Not my area of expertise, but these reports are about several recent coups in the southern Sahel which used to be French colonies, and where the French usually kept the peace, but now we see the Wagner group manipulating the local military and of course the Muslim charity money that is diverted into jihadi groups.
=======
.........
Strategypage has an article on what is going on in Mali:
apparantly the Wagner group, is now considered as formally Russian troops, and the government will have to deal with the Russian Government
Backstory is the head of the Wagner group attempted a coup against Putin and died in an accident (/s).
so what is important about Mali?
Gold
Mali is a major producer of gold and the Russians have always been willing accept payments in gold. Russia maintains a huge gold stockpile (about 2,300 tons), the fifth largest in the world. The Russian gold is an emergency fund that is now being tapped to pay for military operations in Ukraine.
backstory:
The military government in Mali had hoped that hiring Russian Wagner Group mercenaries would enable Mali to maintain control of northern and central Mali. ...
The problems began when the military government ordered the independent French Barkhane counter-terrorism force out of Mali and it was gone by the end of 2021. Since then, Mali forced the 15,000 UN peacekeepers to start withdrawing.
The government forced the French and G5 peacekeepers out by the end of 2021.
lots of details at the link. cated article on what is going on in Central Africa.
again not my area of expertise.
But this part is about refugees in Malawi:
August 10, 2023: Malawi is seeking emergency funds and donations to feed more than 50,000 refugees who are crammed into the Dzaleka Camp. This is the only refugee camp in the country. Most of the refugees in Dzaleka are from Rwanda, Burundi, Congo, Ethiopia and Somalia. The government says the camp will run out of food by December 2023. Foreign aid groups have already cut food supplies because of funding shortages. The government says it needs an additional $6.3 million in order to feed the refugees through June 2024. There are also about 8,000 refugees living outside the camp and are regarded as illegal migrants by the government that they are trying to relocate.
sigh
Refugees are a world wide problem.
I wonder how many of those the fleeing to Europe is due to such disorder.
a new elected government, opposition yells fraud, counter story is that the USA/West is trying to manipulate the opposition, and the elephant in the room: What did China do behind the scenes?
I congratulate President Emmerson Mnangagwa on his re-election. I wish him and the people of Zimbabwe well for the upcoming term.
— Cyril Ramaphosa 🇿🇦 (@CyrilRamaphosa) August 28, 2023
You have consistently denied summoning polling officers to the command center for the signing of new V.11 forms. However, to expose your dishonesty, our team was deployed this afternoon to Nyika, where they witnessed the opening of ballot boxes in the absence of… pic.twitter.com/yGpCOhSX6s
— Citizens' Coalition for Change (@CCCZimbabwe) August 28, 2023
most of the article is behind a paywall, but here is how it starts:
Registering to vote in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, isn’t easy. The only registration centre is two bus journeys from the most populous suburbs. Nationwide there are just 71 voter-registration centres, or one for every 216,000 people (though some mobile ones are operating ahead of a general election next year).
And this is not the only worry. Since 2018 Zimbabwe has collected fingerprints, photos, addresses and phone numbers to clean up the voters’ roll, which was reportedly full of “ghost voters”. This frightens many Zimbabweans, especially those belonging to the minority Ndebele ethnic group, much of which is concentrated near Bulawayo. In 1983 some 20,000 mostly Ndebele people were massacred by the army. Emmerson Mnangagwa, now the president, was head of the security services at the time. Now, people fear data collection “is a way to re-identify and target us,” says Rodwin Sibanda of the Habakkuk Trust, an ngo in Bulawayo.
China is Zimbabwe’s biggest foreign investor and kept the nation afloat amid Western sanctions, but is now estimated to control 90% of Zimbabwe’s mining industry (with the largest lithium reserves in Africa) and helps keep the economically disastrous Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) in government.
Over the years, Chinese interests have been a power behind the throne — once again, ZANU-PF triumphed in national elections last week; once again, amid accusations of rigging the system — with a hand in making and breaking its leaders.
Strategypage has a long essay on the implications of the coup in Niger and points out that often military coups are to fight corruption in civilian governments, but that it leads to a loss of western aid until they restore democracy.
But the bad news is that the problem is corruption and that corruption is so widespread that the military reforming government doesn't work.
part of the essay is about the Amreican and French military in the area trying to fight Islamic terrorism.
