The news out of Sudan, and Ethiopia, continues to be discouraging, and the Middle East is also not encouraging. I'm sorry, maybe I shouldn't even link to it, but I'm just not finding much in the way of happy or distracting news lately.
I keep wondering if there is now something like a global alliance of authoritarian governments, to support each other so that they can all stay in power indefinitely and keep on using resources for the benefit of their own oligarchs. So many coups in Africa, so many steps backward in the Middle East, so many suppressions of protest and crackdowns on independent journalism in so many places.
The irony is that it makes global megacorporations like Facebook look slightly less harmful by comparison, if they're not actively supporting the police states, 'only' making it easier for populists to carry on spreading lies and propaganda. I wonder if there's any chance that this global minimum 15% tax on the largest corporations will really (a) happen and (b) make any positive difference.
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‘They Lied.’ Inside the Frantic Days Leading to Sudan’s Coup
The American envoy, Jeffrey Feltman, was given assurances that seemed to head off a military takeover. Hours later, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan made his move. ...
a frantic series of meetings in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum last weekend, Jeffrey Feltman, the U.S. envoy to the Horn of Africa, sought to narrow the differences between the army chief, Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the civilian prime minister, Abdalla Hamdok, who had been sharing power since the 2019 ouster of the longtime autocrat Omar Hassan al-Bashir.
At a final meeting late Sunday afternoon, General al-Burhan argued that Sudan’s cabinet should be dismissed and replaced with technocrats, but gave no indication he was preparing to seize power.With that reassurance, the American diplomat wrapped things up and caught a flight to Qatar where, on landing, his phone lit up: A coup was underway in Sudan.
“They lied to him,” said Nureldin Satti, Sudan’s ambassador to the United States, referring to his country’s military leadership. ...
In a series of interviews with analysts and multiple American, Sudanese and European officials, a picture emerged of a military that had grown frustrated with its civilian partners and was intent on maintaining its privileged position and avoiding any investigations into its business affairs or human rights abuses during Mr. al-Bashir’s three decades of rule. ...
Some also faulted the civilian opposition for failing to assuage the generals’ fears of prosecution while the transition to democracy was still underway, while one U.S. official said that Russia had encouraged the coup in hopes of securing commercial advantages and a port on the Red Sea. ...
Little known before 2019, General al-Burhan, 61, rose to power in the tumultuous aftermath of the military-led coup that ousted Mr. al-Bashir. Then the inspector general of the armed forces, he played a role in sending Sudanese troops, including children, to fight in Yemen’s civil war. He had also served as a regional army commander in Darfur, when 300,000 people were killed and millions of others displaced in fighting between 2003 and 2008. ...
Thrust into the public eye following a popular uprising against the strongman ruler, he proved a reluctant leader, unaccustomed to the international stage. Under the long decades of isolation and international sanctions under Mr. al-Bashir, his sphere of travel had been limited to a handful of Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.
By contrast, Prime Minister Hamdok, 65, an economist by training, had spent much of his career working at international financial institutions and consulting firms.
The two leaders remained amicable in the beginning, with Mr. Hamdok’s government overseeing a raft of reforms that succeeded in removing Sudan from the U.S. list of countries that sponsor terrorism, banned female genital cutting and scrapped apostasy laws. He also signed a peace agreement with rebel groups. ...
Another divisive issue was whether to hand over Mr. al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court, where he has been charged with crimes against humanity and other offenses. Neither General al-Burhan nor Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, also known as Hemeti, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that were accused of genocidal violence in Darfur, have been indicted by the court, and analysts say they are keen to maintain the status quo. ...
The armed forces and intelligence services have also resisted efforts to rein in their extensive financial power.
Together they control hundreds of state-owned enterprises dealing in the production and sale of minerals including gold, imports and exports of livestock, construction materials and pharmaceuticals. Rife with corruption, the companies rarely contribute their profits to the national budget, said Suliman Baldo, a senior adviser at The Sentry, a Washington-based group that seeks to expose corruption in Africa. ...
Analysts said that General al-Burhan would not have undertaken the coup without at least the tacit approval of powerful allies in the Middle East. Two of those, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, have yet to criticize the coup, while Saudi Arabia has condemned it, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/world/afri...
By banning six Palestinian NGOs, Israel has entered a new era of impunity
I founded al-Haq in 1979. Israeli now considers it to be a terrorist group, along with other vital humans rights organisations ...
Israel’s charge against the six NGOs, which include groups that offer legal support to prisoners and a women’s rights organisation, is based on a supposed connection to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Over the years, this claim has been used by Israeli officials to justify their refusal to permit travel for Al-Haq staff. The claim was that Al-Haq was not a genuine human rights organisation, but a PFLP front. Yet this unfounded and patently untrue accusation was never followed by issuing such a devastating order as happened last Tuesday. ...
Al-Haq’s standing over the past 40 years proves its significance as a major defender of human rights. Its most important work during the past year has been the assistance it has given to the international criminal court in The Hague in its investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes. That the ICC might end up charging any Israelis with such crimes greatly worries Israel. For us Palestinians, it would herald an end to Israeli immunity from prosecution for its grave breaches of international law.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/202...
Huge restored mosaic unveiled in Jericho desert castle
Restoration effort at Hisham’s Palace in occupied West Bank was launched five years ago ...
