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Thursday 02nd of January 2020 |
Henri Cartier-Bresson Queen Charlotte's ball. London. GB. 1959. Henri Cartier-Bresson | @MagnumPhotos Africa |
In the image of Queen Charlotte’s Ball from 1959, the camera captures a scene from above the dancefloor. An annual debutante ball that took place in London from 1780 to 1976, and was resurrected in the early 2000s, the function served to ‘promote’ young women of prominent social ranking and to celebrate their places as newly-recognized adults in high society. Cartier-Bresson’s scene attracts our gaze to the voluminous taffeta of the young women’s dresses moving as they spin in time to the music, their partners’ suit tails mimicking their motion. The scene is alive, filled with possibility for the women in the scene for whom the dance is a social ritual signalling their next steps into a new life stage.
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Unrest in Baghdad could instead create a pretext for the Americans to increase their military presence in Iraq to put additional pressure on Tehran and Damascus, Balmasov told RT Law & Politics |
“A full evacuation of the Embassy could be seen as severing all diplomatic ties, which is impossible” given the current level of US involvement in Iraq, Lukyanov noted. In addition to the embassy and other diplomatic offices, Washington has a major military presence on Iraqi soil, using it to project power in the region. Sergey Balmasov of the Institute of the Middle East in Moscow, also believes that the withdrawal of the US from Iraq is unrealistic. Such a move would hurt President Donald Trump’s chances of reelection in 2020 and “lead to Iran strengthening its position in the region.”
Unrest in Baghdad could instead create a pretext for the Americans to increase their military presence in Iraq to put additional pressure on Tehran and Damascus, Balmasov told RT, adding, “I doubt that Trump will now send a massive 200,000 contingent into the country, which his predecessor Barack Obama earlier pulled out.”
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"The Iraq war was a colossal mistake that strengthened Iran beyond belief. There was never any realistic chance of installing a pro-American government in Shiite-dominated Baghdad." writes @RMConservative Law & Politics |
The Iraq war was a colossal mistake that strengthened Iran beyond belief. There was never any realistic chance of installing a pro-American government in Shiite-dominated Baghdad. Our forces are eternally on the hook both for the Iranian-backed Shiite attacks and the Sunni insurgencies, in response to the Shiite hegemony threatening our forces and assets in the country. This is the enduring lesson our policymakers refuse to understand as they continue to grope in the darkness, perpetuating policies in the Middle East based on illusions. In the case of Iraq, there is this illusion that Baghdad is somehow our ally, when in fact it is perpetually an ally of Iran. This is painfully obvious from the developments today in Iraq. Because of our fear that Iran will retaliate against our forces in Iraq, our government has largely held back from destroying Iran’s naval piracy operations in the Persian Gulf, which, unlike the Iraq nation-building mission, actually affects our strategic interests. This notion that we must remain in Baghdad to fight off Iranian influence is the most circular argument imaginable. The Shiite population is already going to side with Iran in perpetuity, and it will forever spawn endless rounds of Sunni insurgencies. We will never be able to fix the constituencies that these terrorist actors represent. The best we can do is free ourselves from this entanglement, so that we can confront Iran directly from a position of strength. Foreign policy hawks will call for a robust response to Iran for attacking our embassy. But we need to also think strategically in the long term. On behalf of whom are we fighting in Baghdad? Why are we backing a government led by Adil Abdul-Mahdi, a man who worked closely with Iran while in exile under Saddam Hussein? That question must finally be answered after two decades of failure. We have nothing to show for the war other than tens of thousands of dead and wounded Americans, Iranian hegemony, the Sunnis fueling more terrorism, and 200,000 unvetted immigrants we’ve taken in from Iraq – equally divided between Sunnis and Shias. What our policymakers refuse to understand is that the Middle East is not like a game of Risk with different pieces on the board representing different leaders or terror groups. There are multiple warring tribes of Islamists in all of these countries, and in places like Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, there really is no “country” to speak of. The State Department said yesterday, “We are standing with the Iraqi people.” But who are those people? Which ones? On behalf of which government over which territory that can be held, and in what way? To recognize that the Baghdadi government is an enemy of the United States is to acknowledge that not only was the Iraq war a mistake, but that its outcome was a boon for Iran. The same failed generals and civilian leaders who led us into this are not going to readily admit that. Trump himself must finally rectify these mistakes and make this coming decade an America-first decade, where we only fight and die for our own interests at our own border and for strategic assets elsewhere. It’s time to fight to our own strengths rather than to the strengths of our enemies.
