Thanks for the words of support. I confess that I often worry that I'm including much too much text, deluging German-speaking readers with indigestible content. But it's hard to cut back.
______________
The guns of January
As war looms larger, what are Russia’s military options in Ukraine?
They all have their drawbacks ...
Western countries are bracing for the worst. On January 17th Britain began airlifting thousands of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Days earlier Sweden rushed armoured vehicles to the island of Gotland as three Russian landing craft passed through the Baltic Sea, destination unknown. ...
Such an attack could take many forms. One possibility is that Russia would simply do openly what it has done furtively for seven years: send troops into the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics”, breakaway territories in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, either to expand their boundaries westward or to recognise them as independent states, as it did after sending forces into Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two Georgian regions, in 2008.
Another scenario, widely discussed in recent years, is that Russia might seek to establish a land bridge to Crimea, the peninsula it annexed in 2014. That would require seizing 300km (185 miles) of territory along the Sea of Azov, including the key Ukrainian port of Mariupol, up to the Dnieper river. ...
If Russia’s objective is to bring Ukraine to its knees and prevent it from joining [N]ato or even co-operating with the alliance, simply consolidating control over Donbas or a small swathe of land in southern Ukraine is unlikely to achieve it.
To do so would require imposing massive costs on the government in Kyiv—whether by decimating its armed forces, destroying its critical national infrastructure or overthrowing it altogether. One option would be for Russia to use “stand-off” weapons without troops on the ground, emulating [N]ato’s air war against Serbia in 1999. Strikes by rocket launchers and missiles would wreak havoc. These could be supplemented by more novel weapons, such as cyber-attacks ...
The problem is that such punitive campaigns tend to last longer and prove harder than they first appear. If war comes, stand-off strikes are more likely to be a prelude and accompaniment to a ground war ...
The aim would probably be to hurt Ukraine, not occupy it. The country is as large and populous as Afghanistan, and since 2014 over 300,000 Ukrainians have gained some form of military experience; most have access to firearms. American officials have told allies that the Pentagon and Cia would both support an armed insurgency.
... an attack need not come solely from the east.
On January 17th Russian troops, some from the far east, began arriving in Belarus ... An attack from the north, over the Belarus-Ukraine border, would allow Russia to approach the Ukrainian capital from the west and encircle it. ...
Even if Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, is willing to tolerate a siege, Russia may gamble that his government will simply collapse—and it may use spies, special forces and disinformation to hasten that process.
Wars, though, unfold in unpredictable ways. Russia has not fought a large-scale offensive involving infantry, armour and air power since the climactic battles of the second world war. Countries under attack can just as easily stand firm as fall apart. Ivan Timofeev of the Russian International Affairs Council warns of a “long and sluggish confrontation” that would be “fraught with destabilisation of … Russia itself”.
https://www.economist.com/europe/what-are-rus...
Keynes warned the world against using economic sanctions. His alternative is worth considering
In 1924, the economist argued that aiding our allies is more effective than sanctioning our foes. That lesson should be heeded today ...
The United States has come to rely on economic sanctions more than ever before. Following its retreat from Kabul in August, Washington has maintained economic pressure on the Taliban. The treasury’s freezing of $9.5bn in Afghan state assets has left that impoverished country facing starvation this winter. Two weeks ago, US officials warned Iran, already under heavy economic pressure, that it will face “snapback” sanctions unless Tehran restrains its nuclear ambitions.
Most prominent of all is the sanctions threat that the Biden administration issued against Russia last month. In the face of a large Russian military buildup on the borders of Ukraine ...
In all three cases, advocates of economic pressure argue that sanctions will deter aggressive action and compel better behavior. But the reality is that both the deterrent and the compellent effect of US sanctions have fallen dramatically amid rampant overuse. ...
Nicholas Mulder is assistant professor of history at Cornell University and the author of The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022)
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/202...
US accuses Russia of conspiring to take over Ukraine government
Treasury imposes sanctions on four current and former Ukraine government officials it says involved in alleged conspiracy ...
The two MPs the US has placed sanctions on were named as Taras Kozak and Oleh Voloshyn, both members of a pro-Russian party led by Victor Medvedchuk, an oligarch who has been under house arrest in Ukraine since last May, accused of treason.
