English LCCC Newsbulletin For Lebanese, Lebanese Related, Global News & Editorials
For November 15/2020
Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

The Bulletin's Link on the lccc Site
http://data.eliasbejjaninews.com/eliasnews19/english.november15.20.htm

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Bible Quotations For today
Verses telling the Story of Zechariah the Priest & His Wife Elizabeth, John the Papist’s Parents
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Luke01/01-25/:”Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. In the days of King Herod of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, who belonged to the priestly order of Abijah. His wife was a descendant of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. Both of them were righteous before God, living blamelessly according to all the commandments and regulations of the Lord. But they had no children, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were getting on in years. Once when he was serving as priest before God and his section was on duty, he was chosen by lot, according to the custom of the priesthood, to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense. Now at the time of the incense-offering, the whole assembly of the people was praying outside. Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, ‘Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.’Zechariah said to the angel, ‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’The angel replied, ‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.’ Meanwhile, the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home. After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, ‘This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.’””

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 14-15/2020

Amer Fakhoury Foundation: Gibran Bassil's Roll In Handing over Amer Fakhoury To The Terrorist Hezbollah
Health Ministry: 1660 new cases of Corona, 10 deaths
Lebanon begins 2-week lockdown as COVID-19 cases surge
Lebanese security chief visited Syria in efforts to free US captive
Jbeil Mosque Attack Draws Condemnations
Report: Fearing Reform, Lebanon Cabinet Delay is 'Calculated'
Ibrahim Brushes Off Concerns About U.S. Sanctions against Him
US Ambassador to Beirut Renews Accusations Against Bassil
Lebanese Security Chief Visited Syria in Efforts to Free US Captive
UN Envoy to Lebanon Criticizes ‘Slow Investigation’ in Beirut Port Explosion
Hassan announces increase of intensive care beds in regional hospitals, says early reservation of vaccines is an 'achievement for Lebanon'
FPM: We are ready for any possible sacrifice in terms of government participation, on condition of respecting Constitution, Charter
Jumblatt: To stop supporting merchants, provide care to underprivileged families instead
Qatisha: Where did the Karkuk-Tripoli pipeline oil come from?
Armenia says 2,317 soldiers dead in Karabakh conflict
Nissan sues for $95 mln in damages in Carlos Ghosn trial

Titles For The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 14-15/2020

More than 1.3 mn Coronavirus Deaths Worldwide
Villagers burn their houses in Nagorno-Karabakh ahead of Azerbaijan takeover
Armenia says 2,317 soldiers dead in Karabakh conflict
Pompeo arrives in France on 7-nation tour of Europe, Mideast
‘Lebanese man’ killed in Iran over the summer was al-Qaeda deputy leader: NYT
Cyprus condemns ‘provocation’ of Erdogan ghost town picnic in Northern
Al-Qaeda leader’s death in Tehran shines spotlight on terrorist ties
Most UK Labour Muslim members do not trust leadership over Islamophobia: Poll
Ghassan Salame 'Very Optimistic' for Peace in Libya
Libya’s warring sides agree on national election next December, UN broker reports
Reports: Israel in Secret Contact with Niger to Normalize Ties

Titles For The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 14-15/2020

Game-changing Arab role against Iran’s Baghdad proxies/Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/November 14/ 2020
Winners and losers in the Caucasus/Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/November 14/ 2020
Austria's New Hate Speech Law/Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/November 14/2020
France Offers Another Glimmer of Hope on Covid/Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
With Cummings Gone, Johnson Has a Perfect Chance to Do Things Better/Therese Raphael/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
Covid Explosion in Denmark’s Mink Is Danger Sign for Vaccines/Sam Fazeli/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
Winter Is Coming. Get a New Hobby./Sarah Green Carmichael/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
Arab populism paints Trump as evil and Biden as the Mahdi/Baha al-Awam/The Arab Weekly/November 14/2020

The Latest English LCCC Lebanese & Lebanese Related News & Editorials published on November 14-15/2020

Amer Fakhoury Foundation: Gibran Bassil's Roll In Handing over Amer Fakhoury To The Terrorist Hezbollah
November 13/2020
Gebran Bassil, the head of the “Free Patriotic Movement” party and former foreign minister in Lebanon, was sanctioned by the US administration. The sanctions are in response to a number of actions by Bassil, including using his power and influence to lure many Christian Lebanese back to Lebanon, especially those that worked with the former South Lebanese Army, for nefarious purposes.
Many of those innocent Christian citizens, legally protected by the Lebanese government’s previous amnesty declarations, trusted Bassil’s promise of safety. Bassil, however, betrayed that trust, often immediately turning them over to Hezbollah, an internationally recognised terrorist organisation.
Absent typical human rights norms, Bassil’s victims were then imprisoned under deplorable conditions, tortured, and often forced to sign false documents.
Amer Fakhoury, a US citizen, was only one of the many who were lured back to Lebanon by Mr. Bassil. After several months of false imprisonment, denial of basic medical care, and repeated torture, Amer passed away shortly after the US government was able to exert enough pressure on the Lebanese government for his release.
Today The Amer Fakhoury Foundation joins many others in celebrating this news and hope that it begins a path for Mr. Bassil, his associates, and others like him will face justice for the corruption and lies they foment that causes innocent citizens to die at the hands of his ally, Hezbollah.
This is one step closer to obtain justice for Amer Fakhoury.

Health Ministry: 1660 new cases of Corona, 10 deaths
NNA/November 14/ 2020
The Ministry of Public Health announced, on Saturday, the registration of 1660 new Corona cases, thus raising the cumulative number of confirmed cases to-date to 104,267.
It also indicated that 10 death cases were also registered during the past 24 hours.

Lebanon begins 2-week lockdown as COVID-19 cases surge
Arab News/November 14/ 2020
The lockdown reinstated a nightly curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.
The total number of infected people in the country is 102,607
Lebanon began a two-week lockdown on Saturday as COVID-19 cases continue to surge at an alarming rate in the country. Caretaker Prime Minister, Hassan Diab, said the nationwide lockdown was “aimed at avoiding the collapse of the health system,” the state news agency reported. The lockdown reinstated a nightly curfew from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m.. Hospitals and medical staff are under immense pressure as ICUs reach capacity, according to local reports. On Friday, 1,904 new coronavirus cases and 21 deaths were registered, bringing the total number of infected people in the country to 102,607. The lockdown was not a solution but a measure to prepare the health sector, Diab said.  “It is an opportunity to raise the country’s health sector preparedness in light of the dramatic surge in coronavirus infections over the past weeks,” he said. Gyms, malls, restaurants, cafes and bars will be closed entirely to the public. However, restaurant deliveries and supermarkets will be permitted to operate before curfew hours. Despite receiving criticism over the decision, Diab said he chose “life and health over the economy.”

Lebanese security chief visited Syria in efforts to free US captive
Reuters/November 14/ 2020
AMMAN: Lebanese Security Chief Abbas Ibrahim visited Damascus after a trip to Washington as part of efforts to free US citizen Austin Tice, who is thought to be held in Syria, Lebanese broadcaster al Jadid reported on Saturday. Ibrahim told al Jadid he went on a two-day visit to Damascus and was in regular contact with Tice's mother to tell her that he would continue to work on her son's "file". "I won't stop working on this subject and I promised Tice's mother whom I met in Washington and am in daily touch with on the phone," he told the broadcaster. US President Donald Trump has adopted the case of the freelance journalist and former US Marine officer who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012. Abbas said the trip to Damascus came after he visited Washington last month where he met with national security adviser Robert O’Brien. A Trump administration official on Oct.18 confirmed a newspaper report that a White House official travelled to Damascus earlier this year for secret meetings with the Syrian government seeking the release of Tice and another US citizen. The trip was the first time such a high-level US official had met in Syria with the isolated government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in more than a decade. Syria erupted into civil war nearly a decade ago after Assad in 2011 began a brutal crackdown on protesters calling for an end to his family’s rule.

Jbeil Mosque Attack Draws Condemnations
Naharnet/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
An attack at a mosque in the northern town of Jbeil drew nationwide condemnations on Saturday. A group of young men attacked on Friday the Sultan Ibrahim bin Adham Mosque in Jbeil, and assaulted and beat up the Sheikh who calls for prayers. The municipality of Jbeil-Byblos condemned, in a statement, "the attack on the mosque in Jbeil by a group of young men." The statement thanked the competent security authorities for taking swift action against the attackers. Grand Sunni Mufti of the Republic, Sheikh Abdul Latif Daryan’s office issued a statement that “Daryan is following up on the incident,” and that he called upon “competent authorities to investigate what happened, to reveal the truth.”Early Saturday morning, angry protesters blocked Al-Nour main square in Tripoli with burning tires denouncing the attack. Mufti of Jbeil, Sheikh Ghassan Lakkis condemned the incident, describing it a “brutal assault.” Former PM, Najib Miqati, who hails from Tripoli, said: “A Christian-Muslim position must be issued to contain the incident and prevent exploitation attempts. Lebanon can not bear a new crisis or a strife," he said. LBCI TV station later said that one of the attackers handed himself in to the police.

Report: Fearing Reform, Lebanon Cabinet Delay is 'Calculated'
Naharnet/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
France reportedly believes that the formation of a government in Lebanon is being “deliberately” delayed by “some” Lebanese politicians, believing the final outcome of the U.S. elections would strengthen their political position, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Saturday. According to the daily, well-informed sources obtained diplomatic information from France, stating that some officials in Lebanon are linking the complicated cabinet formation process to the US elections results. They reportedly believe the outcome could strengthen their political position in a new government, they said. However, the sources said that such “ambitions” are only based on “illusions” because the US administration has specific constants regardless of the identity of the U.S. President, even if Joe Biden officially wins, “no one can be sure of his orientations.”They warned that the Lebanese people are already “dying of hunger,” and can not wait for two more months until the US election results are official, according to the sources. The daily quoted French deputies as saying: “What we see in Lebanon is not pending the American elections, but rather a lack of impulse by Lebanese leaders towards forming a government to save their country and rebuild its economy. They are simply running away from making reforms that would undermine the foundations they rely on.”

