mercenaries: Follow the money

In #Africa, #Wagner is more #China’s tool than #Russia’s. It appears #Beijing is supplying the bulk of the cash to the mercenaries, not a broke #Moscow. https://t.co/ygIXWapVmC

— Gordon G. Chang (@GordonGChang) June 26, 2023

Russian mercenaries in Africa

Right now there are confusing stories about the Wagner group turning against the Russian military.

 

BBC stories LINK LINK2 and a lot of people are following it on Twitter.

A lot of the civilian atrocities in the Ukraine are blamed on the Wagner group. I have no idea how much is true because the propaganda from that war is so confusing.

However, the Wagner group has worked as mercenaries in Africa, and were suspected to be responsible for atrocities there.

AlJ article from April 2022:

When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali – fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians – all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group. 

 Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had deployed them to under-the-radar military operations across at least half a dozen African countries. Their aim: to further President Vladimir Putin’s global ambitions, and to undermine democracy.

 Analysts estimate Wagner operates with only a few hundred to 2,000 mercenaries in a country. Many are ex-Russian military intelligence, Siegle said, but because it is a private force the Kremlin can deny responsibility for Wagner’s actions. The real price is paid by ordinary people.

 the Wagner Group has been active in the Sudan and is suspected to be meddling in the military coup there, but without neutral observers on the ground it is hard to verify this.LINK LINK2

a 

lots of folk in the west are aghast at claims of CIA interference in foreign countries, but they ignore that there are other folks doing this too.

sigh

This is cross posted from my main.

Cassava bread

 

so who is complaining about an eleven year old post?

 I just got notified that an essay I posted in 2012 has not met community standards.

Sorry about that. 

as usual, there is no way I can easily find a post that old, and since no one complained about it or commented on it in the last 11 years, my opinion is forgtaboutit.

So who went back 11 years to find something and complain about it? 

Heh. Wait til they start scanning my medical blog where I posted graphic illustrations of FGM....

Saving Africans: Stopping HIV

Chinese debts harming Africa

 

...............

corruption behind brownouts in South Africa

 

Out of Africa

GetREligionblog reports that the Anglican bishops in Africa have rejected the leadership of the bishop of Canterbury, essentially saying the see of St Augustine is empty. (St Augustine of Canterbury evangelized the Anglo Saxons and reestablished Christianity in England. The See refers to the seat/location i.e. area governed by the bishop).

The Anglican site VirtueOnLine has several reports about this:

a similar schism is perculating in the Catholic church, and Africa might have a major part of that rejection of PC sexual morals. From Cardinal Sarah to CNA in 2015 essentially rejects how western government are pushing gender ideology on Africa. He has written several books, including one with some other bishops in Africa stressing that Africa will save Catholicism from these anti family trends.

"I encourage you to speak with clarity and with one credible voice and with filial love of the Church. Be conscious of the mission of the Church; protect the sacredness of marriage which is now being attacked by all forms of ideologies that intend to destroy the family in Africa. Do not be afraid to stress the teaching of the Church on marriage." In a major six-page interview released during the same period in the French magazine Famille Chrétienne , Cardinal Sarah said: "At the synod next October we will address, I hope, the question of marriage in an entirely positive manner, seeking to promote the family and the values that it bears. The African bishops will act to support that which God asks of man concerning the family, and to receive that which the Church has always taught. . . . Why should we think that only the Western vision of man, of the world, of society is good, just, universal? The Church must fight to say no to this new colonization."

the so called synod on synodality is being pushed with the idea to let people talk about what concerns them: but of course these meetings are not with practicing Catholics as much as with those eager to change the church, and like most institutions that practice wokeness, there is a danger that it will push out true believers who feel their voices are being ignored.

thanks to Mother Angelica, despite Catholics leaving the church en masse in the USA (some to no religion, but about half to other Christian churches), about half the bishops remain faithful to Christianity.  This is similar to the few Anglican bishops in the UK who oppose these trends, but who are slowly being replaced by those obeying the non Christian reformers.

Alas, due to liberation theology and Pope Francis' shennanigans in adding pachimama pagan rituals, there is also an exodus to evangelical churches in Latin America and in Hispanic immigrants in the USA.... there, similar to that in the Philippines, where out bishops push a green agenda that will make poor people poorer, help China, but hey it will get them praise from the elites here.

sigh.

Black Lives in Central Africa don't matter?

 The various civil wars, insurgencies, careless mining practices that exploit people, and outbreaks of disease in Central Africa have been going on for years. So who cares about what is going on there?

Netflix will have African tales series

 From Global Voices:

Interview: Behind the scenes of Netflix/UNESCO's African Folktales Reimagined Netflix and UNESCO are supporting a new generation of African storytellers

On March 29, the films “Enmity Djinn” by Mohamed Echkouna from Mauritania; “Katope” by Walt Mzengi Corey from Tanzania; “Zabin Halima” (Halima’s Choice) by Korede Azeez from Nigeria; “Anyango and the Ogre” by Voline Ogutu from Kenya; “Katera of the Punishment Island” by Loukman Ali from Uganda; and “MaMlambo” by Gcobisa Yako from South Africa will premiere globally on Netflix.

Zimbabwe's cybercity

 A report from GlobalVoices, from a local independent blogger:

 Zimbabwe's cyberpunk cities fueled by China

Interrogating the narratives behind Zimbabwe’s smart cities

The government is making a suburb. aka New Harare, with full internet integration. The companies behind this are Chinese government linked companies such as Huawei.

What could go wrong?

Forget the old fashioned methods of just tearing down the suburbs where you are not popular, or sending the bully boys to terrorize villages. With China's help, the plan has upgraded to Big Brother. 

New Harare’s plans for omnipresent facial recognition tech combined with AI will usher Zimbabwe into a dystopian era. The technology will be able to match a person’s live images with centralized databases and alert law enforcement when a suspected criminal is detected.

