The Drone Base Will Provide a Stronger US Presence in a Region

[Combating Extremism is the stated objective. Terrorism is the Justification for the Militarization of Africa, GR Editor]

Back in 2013, President Obama had ordered a drone base to be built in the capital of Niger, Niamey, but even than military officials already indicated that ideally, they wanted the drone operation to be based outside of Agadez. The NY Times reported moving the drone base to Agadez had two main advantages. First, it is better positioned to launch drone operation throughout the southern regions of the Sahara that are turning into an alleged “terrorist hotbed”. Second, the drone operations are better shielded from prying eyes in isolated Agadez than in Niamey. A third reason, not mentioned by the NYT might well be that with the fall of Libyan leader Gaddafi, Agadez has turned into the smuggling capital of Africa, according to Politico Europe.

Pilots of American military aircraft operating over the western Pacific Ocean have been targeted by lasers more than 20 times in recent months, US officials told The Wall Street Journal, following similar incidents in which Chinese nationals used lasersagainst American fighter pilots operating over Djibouti.

In April, the Pentagon issued a NOTAM, or “Notice to Airmen” warning of “unauthorized laser activity” resulting in minor injuries to an unspecified number of pilots over Djibouti. The lasers originated from a Chinese military base in the African country, just 8.3 miles from the American base.

Although thousands of women have reported rape and other sexual atrocities in South Sudan's war, human rights groups say the figure is likely to be much higher.

Earlier this week while most of the world was transfixed on the World Cup, the Trump/Kim handshake, or a multitude of other sundry events, Julius Malema, aka the Hitler of South Africa, was busy telling white people in his country that he’s not going wage genocide against them. Yet.

In an interview with TRT World News published this week, Malema said, “We have not called for the killing of white people. At least for now. I can’t guarantee the future.”

When the reporter mentioned that some people might view these remarks as a call to genocide, Malema responded, “Crybabies. Crybabies,” but later warned white South Africans that “the masses are on board” for “an un-led revolution and anarchy”.

The Tanzanian government is putting foreign safari companies ahead of Maasai herding communities as environmental tensions grow on the fringes of the Serengeti national park, according to a new investigation.

Hundreds of homes have been burned and tens of thousands of people driven from ancestral land in Loliondo in the Ngorongoro district in recent years to benefit high-end tourists and a Middle Eastern royal family, says the report by the California-based thinktank the Oakland Institute.

Although carried out in the name of conservation, these measures enable wealthy foreigners to watch or hunt lions, zebra, wildebeest, giraffes and other wildlife, while the authorities exclude local people and their cattle from watering holes and arable land, the institute says.

Health Minister Mpho Phalatse was suspended yesterday after declaring South Africa’s economic hub Johannesburg a “friend of Israel”.

Phalatse made the comments while speaking at the South African Friends of Israel Conference, an event sponsored by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy.

According to a video of her speech, Phalatse said: “I would like to declare that I am a friend of Israel and the city of Johannesburg is a friend of Israel,” according to the New Arab. The Minister also told pro-Israel conference attendees: “we value you, we celebrate you, we appreciate you, feel at home.”

The city’s Mayor, Herman Mashaba, said he was “disappointed” by Phalatse’s comments, explaining “I was disappointed by the remarks, not as they relate to her personal beliefs [but rather] my disappointment stemmed from the attribution of those sentiments to the City of Johannesburg on a matter of such an emotional and sensitive nature.”

White South African farmers are now being trained by Israeli Special Forces. The farmers are preparing to use force to defend themselves and their property from the violent attacks generated toward them because of their race.

There were 74 farm murders and 638 attacks primarily on white farmers between 2016 and 2017, according to minority rights group AfriForum. “Current murder tendencies indicate that we will lose more people on farms than in the past three years,” AfriForum’s Ian Cameron recently wrote, according to RT.

The situation has been wildly underreported in the mainstream media, and white farmers have felt the need to begin preparing themselves to survive a possible assault. Some of the white farmers will fight back and have turned to Idan Abolnik, a former member of the Israeli special forces, who trains them in hand-to-hand combat and weapons handling, Sky News reported.

An American Special Operations forces soldier was killed and four others wounded in a firefight with Somalia militants on Friday, the New York Times first reported.

