Tag: africa

Ohio Town Flooded With African Migrants After Social Media Apps Teach How To Illegally Enter USA

Hundreds of illegal aliens from the West African country of Mauritania have recently descended upon Cincinnati, Ohio, thanks to social media apps TikTok and WhatsApp providing them with instructions.

According to Fox 19 Cincinnati, around one thousand Mauritanians have settled in the city in recent weeks.

U.S. Border Patrol data shows over 8,500 Mauritanians entered the U.S. between March and June.

John Keuffer, the CEO of a Cincinnati non-profit called Valley Interfaith Community Resource Center, told Fox 19, “We don’t know where they’re from, we don’t know how to communicate with them, and it created quite an issue for us.”

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Russia accuses U.S. of expanding biological weapons research in Africa

Russia is now accusing the United States of expanding its bioweapons research on the African continent.

Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, head of the Russian Armed Forces’ Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Protection Forces, made this claim earlier in the week based on information his troops have garnered. The information alleges that the U.S. is shifting gears after similar programs that America had underway in former Ukrainian territories were stopped by Russia during the conflict there.

Kirillov stated: “Because Russia has managed to halt the implementation of biological warfare programs in Ukraine’s liberated territories, the Pentagon is forced to transfer incomplete research under Ukrainian projects to other regions.”

He claimed that U.S. Department of Defense contractors are working on such programs in a number of African countries, including as South Africa, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

According to Kirillov, the U.S. works with outside parties in an attempt to obscure this activity. They named a number of intermediaries, such as EcoHealth Alliance and Metabiota, that they believe are being used as part of the expanded bioweapon biological warfare programs in Africa.

He also identified several examples to support his claims. For example, he pointed to U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases staff carrying out a large-scale study of hantavirus from bats in Kenya last October.

In a more recent example, he cited a meeting between officials from the Pentagon and the Department of Health and Human Services with disease control officials in Africa to explore the possibility of developing lab capabilities there.

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British Couple Killed To Make Witchcraft Potions in South Africa

A suspect who confessed to the killing of a British couple and to selling their body parts for use in witchraft (muti) has been released by South African authorities.

Anthony and Gillian Dinnis, both in their 70s and originally from Kent, England, disappeared without a trace from their farm in KwaZulu-Natal’s Mooi River area on 30 August last year.

After their disappearance, their children began receiving strange text messages demanding money for their release.

The couple’s gardener soon became a suspect. He later admitted to being one of three men who kidnapped the couple, before killing and dismembering them. Their body parts were then sold, or planned to be sold, by the suspects.

Despite the confession, and being refused bail, the suspect was released on 13 June this year. The National Prosecuting Authority has said there is “insufficient evidence” to proceed with the prosecution.

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Malawi vice president killed in plane crash along with 9 other passengers

Malawi’s Vice President Saulos Chilima has been killed in a plane crash along with nine other passengers, the country’s President Lazarus Chakwera announced Tuesday.

The aircraft went missing after it failed to land at the Mzuzu International Airport, about 380 km (240 miles) to the north of the capital Lilongwe. The wreckage of the plane has been located, Chakwera said in an address to the nation.

“The search and rescue operation I ordered to find the missing plane that carried our vice president and nine others has been completed. The plane has been found. And I am deeply saddened and sorry to inform you that it has turned out to be a terrible tragedy,” Chakwera said.

The Malawian leader disclosed that the aircraft was found “completely destroyed” near a hill in the Chikangawa Forest in northern Malawi, adding that “words cannot describe how heartbreaking this is.”

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Ugandan human rights lawyer’s arrest exposes use of national ID for surveillance

A Ugandan human rights lawyer’s recent arrest highlights the country’s surveillance and government control via the use of the national identification card.

First introduced by the National Identification and Registration Authority (NIRA) nearly a decade ago, Uganda’s national ID card was initially touted as a solution to streamline administrative processes and bolster citizen services.

