Our Human Affairs Bulletin — November 2021 Issue
A Public Service of the Multnomah County Democrat Party
Nations and People
10/12/21 8 AM (Afghani English-language online daily)
“Seyed Rasoul Mousavi, Assistant Minister and General Director of Iranian Foreign Ministry’s West Asia Department, has announced that a meeting of foreign ministers of Afghanistan’s neighboring countries will be held in Tehran in the near future. ‘There is considerable diplomatic mobility to understand changes in Afghanistan and influence its future; different countries pursue their diplomacy in different ways.’ Afghanistan’s future lies in regional cooperation with its neighbors.”
10/20/21 Microsoft Service Network
“Russia plans to cease its diplomatic engagement with NATO, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Monday. [It seems] ‘NATO is not interested in any equitable dialogue or in any joint work. If this is so, then we do not see a great need to continue to pretend that any changes are possible in the foreseeable future.’”
“Deputy country representative of UN Women in Afghanistan, Alison Davidian, said that the international community should ensure that any aid that they give to Afghanistan is also tied to robust commitments on women’s rights and gender equality. ‘We also need them to ensure that humanitarian aid keeps flowing and that there are commitments in place to ensure that it reaches both men and women,’ she told a UN Women online event held on the eve of a Security Council open debate on women, peace and security. Davidian asked the international community to issue strong joint statements that show the ‘collective mass of voices’ encouraging the Taliban to adhere to key women’s rights and human rights principles. . . . Afghan women have been fighting for their rights for centuries. In 1919, Afghan women won the right to vote — even before women in the United States.”
“Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the acting deputy prime minister of the Afghan Taliban’s interim government, [met] with Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in the Qatari capital of Doha. Baradar briefed Wang on the current situation in Afghanistan, which he said is under control and improving, with the governments at all levels being gradually established. Wang said that Afghanistan is now at a critical stage of transforming from chaos to governance, and is facing a historic opportunity to achieve reconciliation and advance national reconstruction. But challenges still lay ahead, including the humanitarian crises, economic chaos and terrorist threats, which require more understanding and support from the international community. Wang expressed hope that the Afghan Taliban will . . . unite all ethnic groups and factions in the country to work together for a peaceful reconstruction, and effectively protect the rights and interests of women and children.”
“Saudi Arabia and the UAE have summoned Lebanon’s ambassadors to protest against Information Minister George Kordahi’s criticism of the Riyadh-led military coalition fighting rebels in Yemen. Kordahi said during an interview aired on Monday that the Iran-backed Houthi rebels are ‘defending themselves … against an external aggression,’ adding that ‘homes, villages, funerals and weddings were being bombed’ by the coalition. . . . Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday that it handed the ambassador a memorandum protesting against Kordahi’s ‘offensive’ remarks. It also expressed its regret about the ‘insulting’ statements, saying they were ‘clearly biased towards the terrorist Houthi militia that threatens the security and stability of the region.’”
10/27/21 Al-Monitor
“Alleged Israeli attacks on Iranian targets in Syria have become routine in recent years. Just two weeks ago, Israel reportedly attacked twice within one week — once, on Oct. 9, targeting an arms shipment near the T-4 airbase and a few days later, on Oct. 14, in the Tadmor region of Homs Province. But the window of opportunity for Israeli military activity in Syria, which opened seven years ago, appears to be narrowing due to a number of regional and global shifts. Israel began aerial attacks on Syria in 2013–2014 against the backdrop of the civil war there, assessing that the chaos would enable the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to move freely without risking a direct confrontation. This was the genesis of what Israel dubs the ‘war between the wars’, which aims to put off a full-fledged war by undermining Iran’s entrenchment in Syria and foiling its shipments of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah. With the passing of time and Assad’s growing confidence, he or his chief partner, Iran, might well decide to respond more aggressively to Israeli attacks, in order to make decision-makers in Jerusalem think twice before approving raids in Syria.”
“U.S. President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will hold their first in-person meeting in Washington on Nov. 18 . . . . [Among issues] the meeting will address [are] the COVID-19 pandemic and boosting the competitiveness of supply chains in North America . . . . Mexico will also be focusing on economic development in southern Mexico and Central America. . . . The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salaza . . . hoped concerns could be resolved which the United States and private companies have expressed over a Mexican legislative initiative to reform the electricity market. The bill, still in Congress [and] championed by Lopez Obrador, seeks to give precedence to Mexico’s state-owned energy companies over private firms. . . . Lopez Obrador said . . . if it [came] up [for discussion], he would explain to [US President] Biden that Mexico was taking steps to ensure consumers were not subjected to price hikes. The president argues that past Mexican governments rigged the electricity market in favor of private capital at the expense of consumers and the Mexican state.”
