THREAD on how economically Muslims maybe poorer (the state is overall also not as rich) in #Bengal but have relatively got socio-political empowerment (part of Threads I am writing for the understanding of Bengal politics in the context of upcoming assembly election):

1/20

The socio-economic status of Muslims in the state is far behind other communities as the Sachar Committee Report (2006) and Pratichi-SNAP’s “Living Reality of Muslims in West Bengal” (2016) attest.

2/20

But it has not witnessed the rule of the BJP yet although the founder of the predecessor of the saffron party, Bharatiya Jan-Sangh, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was himself a Bengali.

3/20

During both the Congress and the Left Front rule earlier, and now under TMC Muslims did get some leverage although political marginalization even at block level had continued.

4/20

Across India, the last two general elections, and even the recent Bihar assembly elections, have resulted in the further marginalization of Muslims.

5/20

Chinese troops on U.S. soil?

Chinese troops on Canadian and Mexican/S. American soil?

Underground tunnels facilitate movement between the three?

This is a thread to follow up. I won't have enough time to do all the research necessary in one shot.

F-16 Crash Tuesday night (12/8/2020) and speculation about whether "50,000 Chinese troops were killed." Further research links on this

1/10

This is a really tough problem to resolve, especially if the massive increase in inflows from the trade and financial accounts are sustained, as I expect they will be well into 2021.

Clearly the PBoC would like to see the RMB gradually...

2/10

strengthen. This would keep financial markets stable and promote rebalancing, but the RMB has already strengthened a lot, and this puts unwanted pressure on exporters and “international circulation”.

Although PBoC reserves have been flat, other state-controlled Chinese...

3/10

banks have bought large amounts of dollars, but this is expensive. If these banks have half a trillion dollars of exposure, for example, they are losing at least $15-17 billion annually on negative carry, plus another $20-30 billion just this year from the rise of the RMB.

4/10

Beijing seems also to be trying other measures to slow the rise. The regulators are relaxing capital controls on outflows. In mid October the PBoC cut to zero the reserve requirement ratio for banks doing FX forward trading. This requirement was created in 2018 to reduce...

5/10

downward pressure on the RMB. In late October it suspended the counter-cyclical factor in RMB fixing, which was introduced in 2017 also to reduce downward currency pressure. But in both cases while the RMB dropped a few pips on the news, it quickly resumed its upward climb.

1. Michigan : Product of China
Why did Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and Former Gov. Rick Snyder (R) both endorse Joe Biden?
C H I N A !
special guest: Hunter Biden #9

Time for a Scorecard📊and thesis📑updates for purchases done in Feb/Mar 2020. Last review done in late April. How far things have come since then.😯

Not taking any drastic actions, other than few sells in fully valued, slower growth Co.'s.

Events since then
✔️Co's reporting two Qtrly reports
✔️Accelerating growth for few sectors
✔️Understandable problems for few others
✔️Crazy run-ups & valuations in the last 9 mo's, supported by biz growth in some cases, but mostly due to Monetary factors & Investor enthusiasm...

I usually buy for two scenarios

1⃣Leading Co's within strong secular trends, that also have strong Management Teams and solid Financials (Rev growth, Profitability or improving Margins/FCF prospects, no balance sheet risk...).

These are bought with the intention of holding for the long-term as long as the thesis is intact or getting better. Strongly intend to add along the way. Ex : $ROKU $PINS $TWLO $DOCU $W $NOW $WDAY $NVCR $MTCH in the above table.

2⃣More mature and stable Co.'s but with some growth left (no Financial risk), mainly bought for their current under-valuation, with the intent to sell when the Market or those stocks recover. Ex : $BIP $BUD $VTR $BR $BA in above table.

