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Thursday, September 5, 2024
U.S. Accuses Russia of Spending Millions to Influence American Voters - WSJ
U.S. Accuses Russia of Spending Millions to Influence American Voters - WSJ
[This looks a lot like an administration effort to ban foreign public diplomacy and American access to foreign opinion that, because it differs from our officially endorsed narrative, is labeled as 'disinformation.' As such, it mirrors the efforts of other countries to ban U.S. public diplomacy instruments like Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, etc. Are we too not 'spending millions to influence... voters" in various countries?]
[Salon] Indictment of Dmitri Simes -
https://www.justice.gov/d9/2024-09/simes_indictment_9.5.24_unsealed.pdf
[Salon] Haaretz Editorial: Israel's Politicized Police Are the Real Lawbreakers -
Israel's Politicized Police Are the Real Lawbreakers
Haaretz EditorialSep 4, 2024
Two weeks ago, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir took another giant step toward turning the Israel Police into the executive arm of his party, Otzma Yehudit. He appointed his own commissioner after his first candidate, Avshalom Peled, withdrew his candidacy because he concluded that he'd be unable to pass the appointments committee. And in his very first test as commissioner, Danny Levy "justified" his appointment on Ben-Gvir's behalf after violating the position of the attorney general – and the law – by authorizing the promotion of Superintendent Meir Suissa despite his indictment for throwing stun grenades at demonstrators.
Israel's High Court bars 'Pegasus panel' from calling cops to testify
'We're not stopping': Tens of thousands protest for hostage deal on third day of rage
Never-before-seen footage of Netanyahu's interrogation to be exposed in new documentary
It seems that the new police commissioner's subordinates have internalized the spirit of the new commander, which was evident in the handling of the latest demonstrations in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem supporting the hostage deal and opposing the government. An ill wind is blowing in the police. This was not always the case, even during the height of the protests against the judicial overhaul.
In Tel Aviv the demonstrations were turned into a display of police brutality that included the use of mounted officers and Border Police who from the start used violence against protesters, and not as a last resort to disperse demonstrations. In Jerusalem, shortly after hundreds of young people returned from the funeral of their friend Hersh Goldberg-Polin and channeled their grief and anger into a demonstration in the city's streets, they were met with severe police brutality. The hands are the hands of police officers, but the spirit is the spirit of Ben-Gvir.
It isn't only the field officers. Under the instruction of the Tel Aviv District Commander, Maj. Gen. Peretz Amar, and as part of his transparent attempt to curry favor with the man who might make him deputy commissioner, the order went out to conduct wholesale arrests with the use of force. In the past two days, 83 demonstrators were arrested during the protests that erupted in the wake of the murder of six hostages. Most were taken, as a punitive measure, to Israel Prison Service facilities, even though they could have been released immediately after being questioned (Haaretz Hebrew, Wednesday). The courts released all of them and imposed almost no restrictive conditions. A few of those arrested were cynically called "lawbreakers," but it was the police who abused their powers to arrest and intimidate.
We must not become accustomed to this kind of behavior from the top ranks of the police force. Amar, Levy and other senior officials understand the minister's wishes and accede to them by violating the right to protest. Ben-Gvir's appointment was approved by the Supreme Court based on the assumption that the police would still be independent, but the situation has changed. The judgment of the commissioner, the Tel Aviv District commander and others is not independent and not professional; rather, it is distinctly political, as if they were Ben-Gvir Youth in uniform. All of this, together with Ben-Gvir's frequent and flagrant interference in the operations and staffing of the force, requires the attorney general's intervention and an appeal before the Supreme Court. When politics takes control of the police, it must be reined in. And of course we must not forget who appointed Ben-Gvir to his post, and why.
The above article is Haaretz's lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.
(385) How a Zionist armed group helped create the state of Israel | Al Jazeera World Documentary - YouTube
(385) How a Zionist armed group helped create the state of Israel | Al Jazeera World Documentary - YouTube
Avraham Stern, leader of a Zionist armed group that fought the British in Palestine, aimed to create a Jewish state. National Jewish hero or radical Zionist paramilitary leader? Avraham Stern was the leader of the Stern Gang, one of the Jewish armed groups that fought the British Mandate in Palestine in the 1930s and early '40s. This film tells his story through his own son and a range of contemporary historians. It presents both pro- and anti-Zionist sides of a controversial narrative - who Stern was, how he set up and ran the Stern Gang and how he led it in fighting the British administration and Palestinians with the ultimate aim of founding a Jewish state. Some historians believe he may have collaborated with the Nazis and accepted money and weapons in a deal that enabled them to ship large numbers of Jews from Germany to Palestine. Whatever the evidence, this is fascinating insight into a major figure in the Jewish movement that led to the creation of Israel.