In Zimbabwe, where freedoms are harshly curtailed by the regime of President Emerson Mnangagwa, there are also politically-motivated ulterior motives for this technology. In fact, CCTV (Closed-circuit television) cameras are already being placed in Zimbabwe’s cities where opposition movements are strong.

 

Terraces in Eastern Zimbabwe

 I lived in central Zimbabwe. We had paintings on rocks where they were split and so the area was flat and sheltered, and the local hill where the baboons lived was where they buried chiefs. 

But I was too busy treating people and learning the culture and language to go into these ancient sites: Until I got sick and the sisters arranged for me to spend a week vacation in a mission near Umtali.

Nearby, the local mountain was terraced, with stone walls every couple of feet. 

No one knew exactly who did this, but it inspired stories such as King Solomon's mines and the idea that the ancient Phonecians settled there and built these terraces: completely fiction of course and racist because it suggested only white people could do this, not the primitive natives. And indeed, there have been comparisons of the terraces in Zimbabwe to those in Yemen.

The beliefs of the Lemba tribe and DNA suggest there might be a splinter of truth in this, and of course, there was active trading via the Red Sea in ancient times, and later with Arab traders: elephant ivory, gold and slaves:  something that is only now being recognized. 

But anyway, the site of a mountainside terraced was impressive, but hard to find the history of who did this or why this was done. And yes, this was racist because no one wanted to recognize that Bantu farmers would do that.

What inspired this post however was that archeologists discovered "clay pits"near the Zimbabwe ruins complex, and after ignoring them, someone has said: Hey these are in an area that could be used to collect rainwater and the pits used to save it so it was there during the dry season.

Ary.ccheology.com:

  AARHUS, DENMARK—According to a statement released by Aarhus University, a new study at Great Zimbabwe, the eleventh-century capital of the Shona kingdom located in what is now southeastern Zimbabwe, indicates that the large depressions in the landscape surrounding the city’s surviving stone structures may have been used to store and manage the city’s water supply.

It had been previously thought that the depressions, which are known as dhaka pits, were made when clay was dug to build the city. However, remote sensing surveys and excavations conducted by an international team of researchers led by Innocent Pikirayi of the University of Pretoria suggest that the pits were positioned to collect surface water in areas where water runs when it rains, and collect and store seeping groundwater. The stored water would have allowed the people of Great Zimbabwe to manage their livestock and crops during the two dry seasons of the year, the researchers concluded.

Here is another report on the Univ of Zimabwe restoring the southern terraces of Great Zimbabwe 

The article mentions local stone masons. Yes, when I was there, they could make bricklike pieces of stone by finding a flat rock, and placing a fire on top. After a day or two, they would throw cold water on it, and the top layers would come off in slabs of rocks, which they then chisled into bricks very similar to the walls and towers in the Great Zimbabwe.

a photo of the walls to see how the flat stones were used:

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/the-great-zimbabwe-ruins-outside-masvingo-in-zimbabwe-picture-id940133948

But the terraces of eastern Zimbabwe? Were they related? Done by the same tribe?

and why?

I looked for information for years, until I read Brian Fagan's book Elixir, where the author has a long section on East African water systems and noted these were similar to those found in Zimbabwe and on Drackenburg moutain in South Africa.

To understand a lot of this, you have to realize that rain is seasonal in Zimbabwe: so for months you might not have rain at all. So like other cultures, in the Middle East, Egypt, India, and China, these cultures managed the water supply.

Until the Sahara got so dry to make crossing it difficult, sub Saharan Africa was in touch with these civilizations, and of course, ideas spread via trade routes.

So back to the actual terraces. 
ZimFieldGuide has an article on them, noting the earliest terraces were dirt, but later they were made of stone.

In some areas, whole hillsides are covered with thirty or more lines of terracing. For example, at Ziwa Ruins, it has been estimated there are 800 kms of terracing in an area of 30 square kilometres. Examples of terracing patterns are observable from Google Maps at GPS reference: 18°08'10.13″S 32°38'15.50″E which is the position of the Ziwa Site Museum.

Alas, I can't find a decent photo of the terraces. But then, even when I was visiting and we walked up the mountain with the terraces to our right, we couldn't get a decent photo due to the brush and trees that almost hid them from a distance.

Robert Soper in his book The Terrace Builders of Nyanga presents detailed plans and sketches showing that the terraces show how the agricultural community grew crops on the terraced hillsides, raising livestock in the pit structures in the Nyanga highlands initially from about AD 1300 and then moved down into the lowlands by AD 1800 leaving the remains of their efforts over an area of over 8,000 square kilometres. He acknowledges that terracing is used in other parts of Africa, such as South Africa, East Africa, the southern region of Ethiopia and in Sudan, but nowhere are they used as extensively as Nyanga. There are differences in use however; Sutton observes that the terraces found in Tanzania were designed for irrigation, whilst the ones in Nyanga were mainly for soil conservation purpose,

The summary of the Book on terrace builders of Nyanga: includes this observation:

The ruins represent the remains of family homesteads and extensive stone-built agricultural terraces. Successive stages of development have been traced, starting with settlements on some of the highest peaks around AD 1300 and expanding gradually for five centuries to cover an area of over 5000 square kilometres. These stages show how the farming community adapted to and exploited the opportunities offered by the varied environments of the Nyanga highlands and lowlands to develop a specialised agricultural system integrating cultivation and livestock.

