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Thursday 26th of September 2019 |
The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in Africa |
The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy”. He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm officers at Colorado Command: “We have a deviate, Tomahawk.” “We copy. There’s a voice.” “We have gross oscillation here.” “There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”. “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60 years ago.”
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05-AUG-2019 :: "What's your road, man?" Africa |
’ What’s your road, man? - holy- boy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Where body how?” - The Key question is this. Can Prime Minister Johnson self-eject Britain? Can he be stopped? This is a political calculation. As I watched the Pound fall like a stone, I could not help wondering if this Sterling moment is precisely like it was in 1992, a no brainer.
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The Tyger WILLIAM BLAKE Africa |
Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies. Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art, Could twist the sinews of thy heart? And when thy heart began to beat, What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain, In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil? what dread grasp, Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears And water'd heaven with their tears: Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright, In the forests of the night: What immortal hand or eye, Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
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The Serena @SerenaHotels Africa |
MY memories of the Serena start in Mombasa years back when the managing director Mahmoud Jan Mohamed was the manager. I was then a teenager and remember losing my heart to a girl, who would beat me at table tennis, in a bikini. That table tennis Table is still there. The Serena brand has always been sprinkled with a fairy dust and reminds me of happy joyful carefree halcyon days of youth.
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30 JUL 12 :: The Polana The Jewel in the @SerenaHotels Crown Africa |
I hail from Mombasa and the Indian Ocean has always held an endless fascination for me. I recall dimly lit dhows in Tudor Creek in Mombasa. Later I read Felipe Fernández-Armesto who said “The precocity of the Indian Ocean as a zone of long-range navigation and cultural exchange is one of the glaring facts of history” made possible by the “reversible escalator” of the monsoons. The ‘reversible escalator’ of the monsoons allowed this cultural exchange from Goa to Maputo, from Oman to Zanzibar. In fact, my received history includes the narrative of a grandfather coming to East Africa as a stowaway on a dhow, more than a century ago. And a few weeks before, I had met Mahmud Jan Mohamed and he told me, “You should try the Polana and Maputo.” I kept thinking to myself that Maputo was the furthest reach of the reversible escalator. The land of the most flavoursome tiger prawns.
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Whats with this very J. Alfred Prufrock @Potus @Realdonaldtrump Law & Politics |
Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized upon a table; Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, The muttering retreats Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: Streets that follow like a tedious argument Of insidious intent To lead you to an overwhelming question ... Oh, do not ask, “What is it?” Let us go and make our visit.
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Iran's president @HassanRouhani has accused the United States of "merciless economic terrorism" and of engaging in "international piracy" #UNGA @SkyNews Law & Politics |
After paying "homage to the freedom seekers" of the Middle East (read the Houthis, Hezbollah, Assad regime), he then turned his ire on the "most merciless economic terrorism" imposed on Iran by Washington. It was "international privacy", he said and his country would "never negotiate under sanctions". Iran's behaviour this past summer has been brazen but gone unpunished. Tehran has boxed Washington, Riyadh and arguably London, into a corner. They don't know whether to hit back with a slap across the wrists, or do nothing for fear of war. Iran is emboldened. Mr Rouhani spoke of "peace" and "hope" - even the most dispassionate observer cannot expect either those when Iran is willing to mine ships, impound tankers, imprison innocents and launch airstrikes on its neighbour. "Our region is on the verge of collapse. A single blunder can cause a big fire," said Mr Rouhani.
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The President then turns to all of us and says "Well that means I will be gone in a week" and he was. Law & Politics |
we did some business there with the ''Bakrie'' Brothers who were quite a colourful pair and deserving of a column of their own. Well in that period 1997-1998, East Asia was gripped by a financial crisis which started with the collapse of the Thai Baht. The Indonesian Rupiah followed.
One morning Konishi-san called me into his Office. The Government of Indonesia is requesting a $500m Facility. Can we do it, he asked? They are requesting we visit Jakarta immediately. The next day, we were in Jakarta and in the evening we were in State House with President Suharto, His Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Central Bank, Konishi-san and myself. I engaged with the Governor and we established he could cobble together enough collateral and I turned to Konishi-san and said, Yes we can. We were of course going to be rewarded very handsomely and I had persuaded Konishi-san that not only would we make a lot of money but they would never forget that we had pulled through when everyone was hitting the eject Button. Konishi-san sat on the Board of the Bank in Tokyo and started to call other Board members to get their agreement. We were front-running a request to the IMF by the Government.
And at that moment, The Phone rings and the Minister picks it up and then he turns to his President and announces We have got the IMF Package but one of the conditions is we remove all the Food subsidies.
The President then turns to all of us and says ''Well that means I will be gone in a week'' and he was.