Ibrahim Brushes Off Concerns About U.S. Sanctions against Him
Naharnet/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
General Security chief Maj. Gen. Abbas Ibrahim brushed off concerns on Saturday about his inclusion in a US list of sanctions saying “it is not a concern for me.”“I read in US newspapers about the sanctions that could affect me. In my opinion, I will do anything that falls in the interest of the Lebanese. The news being circulated is not of interest to me, nor was I surprised by the issue of sanctions imposed on me,” said Abbas in a telephone intervention on LBCI TV morning talk show, Naharkum Saeed. Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported Saturday that the U.S. Congress could impose sanctions on him, under a new bill being considered. Ibrahim added that during his official visit to Washington last month, the file about Hizbullah was not discussed. “What I do, mainly my visit to Washington falls in Lebanon’s interest. I fear nothing in the world and my conscience is clear. No one can stop me from what I do because it falls in Lebanon’s interest,” added Ibrahim. The U.S. has imposed sanctions in recent months on Lebanese politicians including allies of Hizbullah group. Washington has listed Hizbullah as a terrorist organization since 1997 and sees the group as a proxy for its archenemy Iran in the region.

US Ambassador to Beirut Renews Accusations Against Bassil
Beirut - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
US Ambassador Dorothy Shea said Friday that Free Patriotic Movement leader Gebran Bassil covers Hezbollah’s weapons while the Shiite party covers his corruption, confirming that her country has not stopped its support for Lebanon. Shea said during an online conversation with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that Washington did not support the last government because it was formed by Hezbollah. However, she said her country stood by the Lebanese people and will see what the next government will look like to determine its position.
“We will insist on our positions, and if we do not do that, they will return to corruption; no one will help them at all unless we see progress step by step, and there will be nothing free from now on,” the diplomat added. Commenting on the coronavirus crisis in Lebanon and the pro-Hezbollah caretaker health minister, Shea said: “Our condition to help Lebanon confront the coronavirus is based on dealing directly with friendly and reliable institutions, such as the AUB and the Lebanese Army.” This month, the US blacklisted Bassil, son-in-law of Lebanon's president and leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, "for his role in corruption in Lebanon" and ties with the Iran-backed Hezbollah.Bassil slammed the sanctions as unjust and politically motivated, saying they were imposed after he refused to submit to a US demand to break ties with Hezbollah as that would risk Lebanon's national unity and peace. However, the US envoy to Lebanon said Bassil had voiced willingness to sever ties with Hezbollah, challenging his assertion that he rejected the idea outright.

Lebanese Security Chief Visited Syria in Efforts to Free US Captive
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
Lebanese General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim visited Damascus after a trip to Washington as part of efforts to free US citizen Austin Tice, who is thought to be held in Syria, Lebanese broadcaster al Jadeed reported on Saturday. Ibrahim told al Jadeed he went on a two day visit to Damascus and was in regular contact with Tice's mother to tell her that he would continue to work on her son's "file"."I won't stop working on this subject and I promised Tice's mother whom I met in Washington and am in daily touch with on the phone," he told the broadcaster. US President Donald Trump has adopted the case of the freelance journalist and former US Marine officer who disappeared while reporting in Syria in 2012. Abbas said the trip to Damascus came after he visited Washington last month where he met with national security adviser Robert O'Brien. A Trump administration official on Oct.18 confirmed a newspaper report that a White House official travelled to Damascus earlier this year for secret meetings with the Syrian government seeking the release of Tice and another US citizen. The trip was the first time such a high-level US official had met in Syria with the isolated government of Syrian president Bashar Assad in more than a decade. Syria erupted into war nearly a decade ago after Assad in 2011 began a brutal crackdown on protesters calling for an end to his family's rule.

UN Envoy to Lebanon Criticizes ‘Slow Investigation’ in Beirut Port Explosion
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
UN Special Coordinator for Lebanon, Jan Kubis criticized on Friday the slow pace of the ongoing investigation into the disastrous explosion that hit Beirut last August 4. “One hundred days after the national tragedy of the Beirut port explosion, one hundred days of investigation engaging serious international expertise and still no clarity, no accountability, no justice,” the UN official wrote on his Twitter account. Around 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate, stockpiled since 2014, detonated on August 4, leaving at least 190 people dead, more than 5,000 injured and thousands of families without shelter. Since the blast, the Lebanese judge leading the probe has published no information about what caused the explosion and those responsible for it. The investigation has been assisted by a team from France and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Kubis on Friday met with President Michel Aoun to discuss the situation in Lebanon and the indirect negotiations between it and Israel to demarcate the southern maritime borders. The two sides held their fourth round of talks on Wednesday at the UN headquarters in Naqoura. Kubis also tackled with Aoun the periodic report he intends to present to the Security Council on the implementation of resolution 1701, ongoing efforts to form a new Lebanese government and the latest US sanctions against Lebanese politicians.

Hassan announces increase of intensive care beds in regional hospitals, says early reservation of vaccines is an 'achievement for Lebanon'
NNA/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
Caretaker Public Health Minister, Hamad Hassan, disclosed Saturday that "the Health Ministry's plan during the two-week closure period relies on intensifying testing campaigns for early detection of those infected with the emerging COVID-19 virus, since early diagnosis would lead to the immediate isolation of cases at home so as to relieve some of the pressure on hospitals."
"The Ministry of Public Health is about to announce a treatment protocol at home through specialist doctors," he explained.
Hassan indicated that "the goal of the lockdown is to reduce the daily number of corona infections and limit the spread of the virus after the rate of positive cases rose to 14%, in parallel to increasing the number of intensive care unit beds in hospitals and allowing for break time to ensure the safety of the medical nursing staff." He also reiterated the importance of wearing a mask which is equivalent to the effect of the vaccine, "so whoever wears the mask reduces his infection rate with the virus to 10%, while the percentage increases to 70% if two people are sitting together without a mask, and decreases to 30% if only one of them is wearing a mask." Referring to the awaited vaccine, the Caretaker Health Minister reassured that Lebanon signed two agreements: the first with the Kovacs global vaccination platform to reserve a quantity for twenty percent of the most vulnerable Lebanese, and the second with Pfizer Company to secure additional vaccines for fifteen percent of citizens, noting that the transfer of the amount needed to cover these orders lies with the Lebanese Central Bank, describing this as "an achievement for Lebanon."
"A technical committee has been formed to administer the vaccine, as eight storage centers will be approved in the governorates, provided that the Ministry of Public Health will define in all transparency and fairness the groups that need to be vaccinated," Hassan went on. He anticipated the Pfizer vaccine to be available during the second month of the upcoming new year.Touching on the American Ambassador's stance vis-à-vis the Ministry of Health due to his connection with Hezbollah, Hassan considered this as being a "political position, since health support is a human right and must not be linked to any questioning or doubts, especially with the Ministry's financial disclosure and guarantee of transparency available on its website." He also noted that "protecting the Lebanese, displaced Syrians, Palestinian refugees and various residents of Lebanon is not only the responsibility of Lebanon, but the entire international community."Referring to private hospitals, Hassan underlined that "the Ministry of Public Health is carrying out all its duties to support private hospitals and collect their rightful dues, while in turn, these hospitals must play their national and humanitarian role at this critical stage."

FPM: We are ready for any possible sacrifice in terms of government participation, on condition of respecting Constitution, Charter
NNA/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
The Political Council of the "Free Patriotic Movement" stressed, in an issued statement following its monthly meeting held online today under FPM Chief, MP Gebran Bassil, on "the need to expedite the formation of a government that would serve as a rescue and reform work team that would implement the content of the French initiative."In this context, the Council underlined the necessity of having unified criteria that will accelerate the cabinet formation, i.e. respecting the equal partnership between various Lebanese components and avoiding the combination of two portfolios under one minister, for this denotes a blow to the criteria of competence, specialization and productivity. The FPM political council highlighted the Movement's readiness to provide any possible sacrifice in regards to the issue of government participation, "provided that the Lebanese Constitution and Charter are well-respected."
The Movement also declared its support to the President of the Republic, General Michel Aoun, "in the battle of reform and combating corruption, by opening the doors of accountability and revealing the facts, especially the causes that have led to the financial collapse."
It also expressed strong determination to confront all attempts to drop the forensic audit over the Central Bank's accounts and all public expenditure throughout the past decades. "Any government is called upon to adhere to the forensic audit implementation, in line with the demands of the Lebanese uprising against public waste expenditure and corruption," the statement underlined, affirming FPM's commitment to pursuing the implementation of the forensic audit and removing any obstacle that some may fabricate. During their meeting, the Council members also touched on the US imposed sanctions on FPM Chief Bassil, viewing them as being "part of an interconnected conspiracy targeting Lebanon," with goals that are complementary with the political assassination campaigns waged against Bassil as a price for his stances in preserving sovereignty and preventing sedition among the Lebanese. The statement concluded by stressing that the Council members will continue to follow-up on all measures that can be taken to address this injustice.

Jumblatt: To stop supporting merchants, provide care to underprivileged families instead
NNA/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
"Until the cabinet ministry is formed and the godfather and his companions are satisfied, and before the Central Bank runs out of money and to avoid using the mandatory reserve, support for drug, food and fuel traders and the affluent class should stop, and subsidy must go directly to the most needy families according to a unified census to be set by the Ministry of Social Affairs in cooperation with the Lebanese Army," tweeted Progressive Socialist Party Chief, Walid Jumblatt, today.

Qatisha: Where did the Karkuk-Tripoli pipeline oil come from?
NNA/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
Strong Republic Parliamentary Bloc Member, MP Wehbi Qatisha, posed a question to the Caretaker Energy Minister via Twitter on Saturday, saying: "The Karkuk-Tripoli oil pipeline was closed by the Syrian regime in 1982 at Iran's request. Now a fire breaks out in this closed pipeline in the Al-Abdeh area. Where did the oil come from? In what direction and in whose interest??"