We're not doing any of this because a lot of people were going to catch a cold. We're not destroying our economies and societies because a tiny number of people felt tired for a few months after a cough. We aren't allowing babies and children to die because a new strain

of coronavirus is at large. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that this new virus CAUSES a brand new, deadly disease called Covid-19, the like of which we had never seen before. A disease so horrific that doctors were having emotional breakdowns after treating it. That is what

all of this is based on. The reasoning behind a global reaction which may well lead to the permanent destruction of all the things that make life a worthwhile experience.
In nine months of being immersed in this swamp of information, I have still not found an explanation of what

it is about Covid-19 that makes it so different from other respiratory illnesses.
I think the most important question is this:
What scientific or medical reasoning prevented the message to the public being something along these lines:

'There is a new strain of coronavirus spreading around the world. For the vast majority, it's asymptomatic. Most who have symptoms will experience a mild cold. A tiny number will suffer longer-term fatigue (as is the case with many other viruses). However, for the elderly,

1/9

Good article. But while growing international criticism and rising trade tensions may have had some impact, as the article suggests, I don’t think they really explain the great reversal in BRI lending of the past few years.

2/9

As I have been writing since 2011, China’s development lending was always likely to follow the pattern of other countries when they first “went out” (e.g. the US in the 1920s, USSR in the 1950s, Japan in the late 1970s). Because of little historical...

3/9

knowledge and no previous experience, an early rapid rise in development lending would be driven mainly by underestimating risk and an overestimation of their own business "success" in making loans, and would of course be further supported by geopolitical ambitions.

4/9

This combination would inevitably lead to bad lending decisions, followed just as inevitably by debt restructuring, loan losses, and a contraction in development lending. In the 1920s, for example, the US set off quite explicitly and aggressively to displace England in...

5/9

Latin America, and American businesses and banks assumed they “understood” Latin America much better than the English did, in spite of the vast English experience there, but their early displacement of British lending only resulted in the huge loan losses of the 1930s.

My Foresight

Whatever you see in the next 20 years to come in this country blame the bi-partisan mishandling of ASUU strike.
Let me drop some rough statistics to see what I'm thinking right now.

Today about 2 million Nigerians are working in the US alone. Almost 250 thousand of them are Medical Doctors. The rest are Academicians, Engineers and so forth. Most of these guys were the bests in their schools here in Nigeria.

Because of the poor working condition, unfavorable environment and very low salary, the're forced to emigrate to greener pastures for a better life. Many Nigerian students particularly the ones reading professional courses are thinking of leaving for a better life.

Don't forget this is a country that's in dare need of professional workers. The current doctor-patient ratio will throw you into a depth of despair. From what I observed recently, bad days are coming unless something is done.

Just recently our association hosted a Webinar on opportunities for Doctors in foreign countries. What do you think?
Almost all the people that participated including me are just waiting to graduate in order to apply for job abroad.

I am bored by being patronised by those telling me ‘don’t you know Remain is dead?, closely followed by ‘Move on.’ I can tell you, I have. That’s why I want to Return. To Europe, for sure. But to something much more than that.

I want to also Return to a positive politics. That’s the form rooted in compassion, care and genuine concern. But it’s also one that’s also learned that economics has moved on from what was taught by that subject in the 1980s, as has our understanding of the environment.

I want a politics that is not based in materialism. Or jingoism. Or nationalism. Or populism. Instead, I want a Return to the principles of mutual respect, tolerance, acceptance and co-existence, with each other and the rest of this world, human and otherwise.

I want a Return to a bias to the least well off. That’s because we all know the best off can already look after themselves. It’s those who have trouble doing so, for whatever the reason, that I want to be the priority in politics. I wonder, who wouldn’t, and why?

I want a Return to long term vision based on principles.

