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As Covid-19 continues its relentless spread to almost every country, Vietnam and North Korea stand out in Asia for reporting low numbers of infections and zero deaths, despite neither country possessing the resources of many of their neighbours.

So far, Vietnam has reported roughly 250 infections, with no deaths. North Korea has denied it has had any cases of Covid-19 at all.

Although Vietnam shares a long border with China, its official figures are much lower than the rate of cases in other Southeast Asian nations of similar size. Thailand, for example, reports almost 2400 cases, the Philippines more than 3700. Even Singapore, which is much smaller than Vietnam and also responded early to the virus, has nearly 1500 cases of infection and six deaths.

The situation in North Korea is even more puzzling. The country is sandwiched between Asias two most infected nations (China and South Korea) but still reported zero infections, despite foreign media counting 23 deaths in early March.

In Vietnam, only the Ministry of Health can declare the number of positive cases. Hospitals and clinics cannot independently publish numbers North Koreas opaque institutions can easily censor reports of infections.

While community spread makes it all but impossible to accurately track the number of cases, there is another explanation for Vietnam and North Koreas outlying numbers. As the ability to flatten the curve is used to judge a countrys overall success in responding to the virus, the process of gathering and publishing official data can deployed to achieve different political goals.

In the case of Vietnam, only the Ministry of Health can declare the number of positive cases. Hospitals and clinics cannot independently publish numbers, while any unofficial counts can be subjected to a penalty. North Koreas opaque institutions can easily censor reports of infections, just as China did in January. In this context, it is important to understand the narrative being shaped around Vietnam and North Koreas numbers, which offers an insight into each countrys domestic priorities.

Vietnams reporting of a low number of infections and zero deaths helps the Communist Party (CPV) overcome domestic distrust in light of recent legitimacy crises. Before the outbreak, the CPV was under intense pressure from dissidents at home and aboard. A deadly clash between the government and villagers over a longstanding land dispute took place in early January. The subsequent criticism reflected the countrys chronic problem of politicians colluding with investors to grab land from local residents at a cheap price. The clash triggered an outcry on social media and resulted in large-scale censorship.

However, the Covid-19 outbreak gave the CPV an opportunity to burnish its image after the land grab and other charges of corruption. The Party has deployed the state apparatus at all levels to mobilize security forces and healthcare workers to quickly quarantine and trace tens of thousands of people. At the same time, Vietnam sought toshowoff a low cost but effective model, and compared its small number of infections and zero deaths with those of Western countries on social media to illustrate just how determined the Party was to fight the virus.

The CPV approach has won praise from the majority of its population for being more efficient and transparent than Chinas. Despite reports of a death in a quarantine camp, and much scepticism over the CPV counts, the official numbers allow the Party to demonstrate that it has successfully putthe wellbeing of the people first despite charges of widespread corruption over the years.Vietnam even won praise from US President Donald Trump.

North Koreas claim of zero Covid-19 cases help the country carry on with a sense of normalcy. The Workers Party of Korea in its report earlier this year emphasised the need to prioritise economic self-sufficiency as the United States refused to lift sanctions. The Party also implied resuming nuclear and missile testing and unveiling a new strategic weapon to deter US aggression in 2020.

In response to the virus, Pyongyang assured the local population of its seriousness by implementing social distancing measures. However, North Korea does not want the pandemic to disrupt its socio-economic plans at a moment the country is contemplating whether or not to continue negotiating with Washington. While the border lockdown with China has hurt the country more than sanctions, keeping the numbers at zero allows the option to soon reopen the border and keep its 2020 objectives on track. North Koreas decisions to test missiles and hold the Supreme Peoples Assembly in March and April respectively are examples of North Koreas prioritising normalcy.

Maybe, Vietnam and North Korea have succeeded in containing the virus much earlier than other Asian countries, thanks to police-state institutions. But its a puzzle, and when assembled, the numbers have to tell a story. With Vietnam, it is one of legitimacy. With North Korea, it is normalcy.

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Vietnam, North Korea, politics and Covid-19: The numbers tell a story - The Interpreter

Written by Danielle Ransom

Whats better than a Grammy Award? Boosie BadAzz has one answer.