Nissan sues for $95 mln in damages in Carlos Ghosn trial
Reuters, Tokyo/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
Ousted Nissan Motor Co chairman Carlos Ghosn's legal woes deepened on Friday with the start of a civil trial in Yokohama, Japan, where his former employer is seeking 10 billion yen ($95 million) in damages. “The legal actions initiated today form part of Nissan's policy of holding Ghosn accountable for the harm and financial losses incurred by the company due to (his) misconduct,” Nissan said in a statement. Ghosn, who also ran French carmaker Renault SA, has been in Lebanon since January after fleeing Japan before he was due to stand trial. He denies any wrongdoing. Prosecutors, who arrested Ghosn two years ago, have charged him with hiding 9.3 billion yen ($88.6 million) in compensation, enriching himself at Nissan's expense through $5 million payments to a Middle East car dealership and temporarily transferring personal financial losses to the automaker's books. The “Nissan civil lawsuit is an extension to the extremely unreasonable internal investigation with sinister intent by a portion of Nissan’s senior management and the unreasonable arrests and indictments by the public prosecutors,” Ghosn said in an emailed statement. Ghosn, who has said he was removed from Nissan to thwart any merger with Renault, which already owns 43 percent of the Japanese carmaker, was represented in the Yokohama court by lawyers. The civil proceeding got underway as the criminal trial of former Nissan executive Greg Kelly, who is accused of helping Ghosn hide his earnings, continued at a court in Tokyo. Kelly, who has lived in Japan since his release on bail almost two years ago, also denies any wrongdoing. Nissan, which is also a defendant in that trial, has pleaded guilty. If found guilty, Kelly could face up to ten years in prison and a 10 million yen fine. The conviction rate in Japan is around 99 percent. Nissan is drawing back from the business expansion undertaken under Ghosn. On Thursday, it trimmed its full-year operating loss forecast as a rebound in auto demand in China and elsewhere helped boost sales.

The Latest English LCCC Miscellaneous Reports And News published on November 14-15/2020

More than 1.3 mn Coronavirus Deaths Worldwide
Agence France Presse/14 November ,2020
More than 1.3 million people have been killed by the novel coronavirus worldwide, according to a tally from official sources compiled by AFP. In total, there have been at least 1,303,783 deaths for 53,380,442 declared cases of Covid-19, although experts say the official data is likely to capture only a fraction of the number of total infections and fatalities. New cases and deaths are accelerating again as a second wave of infections strikes Europe and the United States. Nearly one in five deaths occurred in the US (244,345), while Brazil was the next most affected country measured by deaths (164,737), then India (129,188), Mexico (97,624) and Britain (51,304).The world celebrated news this week about major advances in the hunt for vaccines against the coronavirus, but a top WHO expert warned in an interview with AFP that disinformation and public distrust will render them useless against the pandemic.

Villagers burn their houses in Nagorno-Karabakh ahead of Azerbaijan takeover
AFP/14 November ,2020
Villagers in Nagorno-Karabakh set their houses on fire Saturday before fleeing to Armenia ahead of a weekend deadline that will see parts of the territory handed over to Azerbaijan as part of a peace agreement. Residents of the Kalbajar district in Azerbaijan that was controlled by Armenian separatists for decades began a mass exodus this week after it was announced Azerbaijan would regain control on Sunday. Fighting between the separatists backed by Armenian troops and the Azerbaijan army erupted in late September and raged for six weeks, leaving more than 1,400 dead and forcing thousands to flee their homes. In the village of Charektar, on the border with the neighboring district of Martakert which is to remain under Armenian control, at least six houses were on fire Saturday morning with thick plumes of gray smoke rising over the valley, an AFP journalist saw. “This is my house, I can’t leave it to the Turks,” as Azerbaijanis are often called by Armenians, said one resident as he threw burning wooden planks and rags soaked in gasoline into a completely empty house. “Everybody is going to burn down their house today... We were given until midnight to leave,” he said. On Friday at least 10 houses were burned in and around Charektar.

Armenia says 2,317 soldiers dead in Karabakh conflict
NNA/14 November ,2020
Armenia on Saturday said that more than two thousand fighters were killed in six weeks of clashes with Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. "To date, our forensic service has examined the corpses of 2,317 dead servicemen, including unidentified ones," Armenian health ministry spokeswoman Alina Nikoghosyan wrote on Facebook, recording an increase of nearly 1,000 deaths compared to the last confirmed death toll among Armenian fighters. --- AFP
 

Pompeo arrives in France on 7-nation tour of Europe, Mideast
AP/November 14, 2020
PARIS: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Paris on Saturday at the start of a seven-country tour of Europe and the Middle East, a trip that is certain to be awkward since all the nations on his schedule have congratulated Joe Biden for his victory in the US presidential race. The trip is aimed at shoring up the priorities of the outgoing administration of President Donald Trump. It will include visits to Israeli settlements in the West Bank that have been avoided by previous secretaries of state. The United States’ top diplomat — as well as its president and much of his Republican Party — have not accepted the results of the American election, and the unusual circumstances will likely overshadow the issues. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian noted on Friday the “difficult subjects” on the table, from the situation in Iraq and Iran, terrorism, the Middle East and China. ”For the moment, my counterpart is Mike Pompeo, until Jan. 20…,” Le Drian said on BFMTV, referring to the date when Trump’s term ends. “He’s coming to Paris. I receive him.” That meeting will take place Monday, Le Drian said, suggesting that Pompeo also will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron. The French president, who spoke with Biden four days ago to offer congratulations, has had a tense relationship with Trump. Both leaders initially worked to woo each other with gestures of extravagance, such as Macron making Trump the guest of honor at a Bastille Day military parade. Trump later pulled out of the Paris global climate accord, a blow to Macron. After France, Pompeo’s tour takes him to Turkey, Georgia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The leaders of all of those countries have offered public congratulations to Biden. Beside France, Turkey, Georgia and Qatar have had fractious relationships with the Trump administration, and it was not clear whether Pompeo planned public engagements with their leaders — or whether he would take questions from the press, with whom he has had a frosty relationship.

‘Lebanese man’ killed in Iran over the summer was al-Qaeda deputy leader: NYT
Joseph Haboush, Al Arabiya English/November 14, 2020
A man and his daughter who were killed in Tehran over the summer were not Lebanese nationals as Iran’s Fars news agency reported at the time, according to the New York Times on Friday. In fact, the man was al-Qaeda’s Egyptian-born number two Abou Mohammed al-Masri, who was wanted by the US for his role in the bombing of multiple US embassies in Africa, according to the report which cited intelligence officials. Al-Masri and his daughter, Miriam, were gunned down by Israeli operatives “at the behest of the United States,” the Times said.
Al-Masri, who the Times says was around 58-years-old, was one of al-Qaeda’s founders and the successor to the terrorist group’s current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Miriam is reportedly the widow of Osama bin Laden’s 11th son, Hamza, who was his father’s heir in the terrorist group. US President Donald Trump announced the killing of Hamza in September 2019. It is unclear why Iran was giving refuge to al-Masri, or why Iranian officials seemed to have covered up his death. In the Times article, the intelligence officials said that he had been “living freely in the Pasdaran district of Tehran, an upscale suburb, since at least 2015.”After the news was published in Iran and Lebanon that a Lebanese teacher and his daughter were found dead, he was identified as “Habib Daoud.” The New York Times says that name was his alias. “American counterterrorism officials believe Iran may have allowed them to stay to run operations against the United States, a common adversary,” the Times said. Iran’s foreign ministry on Saturday denied the New York Times report and said in a statement that there were no al-Qaeda “terrorists” on Iranian soil. “From time to time, Washington and Tel Aviv try to tie Iran to such groups by lying and leaking false information to the media in order to avoid responsibility for the criminal activities of this group and other terrorist groups in the region,” the ministry said.

Cyprus condemns ‘provocation’ of Erdogan ghost town picnic in Northern
AFP/November 14/ 2020
Cyprus Saturday condemned as a “provocation without precedent” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s planned picnic in a long-abandoned beach resort to mark the anniversary of the divided island’s breakaway northern state. The visit on Sunday to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and to Varosha for the picnic constitute a “provocation without precedent,” President Nicos Anastasiades said. “They simultaneously undermine the efforts of the UN secretary-general to call an informal five-party meeting” between Greek and Turkish Cypriots, Athens, Ankara and former colonial power London, he said. Anastasiades, in a statement, said that such actions also “do not contribute to the creation of a favorable, positive climate for the resumption of talks for the solution of the Cyprus problem”. The visit, just weeks after Erdogan helped a nationalist ally win election as Turkish Cypriot leader, is painful for the island’s Greek Cypriot majority, who have never given up their demand for the displaced to be allowed to return to their former homes in Varosha. “These acts cause the outrage of all the people of Cyprus,” the island’s internationally recognized president, who is also the Greek Cypriot leader, said in a statement. A vacation spot that was dubbed a “Jewel of the Mediterranean”, Varosha had been fenced off ever since Turkey’s 1974 invasion of Northern Cyprus. The invasion, launched in response to an Athens-engineered coup in Nicosia, was followed on November 15, 1983, by the declaration of the TRNC, which is recognized only by Ankara. Turkish troops partially reopened the seafront of Varosha on October 8, stirring international criticism. Greek and Turkish Cypriot organizations have signed a joint petition calling for Varosha’s “unilateral” reopening to halt, and for Erdogan to stay out. “The festive nature of the reopening, built on the memories and suffering of its past inhabitants, hurts our conscience,” the petition reads. “No interference! Freedom for all!” hundreds of Turkish Cypriot protesters chanted in northern Nicosia on Tuesday to denounce Erdogan’s visit.

