Welcome to RICH.CO.KE - Satchu's Wrapup

Satchu's Rich Wrap-Up

Friday 12th of February 2021

Afternoon,

Africa

rich.co.ke

Macro Thoughts

World Of Finance

Bananas! @iv_technicals

Commodities

Chart(s) of the day! Nobody ‘uses’ plain vanilla large cap stocks anymore. ht @sentimentrader @jsblokland

World Of Finance

08-FEB-2021 :: The Markets Are Wilding

World Of Finance

Title: Bar, Las Vegas, Nevada Artist: Robert Frank

Misc.

Definition of 'wilding' 1. an uncultivated plant, esp the crab apple, or a cultivated plant that has become wild wildflowers These Ox-eye daisies @LGSpace

World Of Finance

I've already brought them back :-) @J_Bomb_3k

‘The news channel reports on a massive outbreak of wilding in in the city's most prestigious commercial district.’

08-FEB-2021 :: The Markets Are Wilding ( continued)

World Of Finance

You have it all wrong The Pink Tulips aren't Trading Tulips, they're investing Tulips @StockCats

The rise and fall of RCA, the biggest growth story of the 1929 bull market: @WalterDeemer

The hardest thing at the peak is to be the naysayer the short seller.

Anybody can be decisive during a panic It takes a strong Man to act during a Boom. VS NAIPAUL

“The businessman bought at ten and was happy to get out at twelve; the mathematician saw his ten rise to eighteen, but didn’t sell because he wanted to double his ten to twenty.”

...and so then I says to the guy, "listen - you don't understand Radio..." @coloradotravis

So here we are pirouetting atop the most expensive market in history

The 'Buffett Indicator' has hit an All-Time High. Global stocks now worth equal to 122.4% of global GDP.

Home Thoughts

Africa

This is an image of the Sun. Taken at night. With neutrinos. Which travelled through Earth to reach a detector one thousand metres underground @ThePlanetaryGuy

Misc.

The Royal Hunt of the Sun is a 1964 play by Peter Shaffer that dramatizes the relation of two worlds entering in a conflict by portraying two characters: Atahuallpa Inca and Francisco Pizarro.

Misc.

The expedition is predominantly in the name of gold, religion and belief; all Incas being heathens who must be brought before God.

The play critically studies these two themes throughout the discovery of Atahualpa – the Inca Sun God – and massacre of the Incas themselves.

Atahualpa: I am Atahualpa Capac. Son of the Sun. Son of the Moon. Lord of the Four Quarters. Why you not kneel?

Atahualpa: Pizarro. You will die soon, and you not believe in your God. Is why you tremble and keep no word. Believe in me. For you, I will do a great thing. I will swallow death and spit it out of me.

"Have you ever climbed a mountain in full armour? That's what we did, him going first the whole way up a tiny path into the clouds, with drops sheer on both sides into nothing" - Peter Shaffer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun

Misc.

#JerryGoldsmith was given just 10 days to write the score to CHINATOWN, and he delivered a miracle. @The3Rrrs

Misc.

New York City by Paola M Franqui @Unique_Abstract

Misc.

King’s Crossing: Amboseli Version @just_sham_it

Africa

Political Reflections

Law & Politics

A variant summary update including new vaccine trial results of partial resistance, further spread, and great graphics by @carlzimmer @13pt @NYTScience @EricTopol

Law & Politics

Olivier Véran indique que sur 17 000 test positifs à la #Covid_19 réalisés ces derniers jours, 4 à 5% présenteraient "des mutations évocatrices des variants sud-africain et brésilien". @CovidTracker_

Misc.

We all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'

Misc.

04-JAN-2021 :: The ''warp speed'' Vaccine Roll Out is chasing the coat Tails of the Virus.

Misc.

The spike glycoprotein of the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV contains a furin-like cleavage site absent in CoV of the same clade

Misc.

Economist’s international excess death toll comparisons @EdConwaySkY

Misc.

They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Misc.

In this respect, our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words, they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away.

But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they have taken no precautions

08-FEB-2021 :: We are at peak vaccine euphoria

Misc.

We are at peak vaccine euphoria

Global covid19 cases [are] falling at just under 2%/day @video4me

As al pacino said in scarface the world is yours

"[Manny] Oh, Well What's Coming To You, Tony? [Tony] The World, Chico, And Everything In It."

No one wants to think that

If you have a "normal" pandemic that is fading, but a "British variant" that is surging, the combined total can look like a flat, manageable situation. @spignal

They fancied themselves free, wrote Camus, ―and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

We've updated our preprint on the transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 VOC 202012/01, aka B.1.1.7, with new statistical and modelling methods.

Headline: we estimate VOC is 43–82% more transmissible than preexisting variants.

WHO DG ⁦⁦@DrTedros COVID-19 Some questions have been raised as to whether some hypotheses have been discarded I want to clarify that all hypotheses remain open and require further study

Misc.

It is remarkable that the Propaganda is still being propagated more than a year later.

Misc.

Today only the Paid for Propagandists and Virologists and WHO will argue that there is a ''zoonotic'' origin for COVID19.

It is remarkable that the Propaganda is still being propagated more than a year later.

There is no natural Pathway for the Evolution of COVID19.

01-MAR-2020 :: The Origin of the #CoronaVirus #COVID19

Misc.

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow

“There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It is the sum total of the things they aren't telling us.”

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on. ”

‘’Zoonotic’’ origin was one that was accelerated in the Laboratory.

Misc.

Arab Spring Showed Autocracy is Anything But Stable @bopinion

Law & Politics

It has been 10 years since Egyptians first filled Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square for a series of protests that would, in less than a month, end the 30-year dictatorship of President Hosni Mubarak.

Their success turbo-charged an Arab people-power movement that had already toppled an autocrat in Tunisia, inspiring millions throughout the Middle East and North Africa to rise against authoritarian regimes.

Two more tyrants would fall, in Yemen and Libya, and other regimes would be shaken to their core.

A decade on, the promise of the Arab Spring persists in Tunisia, and in more recent developments Sudan.

But in much of the region there has been a retrenchment of authoritarian rule, or state failure and civil war.

Economies have collapsed, tens of millions have been displaced, and in many corners, violent conflict rages on, fueled by the interventions of competing authoritarian regimes.

The region’s autocrats argue that the lesson from the chaos and violence is that the Arab world is simply not suited for democracy.

Many Western governments are at least sympathetic to this line of thinking:

They embrace autocrats and theories of authoritarian stability, expressing only the faintest murmurs of concern over repression and other excesses all while financing and arming many of the worst violators.

This tendency was most recently on display when French President Emmanuel Macron, playing host to President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, rejected calls to condition arms sales to Egypt on human rights, arguing untenably that such conditions could add to political fragility.

But the Arab Spring actually demonstrated that the opposite is true.

The chaotic, unpredictable and uneven fashion in which regimes entered into crisis and collapsed, along with the societies they ruled for decades, shows that authoritarianism is both highly fragile and a major source of violent turmoil.

