed 15.00 levels which were seen only previously in extremis like when President Zuma conjured up Des Van Rooyen as his Finance Minister. Essentially the Rand was [Ace] Magashule-d. Magashule spooked the markets with his televised declaration that the ANC had decided to broaden the mandate of the Reserve Bank and told the government to implement quantitative easing. (He referred to it as "quality easing")
Max du Preez wrote as follows in the online Afrikaans weekly Vrye Weekblad.
ANC factions are waging war in public. The economy retracted sharply in the first quarter. Populists in the ruling party are flirting with radical economic concepts such as quantitative easing and are determined to undermine the status of the Reserve Bank. It seems there is an increase in violent crime and farm attacks. The rand is close to R15 for a dollar. Eskom, Transnet and SAA are close to collapse''
The ANC is in open rebellion except as Thabo learnt the President serves at the Pleasure of the ANC and not the other way round. I don't see how this gets finessed in fact the direction of travel is for the fissure to get wider, Add into the mix a very soft Q1 and a China South Africa Feedback Loop which is undergoing a Trend reversal and we have some ingredients in play and pointing to a further slide in the Rand. I would be selling rebounds and out of the money Call Options and buying Puts with the premium received.
Zimbabwe has finally dialled up Madam Lagarde but here too Mnanagwa is not only in the habit of hitching rides on MBZ's I am sure well appointed planes but also leans to MBZ's vision of the Future.
Lets turn our gaze to Zambia where President Lungu is seeking to ''nationalise'' Mr. Aggarwal's Copper Mines and the strategy seems to be to flip it and probably clip the transaction for some juicy brokerage. The Problem with this strategy is that the Price of Copper is down -11.4% since Mid-April and there is simply nothing left of FX reserves. Bond Yields are in default territory. This is a ''Hail Mary'' Pass I am afraid and Lungu's Cashew Nut moment. What happened to the cashew nut crop in Tanzania?
What I missed entirely however was the big spike in [SnapChat +155% YTD] African rare Earth producers. Having spoken about it on my Show on Metropol TV at least two weeks ago when I said this might prove a ''Hallelujah'' moment a Geopolitical renaissance for President Pierre Nkurunziza because there are rare earths in Burundi. Reuters reported that The Pentagon has held talks with both companies following threats by Beijing to cut off supply to the country, Rainbow Rare Earths, which is developing a project in Burundi, said it could neither confirm nor deny the news. Mkango, which wants to build a mine and processing plant in Malawi, did not immediately respond to a request to comment. Rainbow Rare Earths last traded up 38 per cent at 7.69p, while Mkango was up 42 per cent at 10.375p. Rare earths are a group of 17 niche minerals that are used in electronics, electric cars, and some military equipment such as night vision goggles and lasers.
Which is the quandary. It is better to act than to say.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
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Reckless in Riyadh @nybooks Law & Politics |
In February 1945 Franklin Roosevelt, on his way home from the Yalta Conference—and just two months before his death—made a detour to Egypt to meet Abdulaziz bin Abdul Rahman al Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi state. Historians recall that the Saudi monarch brought aboard the USS Quincy live sheep for roasting on deck and his astrologer, while the American president introduced the seventy-year-old king to ice cream and movies. Yet their concerns were serious: the United States sought guaranteed access to the oil that had been discovered in the kingdom seven years earlier; Ibn Saud, as he was known, wanted protection from a challenge to his family’s rule that would be backed—in his imagination—by Britain.
In the seventy-four years since it was conceived, the relationship between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shown remarkable durability. One reason for its resilience has been the ease with which it has evolved as the partners prospered and global politics changed. Riding a tide of oil wealth, Saudi Arabia has been transformed from a congeries of seminomadic tribes into one of the twenty largest economies in the world, while US involvement in regional security grew so dominant that for decades, analysts spoke of the pax Americana in the Middle East. The relationship has also lasted in no small measure because of American leaders’ disinclination to criticize the Saudis’ domestic policies, especially their disregard for human rights. Bruce Riedel, an adviser on the Middle East to four presidents, has noted that the sole instance of an American leader pressing the Saudis for internal change occurred in 1962, when, at the urging of John F. Kennedy, then crown prince Faisal reformed the judiciary, introduced free health care and education, and abolished slavery.
The White House has long directly overseen the US–Saudi relationship, as it has the US–Israel relationship, but generally not other bilateral ties. The Saudi leadership has never taken the US Congress or the State Department seriously and has always sought a direct link to the president. The CIA station in Riyadh exercises a high degree of control over dealings with the kingdom, guarding against intrusive diplomats with big ideas about promoting human rights and obliging the Saudi preference for secrecy. The arrangement works in a country where historically there has been almost no foreign press presence or civil society organizations. Saudi governance has traditionally been the preserve of a small number of aged princes. Among US policymakers and intelligence analysts, it is often said that no country is more opaque, except for North Korea.