Al-Qaeda leader’s death in Tehran shines spotlight on terrorist ties
Al Arabiya English/November 14/ 2020
Reports that Al Qaeda’s second-in-command was assassinated in Tehran over the summer have refocused attention on relations between the international terrorist organization and Iran’s government. On Friday, the New York Times cited anonymous US intelligence officials to report that Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, known as Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was assassinated on the streets of Tehran on August 7. Al-Masri was one of al-Qaeda’s founders and the mastermind behind the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed over 200 people and wounded hundreds more.
According to the Times citing four unnamed intelligence officials, al-Masri was shot and killed by two “Israeli operatives at the behest of the United States.” The report is in line with an Al Arabiya interview with Nabil Naeem, the former leader of Egypt’s Islamic Jihad, who said last month that al-Masri had been using a cover name.
Al-Masri’s daughter Miriam, the widow of Osama bin Laden’s son Hamza, was also killed in the same attack, said the report. At the time of the shooting, official Iranian media said that the victims were “Habib Daoud,” a Lebanese history professor, and his daughter Miriam. The Lebanese news channel MTV identified Daoud as a member of the Iran-backed Hezbollah organization, whose members have often been seen in Tehran. Iran denied the reports on Friday, claiming that it has no links with al-Qaeda. However, analysts have pointed out that despite religious differences, the Shia Islamic Republic of Iran and Sunni al-Qaeda have had long-term relations, with Tehran harboring various al-Qaeda senior figures responsible for atrocities across the world. “Iran and al-Qaeda have always flirted. Iran has historically helped both the Taliban and the Taliban’s Shia enemies in Afghanistan,” Danielle Pletka, Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute, told Al Arabiya English.
Early links between Tehran and al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda was founded in 1988 by Salafist militants Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Abdullah Azzam and other volunteers who were fighting against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Under bin Laden, the organization sought to wage a global war against the US and its allies.
The US government’s 9/11 Commission – established after Bin Laden masterminded the September 11, 2001 attacks against the US that killed almost 3,000 people – found that relations between Iran and al-Qaeda were established as early as 1991 in Sudan. According to the commission, Sudan hosted meetings between al-Qaeda leaders and Iranian officials, as well as personnel from the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah. Bin Laden reportedly then met with Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah commander, who was also an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Under Mughniyeh, the IRGC trained al-Qaeda militants in Lebanon, said the commission. In 1996, truck bombing attacks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, killed 19 US personnel and injured almost 500 others of various nationalities. The US has blamed Iran and the Hezbollah al-Hijaz organization, and Bin Laden welcomed the bombing. The 9/11 Commission said, “we have seen strong but indirect evidence that his organization did, in fact, play some as yet unknown role in the Khobar attack.”
Both Tehran and al-Qaeda were also implicated in the 1998 attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya.
According to witnesses cited in The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)’s The Long War Journal, al-Qaeda attackers had received training from the Iran-backed Hezbollah. “Hezbollah provided explosives training for al-Qaeda and al-Jihad. Iran supplied Egyptian Jihad with weapons. Iran also used Hezbollah to supply explosives that were disguised to look like rocks,” the FDD quoted Ali Mohamed, one of the militants involved in the bombings, as saying in his plea deal. Iran also helped facilitate al-Qaeda members’ movements.
Before 2001, Iran allowed al-Qaeda members to pass through its borders without stamping their passports or with visas from its consulate in Karachi, Pakistan, revealed a 19-page report found among Bin Laden’s items in the US raid on his Abbottabad compound in which he was killed.
Iran offered al-Qaeda “money and arms and everything they needed, and offered them training in Hezbollah camps in Lebanon, in return for striking American interests in Saudi Arabia,” the report said, as quoted by The Associated Press.
IRGC welcomes Al-Qaeda leaders in Tehran
Iran has hosted various al-Qaeda leaders, including senior figures responsible for terror attacks across the region. “Al-Qaeda serves Iran’s interests, and they manipulate the relationship to their advantage,” Pletka said. Many al-Qaeda militants fled from Afghanistan to Iran following the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, launched in part to destroy al-Qaeda’s base there following the September 11 attacks. “Al Qaeda’s Egyptian branch, Egyptian Islamic Jihad, operated openly in Tehran. It is no coincidence that many of the al Qaeda management team, or Shura Council, moved across the border into Iran after US forces invaded Afghanistan,” wrote former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke in his book “Against All Enemies.”
While Bin Laden and some others retreated to cave hideouts along the Afghan-Pakistan border, several of al-Qaeda’s top leaders relocated to Iran between 2001 and 2003. In 2001, Mahfouz ibn al-Waleed, the Mauritanian head of al-Qaeda’s sharia committee who was wanted by the FBI for his role in the 1998 US embassy bombings, fled to the Iranian border under disguise. According to The Atlantic, Iran’s IRGC welcomed al-Waleed and granted him an audience with its chief, General Qassem Soleimani. The IRGC allowed al-Waleed to contact other al-Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Pakistan and invite them to come over to Iran, giving them false travel documents on entry, and discussed their presence with the US, according to a report by The Atlantic that drew upon interviews with al-Qaeda members. The following year, senior al-Qaeda leaders Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Saif al-Adel, and Abu Musab al-Suri – as well as al-Masri – all arrived in Iran. Alongside them also came Bin Laden’s own family. “The IRGC is nominally the ‘supervising’ power of al-Qaeda figures inside Iran. It should be assumed they have substantial information about everything that al-Qaeda figures are doing,” Pletka said.
Hamza bin Laden
Hamza was Osama’s 11th son and was widely seen as his potential successor until US President Donald Trump announced that he was killed last year. Along with other Bin Laden family members, Hamza arrived in Iran in mid-2002 and initially settled in a fortified farmhouse before being moved by the IRGC to a heavily guarded training center in northern Tehran, reported The Atlantic. He lived in Iran until March 2010, where he was reportedly under house arrest, although video footage surfaced that showed his wedding in Tehran. Iran released the Bin Laden’s from house arrest in 2010 after al-Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in Pakistan, after which it is thought that Hamza went to Pakistan.Documents recovered from the Abbottabad raid revealed letter correspondence between Hamza and his father, who had sought a reunion with his son.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
The Jordanian terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (real name Ahmad Fadhil Nazzal al-Khalaylah) was also able to travel to and from Iran. Zarqawi fought with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, where he founded a training camp that hosted up to 3,000 fighters and their family members. He was reportedly in Iran at the time of the September 11 attacks and returned to Afghanistan after the US invasion of the country. However, he suffered a disputed injury and fled back to Iran, where he was given medical treatment in Iran’s Mashhad. Iranian authorities reportedly refused the Jordanian government’s requests to extradite Zarqawi, despite him being a wanted man. He subsequently was allowed to leave to neighboring Iraq, where he quickly established a reputation for brutality, earning the nickname “Sheikh of the slaughterers.”Zarqawi has often been attributed with the creation of ISIS, as he founded its predecessor, the Islamic State of Iraq, in 2006. He was killed in the same year but left behind a legacy of violence in Iraq and beyond. The Egyptian al-Adel is one of al-Qaeda’s top military trainers. He entered Iran in 2002, where he was then put under house arrest. Along with Osama’s son, Saad, al-Adel reportedly ordered an al-Qaeda cell to carry out the 2003 Riyadh compound bombings that killed 39 people and injured 160 at residential compounds in the Saudi capital. He reportedly served as al-Qaeda’s interim head after Bin Laden was killed in 2011. In 2018, the United Nations reported that al-Adel and al-Masri were operating out of Iran, where they had the freedom to make managerial decisions for al-Qaeda. According to the report, Bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri had, “partly through the agency of senior al-Qaeda leadership figures based in the Islamic Republic of Iran … been able to exert influence on the situation in northwestern Syrian Arab Republic.”The UN added that al-Adel had “influenced events in the Syrian Arab Republic ... causing formations, breakaways and mergers of various Al Qaeda-aligned groups in Idlib.”
His current whereabouts are unknown, and the US State Department has issued a $10 million reward for information about him.

Most UK Labour Muslim members do not trust leadership over Islamophobia: Poll
Arab News/November 14/ 2020
LONDON: More than half of Muslim members of the UK’s main opposition Labour Party question its leaders’ ability to tackle Islamophobia, a new survey has found. The study, conducted by the Labour Muslim Network (LMN), revealed that 55 percent of Muslim members said they do not “trust the leadership to tackle Islamophobia effectively.”A further 59 percent, including supporters outside the party, said they do not feel “well represented by the leadership.”The survey also found that more than a quarter of Muslims have experienced Islamophobia within the party. About 48 percent of Labour’s Muslim members said they do not have confidence in the party’s ability to deal with complaints “effectively.”The survey also found that 44 percent think that Labour is failing to take Islamophobia “seriously.”Labour has said it will meet with the LMN to find a solution to the “scourge” of Islamophobia. “We thank the LMN for this important report, as well as their work to ensure our Muslim members are represented, included and heard,” Labour leader Keir Starmer and deputy leader Angela Rayner said in a statement. “Islamophobia has no place in our party or society and we are committed to rooting it out. We look forward to working with the LMN to implement their recommendations.”

Ghassan Salame 'Very Optimistic' for Peace in Libya
Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
The UN's former envoy to Libya, Ghassan Salame, says he has higher hopes than ever of seeing an end to a decade of violence in the country. "I'm very optimistic," the Lebanese diplomat said. "What we've seen in the past two months is an accumulation of positive factors." Salame spoke in an interview with AFP a day after rival military delegations concluded their latest UN-led meetings inside Libya to fill in the details of a landmark October ceasefire deal.Meanwhile political talks, also led by the world body, were underway in Tunisia aimed at appointing an interim government to organize elections and govern a country battered by conflict, economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic. On Friday evening the UN announced that delegates in Tunisia had agreed that national polls should be held on December 24 next year. Salame resigned in March citing health reasons and stress, but was the architect of the UN's current Libya peace efforts and has stayed closely involved. Speaking from his home in Paris, he warned that "a war that has been raging for one decade cannot be solved in a day." But after months of relative calm and a string of positive steps, the 69-year-old said Libyans had shown "a truly renewed interest" in dialogue. Salame said Libya was now close to being able to run elections safe enough to be "reasonably representative of the will of the people.""I believe this can be done in the next six or seven months."

Libya’s warring sides agree on national election next December, UN broker reports
DEBKAfile/November 14/2020
Libya’s warring sides have agreed to hold nationwide elections on Dec. 24, 2021, said the UN acting envoy for Libya, Stephanie Williams, at a virtual press conference in Tunisia on Nov. 13, Day Five of the talks. She said their consensus on a roadmap for hauling Libya out of years of civil war was “a breakthrough.The peace effort, launched on the heels of a ceasefire on Oct. 23, brought to the table the East Libyan army (LNA) led by Gen. Khalifa Hafter, which is based in the eastern town of Benghazi, and the UN-recognized government of PM Fayez-al-Sarraj (GNA) in Tripoli.
But Libya is so deeply riven by a motley array of volatile local and rogue militias, that the UN broker had to find seats for 75 of their leaders for any chance of an agreed termination of the violent chaos engulfing oil-rich Libya since a NATO-led operation overthrew and killed its dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Haftar came to the table after the offensive he launched in April 2019 to capture Tripoli, with the support of Russia, Egypt, France and the UAE, foundered in June, when militias allied with the GNA, with heavy Turkish and Qatari support, gained the upper hand.
All previous efforts to end the long fighting have failed. While the UN official hailed a breakthrough, the thorny task of appointing a new transitional government and Presidency Council in the interim, has yet to be tackled. Nine years after the overthrow and death of his father, Saif al-Islam, 48, one of the late Qaddfi’s his eight sons, is the only member of the family who retains influence and political ambitions. Saif is the strongest opponent of Haftar and Serraj. The disposition of Libya’s oil riches also remains to be resolved. In mid-September, Gen. Haftar ended the oil port blockade he ordered in January, after signing an agreement with Tripoli’s deputy prime minister to create a commission for deciding how the oil revenues would be allocated and spent. Since then, Libya’s oil production has nearly tripled. But PM Serraj and most of his cabinet have refused to go along with the deal and so another oil shutdown may yet hamper the progress of the peace process.