A former Ukrainian official, Volodymyr Oliynyk, now living in Russia, has a sanction against him for working “at the direction of the FSB [Russian intelligence] to gather information about Ukrainian critical infrastructure”.
The fourth man named is Vladimir Sivkovich, a former deputy secretary of the Ukrainian national security and defence council.
“In 2021, Sivkovich worked with a network of Russian intelligence actors to carry out influence operations that attempted to build support for Ukraine to officially cede Crimea to Russia in exchange for a drawdown of Russian-backed forces in the Donbas,” the US Treasury alleged.
Voloshyn denied being a Russian asset and said he had never “wittingly” talked to the FSB or any other Russian spy agency. He said he was an elected MP for an explicitly pro-Russian political party and that his US-sceptical views reflected those of some Ukrainian voters.
Voloshyn said he suspected he was being punished for calling – unsuccessfully – for a parliamentary investigation into Biden’s son, Hunter, and his work in Ukraine.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/20...
Serbia scraps plans for Rio Tinto lithium mine after protests
President Aleksandar Vučić’s government had been accused of ignoring project’s potential for environmental harm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/20...
In Peru, Courts ‘Used Like Whips’ to Silence Journalists
The author of a book about a powerful politician has been sentenced to two years in prison. Media advocates say the case is part of a trend in which the courts are being used to punish critics. ...
The police raided a reporter’s house
( https://gestion.pe/peru/procurdor-reynaldo-ab... )
after he investigated an elite Catholic society. A court ordered journalists’ assets frozen following a defamation complaint from a powerful figure.
( https://cpj.org/2019/04/peru-assets-freeze-oj... )
A sports journalist called the head of a soccer club inept, and was sentenced to a year in prison.
( https://cpj.org/2021/02/peruvian-journalist-e... )
And then, last week, a judge sentenced a Peruvian journalist to two years in prison and imposed a $100,000 fine following a defamation lawsuit brought by a powerful, wealthy politician.
( https://larepublica.pe/politica/732583-cesar-... ) ...
The politician in this case, César Acuña, is the subject of a book by the journalist, Christopher Acosta, called “Plata Como Cancha,” meaning roughly “Cash by the Bucket.”
In the book, Mr. Acosta quotes multiple sources who accuse Mr. Acuña, a multimillionaire who ran for president and now heads a political party, of buying votes, misusing public funds and plagiarizing. In his decision, the judge in the case, Raúl Jesús Vega, said that nearly three dozen phrases in the book were defamatory.
Rather than address the veracity of the statements, Judge Jesús Vega criticized the journalist for failing, in his assessment, to sufficiently back them up.
The judge also found Jerónimo Pimentel, the director of the book’s publishing house, guilty. And he held Mr. Pimentel and the publisher, Penguin Random House in Peru, also responsible for paying the $100,000 fine, which will go to Mr. Acuña. ...
Unlike in the United States and Mexico, where defamation is typically a civil matter, in Peru it is a criminal offense, defined as the act of publicly attributing to another person “a fact, a quality or a conduct that could harm his honor or reputation.” ...
These defamation suits come after years of economic growth in Peru that expanded public coffers — and created new opportunities for self-dealing among the ruling class.
In recent years, corruption scandals involving former presidents, judges and lawmakers have fueled a political free-for-all, with clashes between Congress and the executive branch and mass protests leading the country to cycle through four presidents in the past year.
Journalists have uncovered much of the wrongdoing.
But powerful figures have pushed back, often using the judicial system, and in many cases succeeding. ...
Mr. Acuña, 69, the magnate who brought the suit against Mr. Acosta, became mayor of the city of Trujillo just as Mr. Acosta, now 38, was beginning his career as an investigative reporter in the same city.
Over the years, Mr. Acuña made his wealth as the owner of for-profit universities and served as a congressman and a governor.
Mr. Acuña went on to run for president in 2016 and 2021. He was barred from the election in first run after he was caught on camera promising to distribute cash in a poor neighborhood.
By then he had already fallen in the polls, after local media reported that he was suspected of plagiarizing parts of his doctoral thesis ...