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24 JUN 19 :: Wizard of Oz World. International Trade |
This is ‘’Voodoo Economics’’ and just because we have not reached the point when the curtain was lifted in the Wizard of Oz and the Wizard revealed to be ‘’an ordinary conman from Omaha who has been using elaborate magic tricks and props to make himself seem “great and power- ful”’’ should not lull us into a false sense of security.
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27-NOV-2017 :: Bitcoin "Wow! What a Ride!" World Currencies |
This, you will agree, is mind-boggling inflation. In my experience, when I have found myself riding a tiger by its tail, the key issue is the getting off
Or as T.S Eliot said in The Hollow Men
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom.
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23-SEP-2019 :: Streaming Dreams Non-Linearity Crude Oil; 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 focussed 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] Today 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 Comcast’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 an expansion outside the US, where it has already attracted 60m subscribers. And this is an inflexion point just like the one I am signalling 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 Fridays closing price of $270.75. Countries at all levels of development risk becoming mere providers of raw data to those digital platforms while having to pay for the digital intelligence produced with those data by the platform owners.
Commodities
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US demands African countries avoid buying Russian weapons, says Foreign Ministry @tassagency_en Africa |
"We have seen attempts by a number of Western countries, in the first place, the United States, to enhance their presence in Africa. In particular, they have been exerting major and persistent efforts with the aim to persuade some African countries, which are our long-standing allies, to give up purchases of Russian products, in the first place, military hardware," the Foreign Ministry said. Quite often the United States goes much further than persuasion to threaten African countries with sanctions. "Our African partners firmly resist this crude blackmail. They state quite fairly that the supplies of Russian military equipment are a prerequisite for maintaining their national security and sovereignty, so they have no intention to give up cooperation with us in this field," the Foreign Ministry said.
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Burundi, the Forgotten Crisis, Still Burns @AfricaACSS @PNantulya Africa |
Mass atrocities and crimes against humanity committed primarily by state agents and their allies continue to take place in Burundi, according to the September 2019 report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi. The Commission, moreover, found that President Pierre Nkurunziza and many in his inner circle are personally responsible for some of the most serious of these crimes. They include “summary executions, arbitrary arrests and detentions, acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, sexual violence, and forced disappearances.” The Commission has been investigating the Burundi crisis since 2016. Its findings mirror those of the International Criminal Court, which opened a separate investigation in 2017 based on “a reasonable basis to believe that state agents and groups implementing state policies … launched a widespread and systematic attack against the Burundian civilian population.” The persistence of such atrocities echoes Burundi’s 1972 and 1993 genocides and the brutal civil war that ended in 2005. The adoption of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement in 2000 created a comprehensive peacebuilding framework that, through an inclusive power-sharing formula, addressed the root causes of Burundi’s violent past. The framework ushered in a period of stability and hope, marked by two leadership transitions from President Pierre Buyoya to President Domitien Ndayizeye, each of whom ruled for 18 months before the transition to Nkurunziza in 2005. By this time, Burundi’s traditional political parties were functioning as multiethnic coalitions, marking a break from the divisive politics of the past. Nkurunziza’s unwillingness to step down following his second term in office in 2015, as stipulated in the Arusha Accords and the 2005 Constitution, reversed this hopeful path and set off the current crisis. His decision to pursue a third term coupled with the resurfacing of the Hutu nationalist agenda of his ruling CNDD-FDD party triggered months of protests and a failed coup attempt in May 2015. It also set off a wave of defections and tit-for-tat violence in the military, targeted killings of civilians—often with ethnic undertones—and the launching of armed rebellions by three separate movements. It is estimated that around 1,700 people have been killed since 2015. The September 2017 Final Report of the UN Independent Investigation on Burundi, however, cautions that “no one can quantify exactly all the violations that have taken place and continue to take place in a situation as closed and repressive as Burundi.” Despite the information shortage, ample evidence points to a worsening situation under the veneer of calm that the authorities have tried to project. The number of Burundian refugees has exceeded 400,000 (out of a total population of 10 million), making Burundi a “forgotten refugee crisis,” according to Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. At the same time, the state-sponsored militia, the Imbonerakure (“those who see far”), has been implicated in mass atrocities along with the police, intelligence, and elements of the military. Imbonerakure deployments follow a four-tier structure from the colline to the commune, province, and national level, mirroring Burundi’s administrative units. Its members are a major