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Thursday 20th of May 2021
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@WHO Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 18 May 2021 Misc. |
Globally, in the past week, the number of new cases and deaths continued to decrease, although overall counts for both remained high with just over 4.8 million new cases and nearly 86 000 new deaths reported in the past week.
All regions reported a decline in new cases this week with the exception of the Western Pacific where the number of new cases were similar to the previous week.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from
India (2 387 663 new cases; 13% decrease)
Brazil (437 076 new cases; 3% increase)
United States of America (235 638 new cases; 21% decrease)
Argentina (151 332 new cases; 8% increase)
Colombia (115 834 new cases; 6% increase)
Conclusions
The Invisible Microbe COVID19 posted two record high weeks of Infections and then declined -4% and -12% in the two following weeks
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''Yeah you good traders can spot the highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that and make a millino bucks sure no problem bro." World Currencies |
GameKyuubi posted "I AM HODLING," a drunk, semi-coherent, typo-laden rant about his poor trading skills and determination to simply hold his bitcoin from that point on.
"I type d that tyitle twice because I knew it was wrong the first time. Still wrong. w/e," he wrote in reference to the now-famous misspelling of "holding."
"WHY AM I HOLDING? I'LL TELL YOU WHY," he continued.
"It's because I'm a bad trader and I KNOW I'M A BAD TRADER. Yeah you good traders can spot the highs and the lows pit pat piffy wing wong wang just like that and make a millino bucks sure no problem bro."
He concluded that the best course was to hold, since "You only sell in a bear market if you are a good day trader or an illusioned noob. The people inbetween hold. In a zero-sum game such as this, traders can only take your money if you sell."
He then confessed he'd had some whiskey and briefly mused about the spelling of whisk(e)y. [HODL Definition | Investopedia]
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27 NOV 17 :: "Wow! What a Ride!" World Currencies |
The parabola was described thus by Thomas Pynchon,
“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably.It's The Parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refused to believe- that everything, always, collectively, had been moving toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no surprise, no second chance, no return.’’
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.
My investment thesis at the start of the year was that Bitcoin was going to get main-streamed in 2017. It has main-streamed beyond my wildest dreams, therefore, I am now sidelined.
Let me leave you with Hunter S. Thompson, “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”
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The story of Sir Isaac Newton and the South Sea Bubble. World Of Finance |
Graham writes,
Back in the spring of 1720, Sir Isaac Newton owned shares in the South Sea Company, the hottest stock in England.
Sensing that the market was getting out of hand, the great physicist muttered that he ‘could calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of the people.’ Newton dumped his South Sea shares, pocketing a 100% profit totaling £7,000.
But just months later, swept up in the wild enthusiasm of the market, Newton jumped back in at a much higher price — and lost £20,000 (or more than $3 million in [2002-2003’s] money.
For the rest of his life, he forbade anyone to speak the words ‘South Sea’ in his presence.
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WHO African Region .@WHO Weekly epidemiological update on COVID-19 - 18 May 2021 Africa |
The African Region reported over 40 000 new cases and over 900 new deaths, a 4% and a 9% decrease respectively compared to the previous week.
Case incidence continued to decrease for a fourth consecutive week while the number of deaths has reflected similar trends during this period.
The highest numbers of new cases were reported from
South Africa 16 326 new cases a 36% increase
Botswana 3745 new cases a 153% increase
Ethiopia 3615 new cases; a 13% decrease
Cases in South Africa comprised 41% of cases reported in the Region.
The highest numbers of new deaths were reported from
South Africa 459 new deaths a 44% increase
Kenya 118 new deaths a 15% decrease
Ethiopia 105 new deaths a 35% decrease
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Abiy Ahmed Has Condemned Ethiopia to Dissolution @TheNatlInterest Michael Rubin H/T @KjetilTronvoll Africa |
The war in Ethiopia’s Tigray Province is now more than six months old. Jeffrey Feltman, the Biden administration’s special envoy, has just completed his first trip to the region but, for Ethiopian unity, it may be too late.
Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has sent his country beyond the point of no return.
Abiy’s stated reason for his assault on Tigray was the rebuff of that province’s leaders to his efforts to delay elections.
His supporters justify his move to repress Tigray and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in two ways.
Some argue that the TPLF deserves the central government’s offensive and even the atrocities it suffers because of the TPLF’s past poor human rights abuses as well as its participation in the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition from which Abiy’s two immediate predecessors emerged.
Others argue that Ethiopia’s ethno-federalism is unfair to provincial minorities and Abiy is right to repress it. Both arguments are problematic:
TPLF’s past does not justify massacres, looting, and rape against civilians targeted solely because of ethnicity or political opposition.
If Abiy had legal justification against any particular TPLF leader, the courts would have been the proper recourse.
Critics of Ethiopian federalism have valid arguments about problems inherent in the system but the remedy for this is revision of the constitution through the legislative process, not the whims of one man acting through brute force.
Abiy promised a quick victory, but his gambit failed. While Ethiopian troops control the cities, videos show Tigray Defense Forces openly defiant and operating with impunity in the countryside.
Tigrayans, like much of the rest of Ethiopia, are overwhelmingly young. Most Tigrayans under thirty care little about Ethiopia as a whole and imagine a better life for themselves as their own independent state.
It was the senior TPLF leaders who had fought for, served Ethiopia, maintained links across regions, and remained open to unity. This was the caste whom Abiy has sought to kill.
