Blood cobalt and other things greens love

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

Chiristmas song

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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