Today this long-running accommodation may be crumbling as a result of the rise to power of the impetuous Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman. US congressional leaders of both parties have expressed outrage at the thirty-three-year-old heir for his part in the murder in Istanbul of the journalist and American resident Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, as well as for other misdeeds—particularly Saudi intervention in the brutal war in Yemen that has turned that country into the world’s foremost humanitarian disaster.
The recklessness of MBS, as he is known, has been abetted by the Trump administration, which has boasted of its special relationship with the young de facto ruler (his father, King Salman, is in poor health, and MBS enjoys great latitude) and has avoided criticizing him for his misadventures. Yet Democratic contenders for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination are lining up to see who can Saudi-bash the loudest. The Democrats’ outrage has been further fueled by the suspicion that behind the president’s uncritical embrace of the Saudis are his hopes for personal enrichment from the relationship—a reasonable surmise in light of the Saudi habit of booking entire floors of his Washington hotel when delegations come to town. As the de facto alliance approaches its seventy-fifth anniversary, some American policymakers and scholars are questioning whether it still makes sense for the US.
For a long time, it clearly did. The first major breach came during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Washington rushed arms to Israel that helped it reverse the Arab states’ surprise attack. Angered by the US action, King Faisal, probably Ibn Saud’s shrewdest son, succeeded in pressing most OPEC nations to cut oil production at a time of increasing global demand. Although the US imported little oil from the Persian Gulf, prices almost quadrupled. Long gas lines made the rift in the relationship a daily reality for Americans; over the next two years, US GDP fell 6 percent.
The oil cuts ended after Khalid bin Abdulaziz succeeded Faisal, who was assassinated by a deranged nephew in 1975, and Jimmy Carter became president in 1977. A new channel of cooperation was established: covert intelligence operations. Shortly after the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski enlisted Khalid’s support for a secret effort to arm and train the Afghan opposition. Acting as Washington’s off-the-books banker became a habit for the Saudis. Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser Robert McFarlane squeezed $32 million out of Riyadh to fund the Nicaraguan contras, though the Saudis were not pleased to find that they had been hornswoggled into a plot involving a secret US effort at rapprochement with the Islamic Republic of Iran, in their view the greatest threat to the kingdom. Saudi antipathy to Iran long preceded the 1979 Islamic revolution, which intensified it: although ethnic and Sunni–Shia divisions are partly responsible for the two countries’ mutual hostility, rivalry for control of the Persian Gulf region and its immense oil and gas deposits drives it, even though neither is remotely capable of subjugating the other.
During the years following the oil embargo, security concerns shaped the US–Saudi relationship. The invasion of Afghanistan exacerbated fears that the USSR would seize control of the Persian Gulf and cut off the flow of oil. The Carter Doctrine identified the region as a vital interest for the United States and pledged to defend it with force. After Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, President George H.W. Bush offered to station US forces in the kingdom—forces that eventually evicted Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
It would be difficult to overstate Saudi reliance on the US security guarantee, despite the country’s slow push to remove US forces from the kingdom following the terrorist attack on a US Air Force barracks near Dhahran Air Base in 1996. That bombing, directed and financed by Iran, heightened Saudi fears of being drawn into a conflict between the US and Iran, while the size and visibility of the US presence were seen as potentially provocative to Saudis, for whom reliance on foreign troops raised questions about the competence and integrity of the monarchy.
Years of multibillion-dollar arms purchases did not incline the al-Sauds to invest in recruiting and training a competent military. (These purchases were more about strengthening the relationship with Washington by recycling petrodollars, pacifying the Saudi military elite by supplying it with top-tier weaponry, and sending to hostile neighbors signals of the US security guarantee implied by these arms transfers than about building real military capacity.) They feared the kind of ambitious generals who ran Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Pakistan, and sought a close defense relationship with the US and a coup-proof military instead.
A second crisis reshaped the relationship after the September 11 attacks. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis, and Osama bin Laden was a scion of one of the country’s wealthiest nonroyal families. The superannuated princes who ran the country could barely acknowledge that their citizens were involved—some pointed the finger at Israel—until attacks in Riyadh in 2003 gave them an opportunity to present themselves as fellow targets of radical Islamists, and they quickly pivoted into being allies in the US war on terror. US intelligence chiefs forged close ties to Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, the highly capable, pro-American counterterrorism chief.
America’s delicate treatment of the Saudis persisted: for example, while the two countries were targeting terrorists, Washington said little about the enormous Saudi NGOs that spread their ultraconservative Wahhabi Islam around the globe. As the scholar Will McCants remarked, when it comes to Islamist extremism, “the Saudis are both the arsonists and the firefighters.” Still, the burgeoning ties among spies produced real benefits. At least two plots that could have killed significant numbers of Americans during the Obama administration were disrupted because of Saudi tips. American officials murmured approval when the Saudis took small steps to alleviate the plight of the country’s Shia minority or to promote women’s education and participation in the workforce, but their criticism of human rights abuses—torture and other mistreatment of government critics, harsh punishment of migrant workers, and mass beheadings, whether of Shia “terrorists” or common criminals—remained muted at best.