contributing factor of the continuing human displacement, especially in the northern, eastern, and southern provinces, where their presence is particularly entrenched. The patterns of violence have shifted from overt abuses in 2015 and 2016 to more covert tactics that began at the end of 2016. Firsthand accounts captured in the 2017 UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi report indicate that atrocities since then have been committed in near-total concealment. Some involve killing victims in one location and dumping their bodies elsewhere, including in neighboring countries, to avoid detection. The 2019 UN report also confirmed numerous secret locations—including residences owned by senior officials—where torture, rape, mutilation, other forms of abuse, and killings occur on a regular basis. These reports have been corroborated by media stories, local human rights monitors, and the testimony of Imbonerakure defectors. The 2018 Report of the UN Commission of Inquiry on Burundi confirmed the existence of mass graves in the Kanyosha and Mpanda collines of Bujumbura and in Bubanza and other areas. It also corroborated previous findings of lists of civilians and military members marked for execution. Burundi has also witnessed a surge in disappearances. Since 2015, the United Nations has consistently received reports of forced disappearances in Burundi. Hundreds of cases are investigated and brought to the attention of the Burundi government each quarter. The Ndondeza (“help me find them”) campaign has disseminated more than 400 photos of missing persons since 2015. “Despite the information shortage, ample evidence points to a worsening situation.” Atrocities by state agents are not confined within Burundi’s borders. In 2018, the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) documented attacks, killings, and disappearances of Burundian refugees at Uganda’s Nakivale refugee camp. Burundi’s self-inflicted political instability has directly impacted living conditions. Its economic growth shrank from 4.2 percent in 2015 to 0.4 percent in 2019 under the weight of high-level corruption and fiscal mismanagement. Since 2017, the government has been unable to pay civil servants on time, a source of public acrimony given that the state employs 80 percent of Burundi’s salaried workers. Since 2017, the ruling CNDD-FDD has made “contributions” to the Treasury mandatory for every family—a widely unpopular move given the high levels of youth unemployment. Contributing to the economic downturn is a new policy introduced in 2018 that requires foreign aid groups and charities to provide the government with staff lists that identify their employees by ethnicity. Most groups chose to depart rather than comply, further disrupting service delivery. Burundi’s health sector has been hit particularly hard by the political crisis. Only 500 doctors were still working in Burundi in 2017, according to the UN Children’s Fund. This is roughly half the total present in 2010. The effects are dire: 5.7 million cases of malaria—including 1,801 deaths—were reported in 2019. Those numbers dwarf the 1.8 million infections and 700 deaths reported in 2017, illustrating the progressive deterioration of Burundi’s healthcare system. The East African Community (EAC) is mandated to mediate the Burundi crisis, but persistent frictions among its members have rendered it ineffective and prolonged the conflict. Of particular concern is the escalating tension between Uganda, the chair of the Burundi Peace Talks, and Rwanda, the EAC chair. A December 2018 UN report found that Burundi, the DRC, and Uganda are now arming and training Rwandan rebels, adding another layer of strain to the already frayed relations between Rwanda and Burundi. A flare-up could have devastating regional consequences. The AU has been equally ineffective. After abandoning its December 2015 decision to deploy a 5,000-strong protection force, again due to bickering by its members and a threat by the Nkurunziza government to shoot any AU troops entering the country, the AU sent 200 human rights monitors instead. However, they operate under tight restrictions imposed by the government, which largely confine the monitors to Bujumbura. Tellingly, they have never made their reports public due to fears that the Burundi government would expel them. Still, they are the only external monitors in Burundi since the expulsion of the UN Human Rights Commission. The BBC, Voice of America, and virtually all civil society and media organizations have also been forced out. Six EAC summits failed to persuade the CNDD-FDD to attend talks chaired by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and mediated by former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa. Five negotiations were held between 2015 and 2018, but none of the talks were face-to-face. The CNDD-FDD instead initiated efforts to revise the 2005 Constitution in ways that dismantled key provisions of the Arusha Peace and Reconciliation Agreement. This was a major blow to the negotiations, given that their core objective was to use the Accords as the basis for resolving the issues that triggered the crisis, stabilizing the country, and preparing it for democratic elections in 2020. In May 2017, Mkapa presented a fresh road map at the EAC Summit and issued a dire warning: “There is an impasse because the government of Burundi is reluctant to talk to its opponents. Currently, it is picking friendly stakeholders to talk to while ignoring the others.” He also reminded the EAC presidents of the “imperative need” for their “personal engagement” in getting the Burundi government to commit to a serious dialogue without preconditions. Mkapa, moreover, alerted the EAC presidents to the consequences of the CNDD-FDD’s constitutional revision efforts. “Whither the EAC-led mediation whose dialogue I am facilitating? For I fear the region will find itself before a fait accompli.” The Summit adopted the report but failed to convince the