Tag: africa

Uganda Will Harvest the DNA of its Citizens Under National ID Program

The East African nation of Uganda is announcing plans to begin harvesting and tracking the DNA and biometric data of its citizens under an updated version of the country’s national ID program, which will see genetic information added to the ID cards that Ugandans are legally required to obtain.

Uganda began its national ID program in 2014, giving the cards a 10-year lifespan before they reach expiration.  Under plans recently announced by the nation’s government, when cards start expiring in 2024, Uganda will begin to harvest the DNA of its citizens for use in the revamped national ID program, though it isn’t clear exactly how the government plans to extract the DNA from its citizens.

In addition to information on Ugandan’s DNA profiles, the updated ID cards will feature biometric data and fingerprints, as well as information gathered from the eyes of Ugandan citizens using scan technology. All this, the government says, will help speed up the identity verification process at government offices and administrative centers, as well as assist law enforcement in their investigations. The cards are also digitized, giving the government instant access to citizens’ information via a massive national catalog.

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Federal authorities arrest accused Liberian war criminal ‘Dragon Master’ living in Philadelphia

A Liberian immigrant living in Philadelphia has been arrested by federal authorities and charged with fraudulently hiding his background as a high-ranking member of a rebel group — he called himself “Dragon Master” — that is accused of committing atrocities during a Liberian civil war.

Laye Sekou Camara, of Southwest Philadelphia, is accused of lying about his background in 2011 to obtain a visa to enter the United States and then later to obtain a green card.

Camara then allegedly used the green card to falsely characterize his background on a Pennsylvania identification application in 2017, according to a criminal complaint submitted to Magistrate Judge Richard A. Lloret and publicly filed last week. Camara is charged with the use of an immigration document obtained by fraud.

In news accounts dating back to 2003, during and shortly after the conflict known as the Second Liberian Civil War, prosecutors say Camera is identified as a brigadier general with the rebel faction known as Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, or LURD. Liberia’s first civil war was fought for most of the 1990s and left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead.

U.S. authorities have led the charge in recent years to bring Liberian war criminals to justice — particularly in Philadelphia, where thousands of refugees fleeing the conflict were relocated in the 1990s and 2000s.

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The US Government Truly Believes The Entire Planet Is Its Property

The Wall Street Journal has an article out titled “U.S. Aims to Thwart China’s Plan for Atlantic Base in Africa“, subtitled “An American delegation wants to convince Equatorial Guinea against giving Beijing a launchpad in waters the U.S. considers its backyard.”

The article quotes the former US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy saying “We’d really, really not like to see a Chinese facility” on the Atlantic, and discusses “American concern about China’s global expansionism and its pursuit of a permanent military presence on waters the U.S. considers home turf.”

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi has discussed the irony of WSJ yelling about China’s “global expansionism” over a potential military base in Equatorial Guinea without applying that label to the US, when the US has hundreds of times the number of foreign military bases as China. Antiwar’s Daniel Larison wrote an article back in December eviscerating the ridiculous claim that a military base some six thousand nautical miles from the US coastline could be reasonably framed as any kind of threat to the American people.

But what really jumps out is the insane way the US political/media class routinely talks about virtually every location on this planet as though it is a territory of the United States.

The Wall Street Journal referring to the entire Atlantic Ocean as “America’s backyard” and “waters the U.S. considers home turf” follows a recent controversy over the US president proclaiming that “Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.” This provoked many references to the so-called “Monroe Doctrine”, a nineteenth-century imperialist assertion that Latin America is off limits to any power apart from the United States, effectively declaring the entire Western Hemisphere the property of Washington, DC.

It also follows another incident in which Press Secretary Jen Psaki remarked on the ongoing tensions around Ukraine that it is in America’s interest to support “our eastern flank countries”, which might come as a surprise to those who were taught in school that America’s eastern flank was not Eastern Europe but the eastern coastline of the United States.

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At least 89 killed by mystery disease as WHO deploys task force amid fears of outbreak

The World Health Organization has deployed a rapid response task force to South Sudan to investigate a mysterious illness that has left at least 89 people dead.

The ministry of health in South Sudan has reported fast-spreading illness in the northern town of Fangak, in the Jonglei state, which local scientists haven’t been able to identify.

The region was recently hit with severe flooding — with health officials tasked with gathering samples to help identify the deadly disease.

Local health officials in Fangak said initial samples from the sick returned negative results for cholera. 

Sheila Baya, a spokesperson for the WHO, spoke to the BBC, saying the team of scientists had to reach Fangak via helicopter due to the flooding.

She added that the group is waiting for transport to return them to the capital, Juba, on Wednesday.

She said: “We decided to send a rapid response team to go and do risk assessment and investigation.

“That is when they will be able to collect samples from the sick people — but provisionally the figure that we got was that there were 89 deaths.”

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Investigation Finds WHO Employees Raped or Sexually Abused Dozens of Women During Congo Ebola Crisis; Higher-ups “Were Aware” of the Rampant Abuse “But Did Not Act”

According to a shocking new report that was released on Tuesday, Eighty-three ‘humanitarian’ aid workers, including several that were employed by the World Health Organization (WHO), committed horrific sex abuse and exploitation while they were stationed in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the country’s 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak.

The report was compiled by an independent commission that looked into the allegations after the Thompson Reuters Foundation and The New Humanitarian uncovered over 50 accusations of sexual abuse by aid workers that had been submitted last year.

After investigating for months, the commission uncovered that AT LEAST 21 of the 83 offenders were employed by the WHO and had routinely demanded sex in exchange for, or to keep their jobs.

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Are children ‘dying like dogs’ in effort to build better batteries?

“Our children are dying like dogs.”

That is the sorrowful statement of one Congolese mother whose son and cousin died while working the cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

She and other parents like her are part of a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. federal court in Washington, D.C., in 2019 seeking to hold Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Dell Technologies, Microsoft and Tesla accountable for what they allege is profiting off the misery of child labor in their quest for cobalt.

“Cobalt is a key component of every rechargeable lithium-ion battery in all of the gadgets made by defendants and all other tech and electric car companies in the world that has brought on the latest wave of cruel exploitation fueled by greed, corruption and indifference to a population of powerless, starving Congolese people,” the suit reads.

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Tanzanian President Who Was Skeptical And Critical Of Western Vaccines DEAD After Missing For Two Weeks

It is being reported today that Tanzania’s president, John Magufuli, has died after being missing for more than two weeks.

The President’s death was announced today by the country’s vice-president Samia Suluhu, who said the president died of heart failure. He was 61.

About two weeks ago Health Impact News published an article that was written by Rishma Parpia of The Vaccine Reaction reporting that both President John Magufuli, and his health minister, Dorothy Gwajima, had announced that their country has no plans in place to recommend widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines in the African country.

On Feb 2, 2021, Tanzania’s health minister, Dorothy Gwajima, announced that her country has no plans in place to recommend widespread use of COVID-19 vaccines in the African country.

The announcement came a few days after Tanzania’s President John Magufuli expressed concern about the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines developed and manufactured in Western countries.

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