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The Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos had his mobile phone “hacked” in 2018 after receiving a WhatsApp message that had apparently been sent from the personal account of the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, sources have told the Guardian.

The encrypted message from the number used by Mohammed bin Salman is believed to have included a malicious file that infiltrated the phone of the world’s richest man, according to the results of a digital forensic analysis.

This analysis found it “highly probable” that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post.

The two men had been having a seemingly friendly WhatsApp exchange when, on 1 May of that year, the unsolicited file was sent, according to sources who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity.

Large amounts of data were exfiltrated from Bezos’s phone within hours, according to a person familiar with the matter. The Guardian has no knowledge of what was taken from the phone or how it was used.
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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/21/amazon-boss-jeff-bezoss-phone-hacked-by-saudi-crown-prince?CMP=share_btn_tw

A court order has been filed by Turkey to have these pictures removed. That Turkish court can lick my nuts. https://t.co/SaxJOHKyzU pic.twitter.com/YYli3BGTa0

— Woofers (@NotWoofers) February 20, 2020

Sotir wrote:Сомалијска терористичка група Ал Шабаб, повезана са Ал Каидом, донела је одлуку о забрани једнократних пластичних кеса, као и забрани сечења локалних шума.

https://www.prweek.com/article/1492105/al-shabaabs-war-single-use-plastics-lesson-corporate-reputation-management

21. век, и терористичке групе су постале еколошки свесне.

Don’t Let Ethiopia Become the Next Yugoslavia

Federations of ethnonational states can become explosive during moments of political liberalization. Abiy Ahmed must tread carefully to avoid a Balkan nightmare.
By Florian Bieber, Wondemagegn Tadesse Goshu | January 15, 2019, 1:21 AM

Within a few shorts months, Ethiopia has witnessed a dramatic transformation. The new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, signed a peace agreement with Eritrea after years of simmering tensions. He has also granted pardons and amnesties to thousands of individuals and organizations once branded terrorists; all opposition groups based in Ethiopia or elsewhere have been invited to join in a peaceful transformation; media organizations are able to report more freely; legal reform councils and working groups have been established to review laws that were instrumental in the suppression of civil and political rights; and half of the prime minister’s cabinet is made up of women.

This unprecedented and rapid change comes against a more disconcerting backdrop of unrest. Ethiopia is a multiethnic giant with around 100 million people (belonging to more than 80 ethnic groups and speaking many languages), giving its transformation greater regional significance.

But there is also a risk. In this transformation, ethnic conflicts might increase in intensity and number, both as a result of a backlash by conservative forces rejecting the rapid reforms or due to the sudden liberalization of the public space.

These conflicts might in turn precipitate ill-conceived moves, including secession, which could have deadly consequences in communities where violence has been the principal means of settling communal disputes.

Indeed, Ethiopia’s political system today has strong parallels with that of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Similar to the former Yugoslavia, Ethiopia is a federal state with nine units organized along ethnic lines: The Tigray, Somali, Amhara, and Oromia regions (around 80 percent of Ethiopia) take their names from the dominant ethnic groups.

Empowering ethnic groups through territorial autonomy has been a double-edged sword: While allowing self-government has reduced tensions stemming from the dominance of a particular group, it places ethnic belonging at the center of politics, links it to territory, and therefore risks an eventual increase in ethnic tensions.

Yugoslavia was dominated by the multinational League of Communists, which had become a de facto confederation of republican parties by 1990. Likewise, Ethiopia has been ruled for decades by the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of mostly ethnoregional political parties, dominated by the socialist Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Both combined nondemocratic traits with ethnofederalism.

Yugoslavia experienced political transformation in the late 1980s, just as Ethiopia is today. Now, as then, questions about the future political and economic system have come to the fore, and power struggles are being overlaid with ethnic politics.

Conservative groups—whether the military and its allies among the Serb leadership in the old Yugoslavia or the long-dominant TPLF and its military and intelligence allies in Ethiopia—stand to lose the most from democratic transformation.

While it may appear that there is little reason for fear at the moment, secessionist claims of small groups in the Ethiopian Somali region have been around for decades, making the area a conflict zone until recently. The Tigray region could spark a crisis, too.

