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Way to Depsang or Doklam? @IndianExpress @PChidambaram_IN Law & Politics |
“Mr Xi seems to have accurately assessed India’s weakened position as a result of the rapidly sliding economy. Mr Modi seems to have totally failed to read Mr Xi’s intentions.”
The Indian delegation seems to have basked in the glory of the Mahabalipuram sunshine and designated 2020 as the ‘Year of India-China Cultural and People to People Exchanges’.
Later, on December 21, the bonhomie continued at the meeting between the Special Representatives of the two countries.
It is now revealed that Mr Xi had signed in January 2020 a new Training Mobilisation Order (TMO) (see The Hindu, July 13) and, following that
Order, the PLA started planning, mobilisation and movement of troops on their side of the India-China LAC.
Another report (see The Indian Express, July 15) quoted an intelligence official who said that the first intelligence reports on Chinese troop movement were available in mid-April, 2020.
– Were the MEA and the Army HQ not aware of the new TMO?
– Did Army Intelligence and the R&AW not detect the mobilisation of forces on the China side of the LAC?
– Did our satellites not capture images of the movement of Chinese vehicles and troops toward the LAC at several points along the 200-km stretch between Galwan Valley and Pangong Tso?
– Were the intelligence reports of mid-April not analysed, shared at the highest levels and conclusions drawn?
However, it is not clear if Mr Xi also believes that ‘war is not an option’. It is just possible that the PLA has convinced Mr Xi that a limited war-like thrust into India is a viable option and the PLA could take ‘two steps forward and one step backward’.
There are two examples from the recent past: Depsang (2013) and Doklam (2017).
The Chinese vacated the intrusion into Depsang completely, but in Doklam, according to Mr Shivshankar Menon, former NSA, “this started with Doklam, where we negotiated withdrawals by both sides from the face-off point in 2017. The Chinese then proceeded to establish a very strong, permanent presence on the plateau, leaving the face-off point itself free.”
Mr Menon called out the government on Doklam and said, “So, frankly, China learned the lesson that as long as the Indian government could walk away with a propaganda victory, they could actually make gains and change the outcomes on the ground in their favour.”
Six days after the interview (July 13), the government has not explained the actual situation on the ground in Doklam.
Have the Chinese established a strong, permanent presence on the plateau in Doklam? Is Bhutan silent about the Chinese presence because it is helpless and India will not speak up on behalf of Bhutan?
While there are no answers to these questions, the false narrative that was sold is that India repelled the Chinese intrusion in Doklam and that it was a significant ‘victory’ for Mr Modi’s stewardship!
From Where to Where?
The current face-off at multiple places along the LAC could go either the Depsang way or the Doklam way.
Before you read further, you should bear in mind that there are two perceptions (or versions) of the LAC — the Chinese perception and the Indian perception.
With that vital difference in mind, examine the facts. There is no doubt that both sides are withdrawing. The question is, withdrawing from where to where.
Let’s begin with China. If the Chinese troops had not crossed the LAC, according to their perception, they are withdrawing from their own territory to their own territory. There is no loss of territory. If the Chinese troops had crossed the LAC, according to their perception, they are indeed vacating illegally occupied Indian territory.
India’s position is that our troops never crossed the LAC according to our perception, not even on June 15-16.
India has defended the action of Colonel Santosh Babu and his team that objected to structures on Indian territory that had been agreed to be removed at the Commanders’ level meeting on June 5.
So, the unmistakable conclusion is that India is withdrawing from its own territory to its own territory.
How Far Status Quo Ante?
It is common sense that a ‘no troops land’ (akin to a no man’s land) will be created between the new positions of the troops of both sides.
This is the land where the LAC lies, whether according to China’s perception or India’s perception. This space may lead to peace and tranquillity on the border, but it will not resolve the border question. It is obvious that some kind of buffer zone is being created.
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For first time, world records one million coronavirus cases in 100 hours: @Reuters. Misc. |
Global coronavirus infections passed 14 million on Friday, according to a Reuters tally, marking the first time there has been a surge of 1 million cases in under 100 hours.
The first case was reported in China in early January and it took three months to reach 1 million cases. It has taken just four days to climb to 14 million cases from 13 million recorded on July 13.
Those countries were the main drivers behind the World Health Organization on Friday reporting a record one-day increase in global coronavirus cases of 237,743.
