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Thursday 24th of October 2019 |
No one really seems to know. @TheBondFreak Africa |
No one really seems to know. I've heard US Treasury issuance has finally saturated the market, and the Fed has to fund it. I've heard the big banks, probably led my JPM, are flexing their muscles against reserve regulations. I've heard everyone is avoiding a big name out there.
Home Thoughts
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Pushkin was a great-grandson of Ibrahim Hannibal, who was born near Lake Chad but captured as a boy and taken to Moscow. Africa |
As President Vladimir Putin hosts African leaders for the first Russia-Africa Summit in Sochi on Wednesday and Thursday, here is a look at these connections, starting with beloved 19th-century poet Alexander Pushkin. - Russia's 'Moor' - Pushkin, who lived from 1799 to 1837, was a rare mixed-race aristocrat in tsarist-era Saint Petersburg. Though schoolchildren in Russia focus on reciting his poems rather than learning about his ancestry, Pushkin was a great-grandson of Ibrahim Hannibal, who was born near Lake Chad but captured as a boy and taken to Moscow. Hannibal was baptised and given the name Abraham and brought up in the Russian court, growing close to Tsar Peter the Great. He had a career in the military and was one of the first people to cultivate potatoes in Russia. Pushkin was curious about his African relative, who died in 1781 in his 80s, and dedicated a novel to him. Unfortunately the work, called "The Moor of Peter the Great" was never finished.
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Trump's real liability isn't impeachment. It's China and the economy. What the Trump administration has been doing so far, vis-a-vis China, is an own goal - ein Eigentor @asiatimesonline Law & Politics |
You have compared the situation that the US is facing toward China to the siege and conquest of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258. The Mongols, by themselves, did not have the capability to penetrate the twelve-foot-thick walls of the city of Baghdad. But they hired a thousand Chinese siege engineers. Within three weeks, the Chinese mercenaries breached the walls, at which point the Mongol horsemen went in and killed the entire population of Baghdad. Who are today’s Chinese siege engineers who are breaching the American fortress? Huawei very much is the spearhead, because in the Chinese model of economic expansion and the development of world economic power, broadband is the opener to everything else. It’s a company with a lot of very talented people. Ten years ago – if you asked people, “What Chinese products do you buy?” – you wouldn’t mention a single brand name. But everyone now knows Huawei. They produce the world’s best smartphones. They certainly dominate 5G internet. But Huawei is not a Chinese company. It is an imperial company. The Chinese empire is doing better than us because it’s absorbed the talent of a very large number of others. Fifty percent of their engineers are foreign. They bankrupted their competition and hired their talent. They have 50,000 foreign employees, and a very disproportionate amount of their research and development (R&D) is conducted by foreign employees. I’ve seen this personally. I worked for several years as an investment banker in Hong Kong for a Chinese-owned boutique. During that time, I collaborated with people from Huawei. I introduced them to foreign governments. Huawei was very clear about its objectives. They’d tell, for example, the government of Mexico, “Let us build a national broadband network. Once you get broadband, you get e-commerce and e-finance, and then we’ll supply the logistics and the financing for that, and we’ll integrate you into the world market.” A very senior Cabinet-level US official told me recently that the Chinese were way ahead of us before we figured out what was going on, but now we’re catching up. That statement is wrong on two grounds. First, they haven’t figured out what is going on. Secondly, they’re not catching up. Two years ago, the US Intelligence community realized that what 5G would do is not only give China a great deal of economic power, which by itself is a national security concern, but it would also, within the next several years, eliminate America’s advantage in signals intelligence.
The Chinese have pioneered a communications technique called “quantum communications” which uses the entanglement of electrons at a distance to create a communications signal. The quantum system is such that if you interfere with it in any way, the signal disappears. The quantum state is destroyed. So, it’s like a letter that disappears the moment you look at it. It’s theoretically impossible to hack. The 5G bandwidth is so powerful that you can integrate quantum communications into ordinary 5G communications and make it standard. We already know that the Chinese are using quantum communications for sensitive data transmission inside China through fiber optic cable. But there are a half-dozen major groups working on embedding quantum communications in 5G. SK Telecom is working on it. Toshiba is working on it. There’s a group at the University of Bristol, which claims very good results. So, the result is America’s ability to eavesdrop on everyone else will disappear in two or three years.