Some might consider this risk illusory, owing to the regions’ entrenched stake in a unitary Ethiopian state, regional authorities are making implicit threats of secession and even denying access to the region for federal law enforcement, as well as providing safe haven for individuals suspected of crimes against humanity and corruption. Without careful management of the delicate transition, Ethiopia risks a dangerous fragmentation along ethnic lines.

After the death of Josip Broz Tito, the towering president for life, in 1980, the League of Communists relaxed its rule in large parts of Yugoslavia, leading to great media freedom, public debates, and economic reforms—but also rising nationalism.

As the ruling party could not resort to repression and as the views within the party in different units of the country diverged, nationalism became more prevalent. Controversies erupted among intellectuals and politicians from the richer north and poorer south, while war crimes committed during World War II became an increasing source of contentious debates.

Earlier, Tito and the party had imposed their narrative and branded all critics Nazi collaborators. Unlike in the Soviet Union, where opponents were exiled or killed, much of the repression in Yugoslavia was more subtle and succeeded without resorting to gulags. As these memories weren’t subject to public debate until the 1980s, they constituted a potent resource for nationalists, in particular to blame other ethnonational groups within Yugoslavia.

The path to violent dissolution was set during the years preceding it as political elites sought to gain power by taking advantage of the ethnofederal structure of the country. The Yugoslav federation was divided into republics and two provinces, most of which had a dominant ethnonational group (save Bosnia and Vojvodina). Thus, nationalists could easily capture the republics, leading to secession, ethnic cleansing, and war.

Interest and support for Yugoslavia waned as the Cold War was winding down, leading to international disinterest until it was too late. In addition, the policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund increased tensions in Yugoslavia as they demanded austerity and a centralized economic policy, which ignored internal political dynamics and fueled social unrest. An ensuing economic crisis resulted in rising unemployment and shortages that undermined confidence in the Yugoslav state.

The absence of a unifying elite and leader—and the collapse of unifying ideas and institutions—accelerated the descent to violence. Political and social grievances were redirected by skillful politicians, not least by the rising star of Serbian communists, Slobodan Milosevic, against other ethnonational groups, particularly Albanians in Kosovo.

The Yugoslav scenario is not destined to repeat in Ethiopia, but it offers a cautionary tale: During moments of political liberalization, ethnonational federal systems are particularly combustible. Some differences work in Ethiopia’s favor. First, the units of the Ethiopian federation did not previously exist as separate states. Second, loyalty to the Ethiopian state irrespective of ethnic or national allegiance and identification is strong. (Even the few extreme nationalists, such as the Oromo Liberation Front, are generally reacting to rampant injustice in the past rather than challenging the existence of the state.) Third, the bond among nationalities appears stronger. After all, all groups remember the common struggle against the Italian invasion more than 80 years ago, whereas in Yugoslavia the resistance against Nazi occupation was not universal; there were internal divisions between the resistance and collaborators. Finally, separation and secession appear impossible in key cases. For example, Oromia is the geopolitical center of Ethiopia; the secession of the country’s largest region is geographically impossible without a complete dissolution of Ethiopia (unlike in Yugoslavia, where the main claimants for secession had borders with other countries).

In Yugoslavia, the Serbian League of Communists in the late 1980s and early 1990s advocated centralization and keeping the country together, including by force, whereas parties in Slovenia and later Croatia advocated secession. In Ethiopia, there has been a turnaround as political parties that used to anchor their political agenda with demands for self-determination and sometimes secession, a constitutional right enshrined in Ethiopia’s constitution, recently shifted to preaching Ethiopian unity.

The two largest parties in the EPRDF coalition—the Oromo Democratic Party and the Amhara Democratic Party, which represent more than 70 percent of Ethiopia, ruling the Oromia and Amhara regions and controlling the federal government—belong to this category. The Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region, representing more than 20 percent of Ethiopia’s population, is also now committed to the unitary state.

Despite these safeguards against fragmentation, many hazards remain. Like the Croats and Slovenes in the old Yugoslavia, there are also Ethiopian groups, such as the current Tigray regional administration, threatening secession. There is an implicit threat from the TPLF (ruling a region comprising less than 10 percent of the population), which had disproportionately dominated the political and economic scene for the last three decades, to hold on to power.

The TPLF’s resentment includes selective criminal prosecution of its past and current officials (mostly on grounds of extreme rights violations of political dissidents and corruption) and discrimination and displacement of its people in federal and other regional administrations.