So what has gone wrong? Ties were strained during the Obama years by Saudi anger at Washington’s refusal to stand by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak as his regime was upended by the Arab Spring; the tacit US approval of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose espousal of democracy implicitly challenged the Saudi political order; and the US refusal to intervene militarily in the civil war in Syria, where the Saudis were eager to see the Assad regime, Iran’s only long-term ally, removed from power, even if it meant backing radical Islamist fighters. From Riyadh’s perspective, this was to be payback for Iran’s swift rise in influence in Iraq after the US deposed Saddam Hussein and for the establishment of a Shia-dominated government in Baghdad.
Saudi disappointment in the US was exacerbated by the diplomacy that led to the Iranian nuclear accord, which Riyadh saw as presaging a broader rapprochement with Iran and paving the way for a US departure from the Persian Gulf region. Tensions rose during this period because of Iran’s support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and fears of a Tehran-dominated “Shia crescent” stretching from Lebanon through Syria and Iraq to Iran. Saudi diplomats, led by then ambassador to the US Adel al-Jubair, disparaged Obama as a weak leader, when what they really deplored was his refusal to go along with hard-line Saudi hostility to Iran.
Further destabilization resulted from the death in 2015 of King Abdullah, who had reigned for ten years after a decade as crown prince and de facto ruler during the long illness of his half-brother and predecessor, Fahd. Salman, the sixth son of Ibn Saud to ascend the throne, did so in the traditional manner, having been designated crown prince by Abdullah and a council of senior princes. But the new king and his favorite son, Mohammad, quickly showed themselves to be little beholden to tradition. Unlike many princes of his generation and even the preceding one, MBS had been schooled entirely in Saudi Arabia. In January 2015 he was appointed minister of defense after Salman’s ascent and made second-in-line to the throne.
Less than two months later, MBS committed Saudi-led coalition forces to a military campaign against the Houthi rebels who had captured Sanaa, the Yemeni capital. But his expectations of a short and glorious war evaporated: it has become the kingdom’s largest and longest military commitment. This intervention was a sharp departure from the kingdom’s habit of arming others while keeping its own forces in the barracks, but that was not all that was new. The Saudi court rapidly began an unprecedented effort to centralize power, eliminating numerous government bodies that had been controlled by leading princes and replacing them with committees staffed with nonroyal technocrats loyal to MBS.
These changes were part of a larger attempt to brand the new rulers as reformists who would tackle Saudi Arabia’s looming challenges: dramatic population growth (from less than 3.5 million at the time of Abdulaziz’s death in 1953 to about ten times that today), an economy wholly dependent on fossil fuels, and an unskilled workforce accustomed to generous benefits that are fast becoming unaffordable. In 2016 MBS rolled out Vision 2030, a far-reaching plan to modernize and diversify the Saudi economy. It was developed by the consulting firm McKinsey, which, along with Booz Allen Hamilton, another consulting giant, functions as part of the Saudi government. Booz Allen trained Saudi naval forces operating in Yemen; McKinsey also briefed the Saudi government on dissidents within the kingdom, essentially providing a target list for the security forces. Later McKinsey declared that it was “horrified” that it might have facilitated a crackdown.
At first, Vision 2030 gave MBS a real sheen. Donald Trump broke with tradition and made the first overseas trip of his presidency to Riyadh instead of visiting democratic allies. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, “I never thought I’d live long enough to write this sentence: The most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia.” He praised MBS for rolling back the power of the country’s clerical establishment and proclaimed, “Not a single Saudi I spoke to here over three days expressed anything other than effusive support for [his] anticorruption drive.” During a visit to the US in April 2018, MBS was feted by Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos and, at a dinner party hosted by Rupert Murdoch, entertained by the actors Michael Douglas and Morgan Freeman, before having an audience with Oprah Winfrey.
The sheen faded quickly, though, as it became clear that MBS’s notion of reform owed less to Western norms than to Xi Jinping and the Chinese policy of pushing for economic growth without permitting the expansion of political freedoms. There has been a degree of limited liberalization, but in MBS’s view, reforms must be granted by the crown, not elicited, let alone demanded, by his subjects. Hence the imprisonment of women who pressed for the right to drive and for a relaxation of the “guardianship laws” that give men control over the lives of the women in their families—the very measures that MBS had endorsed and, to some extent, enacted. Despite the reforms, there has also been an increase in the pace of executions. Several are now planned for well-known Sunni clerics who, though previously incarcerated for opposing royal policies, were viewed as too popular to be treated more harshly.