Reports: Israel in Secret Contact with Niger to Normalize Ties
Tel Aviv - Asharq Al-Awsat/Saturday, 14 November, 2020
Intelligence director Eli Cohen revealed that Israel has carried out secret contacts with Niger to reach an agreement on the normalization of relations between the two countries, as a source said there have also been Israeli attempts to conclude such a deal with Morocco. “Niger is the largest Muslim country in West Africa, with a population of more than 25 million,” Cohen said, adding that an agreement with Niamey as well as agreements expected between Israel and other Muslim states in Africa, will help regional stability. He said the upcoming elections in the country will be essential for the advancement of the normalization process between the two states. According to Israel media reports, the Israeli Foreign Ministry expects the administration of US President Donald Trump will continue to seek further agreements between Israel and Arab and Muslim countries. The reports said Niger will be the second Muslim state to ink such deal following Chad, which will conclude a normalization agreement with Israel. They expected that the presidential election in Niger next month will result in the victory of former Interior Minister and President of the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism Mohamed Bazoum, who supports normalization with Israel. The reports also said there are common interests between the two states, mainly the fight against terrorism. Separately, Channel 12's political analyst Amit Segal wrote Friday in his weekly analysis published by the Hebrew Yediot Aharonot newspaper that ahead of the presidential election, Israel planned to put pressure on the Trump administration to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty in the Sahara Desert and in return, sign a normalization agreement with Israel. Segal said that one US Senator had blocked the deal because of his opposition to Morocco’s position towards the Sahara issue. “If this Senator changes his position in the coming few weeks, an Israeli embassy will open in Rabat and a Moroccan embassy in Tel Aviv,” he wrote.

The Latest LCCC English analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on November 14-15/2020

Game-changing Arab role against Iran’s Baghdad proxies
Baria Alamuddin/Arab News/November 14/ 2020
Arab investments are a “threat” to Iraq: This is what pro-Iran elements are claiming following the landmark meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, and coinciding with the visit of a Saudi trade delegation to Baghdad. Nouri Al-Maliki, puppet of the ayatollahs and former prime minister, denounced this economic support as “colonialism.” Paramilitary warlord Qais Al-Khazali accused Arab states of “harming the security and stability of Iraq.”Yet this GCC aid is poised to have a transformative impact. A single Saudi project for cultivating a million hectares of land encompasses the impoverished Shiite province of Muthanna where, despite its proximity to vast oilfields, 52 percent of citizens live in poverty, with sky-high unemployment. With Maliki, Khazali and Tehran seeking to obstruct such investment, it is clear who is betraying the interests of ordinary Iraqis.These panicked litanies by Iran’s proxies are a welcome indicator that Iraq’s relationships with its Arab neighbors are finally bearing fruit. This is also a reminder of how economic and political dynamics are intimately intertwined.
Tehran seeks to monopolize and perpetuate Baghdad’s economic dependency with the aim of consolidating Iraq as a vassal state. Arab economic support is welcome in its own right, but this is also about breaking the Iranian stranglehold and reintegrating Iraq into the Arab world.
Iran dominates Iraq via the Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi paramilitary coalition, which as well as exerting military control over most Iraqi provinces also holds a critical mass of seats in the parliament. Kadhimi is Iraq’s first prime minister since 2003 who has modest intentions for challenging this paramilitary dominance. He has been accused of moving too cautiously, having remarked that “1,000 years of discussion is better than one moment of exchange of fire.” He’s right to worry that his paramilitary enemies will resort to extreme lengths in order to thwart him. However, if Kadhimi fails to move rapidly and decisively, his good intentions will amount to nothing.
With the Western world distracted by the dying moments of the Trump regime, the pivotal role of Arab states is more crucial than ever, and there is a vast amount of catching up to do. Iraq’s current minuscule non-oil trade with Arab neighbors is dwarfed by its bilateral trade with Iran, at around $13 billion annually. Iraq and Saudi Arabia resumed diplomatic relations only in 2015, and the sole crossing point at Arar has been closed for trade and non-pilgrim travelers. Kadhimi was also recently in Jordan and Egypt, with the latter trip focusing heavily on enhanced bilateral trading relations. Fifteen agreements pledged Egyptian support for strengthening Iraq’s healthcare, economic and infrastructure sectors. With this flurry of regional engagement, for the first time in years Kadhimi looks serious about restoring Iraq as an active and prominent component of the Arab world.
But while Tehran is at its weakest, now is the time for a massive surge in Arab political support, enabling Kadhimi to follow through on pledges to curtail the power of Iran’s paramilitary hordes once and for all. Yet this $13 billion in Iran-Iraq bilateral trade is dominated by cheap Iranian imports. Iraqi exports to Iran have often hovered around a woeful $400,000. Iraqi traders warn that Tehran deliberately floods local markets with cut-price goods with the intention of destroying Iraqi economic production and making markets wholly reliant upon Tehran. A new commercial rail link between the two countries threatens to make this stream of Iranian goods into a deluge. Nevertheless, the halving of Iranian non-oil imports to Iraq during 2020 illustrates their susceptibility to changing economic realities.
In recent mass protests throughout Shiite southern regions, demonstrators called for measures to end the dumping of Iranian goods, as well for closing down predatory militias. Prime Minister Kadhimi should capitalize on these pressures for following through on his promises to curtail paramilitary dominance.
This July, Kadhimi used his first trip abroad as prime minister, to Iran, to assert Baghdad’s sovereign right to balanced relations with all nations. Furthermore, Iran’s emphasis on economic ties during this visit — at the expense of pressure for US troops to depart Iraq — highlighted Tehran’s increasingly precarious and desperate financial plight. Curtailing Iran’s vast paramilitary assets requires cutting off their illegal sources of revenue. Illegal customs duties on goods travelling between Kurdish and Arab regions were netting the Badr militia an estimated $12 million-$15 million per month; while Qais Al-Khazali’s force, Asaib Ahlulhaq, was earning $300,000 a day through checkpoint fees in Diyala province alone. In Basra, militia profits from oil smuggling are assumed to be exponentially larger.
Kadhimi should slash the $2 billion-plus Hashd budget, forcing a reduction in dangerously inflated paramilitary numbers, particularly at a time when teachers and other public sector workers have been protesting over months of unpaid salaries. With the 2020 budget delayed by months amid soaring debt and depleted income, the government is resorting to additional borrowing to cover an unaffordable $6.8 billion in monthly public sector salaries. It is no longer financially sustainable for the state to be bled white by corrupt agents of Iran.
Kadhimi recently swore that paramilitary murderers of activists, journalists and intellectuals such as Reham Yaqoub and Hisham Al-Hashimi would “not escape punishment, however long it takes.” Yet if Kadhimi is serious about delivering justice, this is not about detaining the low-level perpetrators, but rather dismantling these entire terrorist networks with the blood of thousands of Iraqis on their hands.
Kadhimi isn’t Superman. His achievements so far are almost too modest to mention. However, for the foreseeable future he may be Iraq’s best prospect for cutting overmighty militias down to size.
This torrent of Arab investment and aid is important and commendable. But while Tehran is at its weakest, now is the time for a massive surge in Arab political support, enabling Kadhimi to follow through on pledges to curtail the power of Iran’s paramilitary hordes once and for all.
*Baria Alamuddin is an award-winning journalist and broadcaster in the Middle East and the UK. She is editor of the Media Services Syndicate and has interviewed numerous heads of state.

Winners and losers in the Caucasus
Cornelia Meyer/Arab News/November 14/ 2020
Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans, the underbelly of the former Soviet Union, are mired in complex ethnic animosities that go back centuries and occasionally flare up into open conflict. We saw it in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and most recently in Nagorno-Karabakh. This is of great concern to Russia, which considers those regions its backyard and wants to ensure its continued influence. For example, after elections in Belarus that appear to have been won by the opposition, Moscow chose to support President Alexander Lukashenko remaining in office, albeit half-heartedly and perhaps temporarily. Elections will also take place this month in Georgia, which Russia will be closely watching. Events in Nagorno-Karabakh, meanwhile, represent geopolitics at its highest level. The former Soviet “oblast”, or administrative region, was assigned to Azerbaijan during the break-up of the Soviet Union, despite its majority ethnic Armenian population. A bloody war erupted in 1994, resulting in hundreds of thousands ofdisplaced people, and Armenia took control of parts of the territory. There was a tenuous cease-fire, althoughvarious skirmishes erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the next 25 years, and the fighting erupted again in September. Turkey supported Azerbaijan during 44 days of armed conflict that killed more than 5,000 people.
After a series of cease-fires that were broken pretty much immediately after they began, last week Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia reached an agreement. Armenian forces are to withdraw from occupied districts in the contested region by Dec. 1. A land corridor between the disputed territory and Armenia will be established and secured by Russian peacekeeping forces. There will be a second corridor between the Azeri enclave of Naxcivan on the border with Turkey, allowing travel to Azerbaijan via Armenian territory.
All in all, the agreement was good for Azerbaijan and Russia. The former was able to regain territory which, in their view and according to international law, is rightfully theirs. The latter brokered the deal and asserted its influence. Moscow also will station about 2,000 troops in the area. For Turkey the deal was not all bad either, since its ally Azerbaijan, a fellow Turkic and Muslim country, came out on top. Some Turkish troops will bestationed in the cease-fire monitoring centre, which is on Azeri territory and not Nagorno-Karabakh. This allows Turkey to save face, while Russia clearly calls the shots.
Among the losers are European countries who did not play a role in reaching the agreement, although the Minsk Group of the OSCE had played an instrumental role in reaching past cease-fires.
The biggest losers are Armenia and the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh, who are deprived of what they consider to be their rightful homes. The biggest losers are Armenia and the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh, who are deprived of what they consider to be their rightful homes. The scenes of ethnic Armenians burning their houses before going back to the homeland have by now become part of the narrative. We should also not forget the fraught history between Armenians and Turkey, and the 1914 genocide, which Turkey denies.
The contrasting scenes in the streets of Baku and Yerevan tell the story better than anything; jubilation in the Azeri capital, while Armenian protesters took to the streets to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Nagorno-Karabakh and the Caucasus may be far away for most of us, but, the region matters. Russia wants to ensure its status amid economic challenges caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a falling oil price, as well as geopolitical challenges posed by the growing influence of China with its Belt and Road Initiative, and European assertions that they should act as mediators.
In the end Russia, was the deal maker and its troops will secure the peace. That is a big geopolitical achievement. However, as NATO troops in Afghanistan and Iraq can tell Moscow, it is a lot simpler to put boots on the ground than it is to withdraw them once they have become involved in the murky geopolitical and sectarian quagmire of the region. The age-old proverb “be careful what you wish for” holds eternally true. Nothing is easy and everything is complicated in the backyard of the former Soviet Union. For now, we have a achieved an uneasy truce, the cost of which is high for the Armenians who have to repatriate — but expect ethnic and religious tensions in the wider region to flare up from time to time. Also expect the regional powers,Russia and Turkey, to try and assert their power while finding a modus operandi. The US, China, and Europe will watch the goings on with keen interest. The Caucasus and central Asia are,after all, in the neighborhood of the second two, and of geopolitical importance for the first. President-elect Joe Biden has his work cut out.
*Cornelia Meyer is a Ph.D.-level economist with 30 years of experience in investment banking and industry. She is chairperson and CEO of business consultancy Meyer Resources. Twitter: @MeyerResources
 