The process of liberalizing a political system in an ethnically polarized society is dangerous. During the liberalizing moment, newfound freedom of speech can easily focus on finding culprits, singling out particular groups, and bringing up repressed grievances. Furthermore, there is less tradition to distinguish fact from rumor, and thus fearmongering rhetoric can travel quickly and with fewer checks than in established pluralist environments. This is mostly due to social media but also because of a lack of reliable institutions and structures to turn to in a country where institutions have been decimated by years of authoritarian rule.

In addition, in ethnic federations, political parties and movements are likely to organize along ethnic lines (as they are in Ethiopia). Ethnic parties usually maximize their support not by moderation but by polarization. First, this allows them to convince their voters about an existential threat to their group that necessitates them to vote for ethnic parties. Second, cross-ethnic voting is difficult, as this requires a more elaborate program than simply fomenting fear. Ethnic parties thus reinforce their raison d’être.

In ethnic federal systems, institutional power, economic and social inequalities, and ethnic identity overlap can easily reinforce themselves. Thus, economic grievances or perceived or real privileges of certain groups lead to heightened tensions.

Unlike in Yugoslavia, Ethiopia’s transformation is taking place in a more positive international context. All major actors appear to support or at least are content with the transformation taking place. The United States has expressed its support for the process, as have European leaders. Support also came from China, the most important economic actor involved in major infrastructure development, with billions of dollars in grants and loans.

So far, Abiy appears to have the wide support of Ethiopians, from almost all groups, a feat that no leader has managed in recent Ethiopian history. Despite his base in an ethnonationalist party, his speeches and actions have embraced and galvanized Ethiopian nationalism and depicted the country as a home for all nationalities—as long as the state is just.

But his work is far from finished. Ethiopia is witnessing unprecedented internal displacements and ethnic conflicts. More than 2 million people have been displaced, owing to interethnic conflicts allegedly caused by the TPLF and its cronies losing their socio-economic and military dominance. Allegations of discriminatory practices by regional and local governments against individuals and groups belonging to other ethnicities are also major causes of concern. Worse, the federal and regional institutions have not yet built the capacity to address those challenges.

For a successful peaceful and democratic transition, the new administration needs the support of international actors. But most of all, the prime minister needs new blood in the bureaucracy—with commitment, diligence, and ability—to tame and reverse the rampant corruption, inequality, discrimination, mediocrity, and favoritism that were the hallmarks of the past regime.

To avoid the pitfalls Yugoslavia experienced, Ethiopia’s leaders need to address and defuse ethnic tensions immediately. Many such conflicts arise and are escalated because of incitement. As in the case of Yugoslavia, such radicalization stems from officials dissatisfied by the transformation, who seek to build public support through the politics of fear, and those who see the ethnofederal units as potential building blocks for political careers based on ethnicity.

Challenging such divisive politics will require a clear effort by the federal state to mediate and manage conflicts and to remain a neutral arbiter. In addition, a positive and shared project of transformation can also help counteract ethnic tensions. Such leadership, neutral and legitimate federal structures, and a shared project were all lacking in Yugoslavia.

Ensuring fair treatment of everyone by federal and regional governments, equitable distribution of power and resources, and efficient administration of governmental bureaucracy at all levels would reduce the sense of injustice, exploitation, and deprivation that might have in the past tempted some actors to push for secession.

The dissolution of Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars stand a warning that the transformation of ethnofederal states with diverse and divided group identities poses particular risks. So far, Ethiopia’s transformation has avoided some of the pitfalls of the Yugoslav experience—whether it will stay that way will depend on avoiding the same mistakes.

After all, all groups remember the common struggle against the Italian invasion more than 80 years ago, whereas in Yugoslavia the resistance against Nazi occupation was not universal;

Unlike in Yugoslavia, Ethiopia’s transformation is taking place in a more positive international context. All major actors appear to support or at least are content with the transformation taking place. 

Ethiopia Will Explode if It Doesn’t Move Beyond Ethnic-Based Politics

Oromo nationalism helped bring Abiy Ahmed to power, but it could also be his undoing. To hold the country together, the Nobel-winning prime minister needs to convince various ethnic groups that he and his new party represent all Ethiopians.
By Addisu Lashitew | November 8, 2019, 6:49 AM

n Oct. 11, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed received the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the long stalemate with neighboring Eritrea. Paradoxically, Abiy enjoys only fragmented and diminishing popular support in his own country. Even in his home region of Oromia, his leadership is seriously contested by the ethnonationalist forces represented by the social media activist Jawar Mohammed.