Burundi authorities to join. Passed without a viable opposition in May 2018, Burundi’s new constitution confirms Mkapa’s worst fears. It dismantles two-thirds of the provisions of the Arusha Accords, including the carefully crafted power sharing structure. The president’s office now has the power to overrule Parliament. Moreover, the delicate checks, balances, and quotas that regulated other government branches have been nullified. However, since 2015, the CNDD-FDD has pursued an extensive purge of ex-FAB officers, with numerous being killed or abducted. A law introduced in 2017 bestows “reserve force status” on the Imbonerakure and places it within the military, describing it as “citizens militarily trained for this purpose by the Burundi army and veterans.” “As the CNDD-FDD gears up for the 2020 polls, intimidation, disappearances, killings, and ethnic rhetoric are all on the rise.” Mkapa saw the rollback of the Arusha Agreement as an affront because he, alongside former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere and former South African President Nelson Mandela, were central in crafting the Arusha Accords. In February 2019, he presented a report at the EAC Summit calling for a review Burundi’s new constitution to keep the Arusha provisions intact. The Summit adopted the report, but it was indeed a fait accompli because the EAC cannot overrule member state’s constitutions. In the face of EAC inaction, Mkapa resigned shortly after the Summit. As the CNDD-FDD gears up for the 2020 polls, intimidation, disappearances, killings, and ethnic rhetoric are all on the rise. Lost in the Burundi tragedy is the irony that the trigger for the crisis was Nkurunziza’s pursuit of a third term in 2015. While not yet announced, Nkurunziza is expected to run for a fourth term (extended to seven years under the new constitution) and is entitled to run for a fifth term in 2027. Reflective of the personality-based political structure he has cultivated, Nkurunziza was officially named by his party as “Supreme Eternal Guide” in March 2019. The fact that the Burundi crisis is self-inflicted also means that it can be resolved. Moreover, a roadmap for this resolution, the Arusha Accords, has already been devised. The challenge for external actors is to get the Burundian parties back on that road.
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4 MAY 15 ::Eyes on Burundi Africa |
President Pierre Nkurunziza, a pentecostal former aerobics instructor and rebel leader with his own presidential soccer team, is now in the crosshairs. On Tuesday last week Nkurinziza’s government blocked access to the most popular social media services, including Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, which had been used to share photos, video and news as well as organise protest movements. “All we expect from our leaders is the understanding that whatever was accepted 10, 20 years ago no longer goes,” Assane Dioma Ndiaye, a human rights lawyer in Dakar told Reuters. “What happened in Senegal and Burkina will happen... elsewhere if leaders maintain their efforts to stay in power.” “There is an internationalisation of African youth who are dreaming and thinking in the same way,” said Barro to Reuters, wearing his trademark scarf and woolly hat, back in Senegal after spending three days in detention in Kinshasa. Barro: “But they cannot imprison hope. They will fail. Youth will continue to mobilise.”
My wife started a gun course this week. Buying a Glock 48 for her. I never never never in my life thought it will come to this For the women the rape culture is the worse. 120 reported rape cases per day (many doesn't report). 55 murders a day.
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"The caps are going to remain," Jude Njomo, who first pushed for changes in the banking laws in 2016 to introduce the caps, told @ReutersAfrica by phone Africa |
Kenya’s parliament on Wednesday rejected a Finance Ministry request to scrap commercial lending rate caps that critics say have led to a credit squeeze, a lawmaker who was present during a vote on the 2019/20 (July-June) fiscal budget said. “The caps are going to remain,” Jude Njomo, who first pushed for changes in the banking laws in 2016 to introduce the caps, told Reuters by phone. In 2016, the government limited rates banks can charge customers at four percentage points above the central bank’s benchmark - currently 9% - saying they were concerned about high rates. Lawmakers voted by acclamation to reject the Finance Ministry’s request on the caps contained in the 2019/20 budget, although they also backed a measure passed by parliament’s finance committee making the language on the caps limit clearer. The finance ministry had sought to repeal the rate cap, arguing that it has cut private-sector credit growth as banks shunned lending to customers deemed risky, including small and medium-sized businesses. The central bank, which has also opposed the caps, said that they had probably cut 0.4% from 2017 economic growth. In March this year, the High Court ruled that the section of the law capping rates was unconstitutional and gave parliament a year to amend it. The ruling was issued in a case brought by a private citizen challenging the caps. An appeal against the ruling by a consumer group is pending before a higher court. Lawmakers have started a separate amendment to banking laws to comply with the court’s ruling. “We are making certain amendments to make it compliant with the law,” lawmaker Chris Wamalwa said ahead of the section on rate caps being put to a vote by acclamation. It is the second time the finance ministry’s request to have the caps removed has failed, after a similar move last year was rejected. The next step after the parliament completes voting on the cap and other amendments to the budget is for them to be sent to the president, who will then approve or send them back to parliament, outlining any reservations he has.
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