I would like to read the book, but alas it's not available on ScribD, and I can't afford 30 plus dollars plus postage to buy it from Amazon.

another book on the area:from Oxford press:

The Archaeology of Nyanga, Eastern Zimbabwe

• Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi

that oneThe Archaeology of Nyanga, Eastern Zimbabwelocked Plan Shenjere-Nyabezi from oxford press:The Nyanga district is however particularly famous for its stone constructions that come in a variety of forms, consisting of stone terraced hillsides, which extend for almost sixty-five miles from north to south and cover some twenty-three hundred square miles, as well as stone-lined pit structures, hilltop forts, stone-walled enclosures, and trackways. Dating from the 14th to the early 19th century, the culture is one of the Later Farming Community cultures of Zimbabwe. The stone architecture and several other cultural aspects differ from those of the more famous Zimbabwe Culture, such that, although the two entities partly overlapped chronologically, Nyanga represents a separate cultural development in Zimbabwe’s history. The purpose of the stone structures has been a subject of archaeological debate for some time. The majority of scholars generally agree that the terracing and pit structures were constructed for agricultural and animal herding practices.

 with the covid strictures on travel being removed, and with Zimbabwe becomeing more peaceful, the tourist industry should reopen: not just to Europeans but to South Africans and from China who want to see the beauties of that country.

Pilgrimage of hope in South Sudan

 BBC is covering the visit of Pope Francis to ths South Sudan, which continues to have an ongoing civil war after their long fight for independence.

BBC:A banner marking the 300km walk was unveiled to welcome the pilgrims

A group of about 60 Catholic pilgrims are recovering after spending nine days trekking through war-torn South Sudan to see Pope Francis in the capital, Juba....

One pilgrim, who was shedding tears as she arrived, hinted at the trauma the years of fighting have brought to this country. "When you have smelled and seen death and hopelessness, then you will search for peace with all the might that you have," said the woman, who did not want to give her name. "I have lost enough, but along the way I saw love and we all spoke one language - that of peace. I really pray that even after the Pope leaves, we will still be like that," she continued. "He is a prophet and whatever he prays in the next few days, while on our soil, will come to pass. Things will be different. We are going to be one people."

...Pope Francis is spending three days in the country and will hold a Mass on Sunday. In a historic first, he travelled with two other Christian leaders - Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland Rev Iain Greenshields.

...........

Many years ago, in 1980, I worked with a physician from the South Sudan. 

He had fled to a refugee camp to escape the fighting, and the Seventh Day Adventists rescued him and arranged for him to study abroad. He became a physician and hoped to help his people, but the war there  made that too dangerous, so he was working in our clinic in Liberia for awhile until he found a job at a nearby Lutheran hospital.

 Alas, I lost contact with him because I had to leave that country, and shortly after that, there was a coup that resulted in chaos and civil war for years.

The story of how charities try to rescue some of the refugees to resettle and get an education in the USA is told in this film:

.

....full movie here:

cross posted to my main blog.

Blood cobalt and other things greens love

 Joe Rogan publicizes the blood cobalt connection of China and green batteries.

Chiristmas song

 <iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ONxlCBr3gVQ" title="Christmas celebration with  my community members" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Ebola seems to be under control

StrategyPage has a long essay about the various tribal wars in Central Africa/DRC area, and how a Russian mercenary group is looting gold and diamonds to sell via the UAE. 

 But they do have this good news in their report:

November 30, 2022: In western Uganda, the Ebola outbreak that began in September has seen a decline in cases because of rapid medical response. Reported cases have declined but despite that decline, Uganda has closed schools nation-wide in an attempt to curb the spread of the Ebola virus. In November eight children died from Ebola in Uganda. The spread of Ebola to neighboring Congo seems to have been halted.....

Andrew Wefwafa had a series of videos about this

 

.....this was caused by the Sudan variation of the virus, and the problem is that the vaccine that helped stop the previous epidemics in central Africa were for a different strain. 

Just recently, a new experimental vaccine for this Ebola strain has been sent there. LINK The doses are from the Sabin Vaccine Institute (SVI), according to Reuters. The SVI vaccine is a modified chimpanzee adenovirus (ChAd3) vector vaccine.

note: The adenovirus vector is what was used in the british AZ vaccine for covid, and for previous Ebola vaccines .

Health officials had earlier cleared plans to study three candidate Ebola Sudan vaccines. The others are from Merck and Oxford University. 

In the middle of November, a WHO working group recommended that ring vaccine trials prioritize the Merck candidate first, owing to the safety and efficacy of the VSV-EBOV platform used for the Zaire Ebola vaccine, followed by the SVI vaccine, then the Oxford vaccine. A sharp decline in Uganda's Ebola cases presents an obstacle to ring vaccination trials. essentially the disease was stopped by isolation etc. so we will not be able to prove the vaccine works. /sarcasm.

WHO Report.

The ring procedure is to isolate the cases, and vaccinate the ones in contact, then vaccinate the ones who were in contact with the contacts, etc.

.......

Covid in Africa

 I no longer am in touch with my friends in Africa, which is why I have so few posts here.

Dr Campbell however has two videos about health and covid in Africa.

,,,,,,....the videos are cross posted on Dr. Wefwafwa's youtube channel LINK

press freedom in Zimbabwe

 Global voices has a report.

one interesting fact is that only 30 percent of people have internet access

Floods in Uganda

 major floods ten days agon in eastern Uganda 

from 13 days ago:

..''''

... more recent.

.....

dr C links to a report (start at 13 minutes)

Islaimic terrorism in Mozambique

Strategypage has a long essay on Mozambique's oil resources and how Islamic terrorism has prevented them from developing this.

it's not about religion, or even local politics since most of the terrorists are not from the area: It's about money

Since 2019 the violence has increased to the point where most foreign natural gas operations have been shut down and neighboring countries have organized a peacekeeping force to restore order until local security forces are reformed and upgraded to do it themselves.

 

,,, The Islamic terrorists, most of them from outside the country, are not seeking to control territory but to disrupt economic activities. The purpose of this is to establish an environment where they can extort money from foreign firms

Terrorism continues, China steals, but Ebola is over in Central Africa

 summary of what's going on in the Congo (DRC) and in Central Africa at StrategyPage.