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Iran just outplayed the United States - again @washingtonpost Law & Politics |
To call the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad merely a diplomatic mission is to severely understate its scope and size. At 104 acres, the compound is nearly the size of Vatican City and comes complete with its own dormitories, dining halls, electrical plant, fire department and everything else needed to support the thousands of diplomats and contractors housed inside its thick walls. I have been there many times, and every time I felt like I was being magically whisked from the Middle East to small-town America. So it was all the more shocking to read that hundreds of supporters of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed militia, broke into the compound on Tuesday and ransacked the reception areas familiar to all visitors. To anyone of my generation (I was born in 1969), it instantly conjured up terrible memories of the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 to 1981. The protesters even shouted the same slogan — “Death to America” — as the Iranian hostage-takers. Mercifully, Tuesday’s embassy invasion ended without any Americans being harmed after Iraqi security forces belatedly arrived to restore order, but the demonstrators remain just outside the embassy walls. This is another reminder that in the long-running conflict between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran, we have repeatedly been humbled and hurt by a smaller but more determined and ruthless adversary. Indeed, for the past 41 years, Iran has put on a master class in irregular warfare, leaving the United States flummoxed about how to respond. In the 1980s, Iranian-backed forces took dozens of Americans hostage in Lebanon and demolished both the U.S. Embassy and the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut with truck bombs that killed hundreds. President Ronald Reagan was so desperate to free the hostages that he was willing to sell missiles to Iran — a backroom maneuver that blew up into the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration after the proceeds were secretly diverted to the Nicaraguan Contras. In 1987, Reagan sent U.S. naval forces to prevent Iran from closing the Persian Gulf as part of its war against Iraq. One U.S. Navy frigate was nearly sunk by an Iraqi missile and another by an Iranian mine, but U.S. forces inflicted heavy damages on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Navy and accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger airliner. This was the first and last time that U.S. and Iranian forces engaged in direct battle. Iran prefers to do most of its damage via proxies. Following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iranian-sponsored Shiite militias killed hundreds of U.S. service members. President George W. Bush condemned Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil,” but wisely decided against escalating hostilities. The United States was mired in enough wars without starting another one against a nation of 81 million people. The Iranians took advantage of Bush’s ill-advised decision to overthrow their nemesis Saddam Hussein to extend Iranian influence across Iraq under the very noses of American occupiers. Iran was already the dominant player in Lebanon. In the past two decades, it has become the dominant player in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, too. The new Persian Empire stretches from Tehran to Beirut. The only effective U.S. response to the Iranian threat since Reagan’s tanker war was President Barack Obama’s decision to conclude a deal with Iran in 2015 that would freeze its nuclear program. The deal did nothing to curb Iran’s regional power play and may have even fueled it by lifting economic sanctions — which is why I and others opposed it at the time. But it did at least stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. President Trump blundered by exiting the nuclear deal in 2018 and imposing economic sanctions on Iran in 2019, even though it was complying with the agreement. Pushed into a corner, Iran and its proxies have lashed out by allegedly attacking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, shooting down a U.S. drone, hitting a major Saudi oil facility with cruise missiles — and now rocketing a compound near Kirkuk, Iraq. The latter attack, which killed an American contractor and injured four U.S. troops on Friday, led Trump to retaliate with airstrikes across Iraq and Syria that killed 25 members of Kataib Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia blamed for the rocket attack, and sparked anti-American outrage. The embassy invasion on Tuesday was Iran’s riposte to make clear that it will not bow to American pressure. Your move, Mr. Trump. The United States has only two ways out of this escalating crisis: fight or negotiate. A war with Iran, as I have previously argued, could be the mother of all quagmires; it could easily spin out of control with tit-for-tat responses of the kind we have seen in recent days. Better to negotiate. That would mean trying to rebuild a tougher nuclear deal in return for the lifting of U.S. sanctions. But Trump shows little interest in either seriously negotiating or fighting. He has waged economic warfare on Iran while doing nothing to curb its regional aggression; indeed, by withdrawing U.S. troops from part of northern Syria, he has allowed an extension of Iranian influence. So we are left with the worst of all possible worlds: Iran is once again waging a low-intensity conflict, and America once again has no effective response.