This became painfully evident on Oct. 23, when the Oromia region was shaken by a deadly wave of violence following a series of Facebook posts from Jawar. The activist, who also heads a TV channel called Oromia Media Network, announced that the police were about to detain him, an allegation that was later denied by the government. Around 70 civilians were killed when his angry supporters took to the streets, setting off an intercommunal conflict that took on an ethnic and religious dimension.

This tragic incident is emblematic of the volatile nature of ethnic politics in Ethiopia, which has started to crack the foundations of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition. The EPRDF, which has ruled the country since 1991, is a coalition of four parties that represented the country’s major ethnic groups (Amhara, Oromo, Tigrayan, and southern groups) of which the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front was the most dominant party until recently.

Decades of authoritarian rule, forced displacement, and the perceived dominance of Tigrayans within the coalition led to widespread discontent that sparked a series of protests in 2015.  The protests started in Oromia and subsequently spread to the Amhara region, and they were led by grassroots-based ethnic youth groups, most particularly by the Qeerroo movement in Oromia.

In April 2018, the EPRDF buckled under the pressure of the protests, and its chairman, Hailemariam Desalegn, resigned. A fractious internal reshuffle brought Abiy to the chairmanship, the first Oromo ever to hold the position. Abiy represented a younger generation of reformists within the EPRDF, and he immediately commenced with conciliatory gestures and a promise to widen the political space. His swift measures of making peace with Eritrea, releasing thousands of political prisoners, and welcoming banished political parties gained him significant popular support.

This didn’t last very long, however. Abiy’s measured tone and search for compromises in a country where politics is severely polarized immediately disappointed a large share of his supporters. The Oct. 23 violence in Oromia has further divided his support base and impaired his plans to unify the EPRDF coalition. As the country prepares for a national election in May 2020 with a weakened ruling party and fragmented electorate, the risk of radical ethnonational forces inciting violence is worse than ever.

Ironically, Abiy found it much easier to make peace with Eritrea than to unify his own country and party. In fact, his peacemaking sojourns in Sudan and Eritrea are best seen as efforts to bolster his profile before embarking on the much harder task of making peace at home.

Abiy must find a way to avoid repeating the perilous history of previous experiments in ethnic federalism in countries such as Yugoslavia. That will require bringing in more order and transparency to the process of political transition. At this point, the transition process is nebulous without any consensus on desired outcomes or a clear timeline.

This could be intentional on Abiy’s part. The root causes of the current political crisis come from a system that awkwardly weds ethnicity to electoral politics. Devised to ensure greater ethnic representation and equality within the confines of democratic centralism under the EPRDF, ethnic politics in an era of social media is inflaming ethnic extremism and undermining the very foundations of the federal system upon which it rests.

A lasting solution will necessitate a constitutional reform that establishes new checks and balances that mitigate the risk of ethnic politics exploding into downright violence. This, however, will require an extensive process of consensus-building around a bargain that reconciles the interests of federalists with those advocating for a more unitary state.

Unfortunately, creating a mechanism that can support this kind of reform is all but impossible in the current political atmosphere, which is highly polarized, fragmented, and unstable. Having gone through decades of repression and then an abrupt opening, Ethiopia’s political sphere is awash with the irreconcilable demands of various ethnic parties and other interest groups.

Moreover, efforts to subdue the role of ethnicity in politics will inevitably anger large parts of the country. Regional power brokers who have financially and politically benefited from ethnic politics could easily resort to the kind of ethnic violence that shook the country on Oct. 23 to protect their turf.

In the meantime, Abiy seems keen to work around institutional constraints to temper the divisive forces of ethnic polarization that are endangering the country’s survival. His rush to unite the ruling EPRDF coalition into a single party seems part of that strategy. Abiy thinks that its unification will make the EPRDF inclusive to ethnic groups that are not represented by the current four member parties. It could also halt the trend of smaller ethnic groups forming their own parties and demanding regional self-rule.

This is not a welcome news for everyone and is strongly rejected by actors whose power comes from playing the hardball of ethnic politics. Abiy’s dash to unify his party is a major factor behind his deteriorating relationship with Jawar, who is vigorously opposed to the plan. Jawar tends to view Ethiopia’s politics and history as a field of ethnic contestation and hence prefers a system where political representation is organized along ethnic lines.