Longer report on the end of Ebola outbreak that started in April this year LINK

Different public health response measures were put in place, including community-based surveillance trainings for rapid response teams; Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) interventions in health care facilities and the community, psycho-social support, and risk communication and community engagement. A total 11,139 (alive) and 161 (deaths) alerts were investigated; 1,076 contacts were identified and followed; 909 laboratory samples (805 blood and 104 swab) were tested and 2,037 persons vaccinated (301 contacts vaccines, 1301 contacts of contacts and 435 Health care workers).

Liberia film

 

....Vimeo link

Nigeria: attacks on Christians

 Get Religion blog reports on the thousands of deaths of Nigerian Christians by Muslim terrorists: some are religious and some are tribal massacres by the Muslim herder tribes.

link2

....

hey, just like the millions killed in Rwanda or DRC or Uganda, it's not a big news story. Most of these wars were exacerbated by colonial powers who favored one tribe over another, and of course when the atrocities started, these colonial powers looked the other way.

Sigh. And one doubts the neocolonialist China will do any better: China is well known for it's kleptocracy and bribing of politicians.

 nothing new here, of course: I am old enough to remember the Biafiran war, which left several million dead, mainly of starvation. LINK2.

The Igbo became the most effective at integrating and benefitting from British rule. Compared to the other Nigerian ethnic groups, the Igbo more aggressively pursued western religion, education and spread throughout Nigeria with these advantages to seek employment and establish livelihoods after Nigeria declared independence in 1960. Although the Igbo hailed from the eastern part of the country, the Igbo had established lives throughout the country by the time of independence.

In other words, they ran the place (and I knew several who fled and were working in Liberia when I worked there).

The massacres of course were blamed on the rebels for letting people starve and trying to get sympathy from the west so that the wests would help them. (/sarcasm). Wrong move.

The west only cared about keeping the country intact so they could more easily exploit the oil found there.

. LINK

The attempt by Biafra to secede from the federation provoked the Nigerian Civil War that raged for almost three years. Oil was one of its major causes. Shell-BP was a British multinational company that had dominated the exploration process of the Nigerian oil industry since the 1950s. This study focuses on Shell BP’s dilemma in Nigeria during the civil war era (1967-1970). By using relevant primary and secondary sources, the paper explores the complexities that surround Shell-BP’s position either on the side of Federal government in Lagos through which it got its operating license or the Biafra government in the East that was desperate to secede from the federation. The paper further highlights the economic value of Shell-BP’s investment in oil exploration, its position during the civil war barely eleven years of oil production in eastern and mid-western Nigeria, problem of royalties’ payment in the face of dreadful threat to installations by Biafran troops, and the involvement of British government. The major findings of the paper show that despite Shell-BP’s claim of non-partisanship, its exploration activities went on almost smoothly for the larger part of the war period. This feat could have been achieved by Shell-BP only with payment of adequate royalties to the federal government, and at the same time payment of certain undisclosed token to the Biafran leaders to avoid severe damage to its installations. This study contributes to the existing knowledge on oil and war, particularly the conflict of interests associated with oil companies, the government and other stakeholders. It also contends that it is difficult for any oil company to be completely non-partisan in the conduct of its business activities in a country like Nigeria. The paper concludes that the circumstances of war era compelled Shell-BP to adopt the strategy of constructive negotiation with the Biafran leaders without undermining the Federal Government.

corruption is easy to exploit, something the Brits, and now the Chinese are happy to do. 

LINK:

the report in The Economist magazine of October 10, 2019 which revealed that about $582bn has been stolen from Nigeria since independence in 1960. ... At least N11tn is said to have been diverted in the power sector alone since 1999, while N1.3tn public funds were reportedly laundered between 2011 and 2015.,,,It quoted Britain’s International Corruption unit as saying it has confiscated £76m ($117m) loot from Nigeria since 2006. “Another £791m has been frozen worldwide, thanks to its work,” it said, adding that “it barely makes a dent in the £100bn of illicit funds

and one wonders who got the recovered money? I suspect a lot of that recovered money got stolen too, just like the funds stolen by Marcos and recovered ended up being stolen by other politicians after it was returned to the Philippines.

Sorry, but every time I read some bleeding heart say that there is no hell, it makes me hope they are wrong. And I suspect that sardonic Jewish carpenter would agree with me: Matthew 18:21-35 

Hunger is coming to Africa

Sigh. ....SP also has a report on peacekeepers and corruption LINK...

digital rights oppression in Zimbabwe

 Check report on Global Voices.

the law is enabling the blocking of opposition voices.

more at Netblocks.

hmm... I wonder if Starlink service would enable the news to get out. But I lack expertise in this area.

covid in Africa

 

The sorrows of Mozambique

 StrategyPage has a link to the present troubles of Mozambique, which now has an ISIS related terrorists, many who were Somalis, that sprang up where foreign investors were drilling for oil/natural gas. it could have made the locals rich but corruption happened so some decided that terror was the way to go.

It includes the history of that poor country. Sometimes with most of the terrorism and civil wars being blamed on Islam, one forgets two things: One, many of Africa's massacres and wars are tribal. And two: many, especially in the past, were inspired and funded by communist countries and/or the left, who saw the goal of independence and a socialist state should replace the (very badly run) colonial state.