However, Nick Opiyo, one of Uganda’s human rights lawyers, believes that there was an ulterior motive for his December 2020 imprisonment as he became ensnared in this surveillance dragnet, enduring arbitrary detention and harassment for his endeavors to expose state-backed human rights transgressions, a Bloomberg feature uncovers. His plight spotlights the impact of state surveillance on dissent and freedom of expression.

In fact, a 2023 study by the African Center for Media Excellence (ACME) concludes that the implementation of biometric and digital identity (BDI) programs in Uganda has given room for surveillance and intrusion on journalism and media in the region, unveiling that journalists in the country have become targets due to the mass collection of data under the government’s biometric and digital ID programs and its ability to engage in communications surveillance.

The expansion of Uganda’s surveillance apparatus hasn’t gone unnoticed by the global community.

Presently, in the country, possessing a NIRA-issued ID card isn’t just advantageous but essential for accessing fundamental services and participating in societal affairs.

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Moderna Stops mRNA COVID Biologics Plant Construction in Kenya

Moderna, Inc. announced recently that it has suspended its efforts to build a $200–$500 million mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) biologics manufacturing facility in Kenya while it determines projected future demand for mRNA biologics in Africa. Company officials concluded that, since the end of the COVID pandemic,  interest in COVID-19 biologics in Kenya and Africa has declined and is insufficient to support the viability of the proposed mRNA biologics manufacturing plant. Moderna confirmed that it has not received any orders for its Spikevax mRNA COVID biologic from Africa since 2022 and that previous orders for the product have been cancelled.1

Vaccine Plant in Kenya Would Have Supplied Vaccines and Drugs to African Countries

In 2021, Moderna announced that they were partnering with the Government of Kenya to build a state-of-the-art mRNA COVID biologics plant in Kenya to produce up to 500 million doses of Spikevax each year. The company expected the new facility to initiate drug substance and drug product manufacturing for Kenya and other countries in Africa. In addition, Moderna stressed that the facility would have had the capacity to quickly respond to public health emergencies in Africa.2

According to Moderna, orders for Spikevax that were cancelled resulted in over $1 billion in lost revenue for the company. Although Moderna was a major player during the COVID-19 pandemic distributing its mRNA COVID biologic globally, it has remained a relatively a small biotechnology company with Spikevax being the only pharmaceutical product approved for distribution and use in the U.S. and other countries. Since the decline in the overall demand for COVID shots, Moderna’s revenue from sales of Spikevax is projected to decline to $4 billion this year compared to $18.4 billion in 2022 and $6.7 billion in 2023. The company has also experienced a drop in its share price by more than 75 percent during the past two years.3

The company said that the cost savings from suspending construction of its Kenyan manufacturing facility will allow them to focus on other products.

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Mastercard’s Controversial Digital ID Rollout in Africa

One wouldn’t have pegged Mastercard for that corporation that is “driving sustainable social impact” and caring about remote communities around the world struggling to meet basic needs.

Nevertheless, here we are – or at least that’s how the global payment services behemoth advertises its push to proliferate the use of a scheme called Community Pass.

The purpose of Community Pass is to enable a  digital ID and wallet that’s contained in a “smart card.” Launched four years ago, the program – which Mastercard says, in addition to being based on digital ID, is interoperable, and works offline – targets “underserved communities” and currently has 3.5 million users, with plans of growing that number to 30 million by 2027.

According to a map on Mastercard’s site, this program is now being either piloted or has been rolled out in India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Mauritania, while the latest announcement is the partnership with the African Development Bank Group in an initiative dubbed, Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE).

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U.S. Wanted ICC to Go After ‘Black People’ in Africa, Not White People: Ret. U.S. Army Colonel

Lawrence Wilkerson, retired US Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, said in an interview published Friday that the U.S. response to the International Criminal Court’s decision to seek arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, the defense head, show the blatant hypocrisy in Washington.

Wilkerson told the “Dialogue Works” podcast that he was there when Powell, the former secretary of state, used Washington’s power to “direct the court at Africa, at black people like Charles Taylor.”

(Taylor, the former president of Liberia who led the National Patriotic Front of Liberia.)