In 2011, the rulers of Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and Libya were overthrown while Syria fell into civil war and Bahrain had to invite foreign military forces to quash its massive uprising against the monarchy.

This is not to say any particular authoritarian government has an expiration date. But even when they endure, but they face a persistent risk of violent turmoil and sudden collapse.

The turmoil is the product of authoritarianism. The most common cause of violence is the autocrat’s attempt to impede democratic transitions by brute force.

This is best exemplified by Bashar al Assad’s repression of the Arab Spring uprising in Syria, with the backing of fellow tyrants in Iran and Russia.

The second source of turmoil is the weakness of states, kept that way by despots who fear strong, credible and diffuse governing institutions.

When dictators are overthrown, the absence of such institutions can lead to state failure, as was the case in Libya and Yemen.

In the case of Egypt, regime elites regrouped during the transition from dictatorship, rallied popular opinion and launched a coup d’etat in 2013 against the country’s first democratically elected president.

They were able to count on the support of Gulf monarchs who were alarmed by the uprisings that had spread across the region.

Following the coup, protestors were subject to alarming levels of repression and brutality, they faced mass arrests, torture in detention and massacre on the streets.

Western governments looked away, convinced these outrages were necessary to reestablish stability.

If Western officials believe in authoritarian stability, autocrats themselves are all too aware of how precarious their position really is.

Consider the sequence of events that played out in Egypt starting in Sept. 2019, when a former civilian contractor to the military began broadcasting videos on Facebook from his self-imposed exile in Spain, accusing President Sisi and his allies of spending state funds to build themselves lavish palaces and hotels.

On Sept. 19, only a few thousand Egyptians heeded his call for protests.

And yet, this was enough to cause conniptions in the government with statements from the presidency, parliament and the defense ministry.

Initially, Sisi insisted the new palaces were part of the new state he was building.

Following the protests, he struck a conciliatory tone, promising to add more Egyptians to subsidy rolls.

At the same time, thousands were arrested to quash the risk of protests snowballing into 2011 proportions.

All this, remember, in response to some Facebook videos and a few thousand protestors scattered across a country of 100 million people.

The government’s response speaks not to stability but to paranoia, stemming from the knowledge that authoritarian rulers can fall quickly.

The grievances that brought Egyptians to the streets in 2011 and 2019 are shared by many across the region.

Anti-government protests in the past two years have brought down autocrats in Sudan and Algeria, as well as governments in Iraq and Lebanon.

The refusal of many regimes to shed autocratic models of government, coupled with growing economic hardship, elevates the risk that authoritarian fragility will claim other victims in the coming years.

Every autocrat’s worst nightmare. Photographer: STR/AFP/Getty Images

Law & Politics

@RonySeikaly - Rajeh Yittammar (Revolution Radio Mix)

Law & Politics

January 15, 2011 Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution CS Monitor

Law & Politics

Mr. Ben Ali in a speech on Monday called the riots “terrorist acts” that were the work of “masked gangs” operating for foreign parties.

"We are not afraid, we are not afraid, we are afraid only of God," the crowds chanted on Tuesday in Tunis.

On Thursday, the American secretary of State said the following in Qatar.

“In too many places, in too many ways, the region’s foundations are sinking into the sand,” said Secretary Hillary Clinton.

“Those who cling to the status quo may be able to hold back the full impact of their countries’ problems for a little while, but not forever, If leaders don’t offer a positive vision and give young people meaningful ways to contribute, others will fill the vacuum.”

The day’s seismic events in Tunisia were described by the broadcaster Abeer Madi al-Halabi as serving “a lesson for countries where presidents and kings have rusted on their thrones.”

And this Jasmine Revolution will amplify two ways: through the Maghreb and towards the holy cities of Saudi Arabia.

The question remains the degree of the amplification. And it would be naive to expect that it might not cross the Sahara and head south.

Change is never incremental, it tips and surges.

24 OCT 11 :: 'Gaddafi's Body in a Freezer - What's the Message?'

Law & Politics

Wilhelm Sasnal Gaddafi 2011 @Tate

Law & Politics

10-JUN-2019 :: The ‘’zeitgeist’’ of the Revolution in Khartoum was intoxicating.

Law & Politics

As I watched events unfold it felt like Sudan was a portal into a whole new normal.

Hugh Masekela said ‘’I want to be there when the people start to turn it around.’

Africa

Will they have that moment of Epiphany?

Law & Politics

Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics

“The revolutionary contingent attains its ideal form not in the place of production, but in the street, where for a moment it stops being a cog in the technical machine and itself becomes a motor (machine of attack), in other words, a producer of speed.’

Turning to Africa the Spinning Top

Africa

Democracy from Tanzania to Zimbabwe to Cameroon has been shredded.

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

10 NOV 14 : African youth demographic {many characterise this as a 'demographic dividend"} - which for Beautiful Blaise turned into a demographic terminator

Africa

Martin Aglo, a law student from Benin, told Reuters: “After the Arab Spring, this is the Black Spring”.We need to ask ourselves; how many people can incumbent shoot stone cold dead in such a situation – 100, 1,000, 10,000?

This is another point: there is a threshold beyond which the incumbent can’t go. Where that threshold lies will be discovered in the throes of the event.

The Event is no longer over the Horizon.

21 OCT 19 :: "The New Economy of Anger"

Law & Politics

Nose-diving economic opportunity is creating tinder-dry conditions.

People have been pushed to the edge and are taking to the streets.

Paul Virilio pronounced in his book Speed and Politics,

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.”

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.

Truth behind killing of Iran nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh revealed @jewishchron @JakeWSimons

Law & Politics

The Iranian nuclear scientist who was shot dead near Tehran in November was killed by a one-ton automated gun that was smuggled into the country piece-by-piece by the Mossad, the JC can reveal.

The 20-plus spy team, which comprised both Israeli and Iranian nationals, carried out the high-tech hit after eight months of painstaking surveillance, intelligence sources disclosed.

The Tehran regime has secretly assessed that it will take six years before a replacement for top scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is fully operational.

Meanwhile, Israeli analysts have concluded that his death has extended the period of time it would take Iran to achieve a bomb from about three-and-a-half months to two years — with senior intelligence figures privately putting it as high as five years.

The disclosures come as the JC gives the fullest account yet of the assassination that made headlines around the world and significantly degraded Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, 59, known as the “father of the bomb”, lost his life in a burst of 13 bullets as he travelled with his wife and 12 bodyguards in Absard, near Tehran, on 27 November last year.

Neither his wife nor any of his security team were harmed in the attack, which was carried out using a hyper-accurate automated weapon in order to protect civilians from collateral damage.

Since Fakhrizadeh’s death, speculation has been rife about his killers, with no intelligence agency claiming responsibility for the murder.

The circumstances of the killing have also been shrouded in mystery, with wild reports wrongly blaming a team of 62 gunmen.

