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Tuesday 12th of November 2019 |
@MoodysInvSvc Says Tide of Populism Is Putting World's Credit at Risk @markets. Africa |
A wave of social unrest -- from Chile and Ecuador to Lebanon -- has Moody’s Investors Service worried. The rating company said its 2020 outlook for global sovereign credit is negative, given unpredictable domestic and geopolitical risks and a push for populist policies that weaken institutions, help slow growth and boost the risk of economic and financial shocks. Governments will struggle to address further credit challenges in the coming year, analysts including Jaime Reusche, Calyn Lindquist and Marie Diron wrote in a note on Monday. “‘Populist’ movements have emerged in recent years, either from the political fringe or from within established parties, often in reaction to years of stagnant incomes and rising income inequality,” they wrote. “Escalating global and regional trade tensions increase the risk of financial or economic shocks, and the weakening of multilateral institutions dents policy makers’ ability to deal with those shocks.” In Latin America, social demands in recent months make it harder for authorities to target reform and fiscal programs that support growth and public finances, they wrote. Weaker governance undermines creditworthiness, and less predictability means governments will be less resilient to shocks such as the U.S.-China trade war, especially in emerging markets. Most emerging and frontier-market sovereigns are also running out of room to tweak fiscal and monetary policy because of their vulnerability to capital flow reversals, Moody’s said. The analysts expect flows to remain under pressure in 2020 and beyond, especially if the the U.S. and China escalate their trade spat or growth worsens in higher-debt countries.
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21-OCT-2019 :: The New Economy of Anger Africa |
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.’’ 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 feed- back loop.
Home Thoughts
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Alberto Giacometti Man Pointing 1947 MOMA Africa |
Frail yet erect, a man gestures with his left arm and points with his right. We have no idea what he points to, or why. Anonymous and alone, he is also almost a skeleton. For the Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, in fact, Giacometti's sculpture was "always halfway between nothingness and being." Such sculptures were full of meaning to Sartre, who said of them, "At first glance we seem to be up against the fleshless martyrs of Buchenwald. But a moment later we have a quite different conception: these fine and slender natures rise up to heaven. We seem to have come across a group of Ascensions."
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The Military Coup Against Morales Won't End The Hybrid War On Bolivia @AKorybko Law & Politics |
President Morales resigned under duress following the military's "request" that he do so after the US-backed OAS alleged that it uncovered evidence supposedly proving that his recent re-election was rigged, but the military coup won't end the Hybrid War on Bolivia even in the unlikely "best-case" scenario that it ends the cycle of violence in the country because the structural-institutional consequences of this ongoing campaign will inevitably lead to a reversal of the socio-economic rights that were bestowed upon the majority-indigenous population and therefore risks returning millions of people to their prior position as slaves to the neoliberal-globalist system. The Beginning Of The End? The Hybrid War on Bolivia has thus far succeeded in removing the country's democratically re-elected and legitimate head of state after President Morales resigned under duress following the military's "request" that he do so, with this coup being made possible only because US intelligence had already co-opted the armed forces and therefore ensured that this outcome was a fait accompli even before it was officially announced. On the surface, it might appear as though the Hybrid War is over after it achieved its most visible victory of carrying out regime change in this lithium-rich and geostrategically located state smack dab in the center of South America, but the fact of the matter is that this campaign is far from over for several very important reasons. The Civil War Already Started The first one is the most obvious, and it's that there might be some uncertain degree of physical resistance from ("former") President Morales' mostly indigenous supporters, whether in the form of street protests or possibly even a nascent insurgency that could represent the tangible beginning of a national liberation movement to liberate the country from the US-backed military-oligarchic yoke that it's suddenly been returned under after 13 years of freedom. The military preemptively sought to offset this scenario just prior to the coup by commencing what Reuters reported was "air and land operations to 'neutralize' armed groups that act outside the laws", which in the country's political context could only have been a euphemism for beginning operations against President Morales' mostly indigenous supporters and not their right-wing opponents allied with the armed forces who were rioting throughout the country for several weeks already. This is an important detail that many observers missed amid the fast-moving events that transpired on Sunday but one which crucially reveals that the military went rogue even before demanding President Morales' resignation by launching operations against what are presumably his supporters despite not legally having the authority to do so. In hindsight, this means that not only did a military coup occur, but that it was preceded by what was arguably the unofficial onset of a low-level civil war whereby the armed forces went outside the legal chain of command (considering that they had yet to demand his resignation at the time) in order to "confront the people" despite previously denying that they had any such intention. This dramatic move came after the "opposition" seized state media in the capital, the homes of President Morales' sister and two of his governors were torched Saturday night, and an allied mayor was lynched in the streets by the "opposition" a few days prior. Morales On The Lam It's little wonder then that President Morales implored his countrymen during his resignation speech to "stop attacking the brothers and sisters, stop burning and attacking" since he feared for his supporters' lives after what had recently just taken place, especially seeing as how he would have already had knowledge of the military's ongoing operation against them that was commenced earlier that same day. Knowing this, he fled the capital before they could capture him and potentially carry out a Gaddafi-like regicide while serving a so-called "warrant" for his arrest (on the presumable basis of something having to do with electoral or another form of alleged "corruption") and relying on what would have been the unsubstantiated claim that he "resisted" or was "armed" in order to "justify" killing him in cold blood just like their predecessors did to the famous Che Guevara a little over half a century ago. If they don't succeed in capturing him soon, the US-backed armed forces might even request American and/or Brazilian "anti-terrorist" assistance after possibly claiming that he and his supporters are connected to Iran's IRGC and/or Colombia's FARC considering President Morales' close ties with the Islamic Republic and vehement support of socialism, respectively. They could also "justify" their request for a direct military intervention by reminding the region of his alliance with Venezuelan President Maduro and alleging that the latter is somehow involved in President Morales' so-called "terrorist" and possibly even "drug-trafficking" activities. The deck is therefore stacked against him and his supporters even in the event that they resort to waging a national liberation campaign, which would be entirely within their legal rights after external forces took control of the state by proxy and commenced the ongoing low-level civil war. Institutionalizing Neoliberal Slavery That's the worst-case scenario, but the "best-case" one isn't much better, which would see the US-backed right-wing forces rapidly reversing the socio-economic rights that President Morales bestowed upon the majority-indigenous population throughout his 13 years in office without having to fight an intense civil war first. In other words, his supporters would simply surrender and allow the process to unfold without any physical resistance, which seems extremely unlikely but could nevertheless still occur if the campaign of terror presently being waged against them succeeds in scaring the population into submission. It should be taken for granted that some members of the riotous mobs will team up with the US-backed military in order to form death squads that will kill anyone who resists, beginning with members of his government (both currently serving and those who recently resigned in order to protect their families after their loved ones were at credible risk of being harmed) and their supporters who might take to the streets in protest against this illegal seizure of power. Either way, the grand strategic outcome that the coup plotters are pursuing is to purge all state structures of socialists in order to more easily impose a hyper-neoliberal regime as soon as possible, with the only question being whether the population actively resists this "lustration" or not. Some of the most likely structural-institutional consequences would be the granting of fiscal (and possibly even political) autonomy to the gas-rich "opposition" strongholds of the so-called "Media Luna" lowlands where most of the mestizos live and the drastic reduction of taxes on foreign mining firms operating in the indigenous-populated highlands, which could altogether serve to deprive President Morales' mostly indigenous supporters of the resources needed to subsidize their socio-economic programs. The end result would naturally be that millions of people risk returning to their prior position of undignified servitude that they toiled under prior to President Morales' ascent to office. "The Latin American Libya" Acutely aware of the future that awaits them if the military coup succeeds in stripping them of their hard-earned socio-economic rights and institutionalizing their status as slaves to the neoliberal-globalist system supported by their country's oligarchy and its American/Brazilian backers, it wouldn't be surprising if the "worst-case" scenario transpires of President Morales' mostly indigenous supporters waging a full-fledged national liberation insurgency. That, however, also dangerously carries with it the high risk that the state will "simplify" its "counter-insurgency" strategy by siccing death squads on anyone of native Bolivian heritage (especially in the rural areas), therefore leading to ethnic cleansing against them or even genocide if this strategy is taken to its "logical" conclusion. As such, it's way too early to say that the Hybrid War on Bolivia is over just because President Morales was forced to resign under duress since this campaign will never truly end given the literally fascist outcome that it's aiming to indefinitely perpetuate of informally returning the indigenous population to noeliberal slavery. Considering the dynamics at play, Bolivia might soon become known as the "Latin American Libya", and the consequences could easily spread throughout the rest of South America just as Libya's spread throughout Africa.