Three U.S. Department of Defense officials spoke to the Times about a gun fight in southwestern Somalia, where al-Shabaab militants engaged in a fight for the Shabab, an Islamist extremist group.

Recall that as the horrors of the genocide came to light, it became plain that someone, somewhere, messed up big time; it was inevitable, too, that all scrutinizing eyes would soon enough land on Washington, that bloated imperial octopus with an arm everywhere. Seeing the writing on the wall, the Clintonistas may have decided that the only way to dominate the conversation was to plead guilty, at the top of their lungs, to the relatively minor offense of "failing to stop" Rwanda’s genocide. Perhaps to make this a credible admission of guilt, they also contrived a dubious story about how their strategic uses of violence really could have saved Rwanda, if only they had mustered the will to follow through. Likely by design, this phony mea culpa has for decades served to deflect attention from Washington’s actual and more heinous offense: backing the Tutsi marauders who sparked a genocidal backlash.

The United States plans to sharply reduce the number of American Special Operations forces in Africa as part of a new Pentagon strategy that focuses on countering “rising threats” from Russia and China, according to a report.

Defense Secretary James Mattis has ordered a review of America’s elite commando missions in recent weeks which could see counterterrorism forces in Africa slashed by as much as half over the next three years, The New York Times reported on Monday.

The review was issued amid an ongoing assessment of Special Operations forces worldwide after four American service members were killed during an ambush in Niger last year.

The Tunisian General Labour Union announced last week hat it has joined the international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In a statement released on the 70th anniversary of the Nakba, the union said the move highlights is support for Palestinian refugees, their right of return and is in condemnation of the US’ decision to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to occupied Jerusalem.

Arab countries are complicit in the oppression and suffering of Palestinians, the statement which was signed by the TGLU’s General Secretary Noureddinne Taboubi said.

A leading opposition MP in Tunisia has said that democratic forces in the country remain committed to passing a law which criminalises “normalisation” with Israel, Quds Press has reported. “The Palestinian cause,” added Al-Irada Party leader Imed Al-Daimi, “remains a priority for the political elites and leaders in Tunisia.”

Al-Daimi expressed his regret at the way the Tunisian public and officials reacted to Israel’s violations against the Palestinians, calling the response “weak and substandard”. He attributed this to Tunisians’ preoccupation with post-revolution local entitlements, in addition to the Tunisian communities’ reduced confidence in political participation and its replacement by social media.

“We are witnessing a serious social phenomenon here in Tunisia, which is the reluctance to participate in political and public affairs. This was evident in the weak turnout for the recent municipal elections.”

The Angolan government has fired two of its senior diplomats for attending a gala dinner celebrating the opening of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, according to the Afro-Palestine Newswire Service.

The event, hosted in Tel Aviv by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs last week, was attended by Manuel Augusto Jao Diogo Fortunato, a senior adviser in the Angolan Embassy, with the approval of Angola’s Director for African, Middle East and Regional Organisations, Joaquim do Espirito Santo.

On Monday, Angolan media reported that Fortunato and Santo had both been fired by Angola’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Manuel Augusto, for “failing to comply with procedures and harming Angola’s good reputation.”

"The next few weeks will really tell if this outbreak is going to expand to urban areas or if we're going to be able to keep it under control," Salama said.

Following the meeting, Salama told AFP news agency the outbreak "could go either way" in coming weeks.

Two infected patients who fled from an Ebola treatment center in a Congo city of 1.2 million people later died, an aid group said Wednesday while asserting that "forced hospitalization is not the solution to this epidemic." As the number of suspected Ebola cases continued to rise, experts emphasized that more community engagement is needed to prevent the spread of the deadly virus.

Three patients left of their own accord from the isolation zone of the Wangata hospital in Mbandaka city between Sunday and Tuesday, said Henry Gray, emergency coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders.

LAST month, British woman Sue Howarth and her husband Robert Lynn were woken at 2am by three men breaking into a window of their remote farm in Dullstroom, a small town in the northeast of South Africa, about 240km from the nearest capital city.

The couple, who had lived in the area for 20 years, were tied up, stabbed, and tortured with a blowtorch for several hours. The masked men stuffed a plastic bag down Mrs Howarth’s throat, and attempted to strangle her husband with a bag around his neck.