Wednesday, September 4, 2024
China-Africa Summit: Xi Changes Terms of Belt and Road Initiative - Bloomberg
China-Africa Summit: Xi Changes Terms of Belt and Road Initiative - Bloomberg
Xi Wants Bigger Returns, Fewer Headaches in Africa Debt Deals
By Neil Munshi and Peter Martin
(Bloomberg) -- When Chinese President Xi Jinping welcomes African leaders to Beijing this week, he’ll be holding a smaller checkbook and will have a clearer sense of what China wants in exchange: bigger returns and fewer headaches.
From Angola to Djibouti, for over a decade, China poured more than $120 billion of government-backed loans through its Belt and Road Initiative to build hydropower plants, roads and rail lines across the continent — as well as unparalleled influence. Those relationships helped Beijing lock down access to energy and minerals, while providing an outlet for its pent up industrial capacity.
But the infrastructure and diplomacy also came with accusations of debt traps, exploitation and corruption, charges that were bolstered when a wave of debt distress swept Africa in recent years and three countries defaulted, sparking lengthy restructurings. Some projects, like an unfinished $3.8 billion railway in Kenya that ends in an empty field, seemed to epitomize the failed promise of the BRI.
Despite those problems, the parade of African leaders arriving in Beijing for the ninth Forum on China-Africa Cooperation starting Wednesday attests to China’s role as the continent’s dominant foreign economic power. It’s the first such summit in Beijing since 2018, and it’s the biggest diplomatic event Xi is hosting this year, with participants expected to include Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Heading into the gathering, both sides expect the close ties forged by Beijing’s largess to continue. The difference now is that Xi, struggling to address his nation’s economic slowdown, is shifting China’s focus toward more opaque, public-private partnerships that can generate better returns while deflecting more of the blame if things go wrong.
“The heady days of big lending are done,” said Joshua Eisenman, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies China-Africa relations. “What comes next won’t be as big as before and it won’t be as grandiose. It’s going to be more profitable.”
China’s traditional lending to Africa through its state-run policy banks exploded from $98.7 million in 2000 to a high of $28.8 billion in 2016, according to Boston University’s Global Development Policy Center, making it the world’s biggest bilateral creditor to Africa. Those figures declined in the following years and then plummeted during the pandemic before climbing to $4.6 billion last year.
Throughout that period, Beijing also lent through its commercial banks — but the balance is set to tip much further toward those profit-generating loans in the coming years. Some projects that typify China’s new approach include a $20 billion iron ore mine and railway in Guinea, a $5 billion oil pipeline in Uganda and Tanzania and a $400 million cash-for-oil loan in Niger that the military regime says it needs to “run the country.”
Zambia’s foreign ministry last week announced that President Hakainde Hichilema would be in Beijing to witness the signing of an investment deal to revitalize the 1,160-mile (1,870 km) Tazara railway, originally built in the 1970s as part of China’s first major aid project in Africa, connecting Tanzania and Zambia. Officials from the two nations have said little about how the $1 billion Tazara deal is structured, but it’s expected to rely on a public-private partnership model instead of public debt from one of China’s state-run banks.
African governments flocked to China in the 2000s in part because there were few options to get funding for the kind of major infrastructure they sorely needed. They also appreciated how China’s loans came without the environmental, human rights and other conditions that organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund traditionally impose.
But the mounting debt soon began taking a toll on nations’ budgets, and many of the China-backed projects didn’t live up to expectations, a process exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. When Zambia defaulted in 2020, the crisis put renewed scrutiny on China’s role in financing African nations. Ghana followed suit, while more than a dozen other African countries remain at high risk of debt distress. Angola took the most Chinese debt and now owes the country about $17 billion, more than one-third of all its external debt.
Some of the projects have been seen as successes. The $2 billion Kafue Gorge Lower Hydropower Station in Zambia — largely financed by the Export-Import Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China — is one example. The $1.5 billion expansion of the Hwange hydropower project in Zimbabwe, which has helped ease nearly daylong power outages in the country, is another.
But economists largely agree that with Chinese backing, many African nations overextended themselves. Some projects — such as an $823 million light rail project in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja — appear abandoned or barely functioning. Nigeria spends $50 million a year to pay off its loans for that project. During a visit to the rail line’s facilities last year, train cars sat locked away, cavernous stations were empty and the VIP lounge was full of bat and bird droppings.