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Syria's Bashar al-Assad Reflects on Civil War, Oil, Terrorism and America in Rare Interview @Presidency_Sy @SputnikInt @afshinrattansi Law & Politics |
Having endured a deadly, drawn-out civil war which is gradually drawing to a close, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is facing the daunting task of reuniting and reconstructing a devastated nation, filling in the power vacuum in newly-liberated parts of the country and overcoming a Western-imposed economic blockade. The Presidential Palace in Damascus overlooks the Syrian capital, but the most troubled parts of the war-ravaged country are out of sight. The future of those lands, as well as the broader question of how to solve the ongoing political imbroglio and rebuild Syria, are on Bashar al-Assad’s mind as he speaks in his first interview to foreign media in over a year. The president talks to RT's Afshin Rattansi about the origins of the conflict that engulfed his country and the role of Western governments in it, and gives his take on the recent and future developments in Syria and elsewhere. Bashar al-Assad, who turned 54 in September, last gave an interview to a foreign news outlet in June 2018. He says he had stopped speaking to Western media completely because of their hunt for a “scoop”, but feels now that “public opinion in the world, and especially in the West, has been shifting during the past few years”. “They know that their officials have told them so many lies about what’s going on in the region, in the Middle East, in Syria, in Yemen,” he says of the Western public. “They know there is a lie, but they don’t know the truth; so, I think, it’s time to talk about this truth.” On how the war started The Syrian conflict broke out in early 2011 with anti-government demonstrations, which coincided with violent Western-backed protests in other Arab-majority nations, known collectively as the Arab Spring. Foreign policy-makers and observers have blamed the Syria protests on various factors, or a combination of thereof, from corruption and mismanagement to a protracted drought that stressed the socio-economic conditions. While those factors were largely internal, al-Assad believes the lever was pulled from the outside: “The problem started when the money of Qatar came to Syria, and we had contact with many of the labourers, and we told them, ‘Why do not you come to your workshop?’ and they said, ‘We take as much in one hour as we [used to] take in one week’.” “It was very simple. They paid them 50 dollars at the very beginning, then later 100 dollars a week, which was enough for them to live without work, so it was much easier for them to join the demonstrations,” he claims, adding that the Qatari government then began arming the protesters. The demonstrations were originally described as peaceful by Western media, but Bashar al-Assad says this was not the case from the very beginning because policemen were shot during the initial phase of unrest. In the spring of 2011, the government cracked down on the protest movement, which quickly escalated into an insurgency throughout that year and had erupted into a full-on civil war by the summer of 2012. Western governments, which called for President al-Assad to step down throughout the conflict, responded with tough sanctions on Damascus, including oil bans, trade and financial restrictions, travel bans and arms embargoes. On chemical attacks As the fighting intensified, a series of alleged chemical attacks occurred in opposition-held areas in 2013. Damascus and Moscow both suggested that the March attack in Khan al-Assal was a false flag operation by the opposition-aligned militias, which blamed the government in turn. When UN investigators arrived on the ground to investigate the incident, their visit coincided with an even larger-scale sarin attack in Ghouta on 21 August, which reportedly led to hundreds of casualties. The United States was quick to accuse the Syrian government and was on the brink of a military intervention, averted only when Damascus agreed to surrender all of its chemical weapons. Bashar al-Assad points out that the timing of the Ghouta attack made no sense to him: “The funny thing about that date is that it is the same date when the first delegation, the international delegation that came to Syria to investigate the incident arrived in Damascus, which is only few kilometres from this place.” “And logically, the Syrian army, if we suppose that it has chemical weapons, it wants to use it, it would not use it on that day, this is first. Second, they talked about two hundred civilians killed. If you use chemical weapons, you may kill tens of thousands in such area where people are living very close to each other. I mean, it’s a crowded area.” He calls those incidents and the West’s assessment of them “a narrative that was the pretext to attack Syria.” “They did not offer any tangible evidence to prove that there was such an attack, and there were many reports that have refuted that report or those allegations,” he maintains. “So, it was only allegation; never, never had the Syrian army used chemical weapons before we handed over all arsenals to the international committee.” A similarly suspicious attack on Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib in April 2017 led the United States, based on unconfirmed claims by the opposition, to bomb a Syrian airbase without a UN mandate. A conflict between factions of Syrian rebels saw the rise of extremist Islamist groups in 2014; Al-Nusra Front, and offshoot of Al-Qaeda, and Daesh*, aka ISIS, managed to seize large swathes of the country and sparked massive concerns over the regional security. The United States, along with a few partners, formed a coalition in Syria – without a mandate from anyone whatsoever – while al-Assad invited Russia to intervene on behalf of Damascus. On the US’ role in terrorist insurgence The president reiterates a widespread assumption that those terror groups emerged as a direct consequence of the CIA arming the mujahedeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. He says of the American policy: “They invaded Afghanistan, they got nothing. They invaded Iraq, they got nothing, and they started to invade other countries but in different ways. “The problem with the Unites States now is that they fight a survival war from their point of view because they are losing their hegemony. “Al-Qaeda is a proxy against the Syrian government, against the Russian government and the Iranian government. That’s why they’ve been using this, but you have evidence. How did ISIS rise suddenly in 2014?! Out of nowhere!.. In Iraq and Syria at the same time, with American armaments?!.. How could they smuggle millions of barrels of oil to Turkey under the supervision of the American aircraft, how? Because the Americans wanted to use them against the Syrian army.” “Don't forget that there is a war between the United States and the rest of the world. Now, we're talking about tectonic shifting and earthquakes. “So, you have rising powers like Russia, China and India and other countries. The United States does not accept any partner in leading the world, even UK, France, even other big countries, I wouldn’t call them great powers because this is another meaning, they are not great anymore. They don’t accept partners. That's why they are fighting now. So, the war in Syria is a microcosm of World War 3, let’s say, but without armaments; through proxies.” On the ‘looting’ of Syria’s oil During the war, terrorists have captured large swathes of oil-rich territories in northeast Syria; they have since been ousted from there by US-backed Kurdish militias which apparently continue extracting and smuggling out Syria’s oil. US President Donald Trump has made it clear in recent weeks that “securing” Syria’s oil (i.e. keeping it in the hands of Kurds and away from the Damascus government) is his major priority in Syria. Moscow has recently exposed Washington’s efforts to keep the oil fields under its military control, describing them as “banditry.” “Since ISIS started smuggling Syrian oil and looting Syrian oil in 2014, they had two partners: Erdogan and his coterie, and the Americans, whether the CIA or others,” al-Assad notes. “So, what Trump did is just announce the truth; he is not talking about something new. Even when some of the Kurds started looting the Syrian oil, the Americans were their partners. So, it's about money, and it’s about the oil, and that's what Trump said recently.” “The Americans always try to loot other countries in different ways regarding not only their oil or money, or financial resources. They loot their rights, their political rights, every other right. That’s their historical role at least after World War 2.” On Turkey’s invasion Fighting is still going on in some parts of the country, particularly in the rebel-held north-west province of Idlib and in the north-east, where Turkey recently launched an offensive against Kurdish fighters who it designates as terrorists. It drove the Syrian Democratic Forces – a Kurdish-led alliance of militias that includes Arab groups – to seek protection from Damascus, whose forces have moved into the areas vacated by American troops and Kurds. Al-Assad views the Turkish encroachment as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty but refuses to lay the blame on the Turks altogether. “The Turkish people are our neighbours, and we have a common history, and we cannot make them the enemy,” he says. “The enemy is Erdogan and his policy and his coteries. So, being against those [terrorist] groups in Turkey and in Syria does not mean that we see eye to eye in another aspect, especially after he invaded Syria, publicly and formally.” On the Kurdish deal Al-Assad, now probably in a much stronger military position than ever in the past nine years, has ruled out a power-sharing agreement with Kurds. He says the deal with the SDF is intended for the Syrian government to restore “full sovereignty” over the previously Kurdish-held territories and pull the Kurds from the Turkey border in order to “remove the pretext for the Turks to invade Syria.” He adds he has also invited Kurds to join the government forces; some heeded the call and some did not. A major issue appears to be with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), which has formed the militarised People's Protection Units (YPG) and is a member of an umbrella of Kurdish political groups that also includes the Kurdistan Workers’ Party – an organisation responsible for a decades-long insurgency in Turkey and outlawed by Ankara as a terror group. Al-Assad argues that the majority of Kurds have “a good relationship with the government, and the majority of Kurds supports the government, but this part which is called the PYD is the one which has been supported by the Americans publicly, their armament, their money, they smuggled oil together.” He claims that the PYD’s policy in the last few years was “to invite the Americans to stay, to be angry when America wants to leave and to say: we do not want to join the Syrian Army recently.” He did not expand on the opportunities for a compromise with this group. On attacks by Israel Tel Aviv, which is at loggerheads with Damascus over the Golan Heights, has on many occasions bombed targets in Syria throughout the war that it believes are signs of Iran’s military presence in the country. Asked if Israel provides a direct support to terrorists, al-Assad says: “Every time the Syrian army advanced against those Al-Nusra terrorists in the south, Israel used to bombard our troops, and whenever we advance somewhere else in Syria, their airplanes started committing air strikes against our army.” In his opinion, this indicates that there was a “correlation” between the operations of Israel’s army and Syria-based terrorists. On Iranian tanker arrest Al-Assad took a back seat over the summer when headlines from the Middle East were mostly dominated by Iran’s stand-off with the US and the UK. Syria was indirectly implicated in a spat between Tehran and London over a tanker seized by the Royal Marines off Gibraltar on suspicion of shipping Iranian oil to Syria in violation of EU sanctions. The president strikes a tone similar to that of his allies in Iran, calling Britain’s actions an act of “piracy.” He suggested that the UK “wanted to affect the people in Syria” in “the last-ditch attempt” to turn them against his government. On the rise and fall of al-Baghdadi In one of the latest positive pieces of news for the anti-terror efforts in Syria, Daesh chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was reportedly killed in a night-time aid by US commandos. The self-proclaimed ‘caliph’ – the architect behind atrocious terror attacks and brutal executions – had spent 10 months in an American prison in Iraq after his arrest for participation in the anti-US insurgency in 2004. “He was prepared by the Americans to play that role and we don't believe this recent story of killing him,” al-Assad says. “Maybe he is killed, but it's not about what they've mentioned. The whole story was about whitewashing the American hand from being hand in a glove with the terrorists during the last, not only few years, but during the last decades. “When Saddam Hussein was captured, they showed him. When he was executed, they showed the event of the execution. When his children were killed, they showed their bodies. The same with al-Gaddafi. Why didn't they show us the body of Bin Laden? Why didn't they show us the body of Al-Baghdadi? “Just a fake story about being against terrorists and this very sophisticated operation. Maybe he has been killed because he has expired as a person [and] they needed somebody else. And maybe they wanted to change the whole name of ISIS to another name to bring ISIS as a moderate organisation to be used again in the market against the Syrian government.” On what’s next in Idlib The province of Idlib, mostly controlled by the jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, remains the last major stronghold of anti-government forces. According to al-Assad, it won’t take long to liberate Idlib but the plan now is to give a chance to the civilians to leave the area before the final showdown. “Our interest lies in killing the terrorists in order to protect the civilians, not leaving those innocent civilians under the supervision of the terrorists,” he explains. Cornered by Syrian troops and Russian airstrikes, the Idlib terrorists are posed to surrender sooner or later. And however preoccupied President al-Assad may be with the restive province, a transition from war to peace will be needed next. That transition is complicated by international sanctions, but al-Assad is adamant that Syria will be able to overcome it – with a little help from its friends. “We have the human resources enough to build our country,” the president reassures, “so I would not worry about this embargo, but definitely, the friendly countries like China, Russia and Iran, will have priority in this rebuilding.” When asked whether the EU member states would be allowed to participate, he answeres flatly: “Every country which stood against Syria will not have a chance to be part of this reconstruction.” What about Britain? “Definitely not.”