The couple were bundled into their own truck, still in their pyjamas, and driven to a roadside where they were shot. Mrs Howarth, 64, a former pharmaceutical company executive, was shot twice in the head. Mr Lynn, 66, was shot in the neck.

Miraculously he survived, and managed to flag down a passer-by early on Sunday morning. Mrs Howarth, who police said was “unrecognisable” from her injuries, had multiple skull fractures, gunshot wounds and “horrific” burns to her breasts.

More than 200 farmers from South Africa have applied for humanitarian visas in Australia after allegedly suffering attacks for being white, according to the Australian Home Affairs Ministry.

“The type of criteria they of course have to meet – or the key one – is evidence of persecution, so that's exactly what we will be looking at,” Home Affairs Deputy Secretary Malisa Golightly said. Home Affairs said 89 refugee visa applications relating to 213 people had been received, although they did not specify their ethnicity or any other details.

A recent murder of an elderly white couple in South Africa has triggered a new round of debates about violence against white landowners and the government’s failure to handle crime. The tide of violence has triggered uproar on social media, with some users blaming the authorities for turning a blind eye to racial murders. At the same time the South African government is looking into constitutional reform that would let land to be expropriated from white farmers without compensation. Radio Sputnik discussed the recent spiral of violence with Ian Cameron, Head of Community Safety at the AfriForum civil rights group.

Ministry of Health officials first identified cases of viral hemorrhagic fever when it reached the town of Bikoro earlier this month. On Thursday, officials said a new case had been identified in Mbandaka, a city of 1.2 million.

The new case in Mbandaka has raised the alarm among public health officials because it is the first time the virus has ever landed in a city that sits directly on the Congo River.

In all eight of the previous known Ebola outbreaks in Congo, the virus has been contained within remote jungle villages or relatively small towns, where isolated populations are less likely to spread the disease.

But the Congo River is effectively the region’s highway system. Barges and boats travel from Kisangani in the east through major cities including Bumba, Mbandaka — and eventually Kinshasa, the capital of Congo and home to more than 11 million people, as well as Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo.

More than 10,000 Moroccans chanting "Death to Israel" took to the streets of Casablanca on Sunday to protest against the US decision to move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

The marchers carried Palestinian flags and placards that read "Al Quds (Jerusalem) Palestine's eternal capital." Most appeared to be Islamists, with women wearing headscarves and marching separately from men.

The split-screen juxtaposition had most of us trembling with anger. On the left, here was Ivanka Trump, the US president's daughter, beaming at the inauguration plaque outside the new US embassy in Jerusalem. On the right, Palestinians in Gaza were being pulled from the carnage of a bloodbath. At last count, at least 60 Palestinians were massacred. Another 2,700 injured by bullets and tear gas fumes. Gaza remains in trauma.

And while the usual tropes of Hamas involvement in inciting the protest movement have been spilling from American and Israeli mouthpieces - be they politicians, commentators or columnists - this week's devastating events left even the most neutral of observers stunned. How was it possible, in the 21st century, that such an atrocity could play out without consequence?

In April, we filed a lawsuit on behalf of Shoaib Ahmed and others against CoreCivic, alleging that the prison corporation violates human trafficking laws and employs a deprivation scheme to force immigrants detained at Stewart to work for sub-minimum wages, and then threatens to punish them for refusing to work through solitary confinement or loss of access to necessities. A lawsuit against Geo Group, another prison corporation, is moving forward for using similar practices at the Aurora Detention Center in Colorado, violating the Trafficking Victims Protection Act.

The IMF’s agenda of bigger government and higher taxes is a recipe for continued poverty.

A couple of months ago, I thought I did something meaningful by sharing six separate examples of the International Monetary Fund pressuring sub-Saharan African nations to impose higher tax burdens. This was evidence, I suggested, that the IMF had a disturbing agenda of bigger government for the entire region.

I didn’t imply the bureaucrats were motivated by racism. After all, the IMF has pushed for higher taxes in the United States, in China, in Latin America, in the Middle East, and in Europe. (Folks who work at the IMF don’t pay taxes on their own salaries, but they clearly believe in equal opportunity when urging higher taxes for everyone else.)

Nonetheless, I thought it was scandalous that the IMF was systematically agitating for taxes in a region that desperately needs more investment and entrepreneurship. And my six examples were proof of a continent-wide agenda!