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Revelation 6:12-13: When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood Law & Politics |
Revelation 6:12-13: When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earth- quake, and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.
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"We Are the Ones Who Will Awaken the Dawn" @Consortiumnews @vijayprashad Law & Politics |
Millions of people are on the streets, from India to Chile. Democracy is both their promise and it is what has betrayed them. They aspire to the democratic spirit but find that democratic institutions – saturated by money and power – are inadequate. They are on the streets for more democracy, deeper democracy, a different kind of democracy. Sharply, in each and every region of India, ordinary people unaffiliated to political parties alongside the Indian Left have taken to the streets to demand the withdrawal of a fascistic law that would turn Muslims into non-citizens. This immense wave rises even when the government tries to declare demonstrations illegal, and even as the government shuts down the Internet. Twenty people have been killed by the police forces thus far. None of this stopped the people, who declared loudly that they would not accept the suffocation of the Far Right. This continues to be an unanticipated and overwhelming uprising of the population. The use of divisive social issues allows for a diversion from the issues of hunger and hopelessness. This is what the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch called the ‘swindle of fulfillment’. The benefit of social production, Bloch wrote, ‘is reaped by the big capitalist upper stratum, which employs gothic dreams against proletarian realities’. The entertainment industry erodes proletarian culture with the acid of aspirations that cannot be fulfilled under the capitalist system. But these aspirations are enough to push aside any working-class project. Democracy is a game of numbers. Oligarchies are forced by the establishment of democratic systems to respect the fact that the masses must participate in political life. The masses must be political, but – from the standpoint of the bourgeoisie – they must not be permitted to control the political dynamic; they must be political and de-politicized at the same time. They must be agitated sufficiently, but not agitated so much so that they challenge the membrane that protects the economy and society from democracy. Once that membrane is breached, the fragility of capitalist legitimacy ends. Democracy cannot be allowed into the arena of the economy and of society; it must remain at the level of politics, where it must be restricted to electoral processes. the unemployment crisis cannot be solved unless this contradiction is resolved on behalf of social labour. Since that is unspeakable for the bourgeoisie, it no longer seeks to resolve the contradiction but settles for a ‘bait and switch’ strategy – it is acceptable to talk of unemployment, for instance, but there is no need to blame private capital for that; instead, blame migrants, or other scapegoats. To accomplish this ‘bait and switch’, the Far Right has to go against another seam of thought in classical liberalism: the protection of minorities. Democratic constitutions have all been aware of the ‘tyranny of the majority’, setting barriers to majoritarianism through laws and regulations that protect minority rights and cultures. These laws and regulations have been essential for the widening of democracy in society. But the Far Right’s democracy is premised not on these protections but on their destruction. It seeks to inflame the majority against the minority in order to bring the masses onto its side, but not to allow the classes within them to develop their own politics. Minorities are disenfranchised in the name of democracy; violence is let loose in the name of the feelings of the majority. Citizenship is narrowed around the definitions of the majority; people are told to accept the culture of the majority. This is what the BJP government has done in India with the Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019. It is what the people reject. By the swindle of majoritarianism, the Far Right can appear to be democratic when it operates to protect the membrane between politics (merely in the electoral sense) and society, as well as the economy. The protection of this membrane is essential, the abolishment of any potential expansion of democracy into society and the economy forbidden. The fiction of democracy is maintained as the promise of democracy is set aside. It is this promise that provokes the people onto the streets in India, Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, and elsewhere.