Is it better to split up dominant networks (like social/communication networks) or keep them whole to maximize network effects? I’ve spent 8 years creating a way to use data to answer this for Rwanda’s mobile network, using 5.3b transaction records (1/15) https://t.co/hKC8Vj2PIE

The punchline: allowing an additional competitor in Rwanda’s mobile phone system earlier could have reduced prices and increased incentives to invest in rural towers, increasing welfare by the equivalent of 1% of GDP. (2/15)

Why study mobile phones in developing countries? Mobile operators are emerging as gatekeepers to information, the internet, and, increasingly, financial transactions. (3/15)

And many of the questions faced by tech antitrust have parallels in telecom: whether to force compatibility, make it easier for users to switch, or split dominant firms. (4/15)

But would encouraging competition improve quality--or reduce it? When a network is split between competitors, each internalizes less network effects. But they may still invest to steal customers. In theory it could go either way. (5/15)

@guyyeomans @tazwake @DanielGDresner @ciaranmartinoxf @Tob1Leron @TheEPS1 1/ x Cc @DuncanChapple Long intake of breath as I realise I have recently started the wrong MSc....
@aj66inuk and I have been discussing that whilst the world has changed, some things have not. #Sabotage is an outdated concept unless you think that Cyber is an extension..

@tazwake @DanielGDresner @ciaranmartinoxf @Tob1Leron @TheEPS1 @DuncanChapple @aj66inuk 2/x an extension of what our former Cold War adversaries were trying to do to us. In 1982 Duncan Campbell spelled out where adversaries would try to attack us. But with Glasnost this became unfashionable and apparently unaffordable.

@tazwake @DanielGDresner @ciaranmartinoxf @Tob1Leron @TheEPS1 @DuncanChapple @aj66inuk 3/X Defector information in the public domain gave us some insights was to what the Warsaw Pact threat to our CNI might look like. Discussions with former adversaries, now Polish, (East) German and Czech allies wld be informative here.

@tazwake @DanielGDresner @ciaranmartinoxf @Tob1Leron @TheEPS1 @DuncanChapple @aj66inuk 4/X Believing there is a credible threat has always been our challenge here in UK. Understanding how a nation state adversary would come at us would be the next step.
It will be persistent, an adversary like the GRU will have been analysing our CNI for over 70 years

@tazwake @DanielGDresner @ciaranmartinoxf @Tob1Leron @TheEPS1 @DuncanChapple @aj66inuk 5/x They will have formed physical and logical plans to attack us. It some cases they may know our assets and our vulnerabilities better than we do. CARVER Shock is an old-school tool that gives an idea how they will come after us. You can apply

"Fail to prepare, prepare to fail" has gone from being an irritating statement trotted out on a training course to a description of the UK government's modus operandi. And as well as on covid restrictions we're seeing it in EU negotiations - deal or no-deal. And here's why... 1/

The UK's goal in EU negotiations is to declare victory / sovereignty. Sounds good. But the problem is that there will always be winners and losers in a big trade deal, because it covers everything and involves compromising with the other side. An immediate problem. 2/

Take fish, on which apparently talks are stuck. No deal means we regain full control of our waters. Victory! And sell the fish where? EU tariffs and checks. Not victory. So share waters? But then, defeat! Point being, if you don't explain, the result will disappoint. 3/

We don't want the EU setting our rules and regulations. So minimal sovereignty provisions. No-deal and victory! But then what about the car manufacturers no longer viable? Ok, compromise. But then no win on sovereignty, or perhaps call it "freedom clauses"... 4/

Northern Ireland, customs checks, rules of origin, security cooperation and so on... all inevitably to require compromise. But if your game was all about victory and sovereignty, then what? Not make a decision perhaps? 5/

The Global elite including bankers, politicians, scientists, royalty, presenters, CEOs, Billionaires and millionaires are pushing an agenda , let’s call it a story so complex it degrades over time and leaves many rabbit holes and loop holes in between the ‘whole story’.