“We didn’t want the court coming after white people. We wanted it going after black people,” he said.

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Congo’s Polish Spy Scandal Is Worth Paying Attention To After The Recent Failed Coup Attempt

While all eyes are on Ukraine and Gaza, the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues deteriorating, and it’s quickly becoming a New Cold War battleground after the latest security deal with Russia in early March preceded mid-May’s failed coup attempt that involved three Americans.

The Associated Press reported that “Poland’s president seeks release of Polish traveler sentenced to life in Congo”, which drew attention to a spy scandal from February. 52-year-old traveler Mariusz Majewski was detained on charges that he “approached the front line with Mobondo militiamen, moved along the front line without authorization, and took photos of sensitive and strategic places and secretly observed military activities.” That preceded mid-May’s failed coup attempt that involved three Americans.

For background, Polish President Andrzej Duda was in neighboring Rwanda in mid-February, where he scandalously declared that “If Rwanda is ever in danger, we will also support it”, thus prompting furious protests from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that’s unofficially at war with Rwanda. This phase of the DRC’s three-decade-long conflict was explained here and here in November 2022, with the first presenting a general overview and the second delving into the roles of France and Rwanda.

To oversimplify this very complex conflict, the mineral-rich east has long been a focal point of global attention due to its resources being indispensable for the “Fourth Industrial Revolution” (4IR), namely electric vehicles, computers, and modern-day gadgets. French-backed Uganda conventionally intervened in the DRC with Kinshasa’s approval to fight against Rwandan-backed M23 rebels prior to withdrawing in December once the M23-DRC dimension of this country’s long-running conflict further intensified.

France demanded in late April that Rwanda dump the M23 and pull its troops out of the country, which was shortly thereafter followed by the US calling on Rwanda to punish those of its servicemen that it claims joined the rebels in an attack around that time in the east. For what it’s worth, Rwanda has always denied both accusations, but almost all non-Rwandan observers agree that they’re true. Interestingly, the EU inked a green energy deal with Rwanda in February, so ties between those two aren’t that bad.

Al Jazeera criticized their agreement though by drawing attention to how Rwanda exports more than it mines, which is proof that it’s extracting 4IR-relevant mineral resources from the DRC via its M23 proxies, who in early May took control of “the coltan capital of the world” in the eastern town of Rubaya. Just two weeks later, the DRC foiled the earlier mentioned coup attempt that involved three Americans. While the exact goals of that putsch were unclear, they certainly had something to do with the 4IR.

The DRC under incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi, who won re-election last December in a landslide, has been actively working to renegotiate mineral agreements with its key partners like China due to claims of the previous government reaching completely lopsided arrangements for corrupt reasons. Chinese companies, for example, recently pledged to invest $7 billion into a slew of infrastructure projects in order to resolve their dispute from last year.

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The real reason why U.S. and French troops have been in Niger for Years

In case there was any confusion over what NATO really stands for, the military alliance’s general secretary cleared things up with a bold tweet.

The U.S. military will pull all of its troops and assets out of Niger by mid-September, the Pentagon has announced, after days of talks with the country’s military junta finalized a timeline.

The Hill reports that a group of military leaders executed a coup in Niger last year, forming a military junta government that has geopolitically aligned with Russia. Talks of leaving Niger have lasted several weeks, with the timeline “finalized Sunday after four days of high-intensity negotiations,” according to The Hill, which adds:

“About 1,000 U.S. troops have been stationed in the country, for the purpose of counterterrorism operations against ISIS and al Qaeda-affiliated groups.”

That’s a big fat lie put out there by The Hill, a corporate media outlet based in Washington, D.C. But to be fair, the outlet did add this to its story:

“The Americans stayed on our soil, doing nothing while the terrorists killed people and burned towns,” Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine told The Washington Post last week. “It is not a sign of friendship to come on our soil but let the terrorists attack us.”

But even this leaves a distorted view of the reality of why Americans and French are in Niger. The full story would be too harsh for the American masses to process but I’m going to give it to you because I know my audience can handle it.

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