The Pentagon’s newly released 8-page report on the Niger incident had a very clear narrative. From the moment local commanders endorsed the mission to the recovery of the four bodies of slain US soldiers, the report goes out of its way to lionize everyone’s actions, and downplay errors.

This makes sense, because underlying these conclusions is the fact that the Pentagon has no intention of holding anyone to account for the mistakes made. Yet the summary report’s decision to tread very lightly on a lot of potentially embarrassing specifics means that it ultimately raises a lot more questions than it answered.

Fortunately, a lot of those answers exist, as this 8-page version was just a summary of a 180-page full report on the incident. The administration is keeping that carefully secret, however. They say that the report needs to be heavily reviewed, and redacted, before ever being made public.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has been alerted to an outbreak of Ebola. In the past five weeks, there have been 21 cases of the infection reported, and 17 of those are now deceased.

Over a two-year time span, South African Claudine Van Wyk lost three beloved family members in a series of gruesome farm attacks in the troubled African nation.

Her story is hardly unique.

The horrendous violence that has become so common in South Africa is a terror that even cross-border violence or irrational violence against a religious minority doesn’t approach.

And the attacks are viewed by many experts as the signs of genocide, warning top government officials are inciting, if not participating directly in it.

The trigger for the latest murder and mayhem against whites is the land owned by descendants of Europeans who arrived generations ago and built up what is now becoming known as “Rainbow Nation.”

Among those ramping up the hatred is South African President Jacob Zuma, who sings a song about genocide and is now seeking to expropriate white-owned farms without even providing compensation.

The new South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has pledged to 'expropriate white-owned land without compensation', causing panic among the country's farmers. Will it plunge the country into Zimbwean-style chaos?

In recent months, many Americans have been surprised to learn that the U.S. has an extensive military presence in Africa. An intelligence snafu over fitness tracker data produced by U.S. soldiers using Fitbits and other devices while running laps provided a clear snapshot of their deployments. In November 2017, fitness database Strava produced a Global Heatmap showing popular exercise routes as glowing yellow streaks. The streaks revealed loops around airstrips in remote areas across sub-Saharan Africa that are the undeniable traces of U.S. or European troops staying in shape.

According to secret South African documents, Mr Peres, then Israel's defence minister, responded to a request in 1975 from the white minority government for Jericho Missiles by offering to fit them "in three different sizes", The Guardian reported.

The "three sizes" refer to conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons according to Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the American academic who uncovered a series of classified memos detailing South Africa's clandestine nuclear negotiations with Israel.

The claims appear to offer the first documentary corroboration of a nuclear relationship long suspected but never proved.

When U.S. troops were ambushed in Niger last October, the widespread reaction was surprise: The U.S. has military forces in Niger? What are they doing there?

Pentagon Cites Multiple Missteps That Led To Ambush Of U.S. Troops In Niger
Yet in many ways, the Niger operation typifies U.S. military missions underway in roughly 20 African countries, mostly in the northern half of the continent. The missions tend to be small, they are carried out largely below the radar, and most are focused on a specific aim: rolling back Islamist extremism.

When U.S. troops were ambushed in Niger last October, the widespread reaction was surprise: The U.S. has military forces in Niger? What are they doing there?

Yet in many ways, the Niger operation typifies U.S. military missions underway in roughly 20 African countries, mostly in the northern half of the continent. The missions tend to be small, they are carried out largely below the radar, and most are focused on a specific aim: rolling back Islamist extremism.

In almost all of the missions, the Americans are there to advise, assist and train African militaries — and not to take part in combat. Still, those supporting roles can often take U.S. forces into the field with their African partners, as was the case in Niger.

Heavy rain and floods affecting Kenya since March 2018 have displaced more than 211 000 people, killed at least 72 and injured 33 across the country. The Kenya Meteorological Department has warned that heavy rains and thunderstorms are expected to continue? and called on Kenyans to be prepared for flooding, as water levels have already surpassed the usual season’s average.?

According to the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), the most affected counties are Turkana, Tana River, Garissa, Isiolo, Kisumu, Taita, Mandera, Wajir, Marsabit, West Pokot, Samburu and Narok.

Interior minister for North African country announces capture of 'international spy ring' comprised of 7 Africans, proving Mossad attempts to undermine state security; head of group sentences to death, remaining defendants to prison terms.

If you thought America’s overseas wars had reached their limit - think again.