In June 2017 MBS was named crown prince, replacing Salman’s nephew Muhammad bin Nayef. The following November, he had at least two hundred of the country’s wealthiest men, including a number of the kingdom’s wealthiest princes, rounded up and held in Riyadh’s Ritz Carlton Hotel for what turned out to be an extended “anti-corruption” shakedown. When the last of the captives were released or transferred to a prison several months later—some, including the son of King Abdullah, are still incarcerated—the government reported that it had recovered more than $106 billion from them.
MBS’s foreign policy—even beyond the bloodletting in Yemen—has astonished diplomats and Saudi watchers. In the summer of 2017, just after Trump’s visit and with the backing of the United Arab Emirates, Riyadh began a blockade of neighboring Qatar, accusing it of supporting terrorism and Iran, and appeared poised to invade the world’s only other Wahhabi state. The confrontation has destroyed in all but name the Gulf Cooperation Council, the regional association the US helped create in 1981 to strengthen defenses against Iran. In December 2017 the Saudis hosted Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri. On a morning when he thought he was going on a trip to the desert with MBS, he was separated from his bodyguards and forced to read a statement of resignation on television—his tolerance for Hezbollah had angered the Saudis. Only after multiple world leaders demanded his release could he fly back to Beirut, where he rescinded the resignation.
When Canada protested the imprisonment of the Saudi human rights blogger Raif Badawi and his sister Samar in the summer of 2018, Riyadh recalled its ambassador to Ottawa, expelled Canada’s ambassador, and blocked trade and cut off flights between the countries. More recently, the Saudis have pumped money into the Sudanese military to help it put down the demonstrations that toppled the longtime strongman Omar Hassan al-Bashir in April. Saudi officials also appear to be supporting the campaign of the Benghazi-based Libyan general Khalifa Haftar against the UN-backed government in Tripoli—a campaign backed, in an extraordinary turnaround, by President Trump.
Equally astonishing has been the kingdom’s open embrace of Israel. In 2015 a retired Saudi general, Anwar Eshki, participated in a discussion of Israeli and Saudi mutual interests with Dore Gold, a right-wing Israeli former diplomat, at the Council on Foreign Relations’ office in Washington; in 2017 Saudi media broadcast a lengthy interview with then Israeli chief of staff Gadi Eizenkot. In November 2018 Israeli media leaked a diplomatic cable from the country’s foreign ministry instructing its embassies worldwide to advocate for Saudi foreign policy objectives, especially vis-à-vis Iran. And Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended MBS for his involvement in Khashoggi’s murder—in which the Saudi go-between with Israel, General Ahmed Asiri, was implicated. It has also been widely reported that the Trump administration expects the Saudis to fund an Israeli–Palestinian peace agreement; according to MBS, the Palestinians should either accept it or “shut up.”
Although all this has been a dramatic departure from decades of practice—in their meeting aboard the USS Quincy, Ibn Saud requested assurances from FDR that the US would oppose the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine—there is evidence that at least some Saudis think the time for it has come. They have long been advised by their public relations firms in Washington and by US diplomats to soften the kingdom’s stance toward Israel so that Congress would be more tolerant of objectionable Saudi policies. But for MBS, this change is as much the result of a shared enmity with Iran and affinity for a fellow authoritarian in Jerusalem as it is a lobbying strategy. He has affirmed more forthrightly than any other Saudi leader Israel’s right to exist and has criticized the Palestinians for failing to make peace. Intelligence cooperation between the two countries appears to have increased dramatically. Yet for Washington, the new attitude cannot be taken for granted. The opacity of the kingdom’s politics makes it impossible to know how other parts of Saudi society view overt ties with Israel, or the use to which opponents of MBS might put this change in policy should they choose to challenge his legitimacy.
What kind of damage is MBS doing to the Saudi state? Three factors were long thought to be essential to preserving al-Saud rule: generous distribution of oil revenues as part of the authoritarian bargain between the royals and their subjects, which might be described as no taxation, no representation; the backing of an outside power, which, in the case of the United States, has endured since Roosevelt’s meeting with Ibn Saud; and family cohesion, which had been cultivated over a century of consensual decision-making by senior princes.
MBS’s changes have done little to alter the kingdom’s political economy, although it is being reshaped, to a degree, through Vision 2030 reforms. Nor have they diminished the importance of US support, as demonstrated by MBS’s courtship of the Trump family and Riyadh’s lavish spending on American public relations firms, universities, and think tanks, which have at times been co-opted through generous contributions and endowments. The historical commitment to cohesion and consensus within the royal family, however, has apparently been abandoned. Thus far, the rapidity and brutality of MBS’s seizure of power appear to have preempted open dissent. Yet over the long term, his lack of judgment, defiance of tradition, and exceedingly narrow circle of advisers could make him vulnerable to isolation, tunnel vision, loss of elite support, and, finally, popular opposition. He could occupy the throne for decades, however, before dissatisfaction turns into effective resistance.