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13-JUL-2020 : Year of the Virus Misc. |
We are here
Total Confirmed 12,740,971
My Model is showing 300,000,000 cases by December
summary of #COVID__19 @SandroDemaio
• 1,424,892 cases were confirmed in the last week • 229,759 just in the last 24 hours @MaxCRoser
The #COVID Daily Case Count is above 200,000
cases doubled worldwide in 6 weeks
Malcolm Gladwell spoke of the Boiling Point
Malcolm Gladwell âTipping Pointâ moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. It’s the boiling point. It’s the moment on the graph when the line starts to shoot straight upwards. #nCoV2019
We are not there yet. The exponential moment is still in front of us.
a virulent plague that “travelled through the air as if on wings, it burned through cities like fire”.
This is the Comet NEOWISE BBC
I was reading Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah which sought to explain the intrinsic relationship between political leadership and the management of pandemics in the pre-colonial period.
Historically, such pandemics had the capacity to overtake “the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration” and, in the process, challenged their “power and curtailed their [rulers’] influence...”
Rulers who are only concerned with the well-being of their “inner circle and their parties” are an incurable “disease”.
States with such rulers can get “seized by senility and the chronic disease from which [they] can hardly ever rid [themselves], for which [they] can find no cure”
To thwart calamities, rulers should possess certain qualifications. Khaldun recognizes wisdom, logic, honesty, justice and education as the most desirable qualities in a ruler.
Countries that I'm worried about. @MaxCRoser
Angela Merkel: “You cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation...the limits of Populism are being laid bare.” Angela Merkel
The Correlation between the Case Load and Populism has a stupendously high correlation coefficient.
political decision-making is now driven by often weaponized babble. @FukuyamaFrancis
Madagascar 435 nouveaux cas confirmés #covid19mg @NCoVAfrica
A Lot of People whom I follow and who should know better by now keep repeating that the CFR rate is very low. Understand this
A reminder that # deaths from COVID is a *lower bound* not an estimate. Many people will die months later @nntaleb
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.
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In short, SARS- CoV-2 is possessed of dual action capability. Birger Sørensen, Angus Dalgleish & Andres Susrud Immunor & St Georges University of London Misc. |
urface exposed.
4. The Spike is so configured that it can bind to cell tissue without use of the ACE2 receptor. Clinically it is widely observed that the Covid-19 virus compromises the functions of olfaction and bitter/sweet receptors, erythrocytes, t-cells, neurons and various tissues such as intestine epithelia. These different targets do not engage and use ACE2 receptor binding.
This new Cys-Cys property inserted into the SARS-CoV-2 Spike does not exist in SARS-CoV We posited that the SARS-CoV-2 general mode of action is as a co-receptor dependent phagocyte. But unusually, simultaneously, data shows that it is capable of binding to ACE2 receptors in its receptor binding domain.
In short, SARS- CoV-2 is possessed of dual action capability. How do we think this was made possible? That is the subject of this paper. We shall argue from evidence below that the likelihood of this being the result of natural processes is very small.
The co-receptor dependent phagocytic general method of action for infectivity and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 appears to be specifically related to cumulative charge resulting from inserts placed on the surface of the Spike receptor binding domain, right next to the receptor binding motif.
That SARS-CoV-2 has charged inserts is not in dispute (Zhou et al., 2020)
What we have shown that is new is that the SARS-CoV-2 Spike carries significant additional charge (isoelectric point (pI) pI=8.2) compared to human SARS-CoV Spike,( pI = 5.67) and the implications thereof.
Basic domains - partly inserted, partly substituted amino acids and partly redistributed from outside the receptor binding domain - explain the salt bridges formed between the SARS-CoV-2 Spike and its co-receptors on the cell membrane.
there are 6 inserts which make the SARS-CoV-2 Spike structurally special.
Blasting the Spike protein with a rolling window of 6 amino acids showed that 78.4% of 6 amino acid windows are human like.
This means that with nearly 80% of the spike protein has a built-in stealth property by having high human similarity.
Therefore, it is remarkably well-adapted virus for human co-existence.
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The @WHO announced that even though they originally planned to send a team of experts to investigate about the origin of the #COVID19 virus and pandemic, team won't be deployed at the end of July. @WilliamYang120 Misc. |
Plans for a World Health Organisation (WHO) mission to China to investigate the coronavirus pandemic have been postponed after two scientists spent a week in a Beijing hotel in quarantine.