The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is building a new $110 million drone base in Niger, adding to its existing footprint of more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

On Monday, the AP detailed in a report that the U.S. Air Force is constructing a base for weaponized drones, the newest front in America’s expanding foreign wars “against the growing extremist threat in Africa’s vast Sahel region.”

China’s plans to build high-speed rail connecting Kunming in its Yunnan province with the rest of Southeast Asia are already underway. In the landlocked nation of Laos, tunnels and bridges are already under construction.

The United States has, in general, condemned China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) sweeping infrastructure programme, with US and European policy circles accusing Beijing of what they call “debt trap diplomacy.”

Quartz in an article titled, “Eight countries in danger of falling into China’s “debt trap”,” would claim:

Beijing “encourages dependency using opaque contracts, predatory loan practices, and corrupt deals that mire nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty, denying them their long-term, self-sustaining growth,” said US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on March 6. “Chinese investment does have the potential to address Africa’s infrastructure gap, but its approach has led to mounting debt and few, if any, jobs in most countries,” he added.

Sudan invites Russian companies to participate in oil and gas projects on the territory of the country, Abdel Zahir Mohamed, the adviser to the Sudanese petroleum and gas minister, told Sputnik on Monday.

"In the fields of drilling and oil production there are some sites. These sites have been offered to Russian companies so that they can run these sites and invest in them. These sites do not produce [oil] but they are located close to the main pipelines… There are also [oil] producing sites, they are wholly owned by the state or are occupied by several foreign companies, the Russian companies may also work there and help to increase these companies' production," Abdel Zahir said.

Say hello to Agadez:

Agadez is 4,000 miles from Aghanistan, where the Global War on Terrorism began. It’s 2,500 miles from Iraq, our next destination in the war. It’s 2,000 miles from Syria and 1,500 miles from Benghazi. This is where we’re building a $110 million drone base that will host nearly a thousand American troops, double the number of a few years ago. Here is Eric Schmitt:

Taken together, these parallel missions reflect a largely undeclared American military buildup outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, often with murky authorities and little public attention, unfolding in remote places like Yemen, Somalia and, increasingly, West Africa.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are reportedly recruiting thousands of African mercenaries to serve in their military adventurism overseas, including the bloody war on Yemen.

Saudi sources told the al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper that the kingdom is likely using Chadian mercenaries in its operations abroad.

They said the speculation had gained more credence after Chad’s President Idriss Déby traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier in the month to observe the Joint [Persian] Gulf Shield-1 military drills in the eastern Saudi city of Jubail.

The kingdom has signed secret agreements with N’Djamena, enabling its enlistment of thousands of Chadian mercenaries, according to the sources.

It’s one of the most unbelievable energy stories of the year.

A Chinese oil company was sitting on what might be a major oil discovery - a 182-million-barrel probable reserve, with great potential to grow.

They spent hundreds of millions of dollars and sunk 13 wells, shot or acquired 6,700 km of 2D seismic, and shot over 1,000 km of 3D seismic. Then - thanks to a weird quirk of Sudanese geology - they gave away the entire African mother lode for free.

They literally abandoned their whole investment in the Al-Rawat Basin.

Now, a tiny Canadian explorer - Stamper Oil & Gas (TSX.V: STMP; OTC: STMGF) - stands to reap a petroleum opportunity unlike anything we’ve seen in years.

And, they’re doing it with an energy industry legend - the one man with a nearly perfect 40-year record of striking oil in the tricky rock of Sudan.

The Israeli ambassador in Ghana went into an abusive meltdown in a radio interview about Israel’s refusal to allow a prominent Ghanaian lawmaker to enter the occupied West Bank.

Ras Mubarak had been trying to travel to Ramallah from Jordan on Wednesday for a conference about Jerusalem organized by the Palestinian Authority.

Mubarak was elected to the West African nation’s parliament in 2016, the year his party, the National Democratic Congress, lost power and went into opposition.

He was among more than 60 participants from countries including India, Bosnia, Sri Lanka and Australia who were denied entry by Israeli occupation authorities.

Ynet learns that one month before Netanyahu accepted UN plan intended to resolve migrant crisis, before abandoning it and yet again pledging to deport thousands of Sudanese and Eritreans, Israel already completed at least part of the quid pro quo deal with an African 'third country' for its expulsion plan.