Mozambique leaders feared that the growing Islamic terrorist violence could lead to another long civil war. Mozambique has been suffering wars or threats of war since the 1960s. Mozambique is a largely coastal country north of South Africa and south of Tanzania. Most of the coastline runs parallel to the large island of Madagascar. The current population of 30 million is a lot larger, and less prosperous, than the six million living there in 1950. For over a thousand years Mozambique has, like many other parts of East Africa, consisted of coastal cities that prospered by serving as a marketplace where people from the interior could obtain all manner of foreign goods. Mozambique was part of a vast trading network that used dependable seasonal winds to allow ships to move goods from East Africa to the Persian Gulf, India and Indonesia. In the 1500s Portugal, using new technologies (cannon and superior sailing ships) created the borders for Mozambique, which explains why the country consists largely of coast and interior areas reachable via rivers. What ended Portuguese rule was an anti-colonial rebellion that lasted from the early 1960s, when other European colonizers were voluntarily departing, until 1975 when Portugal finally officially got rid of its colonies. This meant nearly 300,000 Portuguese settlers and officials left Mozambique, taking with them a major portion of the new nation’s technical personnel and skilled administrators. Newly independent Mozambique elected a government that lasted two years before a fifteen-year long civil war began. This civil war was far more damaging than the shorter, and less successful anti-colonial war. The civil war killed over a million people and drove more than 20 percent of the population from their homes for months or years. Nearly two million of those refugees fled the country.

sigh.

one of my friends, an African nun, went there to teach seminarians theology and English, because the missionaries also were thrown out.  The schools and convents, including the libraries, had been looted so only the building was left: She had to sleep on a mat (hint: Bugs and mice could attack and did). And she had to live at a primitive level with the other African sisters because of lack of funds and lack of access to clean water and food. 

She left after a year because of a stroke from high blood pressure, exacerbated by poor diet and the hot climate (she was from the high veldt and not used to the heat).

Sigh.

Refugees in Angola (from DRC Civil wars and Ruanda)

at Crux.

how the Catholic church is helping refugees, who lack proper papers, in a country that was poor to start with.

in the past Angola had it's own civil war, and Cuban military helped the winning (minority) tribe win LINK

and in the last two decades, China has essentially taken over their economy (and oil wealth).

LINK

China's fake development deals

 StrategyPage has a long discussion of China's investment in the Congo, which was supposed to include money for roads and development.

but a lot of the money went to the usual suspects:

The investigators found evidence that the engineering contract was used to distribute $55 million to senior members of former President Joseph Kabila’s government. The bribery plot used several shell companies in Congo and elsewhere that made the operation look legitimate. The shell companies provided fake invoices and other paperwork. One even provided fake telephone justifications for payment. 

since Kabila is out of power, they are working on new deals.

and just ignore the cooperation of western banks to this type of embezzlement of development money/stealing resources of poor countries:

Some of the money flowed through major European and American banks. .... 

then you have the scam of China giving aid lending money and then stealing stuff when you can't repay them. This is something we see in Asia and the Philippines is worried that their aid here will let them steal our resources and ports too.

December 3, 2021: A recent report looked at Zambia’s debts to China. Here’s the bottom line. From 2000 to 2010 Chinese financial groups loaned Zambia around $10.3 billion. So far Zambia has only repaid $1.2 billion. Zambia fears it will be another victim of Chinese Debt Trap tactics which involve offers to settle such debts by taking possession of key items, like ports, railroads or mining rights, that China wants to control....

and then there is this: 

 

 December 1, 2021: China is urging Chinese citizens now in eastern Congo (South Kivu, North Kivu and Ituri provinces) to immediately move to safer areas in Congo. In the last month at least a dozen Chinese citizens living in these provinces have been attacked or kidnapped. It is believed most Chinese nationals in these areas are involved in businesses dealing in minerals and other manufacturing resources.

so are they planning to keep them until ransom is paid, like the terrorists in the Philippines, or will China send in Wolf Warrior II to rescue them a la Rambo? 

the African resistance to covid

 I have cited this elsewhere, but am posting here so I don't lose the link.

Although people of African heritage are more prone to get and die of covid in the USA and UK, (maybe due to the lack of Vitamin D caused by darker skin blocking sunlight), there are fewer deaths in the African continent.

And this might be a genetic factor.

Austin Bay (10 2020) noted 

Chinese are a growing presence in Africa where they are making large investments in mining and other enterprises. As a result, there is a lot of travel between China and Africa and covid19 showed up in Africa but has not become an epidemic. The public health systems in Africa are far less capable as those in the rest of the world like China.

 

Chinese researchers discovered that Africans are less likely to catch covid19 because they have one fifth as many cellular receptors in their lungs than Chinese.

italics mine. 

That difference enables covid19 to cause breathing problems more, or less, readily. Other researchers found that this genetic difference was most helpful for Africans and most harmful for East Asians. People in other parts of the world have less resistance to covid19 than Africans.

Lung damage is the most frequent cause of death among covid19 victims. By April Africa, with 18 percent of the world population, has only suffered about 0.3 percent of the covid19 infections. Africans are not immune, just less likely to get infected or suffer the breathing problems that cause most covid10 related deaths.

 again, italics mine.

Such genetic differences are common and account for some ethnic groups having different health problems, or advantages.

the article then goes on to note a few other racial traits that are associated with less disease, such as malaria and sickle cell. Light skin colour and less rickets and fewer maternal deaths from rickets also was a strong evolutionary reason for pale Koreans and Scandanavians.

Mozambique's natural gas deposits are good news. But now the bad news

 StrategyPage has a long article on Mozambique.

That country suffered starvation after the Portuguese leftist government left the communists take it over and the communists threw out all the Europeans and mixed race and local educated folk.

How bad was it? Well, the Catholics sent local Mashona nuns there from Zimbabwe to help. Sister E, a friend, said the convents had been looted and she had to sleep on a mat and the food was poor. After two years, she had a stroke from the stress and was flown home. 

So although this blog was originally started to document the atrocities of Mugabe, at least there was not the chaos and civil war as there was in Mozambique.

The presence of South African mercenaries in Mozambique (who were protecting the mines) didn't help because the propaganda types (i.e. the leftist press in Europe) blamed all their problems on evil South Africa.

Presumably if they had left the Cubans (and now Chinese) run the place and loot their resources while killing the minority tribes as their sister colony in Angola did, it would have been a socialist paradise. (/s).

But that was many years ago.

Now the problem is that natural gas/oil reserves have been discovered, and are being developed by French and Italian companies.

The bad news? that means instead of the communist crazies, we have the Islamicist crazies making trouble, trying to stop the outsiders looting, I mean developing this resource, and of course, keeping the politicians rich with bribes etc.