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24 OCT 11 :: Gaddafi's Body in a Freezer - What's the Message? Law & Politics |
I am left thinking, this dead Gaddafi business is one powerful message. And today Marshall McLuhan’s prediction in The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962) that ‘The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village’ has come to pass. The image of a bloodied Gaddafi, then of a dead Gaddafi in a meat locker have flashed around the world via the mobile, YouTube and Twitter. Who is in charge of the messaging? Through the fog of real time and raw footage, I note a very powerful message. The essence of that message being; ‘Don’t Fxxk with us! Be- cause you will end up dead and a trophy souvenir in a fridge.’ That same person is probably repeating Muammar’s comment, “I tell the coward crusaders: I live in a place where you can’t get me. I live in the hearts of millions.” And asking ‘Really? Are You? Or are you now very dead and in a meat locker?’
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A New Twist in the Horrific Massacre of American Moms and Kids in Mexico @thedailybeast Law & Politics |
The brutal killing of three American women and six children a week ago in Mexico sparked outrage on both sides of the border. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has promised justice, and already set up a special task force to find the attackers. President Donald J. Trump, meanwhile, has suggested American troops be sent in to combat the rising tide of violence. Rhetoric aside, some important facts remain in doubt, with social media and tabloids generating increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories. The day after the killing, the New York Post, for instance, reported that members of the victims’ community may have been recruited in the past by the NXIVM sex cult, although what, if anything, that might have to do with the murders remains unclear. What we do know is that gunmen claimed the lives of nine members of the LeBaron family. Six other children traveling in the ambushed convoy were wounded and some of them have given their families accounts of what they saw, apparently confirming the thesis the gunmen knew perfectly well that they were slaughtering women and children. The big unanswered question is not just who did the killing, but even more important in a land rife with sicarios and vendettas, why? We also know the LeBarons are part of a wealthy and locally powerful sect of about 5,000 Mormon landowners with both U.S. and Mexican citizenship. Long isolated from their religious counterparts in the U.S., and in some cases allegedly continuing to practice polygamy, banned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints centered in Salt Lake City, the LeBarons reside on several large ranches in the border states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Their houses resemble those in any well-manicured gated community in the United States. “The Barzón water dispute connection is the theory du jour in the Mexican press.” On the morning of Nov. 4, three SUVs carrying 17 family members set out from their La Mora compound in Sonora for another ranch property in Galeana, in neighboring Chihuahua. Less than halfway there they were ambushed by unknown gunmen on a lonely stretch of road in that rugged scrubland. The official version of the story, as told by Mexican authorities, is that it was an accident involving rival drug gangs. Yet the LeBarons claim they’d been under threat from criminal bands in the area and they have no doubt they were targeted deliberately. Several of the victims reportedly were shot at point-blank range. Also, we now know the family had been engaged in a long-running land dispute with local farmers over water rights. Both sides appear to have acted violently—including an incident last year in which the farmers stormed one of the LeBaron ranches and the LeBarons opened fire on them. The conflict reportedly has continued since then. The murder of innocent women and children would be a grotesque escalation—and without precedent—but to understand the broader context of the killings in that arid landscape the issue of water, as well as the issue of drug trafficking, should be taken into account. In the immediate aftermath of the killings, Mexican officials announced that an organized crime group called Los Jaguares was responsible. The theory was that the group’s leader Arvizu “El Jaguar” Márquez had ordered the hit after mistaking the Mormon caravan for that of another gang. The press ran with the story, and it seemed the case was solved. El Jaguar’s outfit is a splinter cell of the Sinaloa Cartel, formerly run by Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, and now headed by a loose coalition between his sons and former lieutenant Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada (more on him later). Breakaway upstart Jaguar Márquez was characterized in news reports as “an alcoholic cuckold,” and one member of the LeBaron family spoke of possibly forming autodefensas [vigilante groups] to track him down. But then the official version changed. It wasn’t the drunken gangster with the unfaithful wife after all. Instead another band was blamed, although the “cartel confusion” narrative carried over. This time the massacre was attributed to a dust up between a group called La Línea [The Line], which is affiliated with the Juárez Cartel, and a rival faction of the Sinaloa Cartel called Los Salazar. “In April of 2018, more than 100 members of El Barzón invaded the LeBaron family ranch at La Mora to protest the diminished water table.” There had been a turf battle between the two groups in the town of Agua Prieta, on the U.S. border, the same day the LeBaron family was assaulted. While retreating from Agua Prieta, La Línea allegedly set up sentinels to intercept any pursuers. And then the LeBaron convoy blundered into the trap traveling in SUVs, the preferred mode of transport for sicarios (hitmen) as well. “It is assumed that this cell [La Línea ], which was sent to stop any incursion of a criminal group from Los Salazar into Chihuahua, [is responsible for] the attacks on the LeBaron family," said Homero Mendoza Ruíz, chief of staff of Mexico’s National Defense Secretariat, in a press conference. However there are glaring discrepancies in the official reports. Mexico's secretary of security, Alfonso Durazo, believes the women set out at around 9:40 a.m. and came under attack at 1:00 p.m. But a special commission ordered by Mexican President López Obrador tells a different story. Those investigators claim there was an initial attack on one vehicle at 9:40, near the remote village of Bavispe. And that the second assault against the other two SUVs came at about 11:00 that same morning, and happened on the same rural highway, but 11 miles away from the scene of the first attack. “What makes the incident highly suspect is the 1.2 hour time gap between the first incident and the second one, and the fact that it would be relatively easy to ID the unarmed female drivers—as well as the small children in the vehicles—as not being representative of cartel tactical unit profiles,” Robert Bunker, a specialist in international security and illicit economies at the University of Southern California, told The Daily Beast in an email. Bunker suggested that the way the murders were carried out indicates the cartel hit teams, if that’s who was responsible, “were marginally trained and disciplined and/or even high on narcotics. Such tactical units could belong to a newly fragmented cartel group who were scraping the bottom of the barrel to put gunmen into the field.” Bunker’s description of a poorly trained, ragtag bunch doesn’t meet the description of La Línea, however. It is known as the elite enforcer wing of the Juárez Cartel, and the DEA estimates some 70 percent of the cocaine that enters the U.S. passes through the Juárez-El Paso corridor, which this cartel controls, making it an extremely well-armed, well-equipped syndicate. Furthermore, some of the children who escaped reported that at least one of the adult women had exited the vehicles to inform their attackers that they were traveling with children, only to be shot point blank. “The conclusion we’ve reached is that it was something premeditated against the community,” Adrián LeBaron told a local news outlet. “They knew that they were killing women and children.” In a separate interview, LeBaron also said the family had been receiving threats from armed groups in the area, and other members of the family have been kidnapped and killed by the cartels. Some 200 shell casings from AR-15 type assault rifles were found at the scene of the ambush, and one of the vehicles had been burned, also possibly indicating an intentional encounter meant to send a message. The targeted attack theory might be the more credible, at least based on what we know now—but it still doesn't explain why the family would have been targeted. One possibility now being reported in Mexico is that the killings are linked to an ongoing series of violent clashes between the LeBarons and an alliance of local farmers over land and water rights in the semi-desert of northwestern Chihuahua. The farming collective is called El Barzón. Its dispute with the Mormon clan over local aquifers goes back some six decades, and had escalated dramatically over the last few years. The farmers accuse the family of syphoning “excessive” amounts of water from rivers and vital aquifers for the commercial cultivation of maguey, nopal, and walnut trees, leaving nearby communities without enough water for subsistence farming. Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA) also alleges the LeBarons’ have sunk hundreds of illegal wells on their properties. They also have reservoirs allegedly bulldozed to hold water diverted from local rivers, leaving little or nothing for indigenous communities downstream. In one high-profile investigation, in November of 2017, CONAGUA found a dozen illegal drainages on a single property, the La Mojina ranch, owned by Julian and Joel LeBaron. In another case, local politician Alexander LeBaron was accused of using his influence to grant 395 water concessions to family members and illegal strawman companies. He flatly denied the accusation. But the resulting strain on the Carmen River Basin and Flores Magón aquifer reportedly left some 900 families in the region without sufficient water. “Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA) also alleges the LeBaron’s have sunk hundreds of illegal wells on their properties.” In April of 2018, more than 100 members of El Barzón invaded the LeBaron family ranch at La Mora to protest the diminished water table. They destroyed property, crops, and vehicles and, when they refused to disperse, LeBaron family members reportedly opened fire on them. At least one LeBaron and five campesinos (small farmers) were wounded in the clash. In the aftermath, Julian LeBaron told a Mexican newspaper that he and his family were prepared “take justice into our own hands” against the campesinos. Shortly thereafter Barzón leaders publicly announced that they’d received death threats from the LeBarons. A few months later, in June of 2018, two members of the ejido were murdered, supposedly for “protecting water rights.” The crimes remain unsolved. Then, in August of 2019, a court ruling in favor of the farmers ordered Francisco LeBaron, Julian’s brother, to restore