On Thursday (Feb. 13), the Baton Rouge rapper revealed to the world that he received a special gift in the mail and he couldnt wait to show it off any longer. Taking to Instagram, Boosie excitedly shared that he was recently sent memorabilia from the personal collection of Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord of the notorious Medelln cartel.

The mementos not only came straight from Colombia, but directly from the Escobar family, which included a T-shirt bearing Pablos mugshot signed by his brother, Roberto, and Pablo's actual fingerprints.

From Pablo Escobar's family baby. Pablo's real fingerprints on the thing. His brother Roberto signed it. This authentic man. Pablo fingerprints before he died, Boosie shared in one clip. The co-founder of the Medelln cartel sent me this. Medelln, n**ga! To Boosie. I keep his name alive...I'm lit the whole day. Can't nobody tell me s**tI done sh*tted on the world. When keeping it real pays off... Nobody better not tell me sh*t.

RELATED: Boosie BadAzz Shuts Down Rumors He Fought George Zimmerman At A Florida Walmart

Boosie posted another separate minute-long clip of the souvenirs taken from close-up.

This b**ch bigger than a Grammy! Boosie boasted as he hovered the camera over the t-shirt. You know why? Because everybody got Grammys. What m**herf**king rapper got this? Elsewhere in the clip, Boosie compared the acknowledgement from Escobars family to that of musics biggest accolade. This a m**herf**king hood Grammy, he declared. Along with the video, the Wipe Me Down rapper concluded in the posts caption that he plans to visit Pablos mansion in Medelln this coming summer.

Check out Boosies special gifts from the Escobar family below.

(Photo: Prince Williams/WireImage)

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Boosie's Gift From The Family Of Pablo Escobar Will Make Your Jaw Drop - BET

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Car Insurance 2020 Tips: What Are The Best Car Insurance Plans For A Family? - Yahoo Finance

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 24, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) U.S. secretary of education Betsy DeVos is taking heat from her left-wing detractors this week over remarks comparing modern-day defenses of abortion to nineteenth-century defenses of slavery.

DeVos was speaking Wednesday evening to a group of students from Colorado Christian University, the Washington Times reports, who were at the nations capital to attend the 47th annual March for Life.

Im reminded of President Abraham Lincoln. He, too, contended with the pro-choice arguments of his day, DeVos said. They suggested that a states choice to be slave or to be free had no moral question in it. Well, President Lincoln reminded those pro-choicers that there is a vast portion of the American people that do not look upon that matter as being this very little thing. They look upon it as a vast moral evil.

State and national Democrat leaders pounced on the statement as woefully uneducated and an insult to the descendants of slaves, while Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who is black, dared the education secretary to say this to my face.

What an insult to the generations of Americans who still live with the scars of slavery and Jim Crow. What an insult to those who have fought valiantly to make abortion safe and legal in all 50 states, Democratic National Committee CEO Seema Nanda and DNC Vice Chair and Louisiana Democrat Party chair Karen Carter Peterson said. The secretary of education remains woefully uneducated on the history of our country. Her ignorance would be laughable if it werent so disturbing. As with so many issues shes commented on before, Secretary Devos has once again failed a simple test of competence and character.

In fact, the parallels between abortion and slavery extend well beyond the obvious. Both denied the equality and humanity of a certain class of people in order to violate their fundamental rights; both were sustained by intensely controversial Supreme Court rulings (Roe v. Wade; Dred Scott v. Sandford); and both even rested on similar arguments about personal freedom, Americas founding principles, and human progress.

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Liberals accuse Betsy DeVos of ignorance for comparing abortion to slavery - Lifesite

Recent protestsin Iraq have demanded an end to rampant state corruption, the removal of foreign influences from Iraqi politics and the proper provision of public services.

State-Society Relations in Iraq

The causes of these demands are partially shaped by the myriad militia groups that began to emerge at the end of the Baathist era in 2003. They took on greater prominence in response to the threatof ISIS to Iraqs Shia. The most significant of these groups, operating under the Shia dominated umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi), utilize patronage links with Baghdad to support illicit economic activity that deprives the majority of Iraqis wealth. Iraqs state-society relations, therefore, entails that political elites in Baghdad maintainrelationships with state-sanctioned armed groups to buttress the power of the central state and resist inclusive government or wide-spread economic prosperity.