StrategyPage:

The presence of large offshore deposits was confirmed fifteen years ago and, after 2010 natural gas related activity began to show up in northern Mozambique. This meant more business for local firms and jobs for people in the area. That attracted the attention of criminal gangs in Mozambique and throughout East Africa.

The current Mozambique government is something of a political gang itself, which is common in Africa and many other parts of the world.

Local expectations soon exceeded reality and the local politicians and gangsters took advantage of it. They were joined by Islamic terrorists from other parts of East Africa where there are larger Moslem populations. ...

Mozambique, with 30 million people, is 20 percent Moslem and 60 percent Christian. To the north, Tanzania, with 56 million people, is 35 percent Moslem. You don’t encounter a Moslem majority nation until you reach Somalia, which is currently the source of most of the Islamic terrorist activity in East Africa. For that reason, it was Somali Islamic terrorists who were attracted to northern Mozambique and played a role in creating some of the local Islamic terrorist groups. 

Sigh. 

the SP version of what happened there in the past can be found at their site.

short summary: 

The rebels were never a real threat to the colonial government. After Mozambique became independent in 1975, its first government was socialist and run by politicians who wanted to establish a communist police state “for the greater good.” This triggered a civil war in 1977 that killed over a million people, most of them civilians, before it ended in 1992.

and then there is the problem of tribalism and corruption.

Something to remember the next time you read the globalist want to give money to poor countries to atone for climate change: it won't go to the people but to the corrupt politicians and businessmen. 

As for China: Wikipedia has an entire article on Chinese/Mozambique relationship. Lots of this sounds familiar (they do this to us in the Philippines, and in other African countries):

China has also become a major buyer of Mozambican timber; despite local regulations forbidding the export of unprocessed logs, which aim to force foreign countries hoping to gain access to Mozambican resources to invest in setting up processing facilities in the country, many logs are exported illegally. 

Chinese businessmen are not typically involved in the actual practise of logging; instead, it is performed mainly by locals, who then bring the logs to buyers in port cities.[7]

China has also become an increasingly important player in Mozambique's construction industry; over one-third of Mozambique's new road construction is now carried out by Chinese contractors. Contractors from other countries, who have been losing out on business due to their higher costs, complain that the Chinese contractors make no effort to transfer skills or technology to locals, and do not make use of local or regional labour subcontractors, instead preferring to import and manage their own workers.

Sigh.

invest in China

As an ex federal employee, I have a small inestment in the government Thrift Savings program

A couple years ago, Tsp planned to invest in high risk questionable  overseas funds including some in china

https://401kspecialistmag.com/tsp-still-investing-in-shady-chinese-companies

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-federal-retirement-fund-is-about-to-invest-in-china-some-former-us-military-leaders-object/2020/04/27/9cd30280-84dd-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html

senators tried to stop it over the objections of certain unions, but Trump heatd about it and stopped it.

Much of the objections were that the money would support the Chinese govt, but the lack of transparancy was also noted.

But the usual suspects lamented how this interfered with the ability of federal employees to make good investments...but we were not informed about it.

But other US pension funds did invest in Chinese companies.

So now that Evergreen and other chinese companies are going belly up, I will have to start googling if US pension funds are affected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/business/economy/china-tsp-federal-retirement-fund.html

This article is from last month

 

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/kudlow-china-list-sanctioned-americans

Last month chinese propaganda said invest in china

http://t.m.china.org.cn/convert/c_yBSHWQBB.html

China in Ethiopia

 Global voices has a long article about China in Ethiopia:

Many of what is reported is what we see here in the Philippines:

Promising jobs but importing their own laborers, pushing vaccine diplomacy, promising infrastructure, flooding shoddy imports.

read the whole thing. 

Neocolonialsm at it's best and something rarely reported in the western media, 

covid in Africa

 fast forward to 23 minutes:

............

also discusses the new Marburg virus outbreak.

Chinese neocolonialism in Africa

 StrategyPage has a long article about Chinese investments etc. in Asia and Africa.

they invest in projects but bring their own people to do the work (so no local jobs). And afterward, the Chinese stay to take over the economy. They mainly work with corrupt governments who will take their bribes to do so.

and then the locals protest.

Hmm... sounds familiar. they are doing a lot of this in the Philippines. heck, even the last buybust drug raid in our are resulted in the death of a "chinese national" who was running the drug gang.

Because of this, China is increasingly seen as a supporter of evil governments and that has generated widespread African hostility towards all things Chinese.

 

This has led to anti-Chinese riots in some countries and a general animosity towards the Chinese at the grass roots level. Thus when these countries go through their next rebellion, Chinese are likely to be a popular target and a major loser if the rebels win.

 

These problems exist, to a lesser extent, in the Middle East and Asia. China has been at this for since 2002. This really kicked into high gear when China declared 2006 was officially "The Year of Africa." China went all out to make a favorable impression on African governments and increase Chinese economic and diplomatic activity in Africa that year. To that end, about a billion dollars-worth of debts, of African nations to the Chinese government, were forgiven. The year before, Chinese commercial and government organizations invested over $13 billion in Africa. This was less than one percent of China's GDP but by African standards, it was a huge investment.

 

However, there was some blowback. The Chinese were mainly after raw materials, especially oil. A lot of that $13 billion was bribes for local officials.

well, duh. 

As usual, the average African was getting screwed by these deals. China is also flooding African markets with inexpensive goods. This and imported Chinese workers are hurting local businesses and causing unrest among African business owners and workers. As a result, it's become common for opposition parties in Africa to accuse China of "neo-colonial exploitation." The accusation fits, and the Chinese will pay for it down the road, as will peacekeepers brought in to help clean up the mess.

 

millet and teff and Sorghum oh my

PhysOrg article on alternative cereal crops in Africa.