land allegedly confiscated by the family from small farmers in Chihuahua. It appears that court order was ignored by the LeBarons. In fact, shortly before the massacre, El Barzón claimed the family was planning to excavate 50 new wells. As speculation that they might have been behind last week’s attack has mounted, Barzón leaders have publicly denied any involvement. Joaquín Solorio, a spokesman for the group who had two family members killed while “defending the environment” in the Carmen River Basin in 2012, has been particularly outspoken against the allegations his group was responsible for the attack on the LeBaron caravan. “I am a victim, too,” he told a Mexican news site. “I find it distasteful, this finger pointing and speculation. It’s up to the authorities to determine [who’s responsible]. The murder of women and children is reprehensible.” Spokespeople for the LeBaron family declined to be interviewed for this article, so it was not possible to ask them if they considered the conflict with El Barzón to be relevant to the attack. However, shortly after the ranch invasion in 2018, family spokesperson Julian LeBaron said in an interview with Televisa Chihuahua that he was “quite worried” El Barzón would return “and finish destroying everything.” The Barzón connection is the theory du jour in the Mexican press, but there are still holes in this hypothesis. Barzón has a strong presence in both neighboring states, but the main flashpoints in the conflict between the farmers and the LeBarons centered around the family’s compounds in Chihuahua. Yet the Mormon convoy was attacked after departing a ranch across the state line in Sonora. It’s also unusual for campesinos in Mexico to possess the kind of firepower used in the ambush. Still, it appears the special commission set up by President López Obrador will be taking a long, hard look at El Barzón. “They’re analyzing all the hypotheses, all of them, nothing is ruled out,” the president said late last week. A source within one of the local cartels, who agreed to speak with The Daily Beast only under the condition of anonymity, said that whoever was responsible for the attack against the LeBarons is now being hunted by Sinaloa Cartel leader and former Chapo lieutenant Mayo Zambada. Mayo remains the most powerful capo in the Sonora-Chihuahua corridor. And he’s supposedly deeply upset over the massacre, after having given orders not to rock the boat after one of Chapo’s sons was arrested and then rescued by cartel forces last month, the source said. “If Sinaloa finds out who did this they’ll kill them immediately. Mayo is fucking pissed. After the whole thing with Chapo’s son he wants to lay low. And now they shoot up a bunch of blond-headed children and put it all over the news?” The source also said that the nature of the attack would seem to indicate a desire for vengeance, or perhaps to drive the LeBaron family out of the area once and for all. “Kids? Little babies? This is more along the lines of retaliation,” the source said. “Mexicans don’t kill a bunch of white kids for no reason.” USC’s Bunker described cartel leaders like El Mayo as akin to “warlords like we saw during the Dark Ages in Europe.” In keeping with that analysis, the anonymous source implied that Sinaloa chief Mayo is about to go medieval on those responsible for the LeBaron massacre, be they cartel rivals or frustrated farmers who’ve been cheated of their water rights. “Whoever shot those kids is in for a bad ride,” the cartel insider said. “They should hope the... government catches them before Mayo does.”
International Markets
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11-NOV-2019 :: The Markets are Run by Machines, Computers, Algorithms and Bots International Trade |
Once upon a time many many years ago, the markets were traded on the Phone and a human had to speak to another human in order to trade. You read the Paper on the way to work, the TV was always on, You relied on a trusted network of humans in different parts of the World. That time feels as long ago as a Fairy Tale. I recall in the 1990s when the Internet arrived on the Trading Floor. Today, as The Economist headlined October 5th, it is [The] ''March of the machines The stockmarket is now run by computers, algorithms and passive managers'' Morningstar, a research firm, reported that for the first time, the pot of passive equity assets it measures, at $4.3trn, exceeded that run by humans. The Financial Markets are a ''Bot'' World with Bots trading with each other. And There is clearly a convergence with Computational propaganda The University of Oxford's Oxford Institute Computational Propaganda Research project produced a research piece which spoke of ''the use of algorithms, automation, and big data to shape public life – is becoming a pervasive and ubiquitous part of everyday life. Cambridge Analytica's now infamous Andrew Nix said “We just put information into the bloodstream to the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again over time to watch it take shape. And so this stuff infiltrates the online community and expands but with no branding – so it’s unattributable, untraceable.” “So the candidate is the puppet?,” the undercover reporter asked. “Always,” replied Mr Nix. Practically every Trading day now and for over a year, President Trump recycles the same headline. The latest iteration ''Donald Trump says China trade talks moving ‘very nicely’, claiming Beijing wants deal more than US'' [SCMP]. Recycle the same headline over and over and over again. And each time markets jump. And each time it means nothing tweeted @NorthmanTrader You know why algos buy unsubstantiated headlines? Because they're stupid. @NorthmanTrader This Feedback Loop has lifted stock markets particularly in the United States to all time highs and there has been a spillover into other developed markets. The Human Institutional Memory has been eroded and if you traded on the basis of fundamentals, You would have been stopped out a decade ago. This is a House of Cards of simply monstrous proportions and has been bulked up with the steroids of Free money, negative interest rates and QE. Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o’clock in the morning. This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper. The Hollow Men T.S. ELIOT Interestingly, last week, we saw a reversal of the overwhelming Safe Haven Demand we had witnessed all year. Gold had its worse week in 2 years. G7 Government Bonds sold off. The US 10 year printed its highest yield since mid Sep, trading above 1.90%. The German 10 year yield was at its highest since mid July, last at -0.274%. French 10 Year Yields crossed into positive Territory. The Global markets pirouette on the outcome of the Trade War. SCMP news carried an article Trade negotiator who got China into WTO is rooting for Trump’s re-election because ‘Twitterer in Chief’ is easy to read. Donald Trump, whose trade war with China has upended global supply chains and imperilled the world’s economic growth, would be most welcomed with another four years in the White House because he is easier to read than other American politicians, said the negotiator who led China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The US president's daily Twitter posts broadcast his every impulse, delight and peeve to 67 million followers around the world, making him “easy to read” and “the best choice in an opponent for negotiations,” said Long Yongtu, the former vice-minister of foreign trade and point man during China’s 15-year talks to join the WTO nearly two decades ago Now its clear that Trump is playing a Game and he has played it rather well. And it is also within Xi's power to absolutely crash the US market by simply pronouncing that ''No Trade Deal is possible'' and the US stock indices will sink as far as the US Farm Economy has sunk and with it Trump's relection chances. And my Final point is that whilst the ‘Twitterer in Chief’ is easy to read, I am not sure he is the Decider. The risk of Bot and algorithmic mayhem is sky high and I am not sure pumping the Patient with more QE and Free Money will do the trick next time around. The Bots will be waiting for Santa Claus and a Christmas rally so as President Trump is wont to tweet Stock Market up big today. A New Record. Enjoy!
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"I was up there with him on the top of the world, and he said, 'Everything is going to be amazing,'" recalled Harrison Weber, WeWork's editorial director at the time. @nytimes World Currencies |
Then, Mr. Neumann picked up an old beer bottle — a remnant, apparently, from some previous bender. He asked the employees to drink the rank liquid. Everyone took a swig, except Mr. Weber. “It felt like a loyalty thing,” he said. “In that moment, I felt what a deeply persuasive person he is.” there’s no question that Mr. Neumann’s good hair and looks helped his cause. At 6 feet 5, he had a physical presence that could dominate a room. Like Mr. Neumann, Mr. Son — known as Masa — quotes Yoda (“feel the force”), trusts his instincts and tries to think centuries into the future. At $100 billion, SoftBank’s Vision Fund is the world’s largest technology investment fund, flush with cash from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. Famously, in 2017, Mr. Neumann spent just 12 minutes walking Mr. Son around WeWork’s headquarters, prompting an investment of $4.4 billion. Afterward, an elated Mr. Neumann zoomed uptown in the back seat of his chauffeured white Maybach, blaring rap, with an iPad open to a rendering of the hasty digital spit-swear he’d just made with Mr. Son. Mr. Neumann would convince employees to take shots of pricey Don Julio tequila, work 20-hour days, attend 2 a.m. meetings. He’d convince them to smoke marijuana at work, dance to Journey around a fire in the woods on weekend excursions, smoke more pot, drink more tequila. Even people who don’t really seem the tequila type would go along with his act — including a pre-White House Jared Kushner, who imbibed while scoping out a property in Philadelphia. Like Mr. Neumann, Mr. Son was known to follow his gut and ignore the naysayers. In 2000, he made a $20 million early investment in the Chinese e-commerce venture Alibaba, now worth more than $100 billion, because he’d noticed a “sparkle” in the chief executive’s eyes. If a founder asked the Vision Fund for $40 million, Mr. Son might ask, “What would you do with $400 million?” “Masa has his own style and others might choke, but Adam would be like, ‘$400 million? How about $4 billion, and I can do this for you,’” said a senior executive with direct knowledge of the men’s interactions. his first date with Rebekah. “She looked me straight in the eye and she said, ‘You, my friend, are full of” crap, Mr. Neumann recalled. “‘She then said, ‘Every single word that comes out of your mouth is fake.’”
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The Great Streaming Battle Is Here @netflix is in an enviable position with a big head start @WSJ World Currencies |
A new era is dawning in the entertainment world and you’re about to get a whole lot more choices—for better or worse. The streaming wars are here. “The next 18 months are going to be the most interesting in the history of the entertainment business—the grounds are shifting,” said Hollywood veteran Steve Mosko, chief executive of the production company Village Roadshow Entertainment, which is developing projects for multiple streaming outlets.