The crown prince’s economic reforms may also be suffering from a growing anxiety about his reign. Vision 2030 is based on the belief that Saudi Arabia must attract foreign investment, yet capital inflows plummeted in 2017 and have only recently begun to inch back up. Progress on diversifying the economy is halting at best, and efforts to induce Saudis to take the jobs of foreign workers—1.5 million have left the country—have yet to show results. The kingdom’s leaders are confident that its oil industry will remain profitable for decades to come: estimates of Saudi oil deposits continue to grow, while the profitability of ARAMCO, the state oil company, swells: last year it took in $111 billion. But low oil prices could make it difficult for the Saudis to continue to pay for extensive social benefits—hence the urgency of diversifying the economy.
MBS’s missteps have now imperiled the US embrace that constituted one of the pillars of Saudi rule. Americans have never particularly liked Saudi Arabia. Its use of oil as a weapon in 1973, spectacles of public executions and reports of other human rights violations, suspicions that Saudi leaders were complicit in the September 11 attacks, and a widespread distaste for Islam have combined in a popular image of a corrupt, cruel, anti-Semitic absolute monarchy. Gallup polls over many years have shown that the majority of respondents have held unfavorable views of the kingdom. It was only during Desert Storm, when Washington went out of its way to portray Saudi Arabia as a valiant ally in the campaign to liberate Kuwait, that expressions of a very favorable view broke into the double digits—11 percent. For the most part, it has hovered around 5 percent.
Yet the relationship between Jared Kushner and MBS is evidence of the kingdom’s enduring influence in Washington despite the growing revulsion against the crown prince. This resembles the chummy relationship between the George W. Bush White House and Bandar bin Sultan, the son of Saudi Arabia’s former defense minister and the ambassador to the United States from 1983 to 2005. Endowed with essentially unlimited resources owing to his father’s rapacious corruption, Bandar courted the rich and famous. He had a winning personality and the brio of the fighter pilot he had been as a young man, and he flattered and seduced senior bureaucrats. The photo of Bandar, Bush, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice lounging on the White House balcony shortly after the September 11 attacks illustrates the cozy intimacy that then prevailed.
Kushner’s bond with MBS similarly reflects class affinity, shared financial interests, and their self-conceptions as men who matter. In policy, it reflects a disregard for human rights, a desire to curtail Iranian influence across the region and to see the clerical regime in Tehran crippled or replaced, and an impulse to recast Middle Eastern politics not just by humbling Iran but by cutting the Gordian knot of Israeli–Palestinian animosity. Their relationship also embodies the self-dealing crony capitalism that keeps Middle Eastern regimes—and increasingly the United States—afloat. One result is the subversion of American strategic interests through bilateral deals that favor the financial interests of their ruling elites.
A case in point, according to an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, is an ongoing secret Trump administration effort to supply Saudi Arabia with nuclear power plants, despite the opposition of its own lawyers and strategic planners. The Saudi plan to develop nuclear power had been circulating for several years and on its face is uncontroversial. Saudi oil is best sold on the hard currency markets, while domestic power needs, especially for electricity and desalinization, could be better met by nuclear energy (but even better met by solar power). Russia, China, and South Korea are competing for lucrative nuclear power–related construction contracts in the kingdom. Westinghouse Electric—which declared bankruptcy in 2017 owing to the high cost of its reactor design but has since emerged from it—has been seeking a contract to build nuclear plants in Saudi Arabia, but US firms are subject to stringent export restrictions designed to prevent foreign countries from using US-built reactors to produce nuclear fuel, which could be used for weapons. The Saudis, however, have insisted that they want to produce their own nuclear fuel; they turned to lobbyists in Washington to make their case and pressed it more strongly after Trump became president.
Saudi interests have meshed with Trump family financial dealings. In 2007 Kushner’s company bought 666 Fifth Avenue in New York City, a poorly timed and disastrously negotiated deal that eventually placed him in serious financial jeopardy. In 2018 Brookfield Asset Management Inc., an investment company with around $330 billion of assets under management, including real estate, renewable power, infrastructure, and private equity, took a $1.1 billion lease on the property, bailing Kushner out. Brookfield also now owns Westinghouse Electric. To make matters murkier, the disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn, while an adviser to the Trump campaign—and apparently during his brief tenure at the White House and after his departure—was deeply involved in the lobbying effort to approve the sale of reactors to the Saudis, although the extent of his formal participation remains unclear, and he presumably stood to make a great deal of money if the deal went through.
This would be a dangerous move. MBS pledged in a television interview last year to secure a nuclear weapons capability if Iran were to do so. A Saudi capacity would almost certainly provoke Iran to acquire its own. Two new and adversarial nuclear powers separated by one hundred miles of Persian Gulf waters are an alarming prospect. The construction of a facility for producing ballistic missiles in the kingdom has also provoked suspicion of Saudi nuclear aims. The Trump administration has said that it will enforce the restrictions governing the transfer of nuclear technology, while cautioning that if they are deemed unacceptable by the kingdom, the Russians or Chinese will construct Saudi reactors instead.