Actually our farmers in Zimbabwe often planted these crops as an alternative if the rains were not enough to get a good harvest of maize. Also, we advised moms to make sadza for babies with them because maize was hard for malnourished kids to digest.

another article on the cereal grains of Africa.

Millet Before maize was introduced to Sub Saharan Africa, millet was the most widely eaten grain across the continent. In fact, up to 50 years ago, it was still the grain of choice. Millet, particularly pearl millet, is said to have originated in Africa prior to being exported to Asia. In fact, according to the National Research Council, it has been documented that pearl millet was domesticated over 4000 years ago in West Africa. Other types of millet include fonio and finger millet (rapoko). Millet is highly nutritious and provides far more to the African food economy than maize does, however, due to the amount of scientific research and investment in cultivating maize, the use of millet as the main staple has been surpassed by that of maize. This is unfortunate because the plant is highly resistant to droughts, requires less irrigation than maize does and is a viable option for the provision of food security.

 

Sorghum Sorghum is sometimes used interchangeably as millet, however, it is a different grain. It is popular in countries such as Botswana and is used to make pap or sadza, known in Botswana as bogobe. It can be fermented and made into a sour porridge known as ting.

In Zimbabwe we ate maize but rice was eaten in Liberia. The article does not mention rice even though there was an alternative rice domesticated in west Africa.

the article also mentions teff, but that is grown in the horn of Africa where I did not work.

More here: Foods of Zimbabwe.

Stopping the desert

 Atlas Obscura has an article on projects in Senegal that are hoping to stop the spread of the desert along the southern edge of the Sahara.

LINK

The garden is the latest iteration of the pro

ject known as The Great Green Wall, first envisioned as a viridescent belt squiggling thousands of miles across the Sahel region, from Senegal to Djibouti. Launched in 2007 by the African Union with backing from the European Union, World Bank, and the United Nations, the project was initially meant to help stave off desertification by stymying the Sahara as it wandered south. ... The drivers of desertification include climate variability and climate change, overgrazing, the construction of river dams, and conflicts that displace people and spur shifts in land use. Long droughts can leave fertile soil vulnerable, and winds and rains can whisk it away. “Deforestation can accelerate the process, because trees serve as windbreaks,” Okolie says. That’s where the Great Green Wall concept came in. The initial plan emphasized trees as an anchor for soil and a buffer against the encroaching sand. Some elements of the idea made sense, says Geert Sterk, a geoscientist at Utrecht University who studies land degradation. “Tree and shrub roots hold soil, [and] the canopies trap raindrops before reaching the soil surface and reduce strong winds,” curbing erosion by wind and the region’s relatively rare but fierce rain,

............

it is not just a problem in Africa: China worries about the Gobi.

 

Uganda covid

 

covid in Africa

 

covid information: Ivermectin use in Zimbabwe

 

.....

in the west, it is the sick, elderly, and those with chronic illness such as diabetes or renal failure who are dying.

But in Africa, those HIV positive are at risk.

CDC report from Zambia.

The effect of HIV infection on COVID-19 outcomes is unclear. Studies in South Africa (1) and the United Kingdom (2) found an independent association between HIV infection and COVID-19 mortality; however, other studies have not found an association between poor COVID-19 outcomes and either HIV status among hospitalized patients (3–5) or HIV-associated factors such as CD4 count, viral load, or type of antiretroviral therapy (ART) (6). The effect of HIV infection on COVID-19 outcomes remains an urgent question in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries are experiencing dual HIV and COVID-19 epidemics, and capacity to treat severe COVID-19 is limited. ... those with severe HIV disease were more likely to develop severe COVID-19 or to die of COVID-19 compared with those with controlled HIV disease.

translation: If you have severe HIV, you are at higher risk. 
If your HIV is under control (e.g. by taking treatment) your risk is normal.

the big problem is keeping HIV positive people taking their anti HIV medicine during the pandemic. 

Mozambique update

 StrategyPage has a summary of terrorism in Mozambique, and the presence of US experts to train the local military.

few Yanks know about their history: all the skilled folks left and the civil war after independence killed a million people (starvation and disease). So the Frelimo communists took over, meaning that they set up an oligarchy to steal everything in sight.

the Muslim uprising here is about the Frelimo oligarchy controlling all the wealth from the new natural gas/oil fields and leaving the locals poor. It is in an area where there are a lot of Muslims, so voila, guess who is willing to help them?

Anyone who noted how this worked out in the rest of Africa realized this was going to make some Mozambique politicians very rich while everyone else remained poor.

 

That got the northern Moslems receptive to calls for rebellion and that led to Islamic terrorists taking the lead, as they often do in Moslem majority areas. It only took a few years for several small Islamic terror groups to get organized and then agree to merge to form the larger Ansar-al-Sunna group. Starting out with less than a hundred gunmen and even more unarmed supporters, it took about four years of fighting, growth and a few spectacular victories for Ansar-al-Sunna to reach nearly a thousand gunmen. At that point the Moslem rebels decided to become an ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) affiliate called ISCAP (Islamic State Central Africa Province).

Terrorism in Mozambique

 StrategyPage discusses the ISIS like Islamic terrorism in Mozambique, that attacked an oil facility.

LINK

several notes: They came from the outside via Tanzania, so are not locals.

The oil facility is bringing in money, but the problem is that they brought in outside help, since such facilities require skilled workers, and locals can't do the job. So there is a resentment against them. 
There are some jobs for locals, but of course they went to the friends and relatives of the local big shots. So as in Nigeria, corruption means local resentment, which facilitates terrorism.

The local anger at the new natural resource bonanza is a common phenomenon in Africa, where most nations with oil or natural gas or any valuable exportable raw material see most of the export income stolen by corrupt politicians. This is the rule, not the exception in Africa. Big promises were made to nearby inhabitants, but governments crippled by corruption fail to deliver the promised benefits. Add the fact that Mozambique’s minority Moslem population is concentrated in the north, to provide the Islamic terrorists with recruits and some local support and you have potential problem. This can create a classic long-term problem sustained by fanatic Islamic terrorists.

this time it's the muslim terrorist vs the French and local corrupt officials etc. 

read the whole article, which relates the sad history of Mozambique and it's many wars... and the Russian/communist history for good or evil is mentioned.