Well, I think this is a moot question anyway because the development of cryptography — particularly quantum cryptography — will eliminate the US ability to eavesdrop in any case. I think all that has happened is the US intelligence agencies look for a way to delay the 5G rollout until they’ve figured out how to address this problem. They are basically floundering. Remember, we spend $80 billion a year on our intelligence services. The vast majority goes for signals intelligence. [“SIGINT” is intelligence derived from electronic signals and systems used by foreign targets, such as communications systems, radars and weapons systems.] All of a sudden, the screens will go dark at the National Security Agency. They will lose an enormous amount of power.
And, now, China is turning outward and asserting its power globally. The combination of telecommunications, logistics, e-finance, e-commerce and the other applications, artificial intelligence, are the instruments of Chinese expansion. The Chinese understanding is that every smartphone is a data gatherer. It’ll gather data on health, on consumer transactions, on the environmental traffic patterns. All of this data can be uploaded to the Cloud. It can be processed by Chinese computers, and it can give China massive advantages in terms of industrial controls, health systems, the environment, urban planning and, of course, social and political control.
They want to have everybody in the world pay rent to the Chinese Empire. They want to control the key technologies, the finance and the logistics, and make everyone dependent on them. Basically, make everyone else a tenant farmer.
Well, it’s very preliminary, because basically what China wants to do is to transform other countries the way they transformed themselves. This is not easy to do. You have political obstacles, cultural obstacles. For example, in a country like Pakistan, where they’ve invested enormously, you have 50% illiteracy and a great deal of political instability, massive infrastructure deficits. No one is going to make Pakistan look like China anytime soon. A country like Brazil, for example, where China is building a national broadband network — that’s a candidate. The whole of Southeast Asia — Vietnam, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand — these are candidates to be transformed into economic adjuncts of the Chinese Empire. If you include Indonesia, Southeast Asia is already 600 million people.
You have called Trump’s strategy of economically confronting China a failure.
I think it has been a complete failure. Now, I voted for Trump. I will almost certainly vote for Trump again. I would like to see him re-elected. But I’m distressed that he may be his own worst enemy.
He ran on a platform of reviving American industry. American manufacturing is the weakest sector of the economy. And because his re-election depends on victory in several manufacturing states, I think his re-election is in greater jeopardy than it might have been. So, I think the tariffs hurt.
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09-JUL-2018 :: Tariff wars, who blinks first? Law & Politics |
James Dean was an iconic American actor, who tapped into the universal yearning and angst of nearly every adolescent human being with a raw connection that has surely not been surpassed since. In one of his most consequential films, Rebel without a Cause, two players (read, teenage boys) decide to settle a dispute (read, teenage girl) by way of near-death experiences. Each speeds an automobile towards a cliff. A simple rule governs the challenge: the first to jump out of his automo- bile is the chicken and, by univer- sally accepted social convention, concedes the object in dispute. The second to jump is victorious, and, depending on context, becomes gang leader, prom king, etc. Jimmie (James Dean), to settle a dispute (read, teenage girl) with Buzz, the leader of a local gang, agrees to a “Chickie Run.” Both race stolen cars towards the edge of a cliff. The first to eject out of his car is branded a “chickie.” Seconds into the race, Buzz discovers that his jacket is stuck on the door handle, making jumping out of the car so- mewhat difficult. Jimmie jumps out an instant before the cars reach the edge of the cliff. Buzz, still unable to free his jacket from the door handle, fails to escape. While he won’t be branded a “chickie,” he suffers a worse fate.
So Xi and @POTUS are here
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10-DEC-2018 :: Truce dinner @Huawei Law & Politics |
Sirloin steaks, Catena Zapata Nicolas Malbec [2014] Huawei Technologies Co. and Wanzhou Meng You will recall that Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping enjoyed a much anticipated ''Truce'' Dinner at the G20 in Buenos Aires and quaffed a Catena Zapata Nicolas Malbec [2014] wine with their sirloin steaks and finished it all off with caramel rolled pancakes, crispy chocolate and fresh cream, a dinner that ran over by 60 minutes and one where the dinner Guests broke out into spontaneous applause thereafter.