Despite his decline in popularity, Mr. Acuña’s party has increased its presence in Congress. Last year, it helped impeach former president Martín Vizcarra, and it is seen as crucial to the political survival of the current president, Pedro Castillo.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/world/amer...
Leer en español
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2022/01/19/espanol...
In Quest for Energy Independence, Mexico Is Buying a Texas Oil Refinery
President López Obrador wants to halt most oil exports and imports of gasoline and other fuels. Critics say he is reneging on Mexico’s climate change commitments. ...
Two giant murals, on storage tanks at an oil refinery ..., depict the rebels led by Sam Houston who secured Texas’ independence from Mexico in the 1830s. This week those murals will become the property of the Mexican national oil company, which is acquiring full control of the refinery.
The refinery purchase is part of President Andres Manuel López Obrador’s own bid for an independence of sorts. In an effort to achieve energy self-sufficiency, the president of Mexico is investing heavily in the state-owned oil company, placing a renewed emphasis on petroleum production and retreating from renewable energy even as some oil giants like BP and Royal Dutch Shell are investing more in that sector. ...
The shift would be an ambitious leap for Petroleos Mexicanos, the company commonly known as Pemex. The company’s oil production, comparable to Chevron’s in recent years, has been falling for more than a decade, and it shoulders more than $100 billion in debt, the largest of any oil company in the world.
The decision to pay $596 million for a controlling interest in the Deer Park refinery, which sits on the Houston ship channel and would be the only major Pemex operation outside Mexico, is central to fulfilling Mr. López Obrador’s plans to rehabilitate the long-ailing oil sector and [establish?] eight productive refineries for Mexican use. Mexico also agreed to pay off $1.2 billion in debts that Pemex and Shell jointly owe as co-owners of the refinery, which is profitable. ...
In the 1930s, the Mexican government took over Royal Dutch Shell’s operations south of the border as it nationalized the entire oil industry then dominated by foreigners. Now Mr. López Obrador is poised to go one step further, taking complete control of a big Shell oil refinery.
The takeover is all the more pointed because it is happening in an industrial suburb that calls itself “the birthplace of Texas,” where rebels marched to the San Jacinto battlefield to defeat the Mexican Army — the event commemorated on the refinery murals. The battlefield is a five-mile drive from the refinery.
It is hard to overestimate the connection between oil and politics in Mexico, where the day petroleum was nationalized, March 18, is a national holiday. Oil provides the Mexican government with a third of its revenues, and Pemex is one of the nation’s biggest employers, with about 120,000 workers.
Mr. López Obrador hails from the oil-producing state of Tabasco, and the powerful Pemex labor union is a crucial part of his political base. He ran on a platform of rebuilding the company, and has raised its production budget, cut taxes it pays and reversed efforts by his predecessor to restructure its monopoly over oil production in the country.
When he took office three years ago, Mr. López Obrador began undoing changes made in 2013 to the country’s Constitution intended to open the oil and gas industry to private and foreign investment. He is also pushing to reverse electricity reforms that his predecessor, Enrique Peña Nieto, put in place to increase the use of privately funded wind and solar farms and move away from state-run power plants fueled by oil and coal.
Energy experts say Mexico is backtracking on a commitment it made a decade ago under President Felipe Calderón, to generate more than a third of its power from clean energy sources by 2024. Mexico now produces just over a quarter of its power from renewables. ...
Many of the Mexican president’s initiatives are being contested by opposition lawmakers and the business community. But Mr. López Obrador can do a lot on his own. He plans to spend $8 billion on a project to build an oil refinery in Tabasco state, and more than $3 billion more to modernize six refineries.
The purchase of the Deer Park refinery is crucial to his plans because the Tabasco complex will not be completed until 2023 or 2024 and will not produce enough gasoline, diesel and other fuels to meet all of Mexico’s needs.
Long a partner of Pemex, Shell, which operates the Deer Park refinery, is selling its stake in part to satisfy investors concerned about climate change who want the oil giant to invest more in renewable energy and hydrogen. ...
The Mexican policy changes would have only a modest and temporary impact on American refineries, which can replace Mexican oil with crude from Colombia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Canada.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/18/business/e...
Leer en español
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2022/01/18/espanol...