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21-OCT-2019 :: The New Economy of Anger Law & 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. Antonio Gramsci wrote, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear. now is the time of monsters.” Leadership in the c21st has become nationalistic and jingoistic, horizons have been narrowed. President Trump is not John F Kennedy. Xi Jinping is all about Han China. Narendra Modi is all about the Hindutva. Boris is all about Brexit. In Africa, other than the Nobel Prize Winner Abiy, who else is sketching out a horizon? Today’s leadership does not appreciate the humanity of all of its citizens, how can they appreciate the humanity of the world or as Marshall McLuhan once put it:- “There are no passengers on the spaceship earth. We are all crew.” Ryszard Kapuściński wrote:- “Revolution must be distinguished from revolt, coup d’état, palace takeover. A coup or a palace takeover may be planned, but a revolution—never. Its outbreak, the hour of that outbreak, takes everyone, even those who have been striving for it, unawares. They stand amazed at the spontaneity that appears suddenly and destroys everything in its path. It demolishes so ruthlessly that in the end, it may annihilate the ideals that called it into being.” This is a Revolution and it is a Global Phenomenon. Ryszard Kapucinski also said: “If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over.” It is not over. More and more people are gathering in the Streets.
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"To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so." Proudhon Law & Politics |
“To be GOVERNED is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue to do so.” Proudhon
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"Ghosn with the Wind" and "Ghosn, Ghosn Gone." @business Law & Politics |
How did Carlos Ghosn do it? The former head of Nissan Motor Co. and Renault SA, who was awaiting the first of two trials in Tokyo, somehow evaded almost round-the-clock manned and video surveillance and heavy restrictions on his freedom of movement to flee to Lebanon. From there, Ghosn released an email Tuesday decrying the “injustice and political persecution” of the Japanese judicial system. The 65-year-old faced charges of financial misconduct and raiding corporate resources for personal gain, allegations he denies. Soon after he resurfaced, the internet lit up with unconfirmed reports and theories of how Ghosn, now an international fugitive, pulled off an escape befitting a Hollywood thriller -- one that will be very hard for Japanese authorities to live down. There are still more questions than answers. In one speculative account, which cited no sources, Lebanese television station MTV reported that Ghosn smuggled himself out of Japan in a large musical instrument box after a Christmas band visited his residence in Tokyo. He was then shipped out of the country and later entered Lebanon from Turkey on a private plane. Ghosn’s getaway followed weeks of planning, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter. A team of accomplices assembled last weekend to carry out his exfiltration, and his wife, Carole, played a major role in the operation, the newspaper said. A detailed report in the French daily Le Monde, citing unidentified sources, similarly reported that Carole Ghosn organized the escape with the help of her brothers and their contacts in Turkey, and that her husband entered Lebanon with an ID card. He may have decided to flee because of new information Japanese authorities could have obtained from a Swiss bank and from offshore centers including Dubai, the newspaper reported.