NETFLIX Price: $12.99 for most popular tier Launch: streaming since 2007 Identity: Catch me if you can. Portfolio overview: With a vast library of TV shows and movies and a growing number of popular originals, Netflix doesn’t want to replace one channel. It wants to replace them all. Total programming: 1500 TV shows, 4000 movies Subscribers: 158 million world-wide Originals of note: “Stranger Things,” “The Crown,” “The Irishman” TV to rewatch: “Breaking Bad,” “Mad Men” and, coming soon, “Seinfeld” Classic movies: “Rebel Without A Cause,” “Rocky” Biggest asset: A giant head start
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23-SEP-2019 :: Streaming Dreams Non-Linearity Netflix World Currencies |
I stuck ‘’non-linearity’’ in my headline for good reason and you will need to indulge me. My Mind kept to an Article I read in 2012 ‘’Annals of Technology Streaming Dreams’’ by John Seabrook January 16, 2012. “This world of online video is the future, and for an artist you want to be first in, to be a pioneer. With YouTube, I will have a very small crew, and we are trying to keep focused on a single voice. There aren’t any rules. There’s just the artist, the content, and the audience.” “People went from broad to narrow,” he said, “and we think they will continue to go that way—spend more and more time in the niches— because now the distribution landscape allows for more narrowness’’. And this brought me to Netflix. Netflix spearheaded a streaming revolution that changed the way we watch TV and films. As cable TV lost subscribers, Netflix gained them, putting it in a category with Facebook, Amazon, and Google as one of the adored US tech stocks that led a historic bull market [FT]. Netflix faces an onslaught of competition in the market it invented. After years of false starts, Apple is planning to launch a streaming service in November, as is Disney — with AT&T’s WarnerMedia and Com- cast’s NBCUniversal to follow early next year. Netflix has corrected brutally and lots of folks are bailing big time especially after Netflix lost US subscribers in the last quarter. Even after the loss of subscribers in the second quarter, Ben Swinburne, head of media research at Morgan Stanley, says Netflix is still on course for a record year of subscriber additions. Optimists point to the group’s global reach. It is betting its future on expansion outside the US, where it has already attracted 60m subscribers. And this is an inflection point just like the one I am signaling in the Oil markets. Netflix is not a US business, it is a global business. The Majority of Analysts are in the US and in my opinion, these same Analysts have an international ‘’blind spot’’ Once Investors appreciate that the Story is an international one and not a US one anymore, we will see the price ramp to fresh all-time highs. I, therefore, am putting out a ‘’conviction’’ Buy on Netflix at Friday’s closing price of $270.75.
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Oil is a 'broken barometer' and 'lagging indicator' of Middle East tensions, energy expert says @CNBC H/T @hervegogo [I look for $60.00 WTI] Commodities |
Oil is a “broken barometer” and a “lagging indicator of Middle East stress,” according to Helima Croft, managing director and global head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets. Investors are underestimating supply-side risks, Croft told CNBC at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition & Conference on Monday. “We have a market that is singularly focused on the demand side; the whole idea that Chinese demand is going to go off a cliff,” said Croft, a closely-watched oil market expert. But China’s crude oil imports are resilient, she added. In October, crude oil imports into China rose 11.5% from a year earlier to a record high, Reuters reported. However, investors have been spooked by the fallout from the U.S.-China trade dispute and a global economic slowdown, leading to a broader market selloff and lackluster oil prices, Croft said. At the same time, they are also brushing off supply risks in the Middle East. “They’re looking at the Middle East saying ‘it’s noise, we’ve seen this before, even when we had the type of attacks which are almost unprecedented in this market. They are thinking ‘well, we can get over this, we have U.S. production and we have demand worries,’” she said. Considering U.S. sanctions on Iran, current oil prices are “amazing,” said Croft. The market is “basically saying ‘we are swimming in oil, it doesn’t matter; someone can fill every supply gap,’” she added.
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India's @narendramodi has had a free pass from the west for too long @FinancialTimes @gideonrachman Emerging Markets |
The world’s democracies are desperate to believe in India. From Washington to Tokyo, and from Canberra to London, the country is viewed as an indispensable counterbalance to China. The two Asian giants are the only countries in the world with populations of over 1bn people. Last year America’s Defense Department renamed its Pacific command the Indo-Pacific command — a reconception of the geopolitical map that is clearly intended to balance Chinese power by bringing India into the picture. In September, Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister, appeared alongside US president Donald Trump at a Texas rally. In Europe, India is lauded as the world’s largest democracy — a refreshing contrast to you-know-where. The west’s investment in India is now strategic, emotional, intellectual and financial. But the sunk costs of that investment mean that western countries are reluctant to acknowledge the dark side of Mr Modi’s India — in particular, threats to minority rights and the erosion of democratic norms. Since Mr Modi won a crushing re-election victory earlier this year, the alarming side to his government has come increasingly to the fore. On August 5, it abolished the special constitutional status of the majority-Muslim state of Jammu and Kashmir — and followed up with a broad clampdown on civil liberties, including the detention-without-trial of leading Kashmiri politicians. Opposition politicians, human rights activists and Delhi-based foreign correspondents have been prevented from visiting the region. There is also rising anxiety about a citizenship-determination exercise in the state of Assam that has seen 2m of the state’s residents designated illegal immigrants, with no right to live in India. Mr Modi’s government says it carried out the exercise to comply with a Supreme Court order. But it is now building camps to hold those deemed illegal immigrants. It talks of extending the process across the country. The weight of this campaign will fall hard on India’s Muslim minority. The administration is expected to push through a new citizenship law that will give any Hindu deemed to be fleeing persecution in a neighbouring country, the automatic right to Indian citizenship. So only Muslims will be at risk of being deemed illegal residents. The sense that the political winds are moving against India’s Muslims will be strengthened by this week’s Supreme Court ruling that a Hindu temple can be built on a long-contested holy site in the city of Ayodhya. Hindu nationalists, whipped up on social media, are delighted by Mr Modi’s increasing boldness. But some of the country’s leading intellectuals are sounding the alarm. Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist now resident in the US, told The New Yorker magazine that his friends are reluctant to criticise the government on the phone, adding, “People are afraid. I’ve never seen this before.” Alarmed by the increasingly compliant judiciary (and much of the media), Pratap Bhanu Mehta, an eminent Indian academic, has written that: “The noose is tightening around all independent institutions in India.” In its defence, the Modi administration can point to its undoubted popularity — confirmed in this year’s elections. The government still enjoys support from business, which appreciates the promise to cut red tape and a recent corporate tax cut. Mr Modi’s focus on the living conditions of the poor — in particular through the construction of more toilets to prevent “open defecation” — is also rightly praised. But the economy is now slowing. Delhi and other Indian cities are suffering a crisis over air-quality. Under these conditions, the argument that Mr Modi’s strongman style might be a price worth paying for economic progress is harder to make. The Trump administration’s failure to make a fuss about human rights reflects more than strategic and diplomatic calculation. In important respects, Mr Trump and Mr Modi are ideological soulmates. They are both assertive majoritarians, scornful of liberal concerns with minority rights. They have promised to crack down on illegal immigration and have stoked fears of Islamic extremism — partly as a way of consolidating their political base. Mr Modi’s many defenders argue that one of his great strengths is that, like Mr Trump, he is in touch with “the common man” — he cares little for the opinions of urban elites. The Indian government could also borrow a phrase from the Israelis, who like to remind foreign critics that they “live in a tough neighbourhood”. There is little doubt that religious and ethnic minorities have fared worse in many of India’s neighbours — including Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and China. But India used to take pride in its status as a tolerant, multifaith democracy. The Modi government’s increasingly strident Hindu nationalism is putting that achievement at risk. The west’s fear of China means that it is likely to continue to give Modi’s India a free pass for some time. But a failure to talk openly about the failings of the Modi model is not cost-free. The danger is that the west is embracing a comforting illusion — that democratic India will act as an ideological bulwark against authoritarian China. The reality is that India’s slide into illiberalism may actually be strengthening the global trend towards authoritarianism.
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Kabir by Swami Sivananda Emerging Markets |
When Kabir died, his body was claimed by both the Hindus and the Mohammedans. The King of Kashi, with thousands of Hindus, wanted to cremate the body. The Hindus claimed that Kabir was a Hindu and that therefore his body should be burnt. Bizli Khan, with thousands of Mohammedans, wanted to bury it. The Mohammedans said that Kabir was a Muslim and therefore his body ought to be buried under Mohammedan rites. While they were quarrelling, Kabir's apparition appeared and said, "I was neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan. I was both. I was nothing. I was all. I discern God in both. There is no Hindu and no Mussalman. To him who is free from delusion, Hindu and Mussalman are the same. Remove the shroud and behold the miracle!" The shroud was removed. A large quantity of flowers was seen under it. Half of the flowers was taken by the king of Kashi and burnt on the bank of holy Ganga. The ashes were then buried and a temple was built. This temple is known by the name of Kabir Chaura--a great place of pilgrimage for the followers of Kabir. The other half of the flowers was taken by the Mohammedans and buried at Moghar where Kabir died. A mosque was built over the grave. This is a place of pilgrimage for the Mohammedans.