The unification of the EPRDF seems to already be underway, and Abiy is pressing ahead in laying out the guiding philosophy of the upcoming unified party, which is to be rebranded as the Ethiopian Prosperity Party. His recently launched book Medemer (Amharic for “Addition” or “Synergy”) expounds Abiy’s doctrine of the same name. If all goes as planned, this liberal-tinged philosophy will replace EPRDF’s 30-year-old ideology of revolutionary democracy.

The Medemer philosophy rightfully recognizes the limits of ethnic politics and the need to reorient toward a politics of civic nationalism. More important, it emphasizes the need to reconcile ethnic differences and build national unity. Abiy has deep personal motives for advocating ethnic and religious harmony; he was born into a family of mixed ethnicity and religion, as his father was a Muslim Oromo and his mother a Christian Amhara.

Unfortunately, his mixed identity could also be his Achilles’ heel. In a country where ethnicity is the fundamental political variable, having a mixed ethnic background can be easily construed to imply being an outsider. For his own Oromo party, Abiy’s ethnic profile is a mixed blessing: While he is likely to bring in support from non-Oromos, he could also be seen as not sufficiently Oromo by his own people, thus risking loss of popular support in a contest against ethnonationalists.

Although the emphasis on national unity in Abiy’s Medemer might prove contentious in some circles, it has elements that appeal to supporters of ethnic federalism and those favoring greater national unity. Abiy’s approach will likely be to maintain regional ethnic federalism for administrative purposes, while relying on national-level parties for political organization at the federal level.

This aspiration seems to enable a pluralist political contest among a few national parties that transcend ethnicity. This hybrid model would appeal to both unitarists who emphasize Ethiopian identity (through united national parties) and federalists who emphasize ethnic autonomy (through ethnic self-rule).

The Medemer doctrine also entails a significant pivoting of political and economic doctrine from left to right. The cornerstone of EPRDF’s ideology, which was articulated by its late leader Meles Zenawi, envisioned a developmental state led by a dominant vanguard party. In a radical departure, Abiy appears to espouse liberal democracy and a free economy that confers greater role to the private sector and foreign investors.

The violence on Oct. 23 has illustrated a deterioration of law enforcement, which is rooted in decadeslong processes of political devolution along ethnic lines. This has strengthened regional and local power brokers who use violence to signal political strength by exploiting the power vacuum during periods of political upheaval. Addressing it will require putting in place a proactive and coordinated law enforcement strategy at the federal level to preemptively predict, abort, and de-escalate conflicts.

Ensuring immediate and transparent recourse to justice in the aftermath of violent incidents should also mitigate the sense of uncertainty and helplessness that is overtaking the public. That requires bestowing greater autonomy upon an independent and impartial judiciary to persecute perpetrators of violence regardless of their political or ethnic affiliation.

A litmus test will be the manner in which the government handles the Oct. 23 violence related to Jawar. Citizens outside of Oromia perceive Abiy’s lenience toward Jawar as an irrefutable example of double standards that favor the Oromo. Especially in the Amhara region, activists have bitterly contrasted Abiy’s lack of response after the violence in Oromia against his swift measures following a purported coup attempt by Brig. Gen. Asaminew Tsige in June. After that bloody incident left four high-level regional and military leaders dead, Abiy took a forceful approach and detained the leaders of the budding ethnonationalist party called the National Movement of Amhara, effectively defanging the movement.

Some activists worry that Abiy’s acquiescence toward Jawar presages a future of Oromo dominance. They fear that Abiy and his party have no commitment to genuine democratization but are only interested in replacing the old hegemony of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, with a new form of Oromo dominance. Despite being the largest ethnic group with more than a third of the country’s population, the Oromo have historically been marginalized from central roles in national politics and, many say, borne the brunt of historical injustices. Abiy carries the full burden of satisfying the expectations of Oromos who expect national emancipation as a result of his rise while also remaining credible enough among other ethnic groups who fear increasing Oromo dominance.

Abiy indeed bends over backward to accede to Jawar’s demands. But this is most likely out of a fear of alienating the passionate Oromo youths who rally behind him than out of the desire to cement Oromo dominance. Having come to the premiership by riding the waves of Oromo protests that were spearheaded by the Qeerroo movement, he needs Jawar’s tacit approval to legitimize the claim that he represents the forces of change that brought him to power.