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OCT 15 :: "I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realise now what you've done?" Law & Politics |
Let us return to UNGA, where Putin set out his stall and I quote: ‘’I cannot help asking those who have caused the situation, do you realise now what you’ve done?’’ Within 24 hours of delivering that speech, Russia instructed that the US should vacate Syrian Air Space. This message was not delivered to Ashton Carter by his Russian counterpart Shoigu. It was delivered to the US Embassy in Baghdad. And pretty soon after that message was delivered, Russia began its intervention on the side of President Bashar Assad of Syria. You could hear the squealing start immediately from Ankara to Riyadh, from the GCC to Washington. All these capitals have assets on the ground in Syria, and what is clear is that Russia is not making a distinction between IS or the ‘’moderate opposition fighting Assad’’ [which really means ‘’our’’ terrorists]. Lavrov said: “If it looks like a terrorist, if it acts like a terrorist, if it walks like a terrorist, if it fights like a terrorist, it’s a terrorist, right?” Putin fancies himself the fly-catcher and syria the fly-trap. The speed of execution confirms that Russia is once again a geopolitical actor that will have to be considered. It is a breath-taking rebound.
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Vladimir Putin, Syria's pacifier-in-chief @asiatimesonline's Pepe Escobar Law & Politics |
The Russia-Turkey deal establishes a safe zone along the Syrian-Turkish border – something Erdogan had been gunning for since 2014. There will be joint Russia-Turkey military patrols. The Kurdish YPG (People’s Protection Units), part of the rebranded, US-aligned Syrian Democratic Forces, will need to retreat and even disband, especially in the stretch between Tal Abyad and Ras al-Ayn, and they will have to abandon their much-cherished urban areas such as Kobane and Manbij. The Syrian Arab Army will be back in the whole northeast. And Syrian territorial integrity – a Putin imperative – will be preserved. This is a Syria-Russia-Turkey win-win-win – and, inevitably, the end of a separatist-controlled Syrian Kurdistan. Significantly, Erdogan’s spokesman Fahrettin Altun stressed Syria’s “territorial integrity” and “political unity.” That kind of rhetoric from Ankara was unheard of until quite recently. Putin immediately called Syrian President Bashar al Assad to detail the key points of the memorandum of understanding. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov once again stressed Putin’s main goal – Syrian territorial integrity – and the very hard work ahead to form a Syrian Constitutional Committee for the legal path towards a still-elusive political settlement. Russian military police and Syrian border guards are already arriving to monitor the imperative YPG withdrawal – all the way to a depth of 30 kilometers from the Turkish border. The joint military patrols are tentatively scheduled to start next Tuesday. On the same day this was happening in Sochi, Assad was visiting the frontline in Idlib – a de facto war zone that the Syrian army, allied with Russian air power, will eventually clear of jihadi militias, many supported by Turkey until literally yesterday. That graphically illustrates how Damascus, slowly but surely, is recovering sovereign territory after eight and a half years of war. The Arab street is inundated with videos of the not exactly glorious exit by US troops, leaving Syria pelted by rocks and rotten tomatoes all the way to Iraqi Kurdistan, where they were greeted by a stark reminder. “All US forces that withdrew from Syria received approval to enter the Kurdistan region [only] so that they may be transported outside Iraq. There is no permission granted for these forces to stay inside Iraq,” the Iraqi military headquarters in Baghdad said.The Pentagon said a “residual force” may remain in the Middle Euphrates river valley, side by side with Syrian Democratic Forces militias, near a few oilfields, to make sure the oil does not fall “into the hands of ISIS/Daesh or others.” “Others” actually means the legitimate owner, Damascus. There’s no way the Syrian army will accept that, as it’s now fully engaged in a national drive to recover the country’s sources of food, agriculture and energy. Syria’s northern provinces have a wealth of water, hydropower dams, oil, gas and food. As I have argued for years, Syria to a large extent has been a key ‘Pipelineistan’ war – not only in terms of pipelines inside Syria, and the US preventing Damascus from commercializing its own natural resources, but most of all around the fate of the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline which was agreed in a memorandum of understanding signed in 2012. This pipeline has, over the years, always been a red line, not only for Washington but also for Doha, Riyadh and Ankara. The situation should dramatically change when the $200 billion-worth of reconstruction in Syria finally takes off after a comprehensive peace deal is in place. It will be fascinating to watch the European Union – after NATO plotted for an “Assad must go” regime change operation for years – wooing Tehran, Baghdad and Damascus with financial offers for their gas. NATO explicitly supported the Turkish offensive “Operation Peace Spring.” And we haven’t even seen the ultimate geoeconomic irony yet: NATO member, Turkey, purged of its neo-Ottoman dreams, merrily embracing the Gazprom-supported Iran-Iraq-Syria ‘Pipelineistan’ road map.