Now the JC can confirm that Israel’s feared spy agency was behind the hit, which was carried out by mounting the killing device in a Nissan pickup.

The bespoke weapon, operated remotely by agents on the ground as they observed the target, was so heavy because it included a bomb that destroyed the evidence after the killing.

It was carried out by Israel alone, without American involvement, the JC has learnt.

US officials were only given a “little clue, like checking the water temperature” prior to the attack, according to top international intelligence sources.

The audacious operation, which humiliated the Tehran leadership, succeeded partly because Iranian security services were too busy watching suspected political dissenters, sources said.

Jacob Nagel, one of Israel’s most senior defence officials who acted as Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser, said: “The Mossad had documents proving that Fakhrizadeh had worked on several nuclear warheads, each one able to cause five Hiroshimas.

“He was serious. He still meant to do what he planned. So someone decided that he had had enough time on earth.”

When Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s “father of the bomb”, perished in a hail of bullets on the outskirts of Tehran in November, the assassination stunned the Iranian regime and made headlines around the world. But three months on, key questions remain unanswered.

Nobody even knows how the 59-year-old nuclear scientist was killed.

Initial reports suggested he was gunned down by armed men; later, a Revolutionary Guards official blamed a “satellite-operated” gun using artificial intelligence.

Quite where such a device had come from, and how it had been set up, remained unexplained.

To this day, nobody knows whether the operation was a snap move or had been planned for months. And despite many theories, no one knows exactly why he was killed.

Uncertainty also hangs over President Trump’s role in the hit. Some analysts argued that he was making his mark before leaving office, while others denied American involvement.

Most importantly of all — despite widespread speculation that Israel was responsible — nobody has pinned down the identity of those behind the killing.

Until now. Today, the JC can confirm that the hit was carried out by Mossad, Israel’s feared intelligence service.

And in the most complete account of the operation yet published, we can reveal for the first time the answers to the questions that have eluded the world.

To understand the need for such a high-profile and high-risk operation, the plot must be traced back to the night of 31 January 2018, to a bleak commercial district on the outskirts of the Iranian capital, and a blinding flash of light inside a darkened warehouse.

That was the start of one of the most significant intelligence coups carried out by Mossad in recent times.

After a year of surveillance, spies stole a vast archive of Iran’s nuclear secrets, using torches that burned bright at 2,000C to free the documents from 32 giant safes.

Starting with the black ringbinders containing the most vital information, the agents spirited away 50,000 pages of documents and 163 CDs containing the full details of Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme.

Today, the nuclear archive — which Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled in a famous address at the Israeli Defence Ministry in 2018 — is housed in a forensically-secure unit at a secret location in Israel.

Sources confirmed that the Jewish state is now using the intelligence it contained to persuade the Biden administration, via the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Tehran cannot be trusted to abide by the terms of any nuclear deal.

“We will base our arguments this time on pure intelligence, not politics,” an Israeli source said. “It will be cleaner to do that.”

The secrets would not be new to the Americans, the source clarified, but Israeli officials would be offering their own interpretation and emphasis.

Earlier this month, the Mossad convened a meeting of its Brigadier-Generals to decide how to stop the US from entering another flawed nuclear deal that would only empower Iran.

Israel believes that the 2015 Obama agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), disastrously allowed Tehran to keep its nuclear programme intact, pausing it but not dismantling it.

And it allowed the regime to siphon money to its numerous proxy militias as soon as sanctions were lifted, subjecting the region to years of havoc.

The archive suggested that Iran had failed to respect the terms of Obama’s bargain.

Fast forward to 2021, and Israel hopes that it will convince Joe Biden not to repeat the errors made by his old friend, and maintain some semblance of Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign on the theocracy.

Operationally, however, the archive meant something else. As soon as Israeli analysts opened those black ringbinders back in 2018, they knew that Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was destined — to use Mossad slang — to “depart”.

“It contained original documents ordering the concealment of the nuclear programme, many of them in Fakhrizadeh’s handwriting,” a source said.

“Analysts realised they were looking at his ink, his fingerprints, his pressure on the paper as he wrote. He was the one who was behind the deception.

“Fakhrizadeh was the father of everything we found in the archive. All was under his command, from the science and the secret sites to the personnel and know-how. He had led an operation to hide it from the world. From that point, it was just a matter of time.”

The assassination plot went live in March 2020, as the world was preoccupied with the Coronavirus threat.

A team of Israeli spies was dispatched to Iran, where it liaised with local agents.

The group was comprised of more than 20 operatives, a large number for such a complex and risky mission. A meticulous surveillance operation was launched.

“The team built up an extremely detailed, minute-by-minute plan,” said a source.

“For eight months, they breathed with the guy, woke up with him, slept with him, travelled with him. They would have smelled his aftershave every morning, if he had used aftershave.”

The decision was made to kill the scientist on the road leading east out of Tehran to the exclusive country retreat of Absard, where he owned a villa.

The team knew that Fakhrizadeh travelled there from Tehran on Fridays.

“They knew his daily route, speed and timing, and they knew exactly which doors they would use to get out,” a source said.

The JC has confirmed that the assassins did indeed use a sophisticated remote-controlled gun, with a small bomb built in to allow it to self-destruct (though contrary to Iranian claims, it was not “satellite operated”).

Including the explosives, the bespoke device weighed one ton, and was smuggled into Iran in small pieces over several months.

Then it was assembled and installed inside a Nissan pick-up truck, which was parked by the side of the road.

On 27 November, Fakhrizadeh was travelling with his wife in a black Opel saloon, in the midst of a convoy carrying 12 bodyguards.

Unbeknownst to them, a team of Israeli spies was on the ground, watching their every move and waiting to operate the gun from a distance.

When the car passed the designated spot, they pressed the button and the hyper-accurate weapon opened fire. Thirteen bullets hit Fakhrizadeh head-on, while his wife, who was sitting 10 inches away, was not harmed.

Iranian authorities claimed that the scientist’s security chief was struck by four bullets as he threw himself across his boss.

But sources close to the operation said this was untrue. Not a single one of Fakhrizadeh’s bodyguards, nor anybody aside from the scientist, was killed or injured, the JC can confirm.

“There were several ways to operate but this one was the most accurate,” a source said.

“It was the most elegant way to make sure that the target will be hit, and only him. The objective was to avoid harming anyone else.”

Claims that gunmen moved in to finish the scientist off were inaccurate, the source added.

As the Mossad team made its escape, the one-ton weapon blew itself up, adding to the confusion at the scene.

“Thank God we got all our people out and they didn’t catch anyone. They didn’t even come close,” one of those familiar with the operation said.

“Their security was not bad at all, but the Mossad was much better. It was a major thing that happened, a dramatic operation.”

The impact of the assassination was so profound that it surprised even the Mossad top brass. “Israel had a big team there, including Israelis, and it was a big embarrassment for Tehran,” a source said.

“The regime was humiliated and devastated. Even the Mossad was surprised by the huge impact.