Silvio Berlusconi Angles for Italy’s Presidency, Bunga Bunga and All
The billionaire former prime minister is working hard to persuade lawmakers to vote for him next week, despite an unusual résumé for a job resting on moral authority. ...
Early this month, Silvio Berlusconi sat at a dining room table in his mansion with his girlfriend, more than a half-century younger, and an old political ally. As they feasted on a pumpkin souffle and truffle tagliatelle, the 85-year-old Italian former prime minister and billionaire made hours of phone calls, working his way down a list of disaffected lawmakers he hoped to persuade to elect him president of Italy next week.
“‘We are forming the Bunga Bunga party and we want you with us,’” Christian Romaniello, a lawmaker formerly with the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, recounted Mr. Berlusconi as saying, referring to the sex-fueled bacchanals that Mr. Berlusconi has deemed merely “elegant dinners.” ...
The Italian presidency, the country’s head of state, is a seven-year position usually filled by a figure of unimpeachable integrity and sobriety whose influence flows from moral authority. The current holder, Sergio Mattarella, is a quiet statesman whose brother was murdered by the mob. Another contender is Mario Draghi, the prime minister and a titan of European politics who has led the country to a period of unusual stability.
Then there is Mr. Berlusconi, who despite his recent bad health, waxen appearance and weakened political standing, is making an unabashed push to win a career-culminating position that he hopes will wash away decades of stains — his allies say unjustly thrown mud — and rewrite his legacy.
That would take some scrubbing.
There are the countless trials; the investigations over mob linksand bribing lawmakers; the tax fraud conviction; the ban from office; the sentence to perform community service in a nursing home; his use of his media empire for political gain; his use of the government to protect his media empire; the wiretapped conversations of his libertine party guests regaling the Caligulan extent of his bunga bunga debaucheries; his close relationship with the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, who gifted Mr. Berlusconi a large bed; his appraisal of Barack Obama as “young, handsome and sun tanned”; his comparing a German lawmaker to a concentration camp guard; his second wife’s divorcing him for apparently dating an 18-year-old. ...
But Mr. Berlusconi is also working the phones and laying on the charm, upping his Christmas gift game from ties to gild-framed oil paintings. He is pulling out all the stops to convince reluctant members of his alliance to stick with him and to persuade enough stragglers that they can count on him.
Mr. Berlusconi’s candidacy is unlikely, but it is no sideshow.
Despite the shrinking influence of his party, Forza Italia, the great-grandfather has remained the father figure of the center-right, which now has — if united — the largest bloc of lawmaker electors in Parliament and a strong desire to choose the next president.
But Mr. Berlusconi’s insistence has caused a major headache for Matteo Salvini, the leader of the nationalist League party, both at work and at home. Mr. Salvini’s girlfriend is the daughter of Denis Verdini, one of Mr. Berlusconi’s closest advisers, who is publicly applying pressure — from house arrest after his conviction in a bankruptcy fraud case — to elect Mr. Berlusconi.
After years of promising Mr. Berlusconi that he would back his candidacy for president, Mr. Salvini sent a stinging message to Mr. Berlusconi this week, saying that, “We must verify if Berlusconi has the numbers before the start of voting next week.” Mr. Salvini indicated that he had somebody else in mind.
Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right leader of Brothers of Italy, the third party in the center-right alliance, spoke on Tuesday of the possibility of Mr. Berlusconi’s stepping aside, prompting speculation that he might drop out. ...
... the prospect of Mr. Berlusconi’s tangerine visage hanging in the country’s public classrooms and offices has prompted threats of national demonstrations and a call to the old liberal battle stations.
“Not Him,” read the cover of Espresso magazine.
( https://espresso.repubblica.it/editoriale/202... )
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/19/world/euro...
Leer en español
https://www.nytimes.com/es/2022/01/20/espanol...
This ‘Plastic Man’ Has a Cape and a Superhero’s Mission: Cleaning Up Senegal
Dressed head to toe in plastic, Modou Fall is a familiar sight in Dakar. But however playful his costume, his goal couldn’t be more serious: ridding the capital of the scourge of plastic bags. ...