In the most famous episode, the Ethiopian Army killed Seyoum Mesfin who had served two decades as Ethiopia’s foreign minister.
In effect, in a fit of pique, the mercurial Abiy has disproportionately targeted the only figures with whom he could negotiate to preserve Ethiopian unity.
He lacks candor and appears untethered from the reality that he has created. Many of his counterparts describe him as a naïf with a messiah complex.
While African leaders will not publicly abandon one of their own, the shedding of African Union offices from Ethiopia to other capitals reflects Abiy’s declining diplomatic capital.
Simply put, beyond Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki, who sees himself as Abiy’s superior, and Mohamed Farmaajo, Somalia’s president whose term expired three months ago, Abiy has no friends.
Regional states fear Ethiopia’s dissolution—it would be a nightmare scenario of dislocation and instability—but many diplomats, including those traditionally friendly to Ethiopia, quietly question whether it is already too late.
Abiy’s supporters may have justified his action in antipathy to federalism but by choosing unilateralism over negotiation, Abiy may have cemented his legacy not as a Nobel Peace Laureate, but rather as the man who ended a country whose history dates back millennia.
Conclusions
Its clear Prime Minister has no Agency in Tigray Province now.
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@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province. Africa |
Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance now has a Nobel Prize Winner whom I am reliably informed
PM Abiy His inner war cabinet includes Evangelicals who are counseling him he is "doing Christ's work"; that his faith is being "tested". @RAbdiAnalyst
@PMEthiopia has launched an unwinnable War on Tigray Province.
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Emmanuel Macron said a summit in Paris on Africa financing had agreed to work towards persuading rich nations by October to reallocate $100 billion in IMF special drawing rights monetary reserves to African states. Africa |
Impoverished African economies must not be left behind in the post-pandemic economic recovery and a substantial financial package is needed to provide much-needed economic stimulus, African and European leaders concluded at a summit in Paris.
In the immediate term, that meant accelerating the COVID-19 vaccine rollout and creating the fiscal breathing room for African nations, which will face a spending shortfall of some $285 billion over the next two years, the summit communique showed.
The communique set out a two-pronged response based on addressing financing needs to support a sustainable, green recovery and the underpinning of private-sector-driven growth - but it was light on concrete commitments.
"This is a new start, a new deal for Africa," Senegalese President Macky Sall told reporters.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva said it was time to stem the "dangerous divergence between advanced economies and developing countries, especially (in) Africa."
Georgieva said the African continent's economic output would increase by only 3.2% in 2021, compared with 6% in the rest of the world.
Central to the talks was the question of how to reallocate IMF reserves (SDRs) that were earmarked for developed countries towards developing economies.
World finance chiefs agreed in April to boost SDRs by $650 billion and extend a debt-servicing freeze to help developing countries deal with the pandemic, although only $34 billion was to be allocated to Africa.
Macron said France had decided to redirect its SDRs and that there had been an accord to try to get rich nations by October to reallocate $100 billion to Africa.
"Our work in the next few weeks will be to make the same rate of effort as France, starting with the United States of America, and I know all the work that we will have to do with Congress and the executive, but I am confident," he told reporters.
Georgieva pledged to come up with a new allocation proposal by August.
"On the $100 billion, is it enough? Let's be very clear, no it is not enough. We have a financial gap just to catch up with the impact of COVID for the continent of Africa of $285 billion, she said. "It is genuinely an all-hands-on-deck situation."
"We have to make the private sector attracted to go into a risky environment by de-risking investments."
The summit was part of Macron's efforts to recast France's engagement in Africa, where it was once a colonial power, at a time when the continent faces a near $300 billion deficit by the end of 2023 while trying to recover from the downturn.
The African Development Bank forecasts that up to 39 million people could fall into poverty this year, with many African countries at risk of debt distress because of the pandemic.
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"Morocco uses migrants to get what it wants" Africa |
When 6,000 people pushed off a Moroccan beachfront Monday, swam around two border walls and waded into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, the question was why Morocco’s normally aggressive border patrols had let them get that far.
The answer: It was a message. With Morocco, the European Union has made the same mistake it made with Turkey just five years ago.
It has granted massive leverage to an unpredictable partner by striking a deal in which Morocco receives assistance in exchange for preventing refugees from travelling into Europe.
That means when Spain does something Morocco doesn’t like, Rabat can play hardball by opening up its borders, however briefly.
Conclusions
#Ceuta, #Spain, is putting strain on relations between the two countries, as Madrid suspects it has to do with its welcoming of Polisario’s Brahim Ghali. @NKCAfrica
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Turning To Africa Africa |
We are getting closer and closer to the Virilian Tipping Point
“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street''
Political leadership in most cases completely gerontocratic will use violence to cling onto Power but any Early Warning System would be warning a Tsunami is coming
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Instead of allowing people to commemorate those killed in the country’s revolution, #Sudan army blocked, opened fire on, and beat people. New from @HRW on May 11 events in Khartoum, #Sudan H/T @LaetitiaBader Africa |
Sudan’s armed forces used excessive and lethal force against peaceful protesters gathered in Khartoum on May 11, 2021, to commemorate victims of a 2019 deadly crackdown, Human Rights Watch said today.
“Sudan’s army blocked, opened fire on, and beat people commemorating lives lost fighting for justice,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
“Once again in the new Sudan, security forces are resorting to abusive old tactics.”
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@elonmusk