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U.S. Intelligence Agencies Prepare to Pull Back Officers From Africa @nytimes Africa |
An expected withdrawal of military forces would lead the C.I.A. and other agencies to reduce their presence, leaving some officials and experts fearful of a gap in stopping terrorist threats. WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies face a significant reduction in their counterterrorism collection efforts in Africa if a proposed withdrawal of United States military forces is carried out by the Pentagon, intelligence officials said. The new planning to pull back intelligence officers deployed in Western Africa and other parts of the continent has been partly driven by the troop deployment review, which is expected to reduce American forces in Niger, Nigeria and other countries in the region. The presence of American troops allows intelligence officers to travel far from traditional diplomatic outposts. The troops also provide protection in the event of spreading chaos or instability. Stark evidence of the risk was seen in the lethal 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, and increased security was ordered for those outposts. If service members are soon pulled out of Africa, the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies simply would not be able to safely deploy their officers far beyond embassy walls, officials say. One intelligence official called the potential shift of C.I.A. officers out of Africa stunningly dangerous. The decision would not just hurt the United States’ ability to detect and stop terrorism threats, the official said, but also hinder America’s ability to collect intelligence about what rival nations, like Russia and China, are doing in Africa. While it is difficult to assess how much of an intelligence deficit would follow a troop pullback, the loss would be real, said Nicholas J. Rasmussen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “With a smaller military and intelligence presence, we limit how much intelligence we collect. Our analysts have a less rich pool of information on which to draw when reaching conclusions and forecasting threat conditions,” said Mr. Rasmussen, the acting executive director of Arizona State University’s McCain Institute. “Our confidence levels in the analysis we produce end up being lower.” Trump administration officials would not say how many intelligence officers could be affected by the changes because the number of officers in the field is a closely guarded secret. The pullback of intelligence officers is not driven only by the planned troop reductions. Counterterrorism officials are also being asked to rethink their work and narrow their focus to the most dangerous terrorist groups, according to current and former intelligence officials. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States shifted resources to fighting terrorism. While most of those were focused on groups like Al Qaeda and then the Islamic State, both with the reach to orchestrate or inspire attacks on the United States homeland, American military and intelligence agencies also built up resources against regional terrorism threats. The Trump administration, hoping to prevent the United States from becoming entangled in more long wars, wants the military and intelligence forces to scale down their ambitions. Under the plans now being discussed, fewer resources would be allocated to monitoring regional threats — terrorist groups that might spout anti-American speech but do not have the wherewithal to mount a significant attack on United States territory. Mr. Rasmussen said no terrorist organization in Africa so far had successfully been able to attack the American homeland, giving credence to the idea that too much emphasis had been put on such groups. But without military and intelligence personnel on the ground, working with partner nations to help combat regional terrorist organizations, it becomes difficult to assess which groups have or could have the capabilities to mount an attack on the United States, Mr. Rasmussen said. “If our intelligence picture is degraded significantly by a drawdown in presence, we run the risk of failing to collect that critical bit of intelligence that might give us insight on the capability part of the equation,” Mr. Rasmussen said. The shift, military and intelligence officials said, is also part of an effort to move resources toward countering the rise of China and to more adroitly compete with Beijing. But some American officials believe that cutting back the intelligence and military presence will reduce the United States’ clout in Africa at the very time it is becoming a front line in the influence battle with Russia and China. The three nations are jostling for prominence in sub-Saharan Africa. Russia’s mercenary force, the Wagner Group, has had a presence in the Central African Republic and other countries, said Sean McFate, a professor at the National Defense University and the author of “The New Rules of War.” China has a military support base in Djibouti and is using its Belt and Road Initiative to expand its connections throughout the continent. “Where we are competing with China is in Africa,” Mr. McFate said. “It seems shortsighted to cede the field. It is strategically myopic to move intelligence — which is the only way we are going to find out on the ground in these places — out of the region.” Some intelligence officials insist that even if American military forces or C.I.A. officers are collecting less front-line intelligence, analysts in Washington can still draw valuable insights and warnings on terrorist threats. But Mr. McFate said gathering knowledge about Africa was not like Eastern Europe during the years when American intelligence focused on the communist threat. A diplomat sitting in the capital simply cannot assess the strength of a terrorist group operating in a distant province, or the influence of Russian or Chinese mercenary companies. The C.I.A. does not take policy positions in interagency discussions, and only points out the implications of different approaches. Nevertheless, inside the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, many experts on Africa and counterterrorism are worried that the troop pullback will have a deep impact on collection efforts, according to intelligence officials. Even so, some officials have played down the planned pullback of troops and intelligence personnel. Without the troop presence, American officials said, they would need to switch how they collect information — relying less on officers in the field and more on intercepted communications, satellite imagery and other technical means. But outside experts have questioned how much technical collection can compensate for a reduction in intelligence officers working in trouble spots in Africa, learning who is responsible for regional instability and what the aims of various groups are. Mr. McFate said that as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wind down, there is a weariness with counterinsurgency operations, akin to the end of the Vietnam War. But pulling troops and intelligence officers out of Africa as a reaction to the exhaustion with “forever wars” is a strategic error, he said. “America has lost an appetite for counterinsurgency; they just think of this as a never-ending war,” he said. “It is a reaction to that, but it is a strategic misstep.”