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Working on #Cancer when... It was a "Western Countries health problem"
@dcp3

The French Govt has adopted its draft law on “strengthening Republican values” which has already provoked so much anger – & distortion, frankly – in parts of Muslim world & US media. At least now we can have a debate on what’s actually in the bill. Some thoughts post presser 1/

The text mentions no religion by name & will apply to all faiths but the Prime Minister, Jean Castex, presenting the law at a presser this afternoon, made it clear that “radical Islamism” – not Islam - was the intended target 2/

“This text is not aimed at any religion or at the Muslim religion specifically,” Castex said . “It’s a law of emancipation from religious fanaticism.” 3/

One person’s “fanaticism” is, of course, another person’s “devout faith”.  Parts of the draft law may be open to question or quibbling. But there is nothing, imo, that can be fairly described as an attack on Islam itself. 4/

Crucially, the Fr Govt has (after weeks of silence) remembered another key part of Macron’s speech in October which promised this new law. There will be new action - including more social housing, more widely spread - to relieve pressure on the struggling, multi-racial suburbs 5/

Thread on the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact:

1. In August, 1939, Stalin called on the UK and France to form an anti-fascist alliance. It was only after they rejected this proposal that the USSR signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to buy time in order to prepare for the war.

2. Getting sick and tired of gentrified "leftists" claiming that Stalin and Hitler "divided up Poland." What it meant was that either side crossing the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San would be seen as an invasion of the other country.

3. By the time the USSR entered Poland, the Polish government was already in exile and thus there was no Polish state. The Red Army's entry into Poland was therefore not an invasion.

4. Furthermore, the Polish government-in-exile declared war on Germany when it invaded Poland, but did not declare war on the Soviet Union when the Red Army entered. Additionally, the Polish Army was ordered to not fight the Soviets.

5. France had a mutual defense treaty with Poland, but it did not declare war on the Soviet Union. Another funny thing that people seem to forget is that prior to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a bunch of countries signed similar agreements with the Germany: UK, France, POLAND, etc

Looking Back to Look Forward: 🧵

Like many, in March 2020 I started feeling very concerned about so many people losing their jobs , not having enough saved to cover basic needs like rent & food for even a month or 2.

And like many wonderful UAE residents, I too did my

best to support with 💰.
However, they say give a gal 🐟 , & she will eat one day; teach a gal to 🐟 & she'll eat every day.

So partly to quell my anxiety but mostly to help the avg. hardworking person learn how to invest, I started blogging about investing.

If you're new to investing or want a refresher, here is how you can catch up. A short course in blogs & videos.

Lesson 1: Why should you invest?

Well, if we’ve learned anything from this pandemic, it’s the importance of saving for uncertainties.

👀 @ 2 charts below H/T @SamRo

The top 1% holds 61% of their wealth in Equities & only 11% in Real Estate , 12% in 💵

Bottom 50% hold 55% in Real Estate, only 6% 💵 & 4% in Equity.

So, the top 1% have liquid assets that have 👍🏽 compounding effect to grow 💰.
I explain more

Lesson 2: Budgeting & How To Save

Yes, you want that fancy car, fancy address or clothes, shoes, bags for that extra Instagram shoot. Certainly have fun but remember less is more.

Here’s how I saved 32% of my income in my mid-twenties AFTER

Waste, Negligence & Cronyism: Inside UK’s Pandemic Spending - The New York Times

I see the US has picked up the UK Pandemic spending scandal whilst our Gov claims there’s nothing to see ⁦@JolyonMaugham⁩ ⁦@DamianHastie⁩ ⁦@allthecitizens⁩

Of the $22billion contracts awarded about $11 billion went to companies either run by friends and associates of politicians in the Conservative Party, or with no prior experience or a history of controversy. Meanwhile, smaller firms without political clout got nowhere.

Seven months on just over half the contracts awarded remain hidden from the public.

But 1 in 10 contracts that went through the Government’s VIP Crony lane were awarded compared to 1 in 100 through the ordinary lane.

What’s our anti corruption Tzar, Dido Harding’s husband, John Penrose, doing about it? (You couldn’t make it up).

The thing is, they think it is perfectly normal. I mean, they get the contracts because they are mates & donors who just happen to be better than the little folk.

Meanwhile companies like Multibrand who actually manufacture PPE just got ignored..