The fortunes of the African refugee community targeted by the Israeli government for deportation have swung wildly in recent days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu first announced a United Nations-backed deal to resettle some of them in the West, but then quickly retracted the plan after right-wing Israelis complained that the deal was too generous to asylum seekers.

“I listened closely to many comments about the agreement. As a result, after reevaluating the advantages and disadvantages, I decided to cancel the deal,” Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page.

“Despite the growing legal and international limitations, we will continue to act with determination to exhaust all possibilities at our disposal to remove the infiltrators,” he added.

US military operations in Africa continue to expand, with Africom airstrikes being carried out increasingly frequently in remote parts of countries like Somalia, killing alleged militants. The latest came Thursday, in southern Somalia.

Just outside the town of Jilib, Africom is reporting a US strike destroyed a vehicle, killing three within. As always, they claimed everyone killed was an al-Shabaab militant, and that no civilians were harmed.

Thousands of Ghanaians demonstrated in the capital of Accra on March 28 against a defense agreement with the United States in which Washington would inject $20 million into the country’s military and grant the US “unimpeded” access to military facilities. Locals see the deal as an affront to their sovereignty.

The African free trade zone aims to create a single market for goods and services in Africa. By 2030, the size of the market should be 1.7 billion people, the volume of consumer and business expenses will be $ 6.7 billion if by that time all African countries join the free trade zone; 10 countries, including Nigeria, have not yet signed an agreement.

The goal is to create a single continental market for goods and services with the possibility of free movement of entrepreneurs and investments.

A large crack, spanning several kilometers, made a sudden appearance recently in south-western Kenya. The tear, which is continuing to grow, is evidence to scientists that the continent is “splitting in two.”

The huge crack caused part of the Nairobi-Narok highway to collapse recently and was accompanied by seismic activity in the area. The East African Rift Valley stretches over 3,000 kilometers from the Gulf of Aden in the north towards Zimbabwe in the south, splitting the African plate into two unequal parts: the Somali and Nubian plates. Activity along the eastern branch of the rift valley, running along Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, became evident when the large crack suddenly appeared in south-western Kenya.

Rallying behind the slogan of "Ghana First," thousands of people in the West African nation protested a new defense cooperation deal with the United States, with many saying they worry the expanded military presence could harm their country's sovereignty.

This weekend, a report revealing that African women immigrating to Israel were subjected to mandatory contraceptive injections, effectively amounting to forced (if temporary) sterilization made global headlines.

Some 130,000 Ethiopians, most of them Jewish, live in Israel. The community experiences higher poverty and unemployment rates than the rest of the country's Jewish population. In the past decade, the birth rate among Ethiopian-Israelis has declined by at least 20 percent. Advocacy groups now claim this decline is the result of a birth control regimen forced upon Ethiopian immigrant women.

A Muslim journalist has slammed Australia as racist for wanting to rescue white South African farmers who he says 'aren't being persecuted'.

Tabish Talib, a senior producer and presenter with the Qatar-government owned Al Jazeera network, fronted a five-minute editorial video condemning Immigration Minister Peter Dutton.

Despite South Africa's parliament voting last month to seize the land of white farmers without compensation, the New York-based journalist claimed they weren't being targeted.

I just returned from South Africa and I can report that Palestine solidarity is alive and growing.

People have held more than 150 events across the country for Israeli Apartheid Week.

SOUTH Africa’s radical opposition leader says white farmers should leave for “racist” Australia, but insists “we are not killing them”.

A FIVE-YEAR-OLD boy was forced to watch as five men tied up and sexually assaulted his mother in the latest terrifying South Africa farm attack. Warning: Graphic

Welcome to South Africa! The country where you get stabbed in the neck, in broad daylight, in the middle of the supermarket, just for… fun… or something. And because you’re white.

News broke in Uganda recently regarding a vaccine program that was rolled out in 2015 regarding the Hepatitis vaccine that apparently has since been given to approximately 5 million people.

Recently, the Ugandan National Drug Authority (NDA) confiscated the use of the hepatitis vaccine due to discovering it was found to be ‘fake’. It was produced by the Serum Institute, a company based in India, that is Asia’s biggest vaccine producer and also the second largest vaccine producer in the world.