After Zambia defaulted, a deal to restructure about $3 billion of debt nearly foundered as the Paris Club and China struggled to agree with fund managers on a deal that would distribute losses comparably. Talks over another $3.4 billion in debt, led by China Development Bank and ICBC, continue.
“I see China going through a learning process,” said Huang Yufan, a fellow at the China-Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “They realize the way they lent before doesn’t work anymore. They realize these governments can default and that they’re quite risky.”
That doesn’t mean Beijing is backing away.
China’s new strategy focusing on public-private partnerships allows cash-strapped African governments to continue borrowing without adding to their officially-declared sovereign debt.
Guinea’s $20 billion Simandou iron ore mining project is another example of the new model. The world’s biggest steelmaker, China Baowu Steel Group Corp., and aluminum producer Aluminum Corp. of China Ltd. are leading investors, along with Australia’s Rio Tinto Group. Chinese state firms control more than 40% of the shares across the pair of consortia developing the complex, while Guinea’s government holds a 15% stake.
The Simandou partners aim to produce 120 million tons of high-grade iron ore a year during the first phase, a volume that could exacerbate a market surplus and deliver greater power over pricing to the project’s largest consumer: China.
In central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo announced an agreement with China to build $7 billion in infrastructure by 2040, backed by the proceeds of a cobalt-and-copper mining joint venture known as Sicomines. The deal is a revamp of a 2008 resources-for-infrastructure agreement financed by the Export-Import Bank of China.
Sicomines was exempt from nearly all taxes and started producing billions of dollars’ worth of metal annually. But over 14 years, Exim Bank delivered only a portion of the infrastructure financing it promised and Congolese authorities said overbilling by Chinese contractors and local officials was rampant.
Under the new deal, the tax exemptions remain and the Chinese partners have linked infrastructure payments to the price of copper. If the price falls below $8,000 per ton, just under the average for the past five years, the payments decline. Payments are eliminated altogether if the price falls beneath $5,000.
In the end, the way many of these new deals are structured risks saddling future African governments with billions of dollars in less-transparent debt, says Brad Parks, executive director of AidData, a think tank at the College of William & Mary.
“What they’re doing is a lot of creative accounting to still borrow but through much more opaque mechanisms,” said Parks.
Trucks transporting copper and cobalt for export in a parking zone before passing through the Kanyaka tollbooth between Lubumbashi and Kasumbalesa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
But the “willingness for more creativity” in financing projects “is a good thing” because it allows countries to still build critical infrastructure, said Hannah Ryder of Development Reimagined, a China-Africa focused think tank with offices in Nairobi, Beijing and London.
Such partnerships can still pose problems. Eric Lautier, the IMF representative in Zambia, warns of a “fiscal illusion” if there are clauses like minimum revenue guarantees that benefit creditors regardless of the project’s success.
“All infrastructure projects are risky by nature, and PPPs are no exception,” Lautier said of the public-private partnerships. “When not properly managed, they can pose significant fiscal risk.”
American officials believe Chinese policy banks overextended themselves and worry about the opacity of the new arrangements, according to people familiar with US policy.
Beijing disagrees. “The conclusions of ‘opaqueness’ and ‘high-costs’ are purely speculative,” China’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “China’s financing cooperation with Africa has always followed international rules, the principle of openness and transparency, and local laws and regulations.”
As African leaders arrived in Beijing ahead of the formal start of the summit, Xi began a long series of bilateral meetings in which he hit familiar themes. Welcoming Democratic Republic of the Congo President Felix Tshisekedi to the Great Hall of the People, he promised "high quality development" and touted "Chinese-style modernization." He told Mali's interim President Colonel Assimi Goita that China would continue to encourage its firms to invest in the nation, but asked its government to ensure their security.
Countries like the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar filled some of the void left by China’s reduced largess in recent years. The US has also hosted its own summits for African leaders, the last taking place in Washington in late 2022. Companies from the US and Africa agreed on about $15 billion in deals at the time, including investments in cybersecurity and clean-tech energy, as well as promises to expand trade.
US officials say their deals — such as financing support for the $2.3 billion Lobito corridor rail project linking Congo, Zambia and Angola — won’t leave African nations mired in debt. But even American officials concede that when it comes to large-scale investments, African leaders see few alternatives to Beijing.
“Wherever I go, heads of state tell me, ‘I’m not choosing the path with the Chinese and increased debt,’” said Amos Hochstein, a senior White House adviser on energy and investment. “‘But if I have to make a choice between that investment or no investment, I will choose that investment every day,’” he said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-09-02/china-africa-summit-xi-changes-terms-of-belt-and-road-initiative?srnd=undefined
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
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