The UN agency had hoped to deploy a full team this month if negotiations with Chinese scientists and government officials last week made progress.
But Michael Ryan, head of its health emergencies programme, acknowledged this weekend that the quarantine requirements and “working remotely” had been “not ideal” for the two experts, although he was “very pleased with collaboration” so far.
Putting together a multinational team and bringing it to China would take “weeks, not days”, Ryan said.
He cited challenges of logistics and “health risk management”, an apparent reference to the quarantine.
China requires all foreign arrivals to spend two weeks in isolation. It was not clear whether the WHO hoped that its emissaries would be exempt.
Ryan said the agency “fully respects” the procedure. There was a need for a “concrete plan of action, with remaining gaps and areas that require further study and elaboration to be clearly elucidated”, he said.
His comments seemed to indicate that the advance party — an epidemiologist and an animal health specialist, whose identities have not been revealed — were still negotiating terms for a larger group.
The origins of the pandemic are politically sensitive in China and the subject of controversy more widely.
The exact conditions for the mission — where it can visit, whom it can meet, what data it can study and which scenarios can be investigated — will be crucial to its prospects.
In return for allowing access, China might try to manipulate the visit or demand that investigations be conducted in other countries.
Beijing has insisted that there is no evidence that Covid-19 originated in China, although the central city of Wuhan was ground zero for infections late last year.
Hua Chunying, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, said last week that the WHO agreed “that origin-tracing is an ongoing process, probably concerning many countries and localities, and the WHO will conduct similar trips to other countries and regions in light of the actual need”.
It was not clear whether the UN agency had actually made any such commitment.
This month Donald Trump, the US president, accused the WHO of pandering to China as America submitted its one-year notice to quit the organisation.
Beijing wants the WHO mission to focus on how the virus jumped from animals to humans, rather than on the source of the outbreak.
There is widespread agreement that the virus came from bats, but the route it took to humans is not known.
A Sunday Times Insight investigation, published this month, raised questions about the role of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a biosecurity laboratory where a bat coronavirus similar to the one that causes Covid-19 was being researched.
There are no plans for the two scientists in the WHO advance party to travel to Wuhan — even when Beijing decides that they can leave quarantine — and it is still not known whether a future team would be allowed into the laboratory.
Some experts have suggested that even if China allows a full mission to go ahead as a gesture of co-operation, WHO scientists will not be able to obtain the information required for an independent inquiry.
“Beijing wants to avoid giving Chinese people any impression from this visit that China was the source of this pandemic,” said Yanzhong Huang, an expert on China’s health system at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
“This visit has barely been mentioned by the Chinese authorities, which reflects the whole approach. The composition of any future mission — what they can do, where they can visit — is all subject to negotiation.”
A Dutch epidemiologist who has worked with the WHO said: “There is no confidence in the official data or information that the Chinese have provided about this pandemic.”
China has a record of cover-ups and misleading the WHO when it comes to coronavirus outbreaks.
In 2003, at the height of Sars, Beijing hid patients from WHO inspectors, whistleblower doctors later revealed.
In one incident, 31 patients were bundled out of a hospital and driven around in an ambulance while the WHO team toured the establishment. “This preliminary mission . . . is to understand what has been discovered already, what has been studied already, what the data [is] that’s available, and then from that to lay out what further studies need to be carried out and what international experts will be useful in engaging with and partnering with Chinese colleagues,” said Ryan.
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The @WHO are going to China for a break. Misc. |
The WHO are going to China for a break.
This is a time for self-reflection, for all of us involved in the #COVID19 response to look in the mirror; to look at the world we live in and to find ways to strengthen our collaboration as we work together to save lives and bring this pandemic under control.
.@WHO experts will travel to #China this weekend to work together with their Chinese counterparts to prepare scientific plans for identifying the zoonotic source of #COVID19. @DrTedros
“An inquiry that presupposes — without evidence — that the virus entered humans through a natural zoonotic spillover and that fails to address the alternative possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident, will have no credibility,” said Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
“To have any credibility and any value, an investigation must address the possibility that the virus entered humans through a laboratory accident and must also address the further possibility that the ability of the virus to infect humans was enhanced through laboratory manipulation — ‘gain-of-function research of concern’.”
Dear @MaEllenSirleaf & @HelenClarkNZ The starting point of your enquiry has to be precisely what is being precluded below because “If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.” #COVID19
I am convinced that the only ‘’zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.