Hellen Ndagigye, who is the director of product safety at the NDA said they had found several privately owned medical facilities which had been using this ‘fake’ vaccine. These facilities included hospitals and pharmacies.

Hellen had received some information from a whistle blower and had an investigation carried out into the vaccine in question.

Violent attacks against South Africa's white farmers are on the rise, according to Paul Toohey, a reporter from Australia’s Daily Telegraph, who traveled to the country.

Last month, South Africa's parliament voted to allow white-owned land expropriation without compensation. That followed South Africa’s new President Cyril Ramaphosa’s pledge to return the lands owned by white farmers since the 1600s to the black citizens of the country. He claimed the land was “taken under colonialism and apartheid.”

“This is normal in South Africa to be attacked on a farm,” a 39-year old farmer Berdus Henrico told the reporter.

Berdus and his 51-year old partner Estelle Nieuwenhuys have been raided in the Limpopo province. The farmer has three bullet wounds - two through his shoulder and one through his face that came out the back of his neck.

The troubled African nation is once again in the spotlight following Australia’s Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s offer to fast-track humanitarian visas for South Africa’s persecuted white farmers.

The move sparked a furious response from the South African government which has demanded Mr Dutton retract the comments.

However, for South Africans who have lived through the violence or know people who have, Mr Dutton’s comments aren’t completely incorrect.

One woman living in South Africa, who didn’t want to be named out of fear of reprisals, told news.com.au she and her family were living in a constant state of fear.

The retiree said crime wasn’t limited just to white people or farming communities but accused the government of not doing enough to protect all South Africans.

“We are living in fear and are reluctant to go out at night and even during the day,” she told news.com.au.

“So basically you are housebound most of the time. This is a terrible way to live.”

Earlier this year, Valery Colong Nyiwung lost $10,000 in just three months — almost 10 times the annual per capita income of Cameroon. And it wasn’t from playing the ponies. The only bet the tech entrepreneur made seemed to have winning odds: co-founding ActivSpaces, one of Cameroon’s leading technology hubs and an enterprise — naturally — that’s heavily reliant on reliable internet service. Nyiwung’s bad luck was to establish his company in a West African country where the government “requests” that telecommunications companies shut down the internet whenever it wants to stifle political dissent in certain parts of the country.

Last week, the South African parliament voted to allow the seizure of land from white farmers without compensation. The motion was motivated primarily by the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) Party, Julius Malema.

During an EFF campaign speech Sunday, Malema cranked up the hate and hostilities toward South African whites, saying that his party had decided to remove the mayor of Port Elizabeth because he “is a white man.” He encouraged his followers to “go after the white man” and to cut “the throat of whiteness.”

The Trump administration has quietly decided once again to allow Americans to import the body parts of African elephants shot for sport, despite presidential tweets decrying the practice as a 'horror show.'

President Donald Trump personally intervened in November when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service first said it would lift an Obama-era ban on elephants imported from Zimbabwe and Zambia.

The agency contends that encouraging wealthy big-game hunters to kill the threatened species would help raise money for conservation programs.

The Pentagon’s investigation into the deadly Tongo Tongo ambush in Niger that left four US soldiers and five Nigerien allies dead has revealed some disturbing findings. Reportedly, the American strike team did not receive senior command approval to undertake the risky mission after which they were ambushed.

The report comes courtesy of Stars and Stripes, which spoke to anonymous US military officials. The officials noted that the report did not claim that the failure to seek command approval was a cause of the ambush.

A firebrand South African politician has vowed to unseat a white mayor after praising plans to hand land to black people.

Julius Malema, 37, who leads the country's Economic Freedom Fighters opposition party, said he wanted to 'remove' Nelson Mandela Bay mayor Athol Trollip specifically because he 'is a white man'.

He told a packed arena in Johannesburg that 'we are starting with this whiteness. We are cutting the throat of whiteness'.

During the speech Malema said he wanted to unseat the mayor - a member of the Democratic Alliance - and accused the political group of being a racist party that promotes the interests of whites.

But even with the rationing, Cape Town is still just weeks away from running out of water.

You’d think that would be at the top of the government’s list, given that their own idiotic policies caused this problem to begin with.

But no.

Social Justice has once again won the day over common sense. So they’re prioritizing the confiscation of white-owned land over critical water supply needs.

A few days ago, they took this a step further and actually passed a law authorizing the expropriation of land without compensation.