“Until a few weeks ago, he was among the strongest men in Syria — if not the strongest — but Javad Ghaffari’s last battle in the war-torn country was this time with no one other than the ruling elite he came to the country to defend. ‘He became a liability,’ an official Syrian source told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. ‘The time has changed, and he still wants to act as per the rules of war, when the war is almost over. The Iranian general, whose real name is Ahmad Madani, was appointed as head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces in Syria in 2015 to succeed Maj. Gen. Hussein Hamadani. Hamadani laid the foundation for the Iranian intervention in Syria and was killed in October 2015 in Aleppo by the Islamic State, according to what the IRGC announced.”
Economy
“After asking Tesla to make its electric vehicles (EV) in India, the South Asian country appears to be working on new plans to target major global EV battery makers as part of its effort to promote new-energy vehicles on its bumpy roads. India will host five road shows starting next month in a number of countries to encourage battery makers to invest in setting up EV battery production facilities locally, citing an anonymous source inside the Indian government. Major global players in the battery industry, including Tesla, LG Energy, Samsung, Northvolt, Panasonic and Toshiba, are the targets Indian officials will be trying to convince.”
“The US House of Representatives passed a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill late Friday aimed at modernizing the country’s infrastructure, including roads, bridges, ports, water lines, and broadband, marking the largest public infrastructure spending package in history. Last week, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai told US steel industry executives that the bipartisan infrastructure deal ‘features strong Buy America provisions to ensure that all projects will be built with American iron and steel.’ [A]n awkward reality is that the hollowing-out of the US manufacturing sector means that its domestic industries don’t have the production capacity to support the ‘once-in-a generation’ infrastructure construction.”
11/07/21 Global Times
“In 2020, China’s infrastructure-related exports to the US totaled about $295 billion, accounting for about 63 percent of its total exports to the US, according to a research report by China International Capital Corp. China’s trade surplus with the US reached $40.75 billion in October, customs data showed. While the figure was down from the monthly high of $42 billion recorded in September, it remains on a relatively high level despite the US’ attempt to narrow its trade deficit. While US politicians repeatedly claim the government needs to reduce trade deficit by cracking down on the so-called unfair, non-market trade practices, it is the massive demand in the US for foreign goods that contributes to its trade deficit. The COVID-19 pandemic has boosted US consumption of Chinese products such as medical goods, toys and clothes, driving up Chinese exports to the country. As the US economy recovers from the worst of the pandemic, such demand will only increase, and the US is unlikely to find any other import source that can sufficiently replace China.”
“Yucatán will be considered to develop a restoration project of 50,000 hectares of mangroves, as part of the measures to reduce the effects of climate change. . . Blue carbon, captured by organisms that live in the oceans, is stored in the form of biomass and sediments underwater, mainly in mangroves, tidal marshes, and sea grasses; Although it sometimes goes unnoticed, keeping it well imprisoned is vital to the health of the planet. Its function is to conserve these complexes, as a measure of adaptation to climate change. Its objective is the protection of the wetlands and mangroves of the Yucatan coast, emphasizing that, when these remain healthy, they are the most effective tools for the control of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the fight against climate change.”
11/11/21 Syrian Arab News Agency
“Electricity Ministry and a group of Emirati companies signed on Thursday a cooperation agreement on establishing a 300-MW photovoltaic power station in the Wedian al-Rabea area near Tishreen power station in Damascus countryside. The agreement stipulates the establishment of a photovoltaic power plant with a capacity of 300 MW, providing it with the necessary fund by 100% through quarter-year installments.”