In the US, outrage at the murder of Khashoggi continues to be strong. In Senate testimony last November, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo derided senators for “caterwauling” about human rights when the Iranian wolf was at the door. Secretary of Defense James Mattis denied that there was a “smoking gun” that indisputably proved the crown prince had ordered Khashoggi’s death, but the circumstantial evidence was convincing enough for Congress to dismiss his assessment as a cover-up and for the Senate to pass a resolution holding MBS personally responsible.
The question of how to punish the kingdom and distance the US from it is not easily answered. Washington has already sanctioned most of the individuals identified by the Saudis or others as having been implicated in the plot to murder Khashoggi by freezing their assets and barring Americans from doing business with them, though it has balked at targeting MBS, whose denials of involvement are wholly unpersuasive. The Treasury Department also did not sanction General Asiri, MBS’s confidant and the former deputy head of Saudi intelligence. In the meantime, dismay in Washington has not induced caution in MBS. The US intelligence community recently exercised its “duty to warn” three regime opponents that their lives were at risk.
Ending US support for the war in Yemen has been the goal of a bipartisan coalition in Congress, and the unpopularity of the Saudi campaign led Mattis to curtail important elements of the US assistance program in 2018, including air refueling of Saudi jets. President Trump, who has made extravagant and false claims about Riyadh wanting to buy $100 billion in arms, seems determined to thwart legislative action to curtail military aid to the Saudis. Earlier this year, Congress approved legislation demanding a halt to all such aid, including most weapons sales, logistics, and intelligence support, but it was unable to override Trump’s veto.
The White House recently announced its intent to proceed with $8 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan by invoking a seldom-used clause in the Arms Export Control Act that allows the executive branch to bypass Congress in emergency circumstances. This has infuriated legislators, who have vowed to prevent the sales, though it is doubtful that they can do so. As the White House builds up forces in the Persian Gulf and prepares for a possible confrontation with Iran, it is determined to avoid punishing its friends in the kingdom.
In consequence neither the Trump administration nor Congress has much leverage over the crown prince. Eight million barrels of oil per day generate enough cash to pay for a public relations campaign that casts Khashoggi as a dangerous Islamist and Saudi Arabia as an indispensable partner of the US. President Trump has frequently called MBS a “great ally.” More broadly, international interest in sanctioning him or his regime is uneven. Vladimir Putin’s support has been vigorous, while the French and British are unwilling to forgo lucrative arms sales to the kingdom. Germany has been the lone exception, halting all arms exports to Riyadh since Khashoggi’s murder.
Stirred up by the controversy surrounding the secret nuclear deal-making and the execution in April of thirty-seven Saudis, most of them Shias, on terrorism charges, Congress will continue to protest. Despite the unusual degree of bipartisan agreement on the issue—and Senator Lindsey Graham’s unusual break with Trump over renewed arms sales to the kingdom—this is unlikely to have any real effect. Significant action, if there is any, will come only when the White House changes occupants.
How far might a Democratic administration go toward redefining US ties with Saudi Arabia? Bureaucratic resistance from within the defense and intelligence establishments could be significant, and oil companies and financial institutions have been clear about their long-term support for the relationship. Yet MBS has tilted so far toward the Republican Party that some Democrats will see no reason not to push for substantive change. Their argument will be strengthened by the somewhat diminished US reliance on Saudi oil—as a result of the rise in domestic production—and by American weariness of costly engagement in the region.* Saudi encouragement for the US to take armed action against Iran will add to the alienation growing among Democrats, whose leading candidates for the party’s presidential nomination want the US to rejoin the nuclear agreement repudiated by Trump.
The Trump administration has embraced the Saudi hard line against Iran, but Democrats remain justifiably critical of a policy that seems designed to drive Tehran to abrogate the nuclear accord that it continues to abide by. If a Democratic president is elected in 2020 and decides to lift sanctions on Iran and restore US adherence to the nuclear deal, that would have a profound impact on Riyadh. Its reaction, as well as the likely caution of a new administration, will have a significant effect on any effort to reshape the US–Saudi relationship.
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08-APR-2019 :: The c21st Oil Economy is a very big deal Law & Politics |
Trading in derivatives such as oil futures and options is mainly dollar denominated. The top two global energy exchanges, ICE and CME, traded a billion lots of oil derivatives in 2018 with a nominal value of about $5 trillion [Reuters]. The c21st Oil Economy is a very big deal and Ryszard Kapuściński who wrote as follows about the oil and petrochemical dollar economy in Shah of Shahs. “Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anaesthetizes thought, blurs vision, corrupts.” Ryszard Kapuściński, Shah of Shahs. “Oil kindles extraordinary emotions and hopes, since oil is above all a great temptation. It is the tempta- tion of ease, wealth, strength, fortu- ne, power. It is a filthy, foul-smelling liquid that squirts obligingly up into the air and falls back to earth as a rustling shower of money.”