“The machine was quite an impressive thing. There was a team on the ground as well, which made it quite complicated. But it had to be done and it was worth it.”

The source disclosed: “It has hit the Iranians hard. Tehran has assessed that it will take six years to find a replacement for Fakhrizadeh. Israeli analysis has now put the breakout time (the period it would take Iran to finalise a nuclear bomb) at two years. Before Fakhrizadeh departed, it was about three months.”

And two years is a conservative estimate. Senior Mossad figures privately believe that the breakout time is closer to five years, the JC can reveal.

The source added: “The Americans were not involved. It was absolutely an Israeli operation, door to door. It was not political, it was a matter of security. It had nothing to do with Trump or the US election. It happened after Biden was elected.

“But Israel did give the Americans a little clue — not to the level of asking for the green light, more like checking the water temperature. Just like they had notified us before killing (Iranian Brigadier-General Qasem) Soleimani.”

Further assassinations were planned for the future, the source said, though nothing on the same scale as Fakhrizadeh or Soleimani.

“Yes, the Mossad may have plans for further departures,” the source said.

“We need to keep the pressure on. Israel will keep on fighting, for sure. We have already created big holes in Al Qaeda and the (Iranian special forces) Quds force.”

According to Mossad analysis, Iran is responsible for 80 per cent of the threats facing the Jewish state. And there is no doubt that whatever approach the Americans take with Iran, Israel will “defend itself by itself”.

“Our main strategy for leverage over the United States is to present our 2018 intelligence to the IAEA,” a source said.

“But if it doesn’t work, we will act. The US won’t love it, but we will keep our sovereignty and fight every existential threat.Many Al Qaeda and Iranian personnel have departed, and now Fakhrizadeh has departed. That has made a big difference.

“But if the situation becomes critical, we will ask nobody for permission. We will kill the bomb.”

This is one hell of a story, filled with detail, from @JakeWSimons @NTarnopolsky

Law & Politics

The scene of the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh @jewishchron

Law & Politics

06-JAN-2020 :: The Assassination (The Escalation of 'Shadow War')

Law & Politics

“One type of paradise that men imagine is about streams, beautiful maidens, and lush landscape. But there is another kind of paradise—the battlefield.”The front, he said, was “the lost paradise of the human beings.”

The supreme leader, who usually reserves his highest praise for fallen soldiers, has referred to Suleimani as “a living martyr of the revolution.” “In the end, he drank the sweet syrup of martyrdom.”-

25 NOV 19 :: Iran’s ‘only crime is we decided not to fold

Law & Politics

4 FEB 19 :: What explains Tehran’s resilience? It is a prize that remains beyond Washington’s grasp, for now.

Law & Politics

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites Chomsky @noamchomskyT

Law & Politics

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information Chomsky

Whoever Controls The Narrative Controls The World

Law & Politics

China bans @BBCWorld because... .. “fake news is not tolerated in China”. @MaajidNawaz

China

International Markets

World Of Finance

Yields on two-year Treasury yields briefly printed a record low under 0.1% on Thursday The yield touched 0.0972% @business.

World Of Finance

Short-dated bond yields have been under pressure recently, with bill rates hovering close to zero, as investors park more of their abundant cash in positive-yielding assets.

08-FEB-2021 :: Negative rates are the only escape hatch

World Of Finance

Lets now turn back to the markets

The front end of the us interest rate curve is flirting with negative

The only game in town: @coloradotravis Feb 4

Negative rates are the only escape hatch

Here's my alchemy formula. You take real $ rates, -100bps and you multiply by total debt-to-GDP, 450pc, and you get a negative real cost of debt at the macro level of -4.5pc of GDP, a trillion bucks. @hendry_hugh

Here is why central banks are trapped and cannot raise rates even if inflation rises: @dlacalle_IA Feb 2

Of course timing is everything but a robust pent up recovery is simply fantasy thinking something the imf has been indulging in of late

The U.S. economy has recovered around 12.5 million jobs since April ... but is still around 10 million jobs down from pre- pandemic level from last February. @ReutersJamie

One of the common narratives in the markets is that there is all this pent up demand & once economy opens back up it will be unleashed. Perhaps.@SantiagoAuFund

World Of Finance

But once economy opens back up rents, mortgages other debts/invoices that have been deferred will need to be paid. Cuts both ways...

There is no V shaped recovery coming in 2021. Thats just a Fantasy.

World Of Finance

"A 15 million jobs 'gap' has opened up between current levels and where we should be based upon pre-pandemic trends. chronic excess capacity could result'' Washington Cross's Caron @lisaabramowicz1

World Of Finance

"A 15 million jobs 'gap' has opened up between current levels and where we should be based upon pre-pandemic trends. Without a revitalized jobs engine, chronic excess capacity could result, possibly leading to downward pressure on wages, prices & demand:" Washington Cross's Caron

Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ

World Currencies

Euro 1.2123

Dollar Index 90.487

Japan Yen 104.844

Swiss Franc 0.8902

Pound 1.3797

Aussie 0.7744

India Rupee 72.771

South Korea Won 1104.7

Brazil Real 5.3667

Egypt Pound 15.6290

South Africa Rand 14.6381

Dollar Index Chart INO 90.484

World Currencies

Euro versus the Dollar Chart 1.2123

World Currencies

Frodo was the underdoge, All thought he would fail, Himself most of all. @elonmusk

World Of Finance

08-FEB-2021 :: @elonmusk I am become meme, Destroyer of shorts

World Of Finance

Mr. Musk can pump and dump just about anything with a tweet.he has superpowers.
And on February 4 He tested that hypothesis
No highs, no lows, only Doge @elonmusk Feb 4

Dogecoin is the people’s crypto @elonmusk Feb 4

What if the King of Meme called the Top @Convertbond? It would be Shakespearean. $BTC The Tweets would be wild

World Of Finance

Commodities

Commodities

Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ

Commodities

08-FEB-2021 The Markets Are Wilding [continued]

Commodities

Gold took a hit

The gold story is very similar to the #Thesilversqueeze a lot of commentators I follow have been very snooty about the merry band of redditeers but the fact of the matter is very simple.

The paper markets trade a multiple of the physical market and the paper ‘’tail’’ has been wagging the precious metals ‘’dog’’ the redditeers can see this.

If you squeeze the physical markets then you reprice the paper market and exponentially and asymmetrically to the upside. I expect that to happen this year.

Keep an eye on gold deliveries

The price impulse will be emitted from the gold deliveries situation.

Keep and eye on silver deliveries and etfs

I stand by my forecast

04-JAN-2021 :: What Will Happen In 2021

My Top Trades are Gold and Silver. I expect Gold to top $2,500 this year and Silver to reach $50.00

These are wilding markets. Stay safe.

Gold 6 month INO 1819.5

Commodities

Oil has posted its Best YTD performance in 30 years. @TaviCosta However this is less a story around increasing demand but one of better supply discipline and management.