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India's Factory Output Posts Steepest Decline in Eight Years @economics Emerging Markets |
India’s factory output shrank to the lowest level in eight years, as a sharp fall in capital goods production underlined weak demand in Asia’s third-largest economy. The index of industrial production fell 4.3% in September, data released by the Ministry of Statistics showed Monday. That compares with an estimate for a 2.5% contraction, and is the lowest since October 2011. Capital goods output dropped 20.7% from a year ago, while consumer durables fell 9.9% The second straight month of decline in factory output caps yet another quarter of subdued activity, belying expectations of a quick recovery after economic growth slipped to a six-year low of 5% in the April-June period Gross domestic product data for the three months to September is due Nov. 29 and will probably show a mild recovery in growth to 5.5%. Economists, however, say that may be more because of a favorable base effect
Frontier Markets
Sub Saharan Africa
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How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader @nytimes Africa |
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — The Russians were hard to miss. They appeared suddenly last year in Madagascar’s traffic-snarled capital, carrying backpacks stuffed with cash and campaign swag decorated with the name of Madagascar’s president. It was one of Russia’s most overt attempts at election interference to date. Working from their headquarters in a resort hotel, the Russians published their own newspaper in the local language and hired students to write fawning articles about the president to help him win another term. Skirting electoral laws, they bought airtime on television stations and blanketed the country with billboards. They paid young people to attend rallies and journalists to cover them. They showed up with armed bodyguards at campaign offices to bribe challengers to drop out of the race to clear their candidate’s path. At Madagascar’s election commission, officials were alarmed. “We all recall what the Russians did in the United States during the election,” said Thierry Rakotonarivo, the commission’s vice president. “We were truly afraid.” Of all the places for Russia to try to swing a presidential election, Madagascar is perhaps one of the least expected. The island nation off the coast of southeastern Africa is thousands of miles away from Moscow and has little obvious strategic value for the Kremlin or the global balance of power. But two years after the Russians’ aggressive interference in the United States, here they were, determined to expand their clout and apply their special brand of election meddling to a distant political battleground. The operation was approved by President Vladimir V. Putin and coordinated by some of the same figures who oversaw the disinformation around the 2016 American presidential election, according to dozens of interviews with officials in Madagascar, local operatives hired to take part in the Russian campaign and hundreds of pages of internal documents produced by the Russian operatives. The meddling in Madagascar began just a few weeks after Mr. Putin sat down with the nation’s president, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, in Moscow last year. The meeting, which has never been reported, also included Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close confidant of Mr. Putin who was indicted in the United States for helping to orchestrate Russia’s effort to manipulate the 2016 American election, according to Mr. Rajaonarimampianina and another government minister present on the trip to Moscow. Mr. Putin has repeatedly denied any official effort to tamper with foreign elections. But his sit-down with Madagascar’s president — Mr. Prigozhin by his side — points to his involvement in Russia’s electoral interference in even the smallest, most remote countries. In some vital ways, the Madagascar operation mimicked the one in the United States. There was a disinformation campaign on social media and an attempt to bolster so-called spoiler candidates. The Russians even recruited an apocalyptic cult leader in a strategy to split the opposition vote and sink its chances. “What surprised me is that it was the Russians who came over to my house without me contacting them,” said the cult leader, known as Pastor Mailhol. “They said, ‘If you ever need money, we are going to pay all the expenses.’” But while Russia’s efforts in the United States fit Moscow’s campaign to upend Western democracy and rattle Mr. Putin’s geopolitical rivals, the undertaking in Madagascar often seemed to have a much simpler objective: profit. Before the election, a Russian company that local officials and foreign diplomats say is controlled by Mr. Prigozhin acquired a major stake in a government-run company that mines chromium, a mineral valued for its use in stainless steel. The acquisition set off protests by workers complaining of unpaid wages, canceled benefits and foreign intrusion into a sector that had been a source of national pride for Madagascar. It repeated a pattern in which Russia has swooped into African nations, hoping to reshape their politics for material gain. In the Central African Republic, a former Russian intelligence officer is the top security adviser to the country’s president, while companies linked to Mr. Prigozhin have spread across the nation, snapping up diamonds in both legal and illegal ways, according to government officials, warlords in the diamond trade and registration documents showing Mr. Prigozhin’s growing military and commercial footprint. Last year, three Russian journalists were gunned down while investigating his activities there. “Prigozhin had tremendous success in 2016, and he is now the guy everyone is watching,” said Paul Stronski, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He’s got some boots on the ground, people peddling stuff in different countries in Africa. These are countries with authoritarian-style leaders who need a little extra help to win. And in return, he gets access to some of the goodies.” But Russia’s forays abroad have been far from flawless. For all its efforts, the operation in Madagascar missed its mark at first, plagued by a startling incompetence and corruption that undercuts Russia’s image as a master political manipulator. Campaign materials were riddled with grammatical mistakes. Ballpoint pens meant as election giveaways misspelled Mr. Rajaonarimampianina’s name. Some operatives appeared to undermine the campaign for their own personal gain, demanding fake receipts with double the actual price of publishing the newspaper so they could pocket the difference. “They paid well, but they were messing around,” said the printing house owner, Lola Rasoamaharo. One person working for the campaign described packets of gold and precious stones piled on the bed in the room of a Russian operative, another sign that the people entrusted with the mission were often more interested in profit than politics. They also chose the wrong candidate. As it became clear that Mr. Rajaonarimampianina had little hope of winning, even with their help, the Russian operatives pivoted quickly, dumping the incumbent, whom they referred to as “the piano,” and shifting their support to the eventual winner, Andry Rajoelina. “The piano is very weak,” Yaroslav Ignatovsky, a manager of the operation, wrote to a colleague in a text exchange obtained by the Dossier Center, a London-based research organization. “He’ll never make it. But we have to make it somehow.” The maneuver worked. After the Russians pirouetted to help Mr. Rajoelina — their former opponent — win the election, Mr. Prigozhin’s company was able to negotiate with the new government to keep control of the chromium mining operation, despite the worker protests, and Mr. Prigozhin’s political operatives remain stationed in the capital to this day. It all started with a secret meeting. News reports described Mr. Rajaonarimampianina’s three-day trip to Moscow in March, 2018, as mundane: He attended an investment forum, met a foreign ministry official and received an honorary degree from a local university. But at some point, his plans veered from the published itinerary. Slipping away from the press pool, he made his way to the Kremlin. There, in the private office of the Russian president, he met for no more than 30 minutes with Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin. In an interview, Mr. Rajaonarimampianina explained that Mr. Prigozhin had set up the meeting, and even met him at the airport in Moscow. But he insisted that the presidential election, scheduled for that fall, was not discussed. Others remembered things differently. Harison E. Randriarimanana, a former agriculture minister who accompanied the president to Moscow, said that after the meeting his boss proudly announced that Mr. Putin had agreed to assist with his re-election campaign. “Putin said he wanted to help him,” Mr. Randriarimanana recalled the president saying. “He was going to help us with the election.” Just weeks later, local residents were startled by the sudden appearance of Russian operatives in Antananarivo, Madagascar’s capital. The operation happened alongside an aggressive push by the Kremlin to revive relations with a number of African countries. For Moscow, Africa had been an important ideological battlefield during the Cold War, and Mr. Putin, who makes no secret of his nostalgia for the Soviet Union, views the continent as an important front for combating the West’s global influence. Last month, Mr. Putin played host to more than 40 African heads of state, including Madagascar’s, at a summit meeting in the Black Sea resort town of Sochi to showcase Russia’s growing stature as a player in the region and present his country as a partner preferable to the West. “We see how a number of Western governments have resorted to pressuring, bullying and blackmailing the governments of sovereign African countries,” Mr. Putin said before the meeting. By contrast, he added, “Our African agenda has a positive, aspirational character.” In recent years, a parade of African leaders have paid visits to the Kremlin, seeking lucrative deals with Russia’s giant state-run companies, including for weapons. In dollar terms, Russia is no match for China or the United States, which have tens of billions of dollars worth of economic investment in the continent. But for some leaders in search of a political edge, Russia has developed a handy tool kit, which is where Mr. Prigozhin comes in. After being indicted on charges of intervening in the 2016 American election, he has traveled the world, proffering his services. In Africa, he has found a highly receptive market. He and his operatives have been active in nearly a dozen African countries, including Libya, Sudan and Zimbabwe, analysts say. In the interview, Mr. Rajaonarimampianina described his meeting with Mr. Putin as run-of-the-mill for someone of his stature. During his tenure, he had met with the leaders of China and India, and twice visited the White House. But unlike those encounters, the meeting with Mr. Putin and Mr. Prigozhin was kept secret. Mr. Rajaonarimampianina insisted that he took “not one penny from the Russians” for his campaign, though he did not rule out that the Kremlin worked to assist him without his knowledge. “Everything is possible in politics,” he said. He stumbled a bit when shown a letter with his signature written to a Russian political operative named Oleg Vasilyevich Zakhariyash. In the letter, written in French and stamped “PROJET CONFIDENTIEL,” the president requests the Russian’s help “to resist attempts by international institutions to interfere” in Madagascar’s election. Western diplomats