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21-OCT-2019 :: "The New Economy of Anger." Law & Politics |
The real time Feed is a c21st Netflix and is both unputdownable and incendiary. From Chile where Protestors burned down the headquarters of ENEL [The Electricity Generating Co] after a proposed Price increase and a state of Emergency has been imposed. All over Latin America from Peru to Ecuador to Haiti to Honduras, Demonstrators have taken to the Streets. The IMF cut the projected economic growth rate for Latin America from 1.4 percent to 0.6 percent, citing domestic policies and the U.S.-China trade war and clearly nose-diving economic opportunity is creating tinder-dry conditions. Of course, no country is as extreme as Venezuela where GDP is down from $350bn in 2012 to an estimated $60bn in 2019. People have been pushed to the Edge and are taking to the Streets. Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics, “The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words a producer of speed.’’ This Phenomenon about which I am speaking is not limited to Latin America. We have recently witnessed the ''WhatsApp'' Revolution in Lebanon, where a proposed Tax on WhatsApp calls sent up to 17% of the Lebanese Population into the street. Iraq is on a Knife Edge. Millions of Algerians sent the wheelchair bound Bouteflika home not too long ago. Hong Kong remains in open rebellion and trying to shake off the ''Crusher of Bones'' Xi Jinping and his Algorithmic Control. The Phenomenon is spreading like wildfire in large part because of the tinder dry conditions underfoot. Prolonged Stand-Offs eviscerate economies, reducing opportunities and accelerate the negative Feedback Loop. Antonio Gramsci wrote “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear....now is the time of monsters.” This level of unhappiness is unprecedented in a time of ''Peace'' and in a time when our august Financial Institutions keep touting about how it has never been so good for the Human Race. Dr. Célestin Monga in a recent piece characterised the situation thus The Great Discordance ''the planet is filled with rage and anger'' The New Economy of Anger ''Anger and discontent levels around the world are high, despite the fact that most available indicators of political and economic progress are better than they have even been'' Leadership in the c21st has become nationalistic and jingoistic, horizons have been narrowed. President Trump is not John F Kennedy. Xi Jinping is all about Han China. Narendra Modi is all about the Hindutva. Boris is all about Brexit. In Africa, other than the Nobel Prize Winner Abiy, who else is sketching out a horizon? Todays leadership does not appreciate the humanity of all of its Citizens, how can they appreciate the humanity of the World or as Marshall McLuhan once put it “There are no passengers on the Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” Ryszard Kapuściński wrote “Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d’état, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution—never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontaneity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being.” This is a Revolution and it is a Global Phenomenon. Ryszard Kapucinski also said: "If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over." It is not over. More and more People are gathering in the Streets. Unless we are now going to Xinjiang the Whole World [A Million People Are Jailed at China's Gulags. I Managed to Escape. Here's What Really Goes on Inside @haaretzcom “Children are being taken from their parents, who are confined in concentration camps, and being put in Chinese orphanages,” he says. “Women in the camps are receiving inoculations that make them infertile''], the current modus operandi is running on empty.