Commodities

In case you missed it: The price of #oil is back to pre-pandemic levels. @Schuldensuehner

Commodities

Sub Saharan Africa

Africa

More African Nations Seen Tapping G-20 Debt Plan on Revenue Drop @bpolitics

Africa

The economic damage wrought by the coronavirus will probably lead more African nations to seek debt restructuring, the head of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said.

Chad last month became the first state in Africa to request relief under a Group of 20 initiative to help countries cope with the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Ethiopia applied two days later, followed by Zambia, which last year became the first African country to default on its debt since the onset of the pandemic.

With government revenue taking strain because of the slowdown in economic growth, some countries are less equipped to meet the demands of their citizens, Uneca Executive Secretary Vera Songwe said in an interview.

She didn’t specify which nations might seek relief, but said it would be those made most vulnerable by the crisis.

“African countries don’t have the resilience buffers that we had in 2020,” Songwe said.

“There probably will be more countries that will opt for the G-20 debt framework,” because they need additional fiscal space to purchase vaccines, she said.

Angola and the Republic of Congo are particularly vulnerable to distress because they have high debt levels, severe economic recessions and borrowed significant amounts from China using resource-backed loans, Verisk Maplecroft said in a research note last week.

Gabon’s government announced in January it’s seeking to “reprofile” its Eurobonds.

Ethiopia’s announcement on Jan. 29 that it will restructure its debt under the G-20 program triggered a sell-off of the nation’s Eurobonds.

The yield on the 2024 securities rose to 9.14% on Wednesday, compared with 6.52% on Jan. 28.

The use of the G-20 framework needn’t hinder market access for African nations, Songwe said, citing the fact that Ivory Coast twice returned to the bond market since seeking debt-service suspension under a program initiated by the Paris Club of creditors in June.

“The market is in search of returns and they are not getting a lot of return in different geographies,” she said. “This is a geography where they are getting a good return.”

The G-20 framework aims to bring creditors including China into an agreement to rework the debt of countries in danger of defaulting.

China is Ethiopia’s biggest bilateral creditor, accounting for 23% of its total public debt burden of $27.8 billion, according to World Bank data.

Under the G-20 program, debtors are committed to seek similar terms of the resulting bilateral restructuring with private creditors.

It’s unclear what that will mean for Eurobond-holders, said Songwe, who spent more than a decade at the World Bank before being appointed head of the UN body in 2017.

“We’ll get better clarity as one or two countries take it and start doing it,” she said. “But essentially when you restructure your debt, you put everything in the basket.”

Last year, Ecuador restructured its debt with bondholders and China after updating its International Monetary Fund loan program.

Ethiopia which was once the Poster child of the African Renaissance

Africa

China Africa Win Win

Africa

Time to Big Up the Quaaludes

Africa

Debt, virus and locusts create a perfect storm for Africa @TheAfricaReport

Africa

Africa’s debt dependent resource producers falling into China’s orbit @MaplecroftRisk

Africa

Public debt in sub-Saharan Africa has increased dramatically in the last ten years, with countries borrowing heavily from China to fund major infrastructure projects.

However, the decrease in commodity prices and the slowdown in the African economy since 2015 has hindered their capacity to repay public debt.

Debt distress risk in the region has further increased due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered Zambia’s default in 2020-Q4.

In addition, debt conditions from Chinese creditors are often opaque and established on a case-by-case basis.

Thus, investors and stakeholders fear that China could take advantage of the current debt crisis to acquire the control of strategic assets, locking out Western companies, and leaving African countries in a state of dependency.

China’s role in the African debt crisis

Zambia’s default shows that, apart from the total amount of debt, the structure and composition of creditors also play a significant role when determining debt risk.

The popularity of Chinese creditors has created a more diverse creditor base than the historical primarily Paris Club bilateral lenders, which complicates the resolution of repayment conflicts.

Since Chinese creditors are often not transparent, Western bondholders are more likely to reject potential debt relief packages in countries borrowing from China, fearing that the debt relief will be used to repay Chinese loans.

Therefore, countries that have received considerable loans from China are likely to experience tensions between Western bondholders and Chinese creditors.

Moreover, investors and stakeholders in Africa tend to be preoccupied by the so-called “debt-trap diplomacy”.

This refers to the idea that China has the long-term goal of obtaining access to key assets and commodities by tying African countries to debt contracts that they will not be able to repay.

However, there is little evidence that China is pardoning African countries from their debt obligations in exchange for control of strategic assets.

So far, the most common renegotiation strategy by Chinese creditors is the deferrals of payment deadlines.

Yet, access to natural resources plays a central role in the repayment conditions of some Chinese loans.

China often offers resource-backed loans to resource-rich countries, using commodities as a repayment method or as a collateral.

This type of loans is often predicated on the future production of a natural resources such as cocoa, tobacco, oil or copper.

Resource-backed loans are often attractive for African countries with limited access to capital markets, since they can be used to finance infrastructure projects and are perceived as a cheaper financing method.

However, these loans can also increase fiscal pressures in highly indebted countries and disrupt their commodity production.

Repayment deals based on the future value rather than on the quantity of a commodity are especially risky for the borrower, since a decrease in commodity prices in the global market would require an artificial increase in its production to cover the debt obligations.

Not all countries with high debt risk are equally exposed to reserve-based lending from China

Debt levels in oil-exporting countries such as Congo and Angola are particularly concerning, since the collapse in global oil prices has led to the devaluation of their national currencies.

This makes debt repayments denominated in foreign currency relatively more expensive.

In addition, the use of reserve-based lending adds an extra layer in the complicated debt landscape of commodity-dependent countries, further increasing the risk of debt distress.

In the chart below, we show that Congo and Angola are the most exposed to the consequences of reserve-based lending.

Apart from being two of the countries with the highest risk in public debt and economic growth in our indices, they are two of the countries that have borrowed more heavily from China.

China’s presence has also played an important role in the debt sustainability of Zambia and Mozambique, where China holds 26 and 18 % of external public debt respectively.

In contrast, other highly indebted countries such as Mauritania and Ghana are less exposed to the risks of resource-backed loans, since Chinese debt only represents less than 15 % of the total external debt.

It is also worth mentioning that, while risk to default is lower in Ethiopia, Cameroon, Kenya and Uganda, they have borrowed heavily from China and could also be exposed to some of the risks of resource-backed loans.

However, not all Chinese loans follow a resource-backed approach and its application varies country by country.

While only some specific projects in Nigeria and Ghana follow the reserve-based lending strategy, the model is more common in countries such as Angola and Congo.

Looking ahead

As countries in sub-Saharan Africa continue to suffer from the economic impact of the pandemic, we expect the risk of debt distress to increase, especially in countries with large amounts of Chinese loans.

The recent increase in oil prices will provide some form of temporary relief and ease the situation for oil-dependent countries.

However, Angola and Congo are especially vulnerable, since they present high debt levels, a severe economic recession and have borrowed significant amounts from China using resource-backed loans.

The case of Angola is particularly concerning, since it is estimated that around 75% of the total Chinese debt is funded this way, often secured by oil exports.