Austria's New Hate Speech Law
Judith Bergman/Gatestone Institute/November 14/2020
Austria's proposed law is modelled on Germany's much criticized NetzDG law, also known as the censorship law, which came into effect in January 2018 and requires social media companies to delete or block any online unlawful content within 24 hours or 7 days at the most, or face fines of up to 50 million euros.
If the proposed law is passed, the freedom of speech of Austrians online will be subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities, such as Twitter, Goggle and Facebook.
With Austria's draft online hate speech law, yet another European country is taking another step towards making online censorship an institutionalized feature of European hate speech laws.
"We too often make bad laws with good intentions. Online platforms should not censor the freedom of expression," said Chairman of the Senate Law Commission Philippe Bas after the decision of France's Constitutional Council. It can only be hoped that European lawmakers eager to censor free speech online will heed the ruling of the French constitutional court.
The Austrian government has presented a draft online hate speech law, the Communication Platforms Act, which, if passed, will limit free speech in the country. The Austrian government writes in the introduction to its proposed law:
"The main reason for the development of this draft Act is the worrying development that the Internet and social media, in addition to the advantages that these new technologies and communication channels provide, have also established a new form of violence, and hate on the Internet is increasing in the form of insults, humiliation, false information and even threats of violence and death. The attacks are predominantly based on racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic motives. A comprehensive strategy and a set of measures are required that range from prevention to sanctions. This strategy is based on the two pillars of platform responsibility and victim protection, with the present draft Act relating to ensuring platform responsibility".
The proposed law is modelled on Germany's much criticized NetzDG law, also known as the censorship law, which came into effect in January 2018 and requires social media companies to delete or block any online unlawful content within 24 hours or 7 days at the most, or face fines of up to 50 million euros. In May 2020, France adopted a similar law, known as the "Avia law", also modelled on the German NetzDG law, which requires online platforms to remove reported "hateful content" -- incitement to hatred, or discriminatory insult, on the grounds of race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or disability -- within 24 hours. Failure to do so could result in fines of up to 1.25 million euros or 4% of the platform's global revenue.
Similarly, the Austrian law requires "obviously" unlawful content to be deleted within 24 hours and other unlawful content within seven days. Failure to do so could lead to fines of up to 10 million euros ($12 million). Platforms must provide a reporting function for such content and react immediately to notifications.
Just like Germany's NetzDG law, the Austrian censorship law privatizes state censorship by requiring social media platforms to censor their users on behalf of the state. If the proposed law is passed, the freedom of speech of Austrians online will be subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities, such as Twitter, Google and Facebook.
With Austria's draft online hate speech law, yet another European country is taking another step towards making online censorship an institutionalized feature of European hate speech laws. In Austria, according to Reuters, a surprising number of private associations would like to see even wider measures implemented: Austria's association of digital service providers, ISPA, representing more than 200 companies including Google Austria and Facebook Germany welcomed the initiative against online hate speech but called for a joint European effort.
"Only a uniform European regulation can become a successful standard and assert itself worldwide," ISPA said in a statement. "Uncoordinated individual courses don't get us any further here."
There has been, however, significant pushback against government censorship: In France, the Constitutional Council, a French court that examines legislation's compatibility with the constitution, struck down multiple provisions of the "Avia law" in June because it infringed on freedom of expression. The Constitutional Council noted in its press release:
"[According] to Article 11 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789: 'The free communication of thoughts and opinions is one of the most precious human rights: any citizen can therefore speak, write, print freely, except to answer for the abuse of this freedom in the cases determined by the law'. It is inferred from these provisions that with the present state of the means of communication and in view of the generalized development of online communication services to the public, as well as the importance of these services for participation in democratic life and the expression of ideas and opinions, this right implies the freedom to access and express yourself in these services..."
"Freedom of expression and communication is all the more precious since its exercise is a condition of democracy and one of the guarantees of respect for other rights and freedoms. It follows that the interference with the exercise of that freedom must be necessary... and proportionate to the objective pursued".
The court found that multiple provisions of the "Avia law" infringed on freedom of expression because they were not "necessary or proportionate".
"We too often make bad laws with good intentions. Online platforms should not censor the freedom of expression," said Chairman of the Senate Law Commission Philippe Bas after the Constitutional Council's decision.
It can only be hoped that European lawmakers eager to censor free speech online will heed the ruling of the French constitutional court.
*Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
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Extremism Has Become Marginal… Corruption a Thing of the Past
Zuhair Al-Harthi/Asharq Al Awsat/November 14/2020
Saudi Arabia is constantly moving forward. These days, it is fervently gearing up to chair the G20 Summit in order to fortify its position as a main economic player in the global economy and a state that cannot be ignored in the region.
These preparations coincide with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s comprehensive and transparent speech in which he tackled several political, social and economic issues, going over the facts and laying out achievements, figures and statistics. He stressed that his country is undergoing a qualitative shift in new and promising sectors given its unique cultural heritage and geographic and demographic diversity, all of which allow it to become a global powerhouse of tourism, culture, sports, entertainment and other sectors.
The Crown Prince’s words leave one sensing that a new Saudi Arabia is taking shape, one that can compete strongly with other countries. The state is forging ahead with its reform project and there can be no going back. The only way is forward despite all of the difficulties and obstacles. Indeed the determination and resolve to actualize objectives is palatable. Development and reform are pressing requirements of our times without which we cannot make social and humanitarian progress.
The Crown Prince was remarkably forthright with his people in his treatment of terrorism in the country, saying: “The phenomenon of extremism had been widespread amongst us, and we reached a point where the best of our ambition was to coexist with this scourge. Neutralizing it was not on the table in the first place, nor was controlling it conceivable.”
It is astonishing to think of how strong the Axis of Resistance was and its attempts to drag the country backward at the time. The Crown Prince had pledged to confront extremism and that “in one year, we managed to wipe out an ideological project that had been 40 years in the making. Today, extremism is no longer tolerated in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and it is no longer appears but is shunned, clandestine and marginalized. Nevertheless, we will continue to confront any extremist movements, behaviors and ideas.”
“This is a message that reassures the people and sends a decisive one to the dark forces of extremism and radicalism who closed the country of for decades and destroyed it culturally and intellectually, spreading an ideology of despair, isolation and hatred of all of life’s colors, art and entertainment. They entrenched a dark ideology, killed life and passionately revered death, cultivating fertile ground for extremist movements.”
The Crown Prince rejected any attempt to link Islam to terrorism but also made an important request for “the world to stop attacking national religious symbols under the banner of freedom of expression because this creates a fertile environment for extremism and terrorism.” He is right about that, as this kind of incitement and escalation will lead to the eruption of an ideological war with an extremist bent, reinforcing extremism and religious intolerance.
With regard to the anti-corruption campaign, the Crown Prince admitted that corruption “had spread over the past decades like cancer, and has come to erode 5 to 15 percent of the state’s budget.” A truly terrifying number, indeed he described it as development and prosperity’s primary enemy, stressing that corruption in his country “has become a thing of the past, and will not recur, on any scale, without a strong and painful accountability, from this day forward.”
Observes can feel Saudi society’s involvement in this fierce battle because it realizes the danger of corruption. The Crown Prince’s bold decisions became the talk of the town, and its echoes continue to reverberate across the country. Everyone received the message, for no nation can progress and make strides while corruption devours it from the inside.
He was honest in his recognition of the suffering that Saudi women had endured in the past. Today, however, as the Crown Prince says: “Women are being empowered like never before, especially in education and regarding personal status laws. Saudi women have become real partners in developing the country for all. The rate of women’s participation in the labor market has doubled from 17 to 31 percent.”
Saudi Arabia used to be described as a closed country, but today it is on the path to becoming a modern, civil state. The decision to embark on this project is the most important because it means becoming a modern state, diving into the world of competition and paving the way for future generations. In Saudi Arabia, one finds a state that is more progressive than society, pulling society forward. The contours of change are evident, and those who understand their repercussions know that historic decisions have been taken. Some measures deal with internal issues while others address external matters in such a way that protects our country’s security and its supreme interests.
The Crown Prince also discussed other issues concerning Vision 2030. He demonstrated, with numbers and data, just how successful the Vision’s path has been and that it is a necessity, not propaganda or publicity campaign. This Vision encompasses major projects, economic and social development programs that prepare the Kingdom for the future by enhancing public and private sector performance, transparency and integrity. It propels the country to advanced positions in the global competitiveness index, reducing the unemployment rate, diversifying revenue and increasing the Saudis home-ownership rate. Therefore, we are before genuine and serious transformation and comprehensive reform taking place through a project for cultural change that moves the country to where it deserves to be.
Bold vision, unyielding will, pragmatism, sound decision making and reliability are all critical aspects of the personality of the Crown Prince, who was able to put his country in the spotlight and give it more positive, brighter and more respected features. He came to power at the right time for our country, which is frankly, the right time to take it to a new and much-needed phase.