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From Chile to Lebanon, Protests Flare Over Wallet Issues @nytimes Law & Politics |
In Chile, the spark was an increase in subway fares. In Lebanon, it was a tax on WhatsApp calls. The government of Saudi Arabia moved against hookah pipes. In India, it was about onions. Small pocketbook items became the focus of popular fury across the globe in recent weeks, as frustrated citizens filled the streets for unexpected protests that tapped into a wellspring of bubbling frustration at a class of political elites seen as irredeemably corrupt or hopelessly unjust or both. They followed mass demonstrations in Bolivia, Spain, Iraq and Russia and before that the Czech Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Kazakhstan in what has been a steady drumbeat of unrest over the past few months. At first glance, many of the demonstrations were linked by little more than tactics. Weeks of unremitting civil disobedience in Hong Kong set the template for a confrontational approach driven by vastly different economic or political demands. Yet in many of the restive countries, experts discern a pattern: a louder-than-usual howl against elites in countries where democracy is a source of disappointment, corruption is seen as brazen, and a tiny political class lives large while the younger generation struggles to get by. “It’s young people who have had enough,” said Ali H. Soufan, chief executive of The Soufan Group, a security intelligence consultancy. “This new generation are not buying into what they see as the corrupt order of the political and economic elite in their own countries. They want a change.” Few were as surprised as the leaders of those countries. On Thursday, the President Sebastián Piñera of Chile boasted that his country was an oasis of stability in Latin America. “We are ready to do everything to not fall into populism, into demagoguery,” he said in an interview published in The Financial Times. The next day, protesters attacked factories, torched subway stations and looted supermarkets in Chile’s worst upheaval in decades, eventually forcing Mr. Piñera to deploy troops to the streets. By Wednesday, at least 15 people were dead, and a clearly rattled Mr. Piñera had spoken of “war against a powerful and implacable enemy.” In Lebanon, Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri survived recent embarrassing revelations about a $16 million gift to a bikini model whom he met at a luxury resort in the Seychelles in 2013, a move that, for some critics, epitomized Lebanon’s ruling class. Then last week he announced the tax on WhatsApp calls, setting off a revolt. Decades of discontent over inequality, stagnation and corruption erupted into the open, drawing as much as a quarter of the country into euphoric antigovernment demonstrations driven by chants of “Revolution!” With one of the highest levels of public debt and intractably low employment, Lebanon seems incapable of providing basic public services like electricity, clean drinking water or reliable internet service. Austerity measures have hollowed out the middle class, while the richest 0.1 percent of the population — which includes many politicians — earns a tenth of the country’s national income, much of it, critics say, from plundering the country’s resources. On Monday Mr. Hariri scrapped the planned tax, announcing a hasty reform package to rescue the country’s sclerotic economy and pledging to recover public trust. Although the recent scattering of mass protests appears dramatic, scholars say it is a continuation of a rising trend. For decades, societies across the world have become far likelier to pursue sweeping political change by taking to the streets. The rate of protest has accelerated sharply of late, as various factors have converged: a slowing global economy, dizzying gaps between rich and poor and a youth bulge that in many countries has produced a restive new generation fizzing with frustrated ambition. In addition, the expansion of democracy has stalled globally, leaving citizens with unresponsive governments frustrated and activists sure that street action is the only way to force change. But as protest movements grow, their success rates are plunging. Only 20 years ago, 70 percent of protests demanding systemic political change achieved it — a figure that had been growing steadily since the 1950s, according to a study by Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard University political scientist. In the mid-2000s, that trend reversed. Success rates now stand at 30 percent, the study said, a decline that Professor Chenoweth called staggering. These two trends are closely linked. As protests become more frequent but likelier to flounder, they stretch on and on, becoming more contentious, more visible — and more apt to return to the streets when their demands go unmet. The result may be a world where popular uprisings lose their prominence, becoming simply part of the landscape. “Something has really shifted,” Professor Chenoweth said in an interview. “You could say these protests mirror what’s going on in the United States,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar who recently stepped down as dean of Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington. In countries where elections are decisive, like the United States and Britain, skepticism about the old political order has produced populist, nationalist and anti-immigrant results at the polls. “In other countries, where people don’t have a voice, you have massive protests erupting,” he said. The disparate outbreaks of unrest have not gone unnoticed at the United Nations. Secretary General António Guterres raised them at a meeting of the International Monetary Fund this past