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Four decades of growth, but Equatorial Guinea's people still mired in poverty @FT @neiLmunshi Africa |
In the roadside bars of New Billy, a sprawling slum in Malabo, people drink Castel beer and steer clear of politics. “They try to make Malabo like Dubai but that’s not reality — this is the real Malabo,” said one resident of Equatorial Guinea’s capital, pointing to the stream of sewage running down the rutted street. Just a few miles away, in the manicured Sipopo district, the country’s leaders courted international executives in glittering five-star hotels. “There’s a lot of money, but it all goes to the president and his family,” the man said, before stopping himself. “But I shouldn’t talk — you talk too much and . . . ” he slid his finger across his neck. President Teodoro Obiang Nguema seized power 40 years ago, ousting his uncle in a bloody coup in 1979. Since then his family has ruled with absolute power over one of Africa’s richest countries. US oil companies discovered giant crude deposits in the country’s maritime waters in the mid-1990s, generating billions of dollars in annual revenues for the regime. Gross domestic product per capita in the country of 1m people is now among the highest in Africa — higher than that of Brazil and China — but very little has trickled down to the population. Equatorial Guinea ranks 141 out of 189 countries in the UN Human Development Index. According to Human Rights Watch, it has the world’s largest gap between per capita wealth and its human development score. “We have many, many hotels. But no schools. No good hospitals. No water, nothing,” said Andres Esono Ondo, secretary-general of Convergence for Social Democracy, one of only two genuine opposition parties. In an example that human rights activists say is typical of the regime’s treatment of its opponents, Mr Ondo was arrested in neighbouring Chad earlier this year and held by authorities for 13 days, accused by Equatorial Guinea of planning a coup. “They persecute us because they’re scared,” he told the Financial Times. “This is a government that likes violence, so when you apply the law . . . they are very nervous.” Freedom House, a US-based think-tank, lists Equatorial Guinea as the sixth least free country in the world — between North Korea and Saudi Arabia — describing the nation as an “oil kleptocracy”. Arbitrary detention, extrajudicial killings and torture are all common. In 2016, Mr Obiang, 77, won his fifth seven-year term with his smallest share of the vote yet: 94 per cent. His coalition holds every seat in parliament. The international community has largely been silent on the state’s alleged abuses. US oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Kosmos and Marathon form the backbone of the economy. Equatorial Guinea at present sits on the UN Security Council, and the IMF has approved a $280m loan facility for the country. This year the government has held two international energy conferences in Malabo’s gated Sipopo district as it has sought to attract investment. A surreal stretch of private beaches and luxury hotels that looks like it was airdropped from another continent, Sipopo includes 52 identical presidential villas built for a week-long African Union summit in 2011. It is one of many impractical government infrastructure projects, including international airports on sparsely populated islands and a city in the middle of the rainforest with a new university and no students. In contrast, Mr Obiang has spent very little on education — 2.3 per cent of GDP in 2015, according to the World Bank — or healthcare. The 2014 oil price crash halted the infrastructure spending spree. Crude production has fallen by roughly two-thirds to about 120,000 barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency, while GDP per capita has almost halved, to just over $10,000, though still among the highest in Africa. The Frank Gehry-esque new airport in Malabo is one of many projects left uncompleted. Few trucks ply the world-class highway that loops around Bioko — the lush, volcanic island that is home to Malabo, 40km off the coast of Cameroon. The road network is similarly pristine on the mainland, a 10,000 sq km rectangle sandwiched between Cameroon and Gabon. “He is not groomed in the same manner,” said Alex Vines, Africa programme head at think-tank