France Offers Another Glimmer of Hope on Covid
Lionel Laurent/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
When Nobel Prize-winning economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee urged France’s Emmanuel Macron in September to impose a tough three-week circuit-breaker lockdown to halt the spread of Covid-19 in time for Christmas, they were politely ignored. Macron’s health minister, Olivier Veran, dismissed such planning as “pie in the sky” and said lockdowns were to be avoided.
Six weeks later, the economists look prescient. Covid’s second wave has been brutal in France with daily deaths now averaging around 500 versus 70 at end-September. The number of patients in hospitals is above where it was at the peak of the first wave, and intensive-care occupancy isn’t far off. France may not be alone in this struggle, but it has the highest total caseload in Europe and the third-highest death toll behind the UK and Italy (unadjusted for population). On Oct. 30, the country began a national lockdown.
There’s one crucial piece of good news about the French response, however. Macron’s softer, less draconian approach to stay-at-home curbs — notably by resisting calls, including by Duflo and Banerjee, to shut schools — looks like it’s possibly starting to pay off.
The latest official data suggest France’s daily case curve has been bending downward in recent days, with the virus’s all-important reproduction rate now estimated at 0.93. That means an infected person will, on average, spread it to less than one person. While still a glimmer rather than a full ray of light, there are also signs that the pace of hospital admissions is slowing, even if it has yet to peak. That’s despite the fact that schools, public services, construction sites and some workplaces have been kept open this time around.
These early hopeful signs are backed up by mobility data from Google, which shows the French are taking lockdown seriously. Retail and leisure traffic is down more than 50% from the pre-virus baseline, and the impact on movement in transit stations isn’t far behind. That’s reassuring considering the fatigue and economic destruction inflicted by the first lockdown. The new “soft” approach still forces people to fill out forms to leave home and respect a 1-kilometer limit when out for exercise, but it’s generally easier to bear.
A closer look at mobility in the Paris region as tracked by Facebook is even more encouraging. It suggests people actually began to restrict their movement when a 9 pm curfew was introduced in mid-October, well before the second lockdown began. That may be contributing to the positive signals in the virus data. Still, France was slow to take action compared with Wales or Catalonia, meaning it’s far too early to think about lifting these restrictions. Prime Minister Jean Castex said as much on Thursday, telling the press that non-essential businesses might be allowed to reopen on Dec. 1 at the earliest.
For all the upbeat signals, the next few weeks will be rough going. Hospitals have been overwhelmed and non-Covid operations are being delayed. Unemployment rose to 9% in the third quarter, and job postings have yet to fully recover from the first lockdown, according to Bloomberg Economics. Only about one-third of French people have faith the Macron administration can handle the pandemic effectively. That’s not reassuring given the population is being encouraged to “do its part” to contain Covid-19.
The longer this crisis drags on, the more unpredictable the public reaction will be. There have been protests from teachers and students who argue there’s not enough social distancing in schools — not just from those who think the restrictions are too strict.
So while curfews and “soft” lockdowns are making a difference — a potential comfort to New Yorkers right now — Macron already needs to be thinking of his next steps for France. Castex laid the seeds for this on Thursday evening by encouraging more work-from-home initiatives and better enforcement of travel restrictions. The situation doesn’t seem to warrant a return to shuttered schools, nor is there appetite for an age-based lockdown on the over-60s or 70s. But it's clearly necessary to better protect the elderly in nursing homes, where 764 deaths have been reported in one week. And to have a plan in place for when the lockdown ends.
Where Duflo and Banerjee had a point was in encouraging France to get ahead of the virus rather than simply keep trying to catch up to it. We’re not there yet, but at least things appear to be getting better.

With Cummings Gone, Johnson Has a Perfect Chance to Do Things Better
Therese Raphael/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
The UK passed the grim number of 50,000 Covid deaths this week, as the country entered its critical final phase of trade talks with the European Union. One might think this is a terrible time for an overhaul of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior advisory team. But the status quo was becoming unviable.
Dominic Cummings, the awkward disrupter and arch-Brexiter who’s been a pivotal figure in recent British history, is stepping down as Johnson’s senior aide, following Thursday’s resignation of No. 10’s communications chief Lee Cain.
This will be a painful parting of the ways. It says everything about the prime minister’s reliance on Cummings that the adviser wasn’t dismissed after he broke Covid lockdown guidelines this spring. Nonetheless, his departure will at least open the way for Johnson to put in place a more effective management team in Downing Street, after the failures and U-turns of 2020’s pandemic crisis.
Cummings was the driving force behind the Brexit campaign and Britain’s subsequent EU negotiating strategy. Johnson’s cabinet was selected, under his adviser’s guidance, on one main criterion: their loyalty to the project to quit the single market. Cummings brought a unity of purpose and discipline to the Brexit messaging that helped the prime minister clinch last year’s EU Withdrawal Agreement and December’s general election.
The changes in Downing Street will undoubtedly weaken the influence of the group that formed the core of the 2016 Brexit campaign. This must lessen the chances of Britain leaving without an EU trade deal, a good thing for anyone alarmed at the economic consequences.
I wouldn’t bet, however, on major shifts in Brexit policy. David Frost, a key Vote Leave supporter, still heads up the British negotiating team. Johnson himself will want to ensure his signature policy has a conclusion he can defend to his Brexit-supporting base.
The bigger message from the Cummings departure is the acknowledgement that Britain’s government has been malfunctioning, especially in its management of the Covid crisis. Communications have been poor at a time when clarity is essential, but the problem is deeper than that. The Vote Leave team that colonized Downing Street, with Cummings as its guiding spirit, were excellent campaigners in referendums and elections. They were less good at running things.
Cummings’s other big mission was an overhaul of the machinery of government, but his methods alienated and demoralized large parts of the civil service and cost it senior managers at a critical time. Expensive private-sector contracts have proliferated and it’s not clear whether the taxpayer is being well served by them. Covid’s arrival revealed the managerial shortcomings with brutal clarity. Phillip Lee, a former Tory lawmaker who quit the Conservative Party in 2019 because of its handling of Brexit, and who’s now a GP, cites testing and tracing and the over-centralization of government in the list of failures.
The question now is whether Johnson has a deep enough bench for the rebuilding task ahead, and whether he can fix the competence problem.
Even his party supporters are becoming weary after more than five years of unrelenting trench warfare — led by Cummings — which started with the campaign ahead of the 2016 referendum and has ended with the dual challenge of having to manage a deadly viral outbreak while trying to organize the end of the country’s decades-old partnership with Europe.
The good news for Johnson is that there are some green shoots for him to seize on, and one can never count out such a gifted politician. There are positive stories to tell, which will be easier for less pugnacious communicators.
The promise of a vaccine from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE — of which Britain wisely preordered tens of millions of doses — is hugely encouraging, provided Britain can get the distribution right. The country’s rollout of rapid diagnostic testing, called lateral-flow tests, carries risks but also offers a way to quickly ascertain the prevalence of infection and aid contact tracing and isolation. That should help avoid future lockdowns.
A new Joe Biden administration may be frosty about Brexit, especially if it threatens peace in Northern Ireland, but there will be plenty of common ground for Brits and Americans. Climate change is one area of shared purpose, with Britain hosting next year’s UN climate summit in Glasgow.
Much depends on how Johnson fills the vacuum left by Cummings. The prime minister is often at his best when he can float above the nitty gritty of policy, make the speeches and deputize the detail work. He had able assistants during his two terms as London mayor. He needs to find some more.

Covid Explosion in Denmark’s Mink Is Danger Sign for Vaccines
Sam Fazeli/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
The fight against Covid-19 got a big boost this week, with the Pfizer Inc.-BioNTech SE vaccine showing much better-than-expected effectiveness in preventing disease in its first readout and Eli Lilly & Co.’s therapeutic antibody getting an Emergency Use Authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration. Other vaccines and treatments are likely to follow with similarly positive data. So far so good.
But exactly how jubilant should we be? Answering this question depends in large measure on how quickly the virus mutates and finds a way to bypass vaccines and other approved therapies. How quickly it mutates, in turn, depends on our ability to slow the spread through responsible mitigation measures.
Some background. Viruses mutate all the time. During the course of a single infection, a person can have coronaviruses with slight differences. If a vaccine or an antibody isn’t 100% effective in eradicating an infection, then even if it prevents disease it could still allow resistant clones to form. These clones could then spread to other people and undermine the efficacy of the vaccine or treatment.
This isn’t theoretical. Denmark, one of the world’s biggest producers of mink skins, is in the process of culling its entire 17 million mink population after the virus found its way into herds at hundreds of the country’s farms. By virtue of their sheer numbers, the mink provided the virus with an opportunity to spread rapidly and mutate. Then, in exactly the same way that the virus first entered into the human population in China, it jumped back into humans. One variant of the Danish virus has the potential to be resistant to the very vaccines and therapies that we have just been celebrating.
But we don’t need mink farms to generate mutations. A recent study from Emma Thomson, professor at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, and associates found a mutation that can bypass infection-fighting antibodies produced by some people. What this means is that there is one more reason to be concerned about the rapid spread of the coronavirus among humans: The more people get infected, the more likely it is for new versions of the virus to evolve. If the number of infections remains at current levels — or if it continues to rise — there is a risk that new mutations start to spread. Some of these new versions may even be able to reinfect people who had been infected before, a phenomenon that until now has been quite rare.
Almost all vaccines in development target the current version of the virus, meaning that they should be effective in preventing the disease in a vast majority of people. However, if we allow the virus to spread, we risk further mutations, and, consequently, less effective vaccines.
We can take comfort in that we have seen how effective a vaccine can be, at least based on early prevention of disease, and how quickly we can make one. And the beauty of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and another in development by Moderna Inc. is that they can be adapted to deal with new variants that develop. The same applies to Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca Plc’s vaccines, with some caveats.
The Danish experience suggests it’s critically important to stop the evolution of the virus before we even start vaccinating people. That means bringing to bear all mitigation tools, from testing and tracing to social distancing and masks. And we may need to keep up these practices after a vaccine has been deployed until we can be sure inoculations eliminate virus transmission. On top of all this, countries should keep a better eye on their animal populations so as to avoid another Danish mink situation. The more responsible we are with our behavior, the better the chance for a successful vaccine.