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DEPTH OF FIELD: THE SPOOKY SYMMETRY OF @jaredkushner AND @IvankaTrump @WIRED Law & Politics |
SYMMETRY DISQUIETS. SO often people, objects, or circumstances align too perfectly, too terrifyingly for our comfort. Order can feel unsettling and foreign when chaos is the sole unchanging factor. This week, nothing brought that notion to light more starkly than the image of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner standing, uniformly framed, in a window at Buckingham Palace. Captured by Samir Hussein, the inanimate, spooky tone of the photograph evokes an immediate emotional reaction. There's a strange emptiness to it all, and yet the picture is rich in metaphorical dimension. Its composition carries a dark tenor, reflective of present and lurking evils. What is it trying to tell us?
Ivanka Trump's look is expressionless, ghostlike, her eyes devoid of feeling. Kushner stands by her side, cut evenly by the pane of the window, offering a faint, robotic smirk. The white of Trump's suit top and dress blend with the white of the curtains, which stuff the photo with an added eeriness. As the image made rounds, it didn't take long for Twitter to accentuate the similarities shared with horror staples The Omen and Flowers in the Attic.
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner emerged from a darkness. The image promises they might retreat to it once this long political nightmare is over.
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Africa |
In Ghana, gold output jumped 12% in 2018, according to data from the Ghana Chamber of Mines. Small producers account for the largest share of the total, although Ghana also hosts some of the world’s biggest gold miners, including No. 1 producer Newmont Goldcorp Corp. Although Newmont is exploring in Ethiopia, Ghana is the only place in Africa where it operates. “Gold is an old sector and naturally it will decline,” Mantashe said. “New minerals that are discovered are becoming more important.”
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The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history Ryszard Kapucinski Africa |
It is authority that provokes revolution....This occurs when a feeling of impunity takes root among the elite: We are allowed anything, we can do anything. This is a delusion, but it rests on a certain rational foundation. For a while it does indeed look as if they can do whatever they want. Scandal after scandal and illegality after illegality go unpunished. The people remain silent...They are afraid and do not yet feel their own strength. At the same time, they keep a detailed account of the wrongs, which at one particular moment are to be added up. The choice of that moment is the greatest riddle of history. Shah of Shahs, Vintage International edition, p. 106
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RDC: quand Joseph Kabila utilisait des anciens du Mossad contre l'opposition @RFIAfrique @RFI Africa |
Uvda, une émission d'investigations de la télévision israélienne Channel 12, livre les secrets de l’entreprise de renseignement privée Black Cube, impliquée ces dernières années dans des opérations souvent à la limite du légal et de l'éthique. Au Congo, affirme l'émission, les agents de Black Cube ont franchi toutes les limites.
Avec notre correspondant à Jérusalem, Michel Paul
Nous sommes fin 2015. L’opération Coltan est lancée par Black Cube ; un des plus importants projets menés par cette entreprise de renseignement privée dont la majorité des employés sont des anciens des services secrets israéliens. Le Mossad, le Shin Bet et aussi 8.200, l’unité de cybersécurité de l’armée israélienne.
Son directeur Dan Zorella rencontre le président congolais Joseph Kabila. Des entretiens qui selon l’émission Uvda vont devenir de plus en plus réguliers. Sous couvert d’anonymat un ancien employé de Black Cube explique : « Kabila voulait tout savoir ce qui se passait lors des réunions de l’opposition. Qui participe et qui s’attaque au président. Il voulait savoir s’il y a des proches qui le trahissent. Qui étaient les traîtres. Et il y avait des traîtres. »
Toujours selon Uvda, une dizaine d’agents de Black Cube font d’un étage d’un grand hôtel de Kinshasa le quartier général d’un service de renseignement officieux.
En 2016, fait remarquer l’émission d’investigations, 17 opposants au régime congolais sont tués par balle lors de manifestations. Parallèlement une agente de Black Cube tente d’enquêter, mais sans succès semble-t-il sur les relations entre Kabila et l’homme d’affaires israélien Dan Gertler.
Black Cube ne réagit pas sur l’affaire congolaise, mais l'entreprise qui possède des bureaux à Londres a porté plainte en diffamation devant un tribunal britannique contre l'émission Uvda et la journaliste Ilana Dayan, et exige 15 millions de livres sterling de dommages et intérêts.