Angola is the country with the highest amount of Chinese loans, spread across 100 projects to finance oil and power state-owned enterprises.

Companies and investors in Angola can expect credit ratings to further deteriorate. As Angola is being pushed into debt restructuring in 2021, commercial creditors are hoping that a post-pandemic oil price recovery will enable the country to meet its obligations.

However, the oil industry will take time to recover and public debt in Angola is in a very critical situation.

23. Evolution of Maplecroft’s Public Debt and Economic Growth Risk indices between 2011 and 2021 in Africa @MaplecroftRisk

Africa

Economic Growth Index, Public Debt Index and % of debt from China @MaplecroftRisk

Africa

Highest ranking countries in Sub-Saharan Africa by economic freedom: @MihrThakar

Africa

Mauritius 21/180

Rwanda 33

Botswana 40

Cabo Verde 76

Tanzania 89

Namibia 96

Côte d'Ivoire 101

Uganda 102

Ghana 104

South Africa 106

7-day Avg. of new #covid19 cases reported by #African countries. @BeautifyData

Africa

Africa is currently reporting a million new infections about every 43 days and has reported more than 3,742,000 since the pandemic began @ReutersGraphics

Africa

6 countries are still at the peak of their infection curve. Mayotte South Sudan [at peak] Ivory Coast 98% Senegal 96% Seychelles 91% Ghana 91%

Active #Covid19 cases record 520,000 was in January 2021 @NKCAfrica

Africa

According to @NCoVAfrica [1st wave] Peak Daily Infections was 24th July 2020 and 20,873

Africa

Drinking The Kool Aid

Africa

Deaths from COVID-19 in Africa have surged by 40% in the last month, pushing Africa’s death toll towards 100 000 @WHOAFRO

Africa

Over 22 300 deaths were reported in Africa in the last 28 days, compared with nearly 16 000 deaths in the previous 28 days.

The continent is expected to reach 100 000 deaths in the coming days.

Thirty-two countries reported a rise in deaths in the last 28 days, while 21 reported flat or falling rates.

Africa’s COVID-19 fatality rate rose to 3.7% during the last 28 days compared to 2.4% in the previous 28 days and is and is now well above the global average.

This spike in mortality comes as Africa’s second wave of cases which began in October 2020 seems to have peaked on 6 January 2021.

The second wave spread much faster than the first and is far more lethal.

South of the border things are very bad. Even though the data isn’t being reported, there’s obvious increase in hospitalization & death - @DrAhmedKalebi

Africa

South of the border things are very bad. Even though the data isn’t being reported, there’s obvious increase in hospitalization & death - so much so that churches & hospitals are issuing warnings. Some of the cases have found their way across to us. Hopefully no mutated variants

Health Alert – U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam (February 10, 2021) @usembassytz

Africa

Health Alert – U.S. Embassy Dar es Salaam (February 10, 2021)

Location: Tanzania

Event: Increase in COVID-19 Cases

The U.S. Embassy is aware of a significant increase in the number of COVID-19 cases since January 2021.

@MagufuliJP #COVID19 was equivalent to “Satan” and that it would naturally be defeated with prayer, since “Satan cannot reside in the body of Christ.” 27-JUL-2020 :: Drinking the Kool-Aid

Africa

The politicians who mismanaged the pandemic committed "social murder" and must be held accountable, writes @bmj_latest @KamranAbbasi @EricTopol

Africa

Pandemics had the capacity to overtake “the dynasties at the time of their senility, when they had reached the limit of their duration”

Africa

The African @jairbolsonaro is of course @MagufuliJP

Africa

Sasa, John Pombe Magufuli akiambukizwa na covid19, ataambia watu nini? @SeweS_

Africa

we all know by now ''viruses exhibit non-linear and exponential characteristics'

Africa

5 of the 9 provinces have entered a post-2nd-wave period: EC,WC,GP,KZN,LP The end of a wave is taken when incidence rate has dropped below 15% of its peak value @rid1tweets

Africa

Big Exponential Slide in South Africa Case Load

Democratic Republic of Congo confirms two Ebola cases in resurgence of major outbreak @Reuters

Africa

Two people have contracted Ebola and died this week in Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the health ministry said in a statement.

A 60-year-old woman who died on Wednesday in the district of Biena had a link with a woman who also died after contracting Ebola and was married to a survivor of the previous major outbreak, the statement said.

Congo’s equatorial forests have been a breeding ground for the Ebola virus, which causes severe vomiting and diarrhoea and is spread through contact with body fluids.

The first known emergence of Ebola Zaire—the hottest subtype of Ebola virus— happened in September, 1976, when the virus erupted simultaneously in fifty-five villages near the Ebola River.

Ebola Zaire is a slate-wiper in humans. It killed eighty- eight per cent of the people it infected. Apart from rabies and the human immunodeficiency virus, H.I.V., which causes aids, this was the highest rate of mortality that has been recorded for a human virus.

Ebola was spread mainly among family members, through contact with bodily fluids and blood. Many of the people in Africa who came down with Ebola had handled Ebola-infected cadavers. It seems that one of Ebola’s paths wends to the living from the dead.

Tigray’s people and their heritage urgently need protecting @Apollo_magazine @JacopoGnisci H/T @Hnde_ke

Africa

Home to thousands of culturally significant artefacts and monuments, the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia is steeped in history.

Among the treasures preserved in Tigray are some of the earliest standing monuments in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as artefacts and sites that provide precious material evidence for the early history of Christianity and Islam in the continent.

For example, late antique copies of biblical texts, some richly illustrated, as well as basilicas shed light on the religious practices and Christianisation of the northern Horn of Africa and on exchanges with the Mediterranean world.

Medieval wall paintings, rock-hewn churches and metal objects show that Christian Ethiopians expressed their identity and beliefs through a distinct material culture while being receptive to visual ideas from Islamic and other Oriental Orthodox communities. Icons, preserved in dozens of sites, visualise the spiritual devotion and theological sophistication of Ethiopia’s holy men.

Finally, palaces such as that of Yohannes IV in Mekelle, built in the late 19th century, speak to the existence of a wealthy and powerful elite involved in international politics, and, perhaps, tragically represent the political tensions that continue to complicate interregional relationships in the Horn of Africa.

In 1868, for example, Yohannes IV as King of Tigray aided the British troops who crossed his lands on their way to storm the Maqdala fortress of Emperor Tewodros II (r. 1855–68), no doubt in the hope that they would aid him by removing his powerful political opponent.

A few years later, on 11 July 1871, Yohannes IV defeated Emperor Takla Giyorgis II (r. 1869–71), becoming the new King of Kings of Ethiopia.

The mosque of Negash, considered by locals as one of the earliest in Africa, is among the sites that have been damaged by the conflict in Tigray.

According to another report, published by the European External Programme with Africa (EEPA), about 750 people seeking refuge in front of the cathedral of Maryam Seyon (Mary of Zion) – the most holy church for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians – were killed on 15 December.