weekend, his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, said on Tuesday. Critics have accused the I.M.F. of exacerbating economic hardships in countries like Ecuador through austerity measures imposed to reduce debts. “We are seeing demonstrations in different places, but there are some commonalities,” Mr. Dujarric said, citing “people feeling they are under extreme financial pressure, the issue of inequality, and a lot of other structural issues.” Some experts say the rash of global protests is too diverse to neatly categorize or ascribe to a single theme. Michael Ignatieff, president of Central European University, was in Barcelona last week as more than 500,000 people thronged the streets after a court sentenced former separatist leaders to prison. While the Barcelona protests bore some resemblance to mass demonstrations in other cities, Mr. Ignatieff said it would be a mistake to lump them together. “People are not being swept away by the madness of the crowds,” he said. “This is politics, with specific causes and specific issues. If you don’t acknowledge that, you make popular politics look like a series of crazy fashions, like the same trousers or headgear.” Still, within some regions, the protests are often similar to each other. In the Middle East, the tumult has drawn inevitable comparisons with the upheavals of the Arab Spring of 2011. But experts say these recent protests are driven by a new generation that cares less about the old sectarian or ideological divides. Instead of calling for the head of a dictator as many Arabs did in 2011, the Lebanese have indicted an entire political class. “They are stealing and pretending that they aren’t. Who’s responsible, if not them?” Dany Yacoub, 22, said on Monday, the fourth day she had spent protesting in central Beirut. She studied to be a music teacher, but said she cannot find a job because it takes political connections to get hired in a school. “We don’t believe them anymore,” she said. Many Arabs have been wary of popular protest since the Arab Spring uprisings, heeding doom-tinged warnings from authoritarian leaders that any upheaval could tip their societies into the same violent chaos as Libya, Syria or Yemen. But the recent wave of protests in Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq — as well as revolts that toppled longstanding dictators in Algeria and Sudan this year — suggest that wall of fear is starting to crumble. “Syria has been the boogeyman for a very long time,” said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “But Algeria and Sudan showed that chaos does not have to be the answer.” Even in Saudi Arabia, where the threat of government repression makes public protests practically unthinkable, an unusual rebellion erupted on social media over a 100 percent tax on bills at restaurants with water pipes, or hookahs. The Arabic hashtag “tax on hookah restaurants” trended in the kingdom. Some Twitter commentators said the tax contradicted the ruling family’s desire to change Saudi Arabia’s ultraconservative image. If protests are quicker to stir and more widespread than in earlier decades, they are also more fragile. The painstaking mobilization that once was a feature of grass-roots movements was slow but durable. Protests that organize on social media can rise faster, but collapse just as quickly. Authoritarian governments have also learned to co-opt social media, using it to disseminate propaganda, rally sympathizers or simply spread confusion, Professor Chenoweth said. And even where there is a spasm of protest, it takes a lot more for it to snowball into a full opposition movement. The soaring price of onions in India caused farmers to block highways and mount short-lived protests. But frustration has yet to sharpen into mass demonstrations because there is nobody to channel it: India’s opposition is in disarray; divisions of caste and religion dominate politics; and the government of the Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, constantly raises the threat of neighboring Pakistan to distract the public.
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05-DEC-2016:: One common theme is a parabolic Putin rebound. #RussiaAfricaSummit Africa |
So much has happened in 2016, from the Brexit vote to President-elect Trump, and it certainly feels like we have entered a new normal. One common theme is a parabolic Putin rebound. At this moment, President Putin has Fortress Europe surrounded. The intellectual father of the new Zeitgeist that propelled Brexit, Le Pen, the Five Star movement in Italy, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, is Vladimir Putin. In the Middle East, it is Putin who is calling the shots in Aleppo, and in a quite delicious irony it looks like he has pocketed Opec as well. However, my starting point is the election of President Donald Trump because hindsight will surely show that Russia ran a seriously sophisticated programme of interference, mostly digital. Don DeLillo, who is a prophetic 21st writer, writes as follows in one of his short stories:
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Russia in Africa: Weapons, Mercenaries, Spin Doctors. @WarsawInstitute Africa |