He can often be seen dancing through the streets dressed in a self-designed and ever-evolving costume made entirely of plastic, mostly bags collected from across the city. Pinned to his chest is a sign that reads NO PLASTIC BAGS. It’s a fight he takes very seriously.
His costume is modeled after the “Kankurang” — an imposing traditional figure deeply rooted in Senegalese culture who stalks sacred forests and wears a shroud of woven grasses. The Kankurang is considered a protector against bad spirits, and in charge of teaching communal values. ...
While plastic waste poses a severe environmental problem around the globe, recent studies have found Senegal, despite its relatively small size, to be among the top countries polluting the world’s oceans with plastic. This is in part because it struggles to manage its waste, like many poorer countries, and it has a large population living on the coast.
In an effort to reduce its share of pollution, the Senegalese government implemented a ban on some plastic products in 2020, but the country has had a hard time enforcing it. Senegal, with a population of about 17 million, is projected to produce more than 700,000 metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste by 2025 if nothing is done, compared with about 337,000 metric tons in the United States. ...
In 2006, Mr. Fall used his life savings, just over $500, to found his association, Senegal Propre, or Clean Senegal.
He planted dozens of trees across the city and held community meetings to persuade people to stop buying throwaway plastic. He organized cleaning and tire recycling campaigns in Dakar’s lively neighborhoods, his waste pickers dodging taxi drivers and street vendors as they went.
With the plastic waste they collected, Clean Senegal made bricks, paving stones and public benches. Old tires became couches that they sold for about $430 apiece — money that went toward more environmental efforts like planting trees at schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/world/afri...
U.S. Charges New Suspect in Haiti President’s Murder, Widening Investigation
The case could help U.S. prosecutors get closer to the people who plotted the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti. ...
A major suspect in the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse of Haiti was charged with taking part in the murder plot in a federal court in Florida on Thursday, in a sign of an accelerating American investigation into the crime that plunged the Caribbean nation into chaos.
The suspect, Rodolphe Jaar, a Haitian businessman and former drug trafficker, admitted to providing weapons and logistical support for the plot, according to court documents unsealed during his hearing on Thursday. ...
Mario Palacios, a retired Colombian commando accused of taking part in the assault on the presidential residence, was charged with the same crime in the same U.S. District Court in Miami earlier this month. ...
Mr. Moïse’s successor as head of the government, Prime Minister Ariel Henry, has made little progress ... None of the more than 40 suspects detained in Haiti have been formally charged, and local court officials and police officers involved in the investigation have denounced threats and widespread irregularities that have paralyzed the investigation. ...
The Haitian police have accused at least six American citizens and residents of participating in the plot, which appears to have been partially conceived and financed in South Florida.
None of the U.S. citizens and residents have been charged yet. ...
Mr. Jaar’s testimony could help prosecutors move closer to the masterminds of the crime. In an interview with The New York Times before his arrest, Mr. Jaar implicated two senior Haitian officials currently in office in the plot to depose Mr. Moïse.
According to Mr. Jaar, Mr. Henry, the prime minister, was in close contact before and after the crime with Joseph Félix Badio, a former justice ministry official accused by the Haitian police of organizing the attack on the presidential residence. Mr. Jaar also claimed that Mr. Badio had contacted the current head of the police, Frantz Elbé, to ask for his help procuring weapons for the plot.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/world/amer...
Explorers discover ‘unrivaled’ reef of rose-shaped corals that could hold lessons for warming oceans ...
French researchers say they have discovered one of the world’s largest healthy coral reefs, possibly paving the way for similar discoveries in locations that have not yet been explored, Paris-based UNESCO announced Thursday.
Discovered off the coast of Tahiti, an island in the Pacific Ocean that is part of French Polynesia, the reef has been explored since late last year and is estimated to be almost two miles long. The expedition project 1Ocean, which was involved in the exploration, said the reef’s state of conservation is “unrivaled” at a time when global warming, pollution and overfishing are threatening corals’ survival.
Photos released by the team showed a seabed covered with rose-shaped corals, some of them more than six feet in diameter.
Whereas many of the world’s explored tropical reefs are found in relatively shallow water, the Tahiti corals stunned the exploration team because they live far deeper, in areas that remain largely unexplored.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/01/...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/...