One hopes Biden will not decide to get involved, since this should be Europe's sphere of influence.

And not just Europe:

the Chinese are aware that they could face similar attacks in countries where they have similar facilities... they even have their own Rambo type propaganda film that ends with the promise that China will defend their people no matter what. Heh. in the film he rescues all those Chinese working in a local factory... you mean no locals working/ Well never mind.  But you see the potential problem. Neocolonialism: only skilled workers can develop resources, but locals are not skilled, and the money goes to the corrupt local politicians, a good way to get a war started.

And the reason Angola had so many Cuban soldiers in the olden days was to let the government, run by a minority tribe, get all that lovely loot. And then there is Nigeria....sigh.

 

Sttarting the covid shots

 Reuters article says that Zimbabwe is getting the vaccine from China India, and Russia

the chinese vaccine gives 50 percent protection but China is giving it to a lot of poor countries to push their image of the savior country.

Ironically, the Russian Sputnik vaccine works: It is based on the old fashioned adenovirus type vaccine and reviewed in the British medical literature as being 90 percent effective.

the Indian vaccine is less tested and relies on the old fashioned technology of using an inactivated virus. more info on it's Wikipedia page.

the article says that less than 2000 people have died from Covid, which is a low number given the many other diseases there killing people, for example a large HIV positive population.

Alas, I haven't heard from my friend there in two years: And she never picked up the last two wire money I sent her, so I can't get a first hand report on what is going on.

and now they canceled Australis

The tech companies are blocking mainstream conservative stories, no problem.

But now facebook is saying they will block any news from Australia.

Something to do with their copyright law.  

And Australia investigating them under anti trust laws. 

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/australia-strips-googlefacebook-to

And they are going after google too.

https://youtu.be/Fsu4dQbHKOc

Last month, China tried to bully Australia into submission and lost.

Fertilizer? We don't need no stikin' fertilizer

 that is sarcasm and refers to this meme

in recent years, the Chinese have moved to Africa in search of mineral resources and farmland. 

In Zimbabwe, they took advantage of the self righteous "sanctions" against Mugabe, who "stole" the farm land of the white farmers (who of course had stolen their farm lands a couple of decades ago from the local Africans). But China ignored the sanctions, and was not above giving gifts to move in.

I am ambivalent about Chinese investment: They are neocolonialists when it comes to exploiting the mines (so Chinese exploitation instead of European exploitation) and their shops sell cheap Chinese goods that make local factories uncompetitive (something we see here in the Philippines).

 But China is helping the agricultural sector by introducing modern high yield methods (fertilizer, "green" hybrids and GM hybrids and working with farmers who own their own land, 

and yes, Bill Gates is helping supply the much needed fertilizer in some areas.

this goes against the meme of the powerful "organic" ecology movement. of course who see traditional practices as sustainable and pollution free (just ignore the kids dying of kwashiorkor).

The modern "green revolution" hybrids (that required fertilizer) and especially now the even more productive GM seeds have been discouraged by some governments in Africa, because of powerful NGO's and church groups that believe in the myth that change is bad, and primitive farming methods and tribal customs should not be changed.

NatGeo on China who now has pollution problems (but hey they are feeding their people). But when it comes to Africa, note that one lady scientists said they can't afford it.

“Africa cannot afford massive amounts of fertilizer,” says Sieglinde Snapp, a crop scientist at Michigan State University. A more sustainable approach, she says, is greater reliance on nitrogen-fixing plants.

Summary: Fertilizer? we don't need no stinkin fertilizer. (pun).

 BBC report from 2014.

as for the Chinese takeover/looting of Africa's mineral resources: This is from StrategyPage:

February 3, 2021: China has continued to expand its dominant control of African raw materials. Currently Chinese firms control about 70 percent of Congo’s mineral deposits and mining industry. Chinese state-owned firms own most of this, which includes substantial portions of the global supplies of copper and cobalt. Since 2012 Chinese companies have invested at least $12 billion in Congolese mineral assets.

Some of those billions go to enrich Congolese officials who make possible Chinese ownership and protect it from local or foreign interference. The eagerness to gain control of so much cobalt is driven by Chinese plans to become the major producer of electric vehicles. Congo is the world’s biggest cobalt producer, each year producing between 55 percent or 65 percent of the world’s total cobalt. 

Chinese companies control around 40 percent of Congo’s cobalt deposits and means of extraction. Cobalt is critical as a stabilizer in rechargeable lithium-ion batteries. It takes about ten kg (22 pounds) of cobalt to manufacture an electric car battery. China is committed to producing electric vehicles (EVs) of all types.

Nigerian massacres

GetReligionblog discusses the many sources of the killing of mainly Christian peoples: by the Islamic militants and the tribal conflicts between the Muslim cattle herders and the Christian farmers.

Of course, both these terrorist groups kill fellow Muslims, but not so much.

The press coverage is spotty of course.

sad.

But of course they left out the terror by southern "terrorists" who mainly are Christian and object to the oil wealth being siphoned off.

And I'm old enough to remember when the mainly Christian Biafiran tribe sought to seceed and were literally destroyed by the government forces (estimated 2 million killed by famine) (rumor: with the help of the western companies that wanted their oil wealth). This is worse than it seemed since the tribe was also highly educated. Ironically, the best coverage of this was by the Irish, since many local missionaries were from that country.

Rwanda: Big brother?

Global voices, a site that publishes independent bloggers, has a report about how Rwanda is monitoring all their citizens.

a story complicated by their history of the massive slaughter during their civil war, and the impressive rebuilding of the country.

I have no expertise here so advise you just to read the story.