There is also a non negligible possibility that #COVID19 was deliberately released – Wuhan is to the CCP as Idlib is to the Syrian Regime – and propagated world wide.
According to Daszak, the mine sample had been stored in Wuhan for six years. Its scientists “went back to that sample in 2020, in early January or maybe even at the end of last year, I don’t know. They tried to get full genome sequencing, which is important to find out the whole diversity of the viral genome.”
However, after sequencing the full genome for RaTG13 the lab’s sample of the virus disintegrated, he said. “I think they tried to culture it but they were unable to, so that sample, I think, has gone.”
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23-SEP-2019 :: I, therefore, am putting out a ââconvictionââ Buy on Netflix at Fridayâs closing price of $270.75. $NFLX World Of Finance |
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’’.
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Zimbabwe Accuses Biggest Mobile Phone Firm of Money Laundering @business. World Of Finance |
Zimbabwe’s police have accused Econet Wireless Ltd., the country’s dominant mobile phone company, of money laundering, demanded a list of its subscribers and issued a search warrant against it.
The move escalates a clash between the government and company whose money transfer service facilitates the bulk of transactions in the southern African country. The government says its activities are contributing to the rapid depreciation of the national currency.
In an order against the company, the police accused the company of creating fictitious mobile money, converting it to cash and then buying foreign currency on the black market before sending it out the country.
On June 26 the country banned most of those transactions and has now said it plans to force Econet’s Ecocash unit to use a government-run money-transfer platform.
Calls to Econet’s spokesman, Fungai Mandiveyi, weren’t answered.
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Africa has a Problem COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is now reaching âfull speedâ @AP #COVID19 Africa |
Africa has a Problem COVID-19 pandemic in Africa is now reaching ‘full speed’ @AP #COVID19 and it’s good to prepare for the worst-case scenario, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief said
’We’ve crossed a critical number here,” he said of the half-million milestone.
“Our pandemic is getting full speed.”
Cumulative total of *reported* #COVID19 cases in Africa @Covid_Africa
From 1st case to 100,000 cases: 98 days 100,000 to 200,000 cases: 18 days 200,000 to 300,000 cases: 12 days 300,000 to 400,000 cases: 9 days 400,000 to 500,000 cases: 7 days
South Africa is the Precursor for the rest of Africa
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The economy may be contracting because of Covid-19 â but the funeral business is on the up. @mailandguardian @thecontinent_ Africa |
For a Do-It-Yourself kit costing R2,600 ($156), trainees receive learning materials including a video and an infant coffin as an example. For R4,600 ($276) people can attend a two-day course at the school.
Coffins that can be made and sold for R2,000 ($120) are being sold for R20,000 ($1,200) by undertaking businesses, he said.
Louw said demand for training is so strong that they plan to open training schools in Cape Town soon.
Louw described the inquiries he is receiving about ready-made coffins and caskets – distinguished by their tapered shape – as “frightening”.
He estimates the cheapest, well-built coffin could cost as little as R1,200 ($72). Some businesses now also offer sturdy cardboard coffins.
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02-MAR-2020 :: The #COVID19 and SSA and the R Word Africa |
We Know that the #Coronavirus is exponential, non linear and multiplicative.
what exponential disease propagation looks like in the real world. Real world exponential growth looks like nothing, nothing, nothing ... then cluster, cluster, cluster ... then BOOM!
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Stanbic IBTC Bank, said it will halve the spending limit for offshore card transactions to $500 per month from Monday and will limit cash withdrawals to $100. World Of Finance |
Stanbic IBTC Bank, the local unit of South Africa’s Standard Bank, said it will halve the spending limit for offshore card transactions to $500 per month from Monday and will limit cash withdrawals to $100.
Another top tier lender Zenith Bank said it will temporarily suspend the use of debit cards abroad for cash withdrawals and cut the monthly spending limit abroad by more than half to $200.
“This review is in response to today’s economic realities,” Zenith said in a notice, advising clients to request prepaid dollar cards.
Other lenders — Ecobank and Fidelity Bank — have also lowered withdrawal limits for individuals while abroad.
Such moves have previously been at the behest of the central bank, but it was not clear if the regulator was behind the latest action. The central bank did not respond to a request for comment.
The bank is battling to conserve dollar reserves that are down 19% from a year ago. Last week it depreciated the currency on the official market prompting the naira to weaken on the black and over-the-counter spot markets.
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