Finance
10/12/21 Federal Reserve Board Weekly Digest
“Real Domestic Gross Product (GDP) rose at a strong 6.4 percent pace in the first half of the year, and growth is widely expected to continue at a robust, if perhaps somewhat slower, pace in the second half of the year. . . That said, the data also indicate that a surge in COVID-19 cases in the summer and supply-chain bottlenecks held back economic activity in the third quarter. As with overall economic activity, conditions in the labor market have continued to improve. Job gains as measured by the payroll survey have averaged 550,000 per month over the past three months. Labor market progress this year, as measured by the Kansas City Fed’s Labor Market Conditions Indicators, has been notable, with this index of 24 labor market indicators since December 2020 closing two-thirds of its shortfall relative to its pre-pandemic level. . . Since February 2020, core PCE (personal consumption expenditures) price inflation is running at a 2.9 percent annual pace that is well above what I would consider to be a moderate overshoot of our 2 percent longer-run goal for inflation. Fully reopening the $20 trillion economy this year is taking longer and costing more than it did to shut it down last year.”
10/12/21 Federal Reserve Board Weekly Digest
“Since our December 2020 meeting, the [Federal Open Market] Committee has indicated that it will continue to maintain the pace of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities purchases at $80 billion and $40 billion per month, respectively, until ‘substantial further progress’ has been made toward our maximum-employment and price-stability goals. At [the] September meeting, the Committee continued to discuss the progress made toward these goals. . . The ‘substantial further progress’ standard has more than been met with regard to our price-stability mandate and has all but been met with regard to our employment mandate.”
10/19/21 Wall Street on Parade
“On October 13, Wall Street On Parade broke the story that the Federal Reserve had quietly released the names of the mega banks that had grabbed tens of billions of dollars of repo loans under the Fed’s emergency repo loan operations that began on September 17, 2019 — months before there was a COVID-19 case in the United States or anywhere else in the world. Repos (repurchase agreements) are a short-term form of borrowing where corporations, banks, securities firms and money market mutual funds secure loans from each other by providing safe forms of collateral such as Treasury securities. Repos are supposed to function without the assistance of the Federal Reserve. But on September 17, 2019, the oversized demand for the repos and the lack of available funds to meet the demand drove the overnight interest rate on repo loans to an unprecedented 10 percent at one point.”
10/21/21 Wall Street on Parade
“The Fed is subsidizing the money market funds operated by Larry Fink’s BlackRock [while at the same time] BlackRock manages a big part of [Fed chair] Jerome Powell’s wealth. There is the growing impression that Fink is functioning in a consultant capacity to the Federal Reserve while his company, BlackRock, also manages a significant part of Powell’s wealth. The Fed also gave BlackRock three no-bid contracts in 2020 to manage the Fed’s corporate bond buying programs. Under those contracts, BlackRock was allowed to buy up its own Exchange Traded Funds. Now we are learning from Crane Repo Data, that a big chunk of the Fed’s overly-generous Reverse Repo operations have landed in BlackRock money market funds. Crane Repo Data reports that as of September 30, BlackRock Liquid Fed Fund money market held $84 billion of the Fed’s Reverse Repos while its BlackRock Liquid T-Fund held $65 billion.”
11/13/21 Federal Reserve Board Weekly Digest
“Home prices had been rising at a moderate rate since 2012, but since mid-2020, their growth has accelerated significantly. In total, home prices in September were 21 percent higher than in June 2020. Home price increases are also widespread. In September, about 90 percent of American cities had experienced rising home prices over the past three months, and the home price increases were substantial in most of these cities. These sharp increases raise the concern that housing is overvalued and that home prices may decline. Historically, large home price increases are somewhat less concerning if they are supported by economic fundamentals rather than speculation. Fundamentals certainly seem to be a large part of the story behind the increases we’ve seen since the middle of last year.”
Disease Control
“Two vaccines used in Mexico — the Sputnik and CanSino shots — have not been approved by the WHO and people inoculated with them will not be permitted to enter the United States under new rules set to take effect November 8. Speaking at his regular news conference, [President] López Obrador questioned why the vaccines haven’t already been approved given that it’s known they are safe and offer protection against COVID-19. . . Roberto Velasco, head of the Foreign Affairs Ministry’s North America department, said in an interview Tuesday that Mexican authorities were speaking to their U.S. counterparts about the possibility of people vaccinated with those shots being able to cross the border.”
“As the new wave of COVID-19 continues to ravage the nation with more than 300 confirmed local cases registered by Thursday, China has rolled out anti-epidemic measures that are being imposed more promptly and stringently than previous moves, putting at least three cities in lockdown and implementing stricter penalties for people obstructing related work. The latest surge doesn’t yet compare to the last round, which started from Nanjing in July, either in terms of the number of infections or regions. But experts noted that the situation is even more complex this time, as cases are more scattered across country, posing more challenges.”