But while Jawar’s only challenge is appealing to the Oromos through radical populist demands, Abiy is torn between two competing challenges: appealing to the Oromos and appealing to the rest of Ethiopia. His current approach is unsustainable, not least because Jawar’s demands are far-reaching. In a media interview, Jawar had said that there are two governments in Ethiopia, the second being the Qeerroo youth movement that seems to follow his bidding.

To effectively address these challenges, Abiy should focus on putting his own party in order. The upcoming EPRDF congress, which is expected to take place sometime this month, should provide him with an opportunity to recalibrate his party’s internal alignment.

It appears almost certain that the newly unified party will not bring the TPLF into its fold. The TPLF views the plan to unify the EPRDF and Abiy’s Medemer philosophy as repudiation of its conception of ethnic federalism. Absent a happy marriage, Abiy should strike a bargain with the TPLF that permits a working partnership. Granted, the two do not like each other. But it is equally true that they cannot exist without each other, and their squabbles will only end up weakening them.

In many ways, this episode presents a unique opportunity to craft a political system that accommodates competitive politics in Ethiopia. The TPLF and Abiy’s upcoming unified party could put their heads together to create a system in which they can peacefully coexist rather than trying to destroy each other. Just as the two-party political system in the United States emerged after a political and constitutional contest between federalist and anti-federalist forces in the 1790s and early 1800s, this occasion provides Ethiopia with a chance to adopt a new political system that accommodates competing views. That can only happen if the major parties agree on a clear and enforceable set of conventions and volunteer to subject themselves to an independent legal mechanism for resolving their disputes.

In the short run, a binding deal with the TPLF will go a long way toward quelling ethnic tensions. Member parties could agree to stop tacitly undermining one another and devise a joint strategy for tamping down ethnic extremism within their ranks and respective regions. Considering that the country is preparing for a lengthy and tortuous path of political transition, the presence of a functioning relationship among member parties of the EPRDF will make the road ahead smoother for everyone.

Abiy has not yet found the formula for creating a legitimate, inclusive, and functional mechanism for deeper political change. It is also not clear if such a change should happen before or after a general election that is expected to take place in May 2020. The best way forward is to create a functioning political order that transcends ethnic divisions.

#BREAKING North Korea fires unidentified projectile: Yonhap pic.twitter.com/hr17DGfQ5F

— AFP news agency (@AFP) 08. март 2020.

Papa Lazarou wrote:Tri rakete. Mangupira se Kim.

(Bloomberg) -- Oil markets tumbled the most since the Gulf War in 1991 after the disintegration of the OPEC+ alliance triggered an all-out price-war among the world’s biggest producers.
In one of the most dramatic bouts of selling ever, Brent futures sunk by 31% in a matter of seconds after the open of trading in Asia on Monday after already suffering their biggest loss since the global financial crisis at the end of last week. As Brent collapsed as low as $31 a barrel, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. warned prices could drop into the $20s.
Hammered by a collapse in demand due to the coronavirus, the oil market sank deeper into chaos on the prospect of a supply free-for-all. Saudi Arabia over the weekend slashed its official prices by the most in at least 20 years and signaled to buyers it would ramp up output -- an unambiguous declaration of intent to flood the market with crude. Russia said its companies were free to pump as much as they could.
“It’s unbelievable, the market was overwhelmed by a wave of selling at the open,” said Andy Lipow, president of Houston energy consultancy Lipow Oil Associates LLC. “OPEC+ has clearly surprised the market by engaging in a price war to gain market share.”
Aramco’s unprecedented pricing move came just hours after the talks between Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies ended in dramatic failure. The breakup of the alliance effectively ends the cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Russia that has underpinned oil prices since 2016.

Stock futures tumbled in overnight trading Sunday as investors continued to brace for the economic fallout from the spreading coronavirus, while a shocking all-out oil price war added to the anxiety.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged about 1,078 points, pointed to a more than 1,000-point loss at Monday’s open. The S&P 500 futures indicated a 4% drop at the open. The sharp declines in the futures market signaled more turbulence ahead after a roller-coaster week that saw the S&P 500 swing up or down more than 2.5% for four days straight.