Some eyewitnesses claim that these civilians were killed while preventing the looting of their church. Sources, corroborated by footage, indicate that the Cherkos Church in Zalambesa was bombed and looted.

At risk: a painting in the Church of St Mary of Zion in Aksum, Tigray. Photo: AGF Srl/Alamy Stock Photo @Apollo_magazine @JacopoGnisci

Africa

The mosque of Negash, considered by locals as one of the earliest in Africa, is among the sites that have been damaged by the conflict in Tigray

Africa

An Unwinnable War

Africa

A rape survivor’s story emerges from a remote African war @latimes

Africa

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — The young mother of two was walking with her sister near a desolate highway in northern Ethiopia last month when five men forced them into a pickup truck and drove them to a small building with a metal roof.

The women recognized their captors by their accents and military uniforms: They were soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, which has joined Ethiopian troops in months of fighting against anti-government forces in the Tigray border region.

Mehrawit, 27, was separated from her sister and locked in a room with only a thin, dirty mattress. For two weeks, she said, the Eritrean soldiers gang-raped her repeatedly, fracturing her spine and pelvis and leaving her crumpled on the floor.

One day, she counted 15 soldiers who took turns sexually assaulting her over eight hours, her cries of agony punctuated by their laughter.

“I was numb,” she recalled from a hospital bed in the regional capital Mekele, days after she escaped. “I could see their faces. I could hear them giggle. But after a while, I was no longer feeling the pain.”

Her account is one of few emerging from the murky conflict in Tigray, where human rights groups say pro-government forces are sexually abusing civilians in a remote highland region far from the world’s gaze.

With tens of thousands of people reportedly killed, many more having fled their homes and some surviving by eating leaves in mountain villages cut off from phone and internet access, the United Nations has warned that the region of 6 million is edging toward a humanitarian disaster.

More than 60,000 have escaped to refugee camps across the border in Sudan.

Compounding the suffering are accounts of gang rapes and other sexual violence by pro-government forces operating with near-total impunity.

As Ethiopia battles to wrest control of Tigray from the regional ruling party, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has barred journalists and most humanitarian groups from the area, rejected allegations of abuses and denied — despite credible evidence to the contrary — that Eritrean forces have entered the country.

Eritrea’s government also denies involvement in the fighting.

With local Tigrayan paramilitary forces having mostly retreated to mountain areas, Ethiopian and allied troops have gained control of population centers including Mekele, where they have established a transitional government.

As some communication links are restored, human rights groups have begun compiling accounts of women bearing telltale signs of sexual violence.

Doctors at Mekele’s main hospital say rape survivors are turning up injured and in tears.

More women are seeking counseling, testing for sexually transmitted infections, emergency contraception and abortions. Girls as young as 12 are among those attacked, researchers say.

“Growing reports of rape and other sexual violence in the Tigray region over the last few weeks adds yet another layer to alarming abuses against civilians since the start of the conflict,” said Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch.

“These reports bring new urgency for the need for a U.N.-led fact-finding mission into the region, which should also include experts in sexual violence and mental health, to press for credible, fair and safe justice for survivors.”

Last month, United Nations special representative Pramila Patten said she was “greatly concerned by serious allegations of sexual violence” in Tigray.

She cited accounts of individuals being forced to rape family members or to have sex with members of the military in exchange for basic goods.

Although Patten did not identify the alleged perpetrators, survivors blame pro-government forces, including Ethiopian and Eritrean troops and paramilitaries from the Amhara region, according to human rights groups.

Mehrawit, whose full name is being withheld under a Times policy not to identify rape survivors, said the Eritrean soldiers did not hide their identities, and cast their actions as revenge against Tigray, whose ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, led Ethiopia for nearly all of the last three decades.

The TPLF presided over a 1998-2000 war with Eritrea, a former Ethiopian state, in which tens of thousands of soldiers died, many in brutal trench warfare.

The conflict ended with Ethiopian troops retaining control of the contested border town of Badme in defiance of a peace agreement.

When Abiy took office in 2018, he agreed to implement the peace deal and ceded the town to Eritrea, ending one of Africa’s longest running conflicts. His efforts earned the 44-year-old leader the Nobel Peace Prize.

Abiy and Eritrean strongman Isaias Afwerki — whose tiny Red Sea nation’s isolationism sometimes garners comparisons to North Korea — now have a shared adversary in the TPLF, which has lost political influence but retains a well-trained paramilitary force estimated at 250,000 troops.

In November, capping months of disputes between Tigray and the government in Addis Ababa, Abiy blamed the TPLF for an attack on a federal military base and launched air and ground raids across the region.

That has trapped women like Mehrawit on a perilous landscape of fresh bloodshed mixed with past grievances.

She said she cried out to her Eritrean captors: “Are you not our brothers? Why are you this cruel?”

One responded: “You killed our family in the war and took Badme from us. So you deserve to be punished.”

Her ordeal began in early January, when Eritrean troops arrived in her village of Kerestber, about 75 miles north of Mekele.

Her family — including her father, 24-year-old sister, aunt and two children ages 7 and 5 — sought safety with relatives in a nearby village.

But there was little to eat there. On the morning of Jan. 9, she and her sister ventured back to Kerestber to collect some crops and check on their house.

Walking back from Kerestber, she said, the Eritrean troops stopped them. Her account was corroborated by a counselor at a rehabilitation center who has interviewed Mehrawit repeatedly, as well as medical records from Ayder Referral Hospital where she was treated.

Staff at both facilities spoke on condition of anonymity to shield them from government reprisals.

Mehrawit said that when she and her sister arrived in the Eritreans’ makeshift camp, they saw about eight other Tigrayan women being held.

That day, five soldiers took turns raping her. Another day, they brought her sister to her room and made Mehrawit watch as she was raped.

For 15 days, Mehrawit was given almost nothing to eat. Her injuries left her unable to walk. The Eritreans brought more and more women to the camp and began to taunt her, saying she would soon be “thrown away.”

“We’ll bring younger and virgin Tigrayan women next time,” one said.

The soldiers eventually loosened their control. On the night of Jan. 23, she crawled out of the camp and made it to a main road, where she fainted.

Her memory remains unclear, but she recalled a motorcycle driver finding her lying next to the asphalt and bringing her to Mekele.

A doctor who treated her in the hospital said injuries to her spine and pelvis meant she would struggle to walk again.

“She has to be in a wheelchair,” he said. “But most of all, her psychological trauma is grave.”

Mehrawit has had no contact with her sister, who she worries may still be in the Eritreans’ custody. Her children and other relatives remain out of phone range.

She was transferred to a nongovernmental center for sexual abuse survivors, where a nurse said she suffers from nightmares that soldiers will climb through the windows and attack her.

“There are days when she begs me not to leave her alone,” the nurse said.

In daily sessions with a therapist, Mehrawit often calls out her sister’s name. Again and again, she wonders about the women she left behind in the camp, the therapist said.