Uvda, an Israeli Channel 12 TV show, reveals the secrets of private intelligence firm Black Cube, involved in recent years in operations that are often borderline legal and ethical. In Congo, says the show, agents of Black Cube have crossed all the limits. With our correspondent in Jerusalem, Michel Paul We are at the end of 2015. Operation Coltan is launched by Black Cube; one of the most important projects led by this private intelligence company whose majority of employees are former Israeli secret service. The Mossad, the Shin Bet and also 8,200, the cybersecurity unit of the Israeli army. Director Dan Zorella meets Congolese President Joseph Kabila. "Kabila wanted to know everything that was going on at the opposition meetings. Who participates and who attacks the president. He wanted to know if there are relatives who betray him. Who were the traitors. And there were traitors. " Under cover of anonymity, a former Black Cube employee explains:According to Uvda, a dozen Black Cube agents make one floor of a large hotel in Kinshasa the headquarters of an unofficial intelligence service. In 2016, notes the issuance of investigations, 17 opponents of the Congolese regime are shot dead during demonstrations. Meanwhile a Black Cube agent is trying to investigate, but apparently without success on the relations between Kabila and the Israeli businessman Dan Gertler. Black Cube does not react on the Congolese affair, but the company with offices in London filed a defamation suit in a British court against Uvda and journalist Ilana Dayan, demanding £ 15 million in damages and interests.
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1.2 billion reasons Singapore tech firms think Africa is next big thing @SCMPNews Africa |
Africa has become the new frontier for Singapore’s start-up movement as more technology and venture capitalist firms eye the continent’s largely untapped market for the next wave of growth From ride-hailing to e-commerce to trade finance and infrastructure, companies from the city state have in recent years been drawn by the sheer size of the African market of 1.2 billion people, and the opportunities it presents as it seeks to keep pace with Asia and the rest of the world. One such budding firm is Gozem, a Singapore-based transport company with ride-hailing services in West African nations Togo and Benin, and plans to enter 15 more African markets within five years.
“We targeted West and Central Africa first, as fibre optic and 4G systems are deployed; 90 per cent of phones sold are smartphones and an open regulatory framework for fintech services is in place,” he said. “Despite the boons, these regions are relatively neglected by investors and entrepreneurs yet present an equivalent potential as Africa’s top three economies.”
For providers like CrimsonLogic, a Singaporean company that started working with Rwanda in 2014, Africa’s development at a government level has proved a boon for the firm and Rwandans alike. In 2015, the company launched IREMBO, an eCitizen portal helping Rwandan people to get more than 89 government services online, with the ultimate aim of turning the country into a paperless, knowledge-based economy by 2020. Thunes, a business-to-business cross-border payments network for emerging markets, in 2017 helped give millions of Africans the ability to top up PayPal and M-pesa accounts so they could access digital marketplaces. “Africa is pivotal for us, as over 35 of our 80-plus global markets are expected to originate from Africa in 2019,” said Aik-Boon Tan, chief commercial officer for payments at Thunes. “The region is estimated to contribute 25 to 30 per cent of our global revenue, slightly shy of Asia, our top market.”
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Activists urge banks not to finance Ugandan oil pipeline @ReutersAfrica Africa |
group of 30 international and local campaign groups have petitioned two banks to abandon plans to raise funds to build an oil pipeline to export Ugandan oil, saying the project would damage local livelihoods, water resources and wildlife. The 1,445 km (900 mile) pipeline, which will run from fields in the west of Uganda to Tanzania’s Indian Ocean port of Tanga, is vital to developing the East African nation’s oil reserves. South Africa’s Standard Bank Group and Japan’s Sumito Mitsui Banking Corporation are helping to raise the debt needed to finance the $3.5 billion pipeline.
“We consider this project to present unacceptable risks to local people through physical displacement and threats to incomes and livelihoods,” Global Witness and 29 other groups from Britain, the United States and elsewhere told the banks.
In a letter urging the banks not to arrange financing, the groups said the project posed “unacceptable risks to water, biodiversity and natural habitats, as well as representing a new source of carbon emissions the planet can ill afford.” Uganda found oil reserves estimated to hold 6 billion barrels in western fields in 2006. But progress on development has been slow, partly due to disagreements between the government and oil firms about strategy. Uganda also took several years to decide on a pipeline route. France’s Total, China’s CNOOC and Britan’s Tullow Oil control the Ugandan fields.The pipeline, which will cross rivers and swampland that act as a catchment for Lake Victoria and areas rich in wildlife, is expected to transport about 200,000 barrels per day (bpd) when oil production peaks.
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Murang'a plans 10m Hass avocado trees @BD_Africa Kenyan Economy |
Murang’a targets to plant 10 million trees of Hass avocado by 2022. Governor Mwangi wa Iria says the county already has six million trees and wouldprovide local farmers with a million seedlings annually. It will also give the farmers inputs to raise productivity. The county is currently reported to be earning Sh2.5 billion from Hass fruits, an amount it seeks to maximise by 2025. “Given that a Hass avocado seedling takes three years to post first harvest, all the efforts we have put in place will mature by 2025, factoring in the seedlings that we will issue in 2022,” he said. The Hass tree has an optimal production of 1,000 fruits per year, meaning that of the 10 million trees that he aspires to have in the county, production will hit one billion fruits by 2025.
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