Russia’s expansion across the Dark Continent will be best exemplified by the first-ever Russia-Africa summit, set to take place in the resort town of Sochi in October 2019. It comes as the culmination of years of Moscow’s heated political and economic efforts to nurture ties with its African peers, and intends to give the green light to open a new chapter. Russia’s clout on African soil runs on many tracks, and its expansion is geared primarily towards hybrid activities. In Moscow’s offer for Africa are mercenaries, military equipment, mining investments, nuclear power plants, and railway connections. Russian military specialists help those politicians that show a pro-Russian attitude. Their activities, or those of mercenaries, serve the Kremlin’s political goals to the very same extent, by offering tangible financial benefits to these business circles that hold close links to Vladimir Putin. Africa is viewed as a prospective source of wealth for Russian oligarchs –– a source of minerals and an outlet for Russian-made military weapons. These investments should pay off, both economically and –– more importantly –– politically. Besides establishing a large group of Russian friends in Africa, it is no less vital to deploy Moscow’s military forces to the continent, albeit carefully. Russia’s fielding of its mercenaries and combat advisors to the Dark Continent may give rise to building up its military presence. Moscow holds interest in creating military facilities in strategically important areas, also throughout the Horn of Africa. “Russia regards Africa as an important and active participant in the emerging polycentric architecture of the world order and an ally in protecting international law against attempts to undermine it,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov back in November 2018 This related both to the areas of security and economy, as exemplified by a massive surge in the value of Russian trade with African countries that rose from $3.4 billion in 2015 to $14.5 billion in 2016. According to the Swedish think tank SIPRI, between 2012 and 2016 Russia had become the largest supplier of arms to Africa, accounting for 35 percent of arms exports to the region, way ahead of China (17 percent), the United States (9.6 percent), and France (6.9 percent). Exports of Russian-made weapons and military hardware to Africa amount currently to $4.6 billion annually, with a contract portfolio worth over $50 billion. The leading importers of Russian arms in Africa are Algeria (helicopters, tanks, submarines), Egypt (aircraft, air defence systems, helicopters), Angola (fighter jets, tanks, artillery systems, arms and ammunition), and Uganda (tanks, air defence systems), alongside Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Sudan, and Rwanda.[21] In 2017, Russian arms trade with Africa doubled compared with 2012. Both Libya and Burundi have become a ground for Wagner Group mercenaries. They have been confirmed to operate in the Central African Republic and Sudan. They serve a dual role, as tools for securing Russian companies’ commercial interests while actually representing the Russian state in an effort to offer opportunities of playing a substantial role in domestic affairs of countries to where Russian mercenaries have been deployed. A leading figure is here Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman close to the Russian president. His steps in Africa resemble those in Syria that was flooded by hundreds of Wagner contractors in exchange for hydrocarbon mining licenses. This is where Prigozhnin-affiliated people were fielded as hybrid warfare experts. They backed a candidacy of a politician that held close ties to the then leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Their practical efforts rose Felix Tshisekedi to power in January 2019, paving Russia’s way for pursuing its interests on Congolese soil. Also, Russian specialists routinely look for offering information and policy-related support in countries across the Dark Continent. They use a social-media apparatus, also to promote Gaddafi’s son in Libya, and know-how to back government-owned media. Moscow is sending to Africa its spin doctors in a bid to keep African leaders in power, which is also Prigozhin’s activity, besides his private military company. Russian independent information outlet Dozhd said on March 20, 2019, that a group of between 100 and 200 Russian political marketing experts might have been sent to take part in election campaigns throughout the Dark Continent. Some of them have allegedly been decorated with state awards for their efforts to nurture Russian interests in Africa, though their names were not found on any official ranking lists.[24] A U.S.-based Bloomberg agency reported that Russian political marketing pundits had been deployed to at least ten African countries across the continent: Sudan, the Central African Republic, Libya, Angola, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Madagascar, where Russian experts worked at the presidential campaign of 6 candidates out of all 35 politicians running for office. Christian Malanga, an opposition politician in the Democratic Republic of Congo, put it bluntly, admitting that “China is the money and Russia is the muscle.”
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Does Africa Need Russia? The First Ever Russia-Africa Summit @GRTVnews @AKorybko Africa |
Moscow invaluably fills the much-needed niche of providing its partners there with “Democratic Security”, or in other words, the cost-effective and low-commitment capabilities needed to thwart Color Revolutions and resolve Unconventional Wars (collectively referred to as Hybrid War). To simplify, Russia’s “political technologists” have reportedly devised bespoke solutions for confronting incipient and ongoing Color Revolutions, just like its private military contractors (PMCs) have supposedly done the same when it comes to ending insurgencies, the latter of which has been powerfully on display in the Central African Republic (CAR) since the beginning of 2018 and was described at length in the author’s piece last summer concerning the latest “UN Update On Russia’s Military Mission In The Central African Republic“. Basically, Russian military advisors, arms shipments, and PMC trainers succeeded in stopping a civil war that was bordering on genocide despite the rest of the world having lost hope that this could happen.