Ethiopian officials have publicly denied allegations of rape and other abuses. The interim head of Tigray’s social affairs department, Abrha Desta, did not respond to requests for comment.

But in a closed-door meeting in Mekele last week, Muna Ahmed, the deputy federal minister for women’s affairs, said the government had recorded 113 rape cases in the Tigray conflict, according to a person who was present and spoke on condition of anonymity.

This week, the U.N. World Food Program said the Ethiopian government had agreed to increase access for aid workers in an attempt to speed the delivery of food assistance to 1 million people.

Humanitarian organizations say armed groups have looted and ransacked medical facilities across Tigray, making it difficult for survivors of rape and other crimes to access emergency care.

Many others are afraid to come forward, fearing punishment by the federal forces that increasingly hold sway over the region.

A few days after Mehrawit spoke to a Times reporter for this article, she received a phone call from an unknown number.

The caller knew she had accused Eritrean soldiers of rape, her therapist said. He warned her not to tell her story again.

Refugees from Ethiopia’s war-torn Tigray region gather at Umm Rakouba refugee camp in Sudan.(Nariman El-Mofty / Associated Press) @latimes

Africa

Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, seen in September.(Eduardo Soteras / Getty Images) @latimes

Africa

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer

Africa

A fiendishly complicated task fending off the centripetal forces which are tearing Ethiopia apart

Africa

‘the genie out of the bottle’@AfricanBizMag

Africa

I reported on Ethiopia's secretive war. Then came a knock at my door @latimes

Africa

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Around 10:30 Monday morning, there was a knock at my door. When I answered, I saw three men I did not recognize. They barged in, knocking me to the floor.

They did not introduce themselves; they didn’t produce any kind of ID or search warrant. They began to ransack my house.

For nearly two years I have been reporting on Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, where government forces last November launched an operation to oust the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF.

As an ethnic Tigrayan, I have roots in the region. But as a freelance journalist based in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, my motivation is to uncover the truth of a war that has gone mostly unreported because the Ethiopian government has severed communication lines and blocked media and humanitarian access to much of Tigray since the start of its offensive in November.

I had just filed a story to the Los Angeles Times about a Tigrayan woman who was gang-raped by soldiers from Eritrea, who are fighting alongside Ethiopian forces, and held captive for 15 days with almost nothing to eat.

The story wasn’t published until today, but it quickly became clear that the men in my house knew about it.

They were wearing civilian clothes but carried guns. They asked me if I had relationships with the TPLF. I told them I had nothing to do with them and don’t support any political group.

In the shadow of the war, Addis Ababa is a tense place for ethnic Tigrayans these days. In Tigray itself, at least six journalists were arrested in the first week of the fighting, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Last month, unidentified gunmen shot and killed a reporter from a state-run TV station in Mekele, the regional capital.

The reporter, Dawit Kebede Araya, had previously been detained by police and questioned about his coverage of the war.

The men in my home threatened to kill me if I kept digging into stories about the situation in Tigray. They also harassed me about my past coverage.

They took my laptop and a flash drive that contained pictures I had obtained from a source in the Tigrayan town of Adigrat, which showed evidence of Eritrean soldiers in several villages.

Ethiopia and Eritrea officially deny that the troops are inside the country, but my reporting and many other accounts indicate otherwise.

The photos I received showed uniformed Eritrean soldiers in their makeshift camps in Tigray, including some in houses they’d seized.

A few days earlier, a therapist who has been treating the rape survivor I wrote about told me that the woman had also received a threatening phone call, warning her not to identify Eritreans as her assailants.

The therapist told me to take as much care as possible with the woman’s safety, and pleaded with me to reveal little of her identity in the article.

Before the men left, they warned that things would be harder for me the next time.

On Thursday the Ethiopian government issued a statement saying I was not a “legally registered” journalist, an attempt to discredit my work.

I no longer feel safe here. I have only my Ethiopian passport, and leaving the country is difficult anyway because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I worry the men might return, searching for more evidence of a war Ethiopia has tried to keep quiet

South Africa All Share Bloomberg

Africa

Dollar versus Rand Chart INO 14.62

Africa

Egypt Pound versus The Dollar Chart INO 15.6280

Africa

Egypt EGX30 Bloomberg

Africa

“Cryptocurrency has become a worldwide transaction of which you cannot even identify who owns what. The technology is so strong Bitcoin has made our currency almost useless or valueless." - Senator Sani Musa @NGRSenate

Africa

“Cryptocurrency has become a worldwide transaction of which you cannot even identify who owns what. The technology is so strong that I don’t see the kind of regulation that we can do. Bitcoin has made our currency almost useless or valueless." - Senator Sani Musa

Nigerian senator says that “#Bitcoin has made the Nigerian currency Useless & Valueless.” @Xentagz

Africa

Nigeria All Share Bloomberg

Africa

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg

Africa

Kenya

Africa

Seems to be simmering at present for we are now witnessing higher positivity rates in last one week albeit without a dramatic surge. @DrAhmedKalebi

Africa

We are likely in a lag phase of a new curve with community spread potentiating an explosive rise if not mitigated. Time to tighten controls is now

Prime commercial office rents fell by 13.8% in the second half of last year as developers adjusted to reduced demand. @moneyacademyKE

RealEstate, Housing & Construction

What’s certain is that the whole global economy has been hit by an insidious, literally invisible circuit breaker. #COVID19

Africa

Camellia reveals £4.6 million settlement over Kenya human rights abuse claims @EveningStandard

N.S.E Equities - Agricultural

Camellia, the British agriculture and engineering firm hit by allegations of human rights abuses on its avocado farming estate in Kenya, said today that it has settled with claimants for up to £4.6 million.

The Kent-based firm has a majority stake in Kakuzi, an avocado farm the size of Manchester that was being sued by law firm Leigh Day on behalf of 79 individuals.

Claims, which dated from 2009 to January 2020, included that the farm's security guards battered a local man to death for stealing avocados, and employees raped 10 women in nearby villages.

Kakuzi had supplied British supermarkets including Sainsbury's, Tesco and Lidl with avocados until all three cut ties after news of the lawsuit emerged last October.

Camellia, which is valued at around £180 million, said in an update that claims it faced at London's High Court "have now been resolved at settlements costing up to £4.6m".

The sum covers "payments for the individual claimants" as well as contribution to their legal fees, and the costs of new safeguarding work - including Kakuzi bringing in independent experts IBIS to conduct a human rights impact assessment of its operations.

Camellia stated that "an innovative and mutually beneficial resolution of all the claims has been reached, without any admission of liability by the companies or by Kakuzi".

It said: "The companies hope that this resolution will clear the path for the investigations into the allegations and, as required, prosecution of any offenders."

The company added that Leigh Day has agreed “not to begin or support” any other claims over Camellia’s Kenya operations “for a substantial period”.

Kakuzi share price data

Price: 370.00

Market Capitalization: 7,252,000,000

EPS:36.4

PE: 10.165