Chatham House. “The politics are Shakespearean.” Instead, Mr Lima’s older brother, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, is viewed as the president in waiting. Better known as Teodorin, the vice-president has been the subject of corruption investigations and asset seizures around the world. Probes in the US, France and Switzerland have exposed an astonishing list of trophy assets allegedly owned by the 51-year-old. They include a 100-room mansion near the Champs-Elysées in Paris, a $120m yacht called the Ebony Shine and Michael Jackson’s sequinned glove. Mr Lima said the country was “not a royalty” where succession would be decided “by blood”, but he compared it with oil monarchies such as Qatar or Kuwait. “At the end, His Excellency is the one who knows [best],” he added. Many Equatoguineans hope it will not be that simple and that economic and social pressures will eventually force change. “Gaddafi is gone, Mugabe is gone,” said one man walking near the “I HEART MALABO” sign at the oceanside Paseo Maritimo promenade in Malabo. “And one day Obiang will be gone too.”
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"The key prize is the neutralisation of Isabel dos Santos," Jonker said. @ReutersUK Africa |
Since ending José Eduardo dos Santos’ nearly 40-year grip on power in 2017, Lourenço has been trying to erase the influence of his predecessor and reform sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest economy. But Lourenço is under pressure as the economy continues to contract under his watch. Isabel dos Santos said the asset freeze was “politically motivated” and that the case against her had been held in total secrecy. ''The judgment contains statements which are completely untrue,” she said in a statement. She later told Reuters by phone that she had never been summoned or questioned by an Angolan court or prosecutors. The move against her comes as the ex-president’s son, José Filomeno de Sousa, faces corruption charges, accused of helping transfer $500 million (£377.27 million) from the sovereign wealth fund. Called “Africa’s wealthiest woman”, Isabel dos Santos amassed a fortune estimated at more than $2 billion through stakes in Angolan companies including banks and the telecoms firm Unitel, earning her the nickname “the Princess”. She chaired the state oil company Sonangol before being sacked by Lourenço months after he came to power. A court document dated Dec. 23 said the government believed Isabel dos Santos, her husband Sindika Dokolo and Mário Leite da Silva, chairman of Banco de Fomento Angola (BFA), had caused the state losses of more than $1 billion. “The state through its companies Sodiam (a diamond marketing firm) and Sonangol transferred enormous quantities of foreign currency to companies abroad whose beneficiaries are the defendants, without receiving the agreed return,” the court said. “The defendants recognise the existence of the debt but allege that they do not have the means to pay.” Dokolo told Reuters the Angolan government was pushing for a freeze on his and his wife’s international assets as well. He said Lourenço’s government was trying to portray him and his wife as criminals without proper evidence. Da Silva declined to comment. The asset freeze applies to personal bank accounts of dos Santos, Dokolo and da Silva in Angola and stakes they hold in Angolan firms including Unitel, BFA and ZAP MIDIA. Dos Santos is believed to live in Portugal and Britain and to have a significant portion of her wealth offshore. The court said the central bank would ensure that no funds leave the Angolan bank accounts of the three accused. The boards of each of the nine Angolan companies affected by the asset freeze must ensure that the relevant stakes are not sold and that no profits from the shares are transferred to the accused. The court said Isabel dos Santos had tried to transfer some of her businesses to Russia and that Portuguese police had blocked a transfer of 10 million euros ($11 million) from one of her business partners to Russia. Darias Jonker, Africa director at Eurasia Group, said the asset freeze showed Lourenço felt he could now move aggressively against the dos Santos family without risking his control over the ruling MPLA party. “The key prize is the neutralisation of Isabel dos Santos,” Jonker said.
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