Winter Is Coming. Get a New Hobby.
Sarah Green Carmichael/Bloomberg/November 14/2020
Howard Schultz once described Starbucks as a “third place.” Unlike home or work, both of which are full of obligations — dinners to be cooked, TPS reports to be filed — Starbucks offered pure relaxation: a place to sit and not do anything.
These days, many of us are stuck without even a second place. We live and work at home. And although Covid-19 vaccines seem just over the horizon, we’re going to be stuck at home for several more months. Many offices remain closed. And third places such as gyms, restaurants and hotels present the highest danger of large Covid outbreaks, researchers have just confirmed.
To stay sane during this time, then, we need a way of creating new mental spaces. I’ve written before about how to keep your work-from-home headspace separate from your live-at-home headspace. But two mental spaces aren’t enough. You need a third — a place that’s not work, and that isn’t caregiving or cleaning.
Enter: the hobby.
A hobby is a pastime that is neither entirely productive nor entirely passive. You don’t make money off your hobby — otherwise, it would be more fairly called a side hustle. But it does require a little active effort. Watching TV is not a hobby; writing a blog about TV is.
And yet watching TV is how Americans spend more than half their leisure time — two hours and 47 minutes every day, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey. And that was before the pandemic. After a long day of staring at a computer screen, there is just something a bit unfulfilling about staring at another, even bigger screen.
Watching hours of TV isn’t good for your brain, and binge-viewing has been associated with loneliness and depression, two things no one needs more of. Scrolling social media for hours is just as bad. It takes something a little more active to take our minds off our troubles.
Hobbies, on the other hand, are good for us. A 2016 study of elderly Japanese people found that having hobbies was positively associated with greater longevity. Multiple studies have found correlations between hobbies and reduced stress. Creative hobbies such as drawing, playing music or creative writing may be especially beneficial for beating burnout.
Curious to know how the pandemic had affected my own hobbies, I took one of the assessments that many of these studies use — something called the Pittsburgh Enjoyable Activities Test. Easily findable online, it asks how often you do things like engage in hobbies, clubs or sports, and how often you spend quiet time alone, go out to eat with friends or visit relatives. I filled it out twice — once thinking about my life now, and once remembering what it was like before the pandemic. (I realize retrospective studies aren’t always the best, but we work with what we’ve got.) I was somewhat surprised to find that my PEAT score is a lot better now.
Although there are entire categories of things that are off the table — going out for meals with friends, for example — I’m much more likely to engage in a smaller subset of activities on daily basis, as opposed to “occasionally” or “never.” What’s gone is the variety — I just do the same activities every day. Every. Single. Day.
And that’s because the pandemic has narrowed the scope of what’s possible. Choir rehearsal is out. Sci-fi conventions have been canceled. Travel is a nonstarter. The arrival of winter in the Northern Hemisphere means many outdoor activities such as bicycling and gardening will soon be off the table, too. And winter sports? Well, knowing that Covid spread in resort towns last winter, I’m not eager to get back on the ski lift.
The human mind thrives on a certain amount of variety, as my colleague Ferdinando Giugliano has observed. So we need some new activities to get us through this tough winter. If jigsaw puzzles and baking projects have lost their appeal, how about drawing or creative writing? Or calligraphy, birding, horology, flower arranging, archery? YouTube is full of tutorials, whether for playing an instrument or tying a fly.
Part of the joy of hobbies is finding a new community, and while in-person communities are still out of bounds, there are subreddits and Facebook pages for all sorts of leisure activities. A number of clubs and associations, such as the New York Adventure Club and the Royal Oak Society, are offering lectures over Zoom — usually for a nominal fee. No hobby is too geeky to be without some sort of organized, and now probably virtual, group.
Some might feel too busy for a hobby. But taking half an hour to glue together a model airplane or photograph your neighborhood makes the day feel more spacious, not more rushed. We get to think of ourselves not only as workers, parents or partners, but as beekeepers, quilters, geocachers.
Consider it a form of self-diversification — and diversification is always a prudent bet in an uncertain environment. If you spend the next six months trying your hand at something new, you probably won’t regret it.

Arab populism paints Trump as evil and Biden as the Mahdi
Baha al-Awam/The Arab Weekly/November 14/2020
An old Arabic proverb says, “When a cow dies, knives abound.” Perhaps this proverb might fit today to describe what the people disgruntled at President Donald Trump and his four years in office are doing. Millions of Twitter and Facebook pages have literally come alive with analyses permeated with much gloating about the latter’s loss of the presidential election, or with tons of sarcasm as they commented his pictures, tweets and other comments about the elections being rigged.
This populist “revenge” against Trump does not include the practices of “journalists”, “media professionals” and “politicians” when they called Trump “idiot”, “donkey” or any other derogatory epithet. When you read and hear such wretched language coming from those who are supposed to be “opinion leaders” in the region, you can’t help but feel sorry for the future generations, and realise the extent of the intellectual decline that we are experiencing today in our societies.
In the context of “taking revenge” against the former American president, if we may say so, you can’t but wonder at the official stances of some countries in the region and the world. They were just as “wretched” as the “populist” wave at times, inconsistent and too hurried other times. Only China and Russia put the matter straight, and said that congratulations to John Biden must await the official announcement of his victory in the elections.
Perhaps some countries may be justified in “taking revenge” of Trump if he had harmed their interests or their people. They can do that politically by officially congratulating his opponent, or in the media by announcing his opponent’s victory before the election results are officially approved, accompanied by a slightly slanted analysis of his loss under the title of constructive criticism of a period of time that brought many changes to the countries of the Arab region and the world in general.
In truth though, it is difficult to say for sure that Trump and his administration had directly harmed a country in the Middle East with the exception of Palestine. He recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, transferred the US embassy to it, and drew a peace map between the Palestinians and the Israelis that contradicts the UN legislation that approved the two-states solution on the basis of the borders of June 4, 1967.
There are, of course, countries in the region, such as Iran, claiming to have been harmed by the “evil” American president; but when you look at these countries’ description of their grievances, you find that they relate to a large extent to security in the Middle East. In fact, were it not for Trump’s siege of the Khomeinists, the latter would have certainly wreaked havoc on neighbouring Arab countries far more than they had done during the terms of former US President Barack Obama.
What is harder to explain though are the reasons why some have chosen to “take revenge” on Trump by singing the praises of his successor as if he were the Messiah. Some countries are applauding Democrat Joe Biden only because they hate Trump. They know that President-elect Joe Biden is no less bad to them than his predecessor and others before him. Nevertheless, they welcomed him and rejoiced in his arrival at the White House as if he were the “awaited Mahdi.”
One such jubilant Arab country is Qatar. Qatar knows very well that Joe Biden might follow in the footsteps of his former Democratic boss, Barak Obama, and free up Iran’s hands to do what it wants in the region. It’s no skin off Qatar’s nose if that happens, although the tiny Gulf state, at least openly, claims to support the Syrian revolution that Tehran and its militias have suppressed, killing and displacing millions of Syrians.
We may see another reason for Qatar’s jubilation over Biden’s victory. The newcomer at the White House has more than once declared his intention to harm certain countries in the region. It is sad to note that what some Arab regimes only want from the new US president is to “take revenge” on a neighbour or brother. They don’t care how, nor do they worry about how much damage it may cause in the region in general, and they are more than ready to finance this revenge.
The Muslim Brotherhood is also dreaming of the new American president taking their revenge on those Arab countries that have banned political Islam and put its organisations on terrorist lists. The new president is a follower of Obama, who launched the theory of supporting extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and helping them to take control of the region and spread their ideologies. Then, he brought his armies to the Middle East to fight militant organisations like ISIS, born from the womb of these ideologies.
The problem for the Muslim Brotherhood is that their joy risks to be short lived. The new White House occupant is not on good terms with the Brotherhood’s protector and “guide”, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The former has been threatening the latter with terrible retaliatory measures for the latter’s strong relations with the Russians first, and secondly because of his arrogance and rebellion against America’s partners in Europe and NATO.
Speaking of the Europeans, they too have engaged in this game of “taking revenge” against Trump, albeit in a limited manner. Some countries in the old continent were quick to congratulate Joe Biden before the US election results were officially announced. But it can be said that their revenge was less ugly because, after all, the main reason why they liked Biden’s arrival at the White House is his lack of interest in the European contribution to the NATO budget.
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has openly called for a new transatlantic partnership launched and sponsored by the United States. The first condition for the partnership that the Europeans, or more precisely the European Union, are looking for is for Donald Trump to go and be replaced by a president who does not raise the slogan “America first” and does not care about the means of filling the US treasury.
The British government, despite the warm friendship between Boris Johnson and Trump, was quick to congratulate the president-elect, Joe Biden, as well. Perhaps the gesture was motivated by “taking revenge” of Trump’s procrastination in signing the free trade agreement with the United Kingdom, or perhaps by a preconceived realization by London that confronting the democratic majority in the US House of Representatives may dissipate the future chances of concluding that agreement altogether.
The conclusion of a free trade agreement between London and Washington may falter if Biden arrives at the White House, but it can never be said that the decades-long strategic alliance between the two parties will vanish, or that the British do not have the keys and tools necessary for dialogue with American Democrats and for reaching understandings with them on economy, politics, security and many other things.
Whether in retaliation against the “evil” Trump or in fear of the “good” Biden, the official reactions of many countries to the US presidential elections reflected the scope of the growing influence of the United States in shaping the foreign and domestic policies of many countries. This crudely marginalises all theories that claim that the world has changed and is now multi-polar in power and influence.
The United States remains the world’s policeman and the regulator of international politics, and the White House is like a cockpit. It is true that the captain changes every four or eight years at the maximum, but those who make American policies continue to be in place for longer than that. Any change in these policies does not depend on the signature of a single person, but carries the seals of the institutions of a superpower.