had, in fact, been concerned that the president was trying to delay the vote. “I am convinced,” the president’s letter said, “that certain forces will attempt to call into doubt” the election. Mr. Rajaonarimampianina confirmed that the signature on the letter was his and acknowledged meeting Mr. Zakhariyash in Madagascar, but he said he did not recall writing the letter. Mr. Zakhariyash, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment, was later quoted by RIAFAN, a Russian news outlet connected to companies owned by Mr. Prigozhin, blaming the United States, Britain and France for interfering in the Madagascar elections. Local residents hired by the Russian operation in Madagascar described Mr. Zakhariyash as “the boss.” Likewise, one of the Russian unit’s internal spreadsheets identified him as the “head of department.” He is also one of two authors of a confidential report detailing plans for the Madagascar campaign, including the creation of a “troll factory” to focus on social media, echoing the tactics Mr. Prigozhin is accused of unleashing on the United States. The documents — along with text exchanges and emails between Russian operatives — were obtained and analyzed by the Dossier Center, a London-based investigative organization founded by Mr. Putin’s longtime nemesis, the former oil billionaire Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky. Through interviews with officials, candidates and local operatives in Madagascar, The New York Times independently confirmed much of the information in the documents, which the Dossier Center said were provided by moles working within Mr. Prigozhin’s organization. The spreadsheets name more than 30 Russians working in the country ahead of the election, calling them media managers, lawyers, translators and a “counterpropaganda technologist.” People in Madagascar hired by the Russians to work on the campaign verified many of the operatives’ identities. Many of them appear to be from St. Petersburg, where Mr. Prigozhin’s so-called troll factory is based. But not all. Several worked for the Russian-backed separatist government in eastern Ukraine. One attracted attention earlier this year when his wife posted a photo of her battered and bruised face on Facebook, accusing her husband of beating her. Few appeared to have much expertise on Madagascar, or on Africa at all — and it showed, locals said. They often used a translation application on their phones to communicate and had little understanding of local politics. “They’re always going around with money, they’re always going around with women,” said one Malagasy man who worked with the Russians and feared reprisals. “They just thought it was all very simple in Madagascar. They arrived and that’s it, let’s go. That’s why it all fell apart.” Nearly two decades ago, André Christian Dieudonné Mailhol, the founder and pastor of the Church of the Apocalypse, said he received a message from God that he would be president of Madagascar one day. He did not predict, however, that three Russians would turn up like Magi on his doorstep 18 years later with an offer to help fulfill that prophecy. “They said that they came here to help me with the presidential election,” he said. The three gathered in his brightly painted living room in 2018, peppering him with questions: “How old are you? Why do you want to run for the presidency?” Pastor Mailhol explained God’s plan for him, and they offered him cash, promising to fully fund his campaign. They never fully explained who they were, he said, beyond giving their first names — Andrei, Vladimir and Roman — and never said what they wanted in return. Pastor Mailhol didn’t ask. “I just thought, a powerful country came to my house and suggested helping me. Why would I bother them with questions like, ‘Who are you? What are you here for?’” the pastor, 59, recalled. “No other foreign countries came to help me. They were the only ones, so I did not want to ask much. I was O.K. with that.” The strategy of supporting so-called spoiler candidates is another echo of the 2016 plot to subvert the American election, in which Russian social media bots encouraged support for figures like Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate — as a way, officials say, to draw votes away from Hillary Clinton. Pastor Mailhol said his Russian team wrote some of his speeches and paid for campaign posters and television advertising. On one internal spreadsheet, the “Pastor Group” is identified as Andrei Kramar, Vladimir Boyarishchev and Roman Pozdnyakov. Shown photos of the men from Facebook, Pastor Mailhol and his assistants confirmed they were the men who worked with his campaign. They made for a curious team. A photo of Mr. Boyarishchev posted to a Russian social media site in 2012 shows him shirtless, flexing his biceps and wearing the blue beret of a United Nations peacekeeper. Other social media posts suggest he served in a United Nations mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Pastor Mailhol said he spoke excellent French, which many educated Malagasy know well. The other two have equally colorful histories. In a Facebook post from a decade ago, Mr. Kramar describes himself as a member of Mr. Putin’s political party, United Russia, but later he popped up in eastern Ukraine as a functionary in a Kremlin-backed separatist enclave that has been fighting a war against Ukraine since 2014. Ukrainian authorities say the third operative, Mr. Pozdnyakov, is also involved with the pro-Kremlin rebels. His wife, once a United Russia member of Parliament, is the head of the separatist government’s election commission. Other presidential candidates in Madagascar gave similar accounts of Russians turning up out of the blue, some with bags of cash. Onja Rasamimanana, who worked for a history professor-turned-candidate named Jean Omer Beriziky, said she coordinated with a Maksim, an Anastasia and a Margo, who was the interpreter. “And then a Grigori showed up,” she said. “They were looking for fresh faces,” she said. “They didn’t explain anything. They didn’t mention anything regarding their motivations.” She said that her candidate, Mr. Beriziky, later told her the Russians offered $2 million in campaign funding, but ultimately provided less than half a million. Two Russians also approached a pop megastar running for president, Rasolofondraosolo Zafimahaleo, also known as Dama. Over four meetings, Mr. Zafimahaleo said, the Russians tried to pressure him to support a delay in the election so that the incumbent had more time to campaign. “They made big promises,” Mr. Zafimahaleo said. “‘If you do what we want you to do, we’ll help your campaign,’” he said they told him. He refused, he said, suspecting that the Russians had come to exploit Madagascar’s natural resources. Only three of the Russian operatives identified by local hires of the campaign responded to requests for comment. All acknowledged visiting Madagascar last year, but only one admitted working as a pollster on behalf of the president. The others said they were simply tourists. Pyotr Korolyov, described as a sociologist on one spreadsheet, spent much of the summer of 2018 and fall hunched over a computer, deep in polling data at La Résidence Ankerana, a hotel the Russians used as their headquarters, until he was hospitalized with the measles, according to one person who worked with him. In an email exchange, Mr. Korolyov confirmed that he had come down with the measles, but rejected playing a role in a Russian operation. He did defend the idea of one, though. “Russia should influence elections around the world, the same way the United States influences elections,” he wrote. “Sooner or later Russia will return to global politics as a global player,” he added. “And the American establishment will just have to accept that.” ‘We Were So Dumb’ As the election approached, the Russians grew nervous and frustrated. In one text message, Mr. Ignatovsky, who helped oversee the operation, describes Madagascar as a “black hole.” One of his colleagues complains that “everything is ass-backward,” and that the “unhappy locals” were impeding the team’s work. But the Russians were setting off alarms, too. An op-ed in a local newspaper warned that after meddling in the United States, Russia had set its sights on Madagascar. “Russia badly wants to make good use of its impressive experience in destabilization” by intervening in Madagascar, the article said. “Vodka will flow like water if they achieve their goal.” Relations with the various candidates the Russians were backing began to sour. By September, they had dumped the incumbent, Mr. Rajaonarimampianina, deciding he was too unpopular to win, according to internal communications. In the interview in Paris, Mr. Rajaonarimampianina said he was aware the Russians were supporting other candidates and became indignant when told of the Russians’ conclusion that he was a losing bet. “How could they know that I will lose the election?” he said. In the first round, he received less than 9 percent of the vote, finishing a distant third. The Russians shifted their support to Mr. Rajoelina, a young former mayor who had been Madagascar’s transitional president after a coup in 2009. In the campaign’s final weeks, Pastor Mailhol said, the team of Russians made a request: Drop out of the race and support Mr. Rajoelina. He refused. The Russians made the same proposal to the history professor running for president, saying, “‘If you accept this deal you will have money,’” according to Ms. Rasamimanana, the professor’s campaign manager. When the professor refused, she said, the Russians created a fake Facebook page that mimicked his official page and posted an announcement on it that he was supporting Mr. Rajoelina. The members of the so-called Pastor Group — Mr. Kramar, Mr. Pozdnyakov and Mr. Boyarishchev — were arrested and deported last year after organizing a protest in front of the French Embassy. They left without fully paying what they owed their local operatives, said Niaina Rakotonjanahary, the pastor’s campaign spokeswoman. “It happened to all of us who worked there,” she said. “We were so dumb.” As in the American election, it is not clear whether the Russians directly colluded with the eventual winner, Mr. Rajoelina, or simply operated a parallel campaign to support him. Before switching sides, the Russians had local hires write articles disparaging Mr. Rajoelina, according to one of the people who worked for them. “They asked me to write bad things about Andry Rajoelina — that he sold our lands to the Chinese,” said the person, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals. “During the second round of the presidential election, though, they asked me to write good things about Andry Rajoelina.” Mr. Rajoelina declined to comment, but an official from his campaign said that his team was aware of Russian payments to other candidates In the end, the Russians retained their prize — control over the chromium operation. They now maintain a staff of 30 in the country, including engineers and geologists. The contract gives them a 70 percent stake in the venture, said Nirina Rakotomanantsoa, the managing director of the Malagasy company that owns the remaining share. “The contract is already signed,” he said. “I am thankful the Russians are here.” Not all the Russian operatives appeared satisfied. In a moment of doubt, Yevgeny Kopot, a Prigozhin functionary who appears to play a coordinating role for operations in different African countries, sent a text message to a colleague in Madagascar in January. “Do you think that we’re disgracing our country?” he asked, according to texts obtained by the Dossier Center. “Or devaluing her name?” The colleague told him not to worry. “If you think about it,” she replied, “the whole planet is disgraced. Not the planet, precisely, but humanity.”