Resembling a fine carpet, the vast mosaic covers 836 sq metres (8,998 sq ft) at Hisham’s Palace, an Umayyad Islamic desert castle dating from the eighth century.
The images, seen on dozens of panels, include a lion attacking a deer to symbolise war, and two gazelles that symbolise peace, as well as delicate floral and geometric designs.
The palace had lain forgotten for centuries until it was rediscovered in the 19th century and explored in the 1930s. It was then that the mosaic was uncovered beneath the dust.
But it remained neglected until five years ago, when the site was closed to visitors as a $12m (£8.7m) Japan-funded restoration effort was launched.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/28...
‘Apocalypse soon’: reluctant Middle East forced to open eyes to climate crisis
Northern Oman has just been battered by Cyclone Shaheen, the first tropical cyclone to make it that far west into the Gulf. Around Basra in southern Iraq this summer, pressure on the grid owing to 50C heat led to constant blackouts, with residents driving around in their cars to stay cool.
Kuwait broke the record for the hottest day ever in 2016 at 53.6, and its 10-day rolling average this summer was equally sweltering. Flash floods occurred in Jeddah, and more recently Mecca, while across Saudi Arabia average temperatures have increased by 2%, and the maximum temperatures by 2.5%, all just since the 1980s. In Qatar, the country with the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world and the biggest producer of liquid gas, the outdoors is already being air conditioned.
In Tehran, air pollution kills 4,000 people each year, while in the south-west province of Khuzestan citizens blocked roads and burned tyres to protest against droughts caused by a combination of mismanagement, western sanctions and killer heat. In the United Arab Emirates it is estimated that the climate crisis costs £6bn a year in higher health costs. The salinity of the Gulf, caused by proliferating desalination plants, has increased by 20%, with all the likely impact on marine life and biodiversity.
And it is, of course, going to get much worse, as temperatures, humidity and waters rise. The Middle East is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world. By the end of the century, if the more dire predictions prove true, Mecca may not be habitable .... Large tracts of the Middle East will resemble the desert in Ethiopia’s Afar ... The gleaming Gulf coastal cities by the end of the century could find themselves inundated as waters rise. ...
Jim Krane, an energy research analyst at Rice University Baker Institute in Houston, said: “It is a really tough issue because the interests of the ruling elites run contrary to the interests of citizens. The ruling elites are all dependent on oil rents for the survival of their regimes.” ...
In truth, the region has been told for at least a decade that it needs to make the transition out of oil. The precise point oil demand will peak has been contested ... many people say demand will peak in about 2040, and then decline.
But the International Energy Association’s report Net Zero by 2050, by contrast, proposed oil demand fall from 88m barrels a day (mb/d) in 2020, to 72 mb/d in 2030 and to 24 mb/d in 2050, a fall of almost 75% between 2020 and 2050. It argued that the Gulf has all three elements needed to switch to renewables: capital, sun and large tracts of vacant land. ...
Opec’s own projections suggest oil demand will rise in absolute terms through to 2045, and oil’s share of world wide energy demand will fall only from 30% to 28%. Hardly a green revolution.
And looking at the current energy crunch, spiralling price of oil and predicted demand for oil this year, the case for a fast transition is harder to make than a year ago.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/...
A Global Tax Deal Is at Hand. Here’s How It Would Work.
President Biden will sign on to an international pact aimed at ending profit-shifting by large companies. Here’s a look at what it means. ...
Leaders of the Group of 20 nations are set to sign off on the most sweeping overhaul of the international tax system in a century when they gather in Rome this weekend, ushering in a 15 percent global minimum tax and changes to how governments can impose levies on large, profitable multinational companies. ...
The most prominent feature of the deal is the 15 percent global minimum tax, which is expected to be enacted by each country that has agreed to the deal. That rate will apply to multinational corporations with annual revenues of more than $867 million. The idea is to discourage companies from being able to avoid paying taxes by finding havens with low rates. Companies that do park money in a country that is not part of the deal would be required to pay the difference between that nation’s rate and the 15 percent minimum rate to their home country.
Governments will apply the tax on a country-by-country basis, so that companies cannot lower their tax bill simply by seeking out tax havens and “blending” their tax rates. That will ensure that companies actually pay the 15 percent minimum rate regardless of where they locate within the 136 countries that are part of the deal. ...
Another crucial part of the agreement involves a shift in how governments can tax companies in the digital era. ... the deal will update rules for the 21st century and allow countries to levy taxes on some large and profitable companies based on where their goods and services are sold.
The agreement was a response to an attempt by European countries to impose digital services taxes on American technology giants such as Google and Facebook, which operate all over the world ...
The global pact reached a compromise that allows countries to impose an additional tax on some of the profits of about 100 of the world’s richest companies based on where their sales are. The right to tax a total of $125 billion of profits will be reallocated among countries around the world. The taxes will be applied to companies with global sales of more than $23 billion and profit margins of at least 10 percent. A quarter of a company’s profit above that threshold will be taxed, with the revenue divvied up around the world. ...
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that the agreement will raise $150 billion a year globally from companies that have parked their operations in low-tax nations, avoiding a higher tax bill.
The Biden administration hopes that the agreement will make American companies more competitive globally while reducing incentives for them to move jobs abroad. ...
In some respects, reaching the agreement was the easy part. Now 136 countries must enact it. That will be easier in some countries than others.
It could be most challenging in the United States, which took a leading role in brokering the deal this year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/29/us/politic...