This is mainly a technical article outside my area of expertise, so if you are interested read the whole thing.
African governments had also been caught in a delicate balancing act between the shadowy mercenary group and the Russian government.
The Malian coup-makers continue to refer to the armed group as “Russian instructors”, though CAR authorities are more forthcoming.
“CAR authorities have always been uncomfortable,” Charles Bouessel, senior analyst on CAR for International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
“They did not know who to praise for Wagner’s assistance. Sometimes, they are thanking the Russian authorities and sometimes, they are thanking Prigozhin. But what they want is that the Russian assistance continues, and they would be cautious in expressing their opinion [on Prigozhin’s death] intimately.”
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,and this is similar to what I have posted on several blogs about the pushing of the sexual agenda on small countries:
About a decade ago, the US had laws like "Don't ask, don't tell" in their military. In the US, LGBTQ is not accepted by everyone. Why do the US and the west think they can force Africa to accept LGBTQ? Let the west keep pushing us like slaves. We will embrace Russia and China.
Globally, there is a growing need to address the sexual abuse of children. Taylor said that there has been an explosion of sexual violence in the digital space. This includes an increase in the number of sexual images of children.
Main factors behind this were changes imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased use of the internet by children. In some cases, sexual violence against children takes place via live streaming.
Currently, one in eight adults worldwide experienced sexual abuse as a child, according to one statistic. That rate is increasing in the digital age. Already one in five children has experienced sexual abuse in the digital space in a country, a survey funded by GPeVAC found. The survey was conducted in 13 countries in Africa and Southeast Asia.
then you have the attacks on Christian villagers in Nigeria, which the western MSM pretends is poor cattle herders burning down farmers villages so they can feed their cattle, but in reality it is a persecution of the Christians.
and here is a more up to date report from EWTN News:
No, I don't know much about Mali, but StrategyPage notes they produce gold, and are using gold to pay for things that foreign aid used to pay for. But of course the common folk aren't getting much benefit. And they note that ordinary folk are doing what we call mom and pop gold mining (They do this in the Philippines, and it is more dangerous and more polluting than professional companies, but, again, I don't know much about this).
But they note the Wagner group, a mercenary group of Russians who are notorious for their work in the Ukraine, are there and trained local soldier to keep the government in place.
and they are paying them in gold.
The article explains that Mali threw out the French and UN peacekeepers partly because they reported on atrocities by the Govt troops and the Wagner group
But the peacekeepers are there to stop Islamic groups who are terrorists and also who threaten the government.
it's the corruption of course
The Mali peacekeeping operation costs about half a billion dollars a month and that is about the only foreign aid Mali gets now that the military government is in control. Most foreign aid was halted because the government was stealing so much of the aid. It is difficult to steal any of the money spent on peacekeepers but the government seems to be trying to do just that.
and of course the problem is that the Islamic terrorists are growing and threatening nearby states
this report from DW last week discusses the good and bad points of the Wagner group
it notes the charismatic movement in Christian churches is now influencing Islam.
well, nothing new here: Sufi Islam stressed a personal relationship with God, and this was partly due to Hindu (Gita) influence I believe. So a pentecostal revival in Islam might pressure the more rule oriented/terrorist inspiring version of Islam pushed by the Saudis to be less influential.
I don't know how accurate this report is, since it is by western reporters who believe polls (uh, people will tell pollsters what they want to hear, out of politeness guys, but never mind).... and these reporters seem to think that the Islamic vs Christian wars can be blamed on local Christians (or even local Muslims) whereas it was actually inspired by Saudi/ISIS etc. snf is something new: Islamic slave traders of the Sahel decimated these tribes for centuries (heck, the slave trade goes back to the days of ancient Egypt and is more about cuture than religion per se).
But I am not an expert here.
Also missing: How African churches are pushing back against the gay agenda in the large Anglican church, and it is local Evangelicals (not the western bigots as the western press always seems to accuse) that is pushing against the US push toward so called gay rights/ birthcontrol/ sex education that approves of premarital sex.
Right now there are confusing stories about the Wagner group turning against the Russian military.
BBC stories LINKLINK2 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.
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.LINKLINK2
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.
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....
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 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.
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.
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:
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.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