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Foreign diplomats and political colleagues have told Tundu Lissu, 51, that "the order is out that I be killed on arrival", he told @thetimes from Belgium, where he has been recuperating Africa |
He predicted that unless Mr @MagufuliJP’s campaign of terror was checked “we are looking at Zimbabwe and all that entails — the complete breakdown of economy and society” Two years after he survived being shot 16 times by unknown assailants, Tanzania’s best-known opposition figure has been warned that he will be killed if he returns home to challenge the autocratic president for power. Foreign diplomats and political colleagues have told Tundu Lissu, 51, that “the order is out that I be killed on arrival”, he told The Times from Belgium, where he has been recuperating. The former MP and chief whip for the main opposition Chadema party has approached foreign governments to provide diplomatic protection so that he can return to campaign against President Magufuli, 60, in next year’s general elections amid a climate of fear in the former British colony. New independent reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch paint an alarming picture of Tanzania’s descent into tyranny since Mr Magufuli took office in 2015. It had been a stable, liberal state of 57 million people in a region strewn with autocracies before he introduced draconian laws designed to silence critics. Mr Lissu had 22 operations after the shooting, which took place outside his home on a secure compound for senior parliamentarians in the capital, Dodoma. Six bullets were taken from his stomach. One is lodged near his spine. No arrests have been made. “No one is safe in Tanzania while Magufuli is in power and I pose a significant threat to him,” Mr Lissu said. “Multiple local and international contacts have heard of the order out to get me as soon as I return. “The thinking of the government is that ‘yes, there will be a fuss for a few weeks rather like Jamal Khashoggi [the journalist murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul] but then it is a return to business as usual’. The risk of killing me is seen as manageable.” His Chadema party will not contest this month’s local elections, accusing the ruling Party of the Revolution (Chama Cha Mapinduzi, or CCM) of cheating and terrifying its candidates. However, Mr Lissu is determined to challenge Mr Magufuli next year to prevent him winning a second five-year term. In its report Amnesty condemned the regime’s “record of ruthlessly disembowelling” human rights. As well as a crackdown on political opponents, journalists and critics have been silenced with beatings, arrests, disappearances and draconian new laws. The 2015 Cyber Crimes Act has given police the right to monitor citizens’ digital communications, while the wide definition of sedition in the 2016 Media Services Act has made it effectively illegal to criticise the government in any way. Mr Magufuli, known as “the bulldozer” for his fondness for ambitious, expensive infrastructure projects, has stated publicly that he is monitoring conversations between his ministers. The president’s tyrannical tendencies are hurting his country’s economy, the International Monetary Fund has said. Foreign direct investment fell to 2 per cent of GDP in 2017, down from about 5 per cent in 2014, according to the World Bank. Foreign exchange reserves have dropped by 20 per cent in the past year. Mr Lissu said he had been shocked by Britain’s “selfish silence” as it continues to channel millions of pounds in aid to the country, much of it through the government. he predicted that unless Mr Magufuli’s campaign of terror was checked “we are looking at Zimbabwe and all that entails — the complete breakdown of economy and society”.
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Zimbabwe Bourse CEO Bemoans 80% Currency Crash Ravaging Market @markets Africa |
When it comes to adverse conditions for stock-market trading, Zimbabwe’s bourse belongs in a special category for extreme cases. Consider the challenges confronting Zimbabwe Stock Exchange Chief Executive Officer Justin Bgoni: a local currency that has crashed more than 80% since a peg to the U.S. dollar was ended in February and annual inflation that the International Monetary Fund estimates at 300%. While Harare’s Industrial Index is at a record high and market capitalization in local currency terms has surged by 169% from a year ago to Z$31 billion, in dollar terms they have crumbled to the lowest in a decade, at $1.9 billion. In the past, investors have used the stock market as a shelter to ride out economic turmoil in the southern African nation, but its haven status has been shaken by the return of the Zimbabwe dollar and hyperinflation. “Our market capitalization in U.S. dollar terms -- that’s just been worse, we are almost half of what we are normally at,” Bgoni, in the job since March, said in an interview in his office in the capital, Harare. “If it was a normal country, where things are not indexed in U.S. dollars, things wouldn’t be so bad.” When it comes to assessing individual stocks, hyperinflation skews the picture for traders, said Lloyd Mlotshwa, head of equities at IH Securities, a Harare-based brokerage. While companies are showing significant gains in revenue, actual volumes of products sold are down and overall performance is deteriorating. “The massive devaluation of the currency has also caused a dislocation in stock market valuations,” said Mlotshwa. “Some firms are trading below the replacement values of their plants. At the same time, sentiment is so negative that this isn’t necessarily being interpreted as a buy signal.” In February, the 1:1 parity peg between so-called bond notes and the U.S dollar was removed. In June, Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube abolished the use of the multicurrency system and reintroduced the Zimbabwe dollar as sole legal tender, almost a decade after it went out of circulation because of hyperinflation. The Zimbabwe dollar on Friday was trading at 15.85 per U.S dollar, compared with the February rate of 2.5 adopted at the end of parity. Economic conditions in Zimbabwe, its struggling companies and inconsistent government policies all make local stocks less attractive to foreigners, Bgoni said. In terms of market development and options for investors, he estimated the bourse trailed African peers in Botswana, Kenya and Nigeria by about 10 years. “We are really down on foreign investors and we almost have no new money coming in,” he said. Foreigners accounted for 15% of trades in October, the lowest in three years, and down from the record 82% in February this year. “We want foreign investors, especially when you have a devaluation of this sort, because they would be able to see bargains and bring up the prices,” Bgoni said. “But then, they can’t take their money out,” due to foreign-exchange controls and other Treasury regulations, he added.
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@Visa is paying $200 million for 20% stake in @InterswitchGRP Nigeria's largest electronic payments company, @SkyNews reports @qzafrica Africa |
The investment places a billion-dollar valuation on 17-year old Interswitch and is a major boon ahead of a proposed initial public offering slated for the London Stock Exchange next year. Interswitch declined to comment on news of the investment. While Visa’s stake purchase would confirm Interswitch’s unicorn status, the company was reportedly set to be valued at as much as $1.5 billion ahead of a planned IPO next year. The company’s previous plans for a 2016 IPO were scrapped amid a recession in Nigeria. Interswitch would not be the first Africa-focused tech company to achieve the billion-dollar so-called unicorn status. Jumia, the e-commerce company, led by a mix of international executives and investors listed for over $1.4 billion in April. The company’s services range from powering online payment platforms and point-of-sale terminals to a debit card network with 19 million active cards. Given its sheer size, strength and lifespan, Interswitch is often thought of as part of the establishment, alongside traditional banks, that fintech startups might be looking to disrupt. In fact, numerous new entrant startups in online payments launched on the premise of providing alternative online payment platforms to Interswitch which was deemed inflexible and too expensive for merchants. For its part, Interswitch has already signaled its appetite for acquisitions in African markets. Last week, it bought a majority stake in e-Clat Healthcare, a health-tech company. It also acquired VANSO, a financial services startup, in 2016 and acquired a majority stake in Paynet, an East Africa-focused payments provider two years earlier.
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Their so-called Building Bridges Initiative envisions an end to a winner-take-all electoral system, watering down the executive's powers and an enhanced role for parliament, according to a draft seen by @business @herbling Africa |
A plan championed by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga to end ethnic animosity may end up widening fault lines that have triggered sporadic violence in the East African nation. The two men commissioned a study on how to promote reconciliation in the wake of a disputed election in 2017 that threatened to reignite a conflict in which more than 1,100 people died a decade earlier. Their so-called Building Bridges Initiative envisions an end to a winner-take-all electoral system, watering down the executive’s powers and an enhanced role for parliament, according to a draft seen by Bloomberg. The document was verified by people with knowledge of the report, who asked not to be identified because the information is still private and could be amended. While most politicians initially welcomed the rapprochement between the one-time foes and their attempts at nation-building, it’s caused ructions in the ruling Jubilee Party because it could pave the way for Odinga to become president in 2022 and leave Kenyatta’s deputy, William Ruto, out in the cold. “Ruto is deeply suspicious of BBI because he sees it as a vehicle to create a coalition that excludes him,” said Nic Cheeseman, a professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. “The threat is that this then raises the political temperatures, and each side starts to prepare for the worst.” Kenyan politics have long been a minefield, with largely ethnic-based coalitions determining who wields power. The five biggest groups are Kenyatta’s Kikuyu, Ruto’s Kalenjin, Odinga’s Luo, the Luhya and the Kamba, and whoever secures backing from at least three of them is almost assured of winning the presidency. Allegiances are consistently shifting. Ethnic violence, mainly between Kenyatta and Ruto supporters, flared up after a disputed 2007 vote and both men were indicted by the International Criminal Court for their alleged roles in the bloodshed until the cases were thrown out for lack of evidence. The two then joined forces to win elections in 2013 and 2017. While Ruto backed Kenyatta for the presidency on the understanding that he’d be next in line for the job in 2022, their relationship has soured since Odinga entered the fray. “The intention from the word go is to give Raila a safe route to power,” said Herman Manyora, a political analyst and lecturer at the University of Nairobi. “For as long as it destroys Ruto’s presidential dream, he won’t support it.” Odinga, 74, who leads the Orange Democratic Movement and has unsuccessfully run for office four times, has also had a fractious relationship with Kenyatta and accused him of stealing the last two elections. They reconciled in March 2018, but the terms of the deal they reached were never publicly revealed. Odinga last year said he’d continue to push for a raft of reforms including the reintroduction of the role of a prime minister -- a post he held under a power-sharing accord that helped halt the 2007-8 violence. A final version of the Building Bridges Initiative report will be presented to Kenyatta and Odinga this week, according to Martin Kimani, the secretary of a panel that’s drafting the plan. He described its contents as “monumental,” but declined to reveal details. Besides proposing changes to the way the government is structured, the panel will also make recommendations on how to tackle corruption and share out the nation’s prosperity, according to its nine-point brief. The initiative will be subjected to a national debate and possibly a referendum before being formally adopted. If a referendum does happen, it will likely be a dress rehearsal of the 2022 vote that will pit Odinga against Ruto, according to Manyora. Ruto will back the new plan if it benefits the Kenyan people, but will oppose it if it only creates positions for a few, his spokesman David Mugonyi said by phone. Odinga’s spokesman Dennis Onyango said he couldn’t talk about the BBI report because he hasn’t seen it, while Kenyatta’s publicist Kanze Dena declined to comment. It’s unclear whether the new initiative will have the desired effect, said Bobby Mkangi, a lawyer who helped draft Kenya’s current constitution. “In a sense, it could either be burning bridges or building bridges,” he said. “We may have to engage in a trial-and-error journey in the quest of nation-building and trying to find what works best for us and mitigate exclusion.”
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