Extortive economic practices

One way in which PMF have spread their influence across the country is by managing and taxing smuggling networks.These networks formed in the late 1990s as Saddam Husseins Baathist regime sought tocircumvent the comprehensive sanctionsregime imposed by the United Nations Security Council and generate revenue from crude oil. In the decade after the 2003 invasion, many of the Baathist officials that had smuggled oil for Saddam joined ISIS and operated along the same routes, reportedly generating$1 million per dayat its peak. As early as2007, Shia militias were also reported to have taken over some of the old Baathist routes and they now maintain significant smuggling routes to and fromIran,Syria, and Turkey. Basra, Iraqs leading oil-producing province, which has been central to the protest movement that began in 2018 is reportedly run by mafiaswho operate arentier economythat fails to translate the density of resources in the area, into widespread economic gains.

Related: These Secretive Oil Companies Control $3 Trillion In Wealth

Checkpoints also generate income along the traditional smuggling routes run by a mixture of PMF brigades (such as the powerful Kataib Hezbollah, the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Saraya al-Salam). It is further supported by federal police, Iraqi Security Forces, and Sunni tribal militias. Taxing the route from oil-rich Basra to the Jordanian borderis a vital source of income that operates with the implicit support of the state.

Asaib Ahl al-Haq, for example, reportedlygenerates $300,000 per daythrough checkpoint fees across Diyala Province.The political economy of Iraq is therefore structured such that state officials in Baghdad benefit from the extractive economic practices carried out by armed, non-state groups who in return gain via patronage links to the central state. For example, the influential PMF, the Badr Organisation, is the military wing of the Fatah party which holds48 seats in the Iraqi Parliament.

As a result, the PMF candraw $2.17 billionfrom the federal budget (reportedlytwice the amountavailable to Kurdish Peshmerga forces), to employ 128,000 personnel. Consequentlysimilarities between Lebanese Hezbollahand the Iraqi militias are be constructed. Despite former Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdiissuing a decree in July, which ordered the PMF to vacate their headquarters and formally integrate into the states security forces, they have continued to entrench their influence over the state and the rest of the country.

The nexus between these non-state actors, the central government and activities such as smuggling and extortion is therefore central to the political economy of contemporary Iraq. Irans alignment compounds the problem with the powerful militia groups.

Irans role

Despite the decentralized and diverse nature of the PMF, the most significant groups profess an ideology of Islamic Revolutionism. This is in line with Irans Qud forces which is the foreign arm of the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The head of the Popular Mobilization Committee and Kataib Hezbollah,Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, previously served with the IRGC against Baathist Iraq. The Badr organization, which was created as a formation of theIRGC during the Iran-Iraq Warhas a long history of allegiance to Tehran. Furthermore, newer, emerging groups are thought to have evencloser links to the IRGCthan Badr, suggesting a significant Iranian role in the activities of the PMF.

Related: Israel's Plan To Bypass The World's Most Critical Oil Chokepoint

In April, the IRGC and the Quds Force were designated as aterrorist entity by President Trump. Kataib Hezbollah, which was a prominent anti-US militia, has held the status since 2009. The designation, which forms part of President Trumps maximum pressure campaign against Iran, may have paradoxically harmed US strategic interests in Iraq. Broadly stated these are to leaveIraq internally stable and free of foreign(read, Iranian) interference. However, with the economic sanctions that come with being designated a terrorist organization by the US, the PMFs commercial interests have become more closely aligned with Tehran and the IRGCs. Unable to access global markets, there is more incentive to maintain the so-called rentier economy.

Conclusion

The system based on patronage links between the state and militias with external connections, which incentives an extortive economy of embedded violence has generated many of the grievances that are driving the current protest movement. This also partially explains why thePMF has been instrumentalin repressing these brutal protests over300 people have diedand 15,000 have been injured. Consequently, the structure of Iraqi governance which generates the incentives for militias to maintain extortive economic practices needs to be addressedbeforethe demands of the protestors can be met.

However, the extent to which these networked links have embedded themselves into Iraqi society implies that the problem of corruption and foreign interference will not be solved by simply replacing the current political elites but will require a bottom-up reconfiguration of much of the economy.

By Jonathan Burden via Global Risk Insights

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The Uncomfortable Truth Behind Iraq's Violent Protests - OilPrice.com