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Tensions rise between Ethiopia and Egypt over use of river Nile @FT Africa |
A dispute over the use of the water in the river Nile has raised tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia threatening to provoke a new crisis in relations as Addis Ababa nears completion of the continent’s biggest hydroelectric project in the Ethiopian highlands. After talks stalled earlier this month over the filling and operation of the Grand Renaissance dam on the upper reaches of the Blue Nile, Ethiopia has accused Egypt of seeking to frustrate the project and block the country’s development. Egyptian officials said Addis Ababa’s plans would give Ethiopia unfettered control over the flow of the river — a lifeline for 100m Egyptians — threatening their nation’s already scarce water supplies. The deadlock threatens to do further damage to relations between two countries with a long history of mistrust. Cairo wants Ethiopia to guarantee an agreed minimum flow of water from the dam in order to maintain the level of its own High Aswan dam, farther downstream, and ensure there is enough water for Egyptian power generation and irrigation. Addis Ababa said Egypt wants to control Ethiopia’s water system and has rejected Cairo’s call for international mediation. “Egypt wants to have veto power, telling Ethiopia what it can do,” said Fesseha Shawel Gebre, the Ethiopian ambassador to London. The east African nation has long charged that Egypt and Sudan have divided the flow of the Nile between them under a 1959 agreement to which Ethiopia was not a party. By seeking to preserve the water rights guaranteed to Egypt under that agreement, Cairo wanted to continue the unequitable use of the Nile waters and leave Ethiopia “in the dark”, said Mr Fesseha. The $4.8bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), near the border with Sudan, will be the largest hydropower project in Africa when completed in 2022. A linchpin of Ethiopia’s economic development plans, at its peak it will generate more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity, helping extend power to the 65m Ethiopians who still live without electricity. The filling of the reservoir is expected to begin in June, during the next rainy season. Egypt fears it could face water shortages if that process is not done slowly. While Ethiopia wants to fill the reservoir within four years, Egypt wants a slower pace that can be varied in response to droughts. Egypt also wants Ethiopia to guarantee a minimum annual flow of 40bn cubic metres of water in non-drought conditions and to keep water levels in Egypt’s Aswan dam above 165 metres. Cairo insists it wants to work out a “co-operative” approach to minimise damage, and that its principal concern was the management of the river during times of drought. “Ethiopia is not offering clear procedures on what to do if we are faced with certain hydrological conditions,” said an Egyptian official close to the negotiations. “They say when there is a drought we will discuss it.” In addition, it has proposed placing monitoring teams from the three countries at the site of the Ethiopian dam and in Cairo and Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. Ethiopia said such demands amounted to an attack on its sovereignty. “What Egypt wants is to make Ethiopia its hydrological colony,” said Zerihun Abebe Yigzaw, a member of Ethiopia’s Nile negotiating committee. “What if we have a dry season, what if we do not have water in the system at all, that means are we going to destroy all other dams in the country, or divert all the water to the Renaissance dam to fulfil Egypt’s request?” International experts say it should be possible to reach an agreement on the joint management of the river system and that there are examples from other river basins such as the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan. “Agreements for filling the GERD should consider the possibility of droughts occurring during the filling process, which may include arrangements on how the three countries might adapt under these conditions,” said Kevin Wheeler, of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford university. “Considering shared drought management strategies over the long term — after the filling process is complete — is also very important.” Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Egyptian president, and Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, who was last week awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, are due to discuss the impasse on the sidelines of a Russia-Africa summit in Sochi next week. For Egypt, an arid desert nation which depends on the Nile for almost all of its water, the prospect of a reduced flow is seen as an existential threat. The country is already under the internationally recognised water poverty threshold and it has a young and fast-growing population. “We want a fair agreement and we understand Ethiopia’s development needs,” said the Egyptian official. “But Ethiopia has to understand that we depend on the Nile for 97 per cent of our water.”
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EIB cancels Sh19.5 billion Centum geothermal loan @BD_africa Africa |
The European Investment Bank (EIB) has cancelled a Sh19.5 billion loan offer to a firm partly owned by Centum Investments over viability and environmental concerns raised by lobbies. The EIB East Africa head Catherine Collin had last year said the €155 million (Sh19.5 billion) generation financing package to Akiira Geothermal Ltd “will be finalised soon.” The Centum consortium was expected to contribute Sh11.7 billion or 30 per cent of the project’s cost of Sh39 billion while the rest would be funded through commercial loans. The EIB Deputy Head of Division Joan Manuel Sterlin Balenciaga, however, said in communique dated October 10: “After careful consideration and due to the fact that the EIB has seen no progress on the Akiira Geothermal expansion project over the past three years, the EIB has formally decided not to pursue the appraisal of the project.”
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