North and West Africa have seen intense U.S. military engagement over the last decade. America has, as The Intercept reported earlier this year, conducted approximately 550 drone strikes in Libya since 2011 — more than in Somalia, Yemen, or Pakistan. In July, Politico disclosed that for at least five years, Green Berets, Navy SEALs, and other commandos — operating under a little-understood budgetary authority known as Section 127e — have been involved in reconnaissance and “direct action” combat raids with local forces in Cameroon, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Tunisia. Between 2015 and 2017, there were also at least 10 previously unreported attacks on American troops in West Africa, the New York Times revealed in March. Last October, four U.S. troops were killed in an ISIS ambush in Niger. Two months later, Green Berets fighting alongside local forces in that same country reportedly killed 11 ISIS militants.

The advisory also warns military activities linked to the bloody conflict in Syria have been ramped across Iran's airspace.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington are running high following Donald Trump’s controversial decision to pull out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal re-introduce economic sanctions last month.

Flight Service Bureau, which provides safety information on airspace to airlines, said "without seeming alarmist", the deteriorating relationship between the US and Iran must be taken into account when planning flights in Iran's airspace.

South Africa's already high murder rate has increased by about seven per cent, prompting the country's police minister to compare the situation to a 'war zone.'

More than 20,300 people - some 57 every day - have been killed across the country in just 12 months, official statistics showed Tuesday.

Many murders were linked to gang violence in Western Cape province, whose capital is Cape Town.

For the first time ever, U.S. Marine Corps F-35Bs Joint Strike Fighters are on an operational deployment in the Gulf of Aden, bringing them the closest they've ever been to conflict zones in Iraq and Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. The stealthy jets and their pilots set to join thousands of other U.S. Navy sailors and Marines for a two-week training exercise while they're in the region, but there's still no indication they are headed for actual combat, at least not yet.

The seventh China-Africa summit was a diplomatic success for China. African countries can expect more cash injections.

South Africa slid into an official recession Tuesday, as second-quarter growth domestic product (GDP) figures showed a contraction of 0.7% — the second straight quarter of decline. First-quarter figures were revised down, from -2.2% to -2.6%.

The main culprit, according to South Africa’s Business Day, was a sharp contraction in the agricultural sector, which has been under political assault this year as the ruling African National Congress has pledged “expropriation without compensation.”

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), an open borders-backing NGO fronted by former Labour Foreign Secretary David Miliband has been accused of “hushing up” allegations of more than 30 crimes.

UK government ministers froze funds to the NGO, which is a major partner of globalist billionaire George Soros, “based on direct reporting of sexual harassment and fraud”, it was reported this week.

With nearly five and a half million pounds of taxpayer cash at stake, a team from the IRC was sent to look into claims made over the body’s behaviour in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

South African farmers subjected to land expropriation without compensation will still have to pay off their debts for property which has been seized by the state, according to a major bank.

In an email from Nedbank widely circulated on social media, now confirmed as genuine by Head of Group Media Relations Kedibonea Molopyane, according to The South African, farmers are warned that their debts will have to be paid in full even after their property is confiscated by the government.

We warned the Ugandan government that Ebola will enter in a certain region in the North East of Uganda under the disguise of so-called European proclamation that opposition armed forces will not allow WHO, UNHCR and Europe to interfere in the Ebola outbreak.

History of Ebola and Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic Virus
Scientists studying viral disease agents in the laboratory for biowarfare purposes and cure against it have become infected in Russia, United States, Crimea, Tajikistan, Philippines, Germany, Former Yugoslavia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, South Africa many decades ago.

A similar accident with Ebola had reportedly occurred at the US Army’s biodefense laboratory at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland, where the Ebola virus was invented, but the researcher involved didn’t acquire the disease. This incident is not listed on the CDC’s list of confirmed outbreaks, perhaps because the researcher didn’t develop antibodies.

Around 200,000 US troops are stationed in 177 countries throughout the world. Those forces utilize several hundred military installations. Africa is no exemption. On August 2, Maj. Gen. Roger L. Cloutier took command of US Army Africa, promising to “hit the ground running.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) approves of South Africa’s controversial land reform as long as the highly contentious process is “rules-based” and transparent, according to the fund’s representative in the country.

Montfort Mlachila, the IMF’s senior resident representative in South Africa, said that the regulation must not damage agricultural output and put at risk food supplies for the country’s citizens.

“We are in full support of the need to undertake land reforms in order to address the issues of inequality,” Mlachila said in an interview with Reuters.

The United Kingdom’s new move to sign trade deals with African countries was in line with London’s old policy to exploit and "rip off" the continent's resources, a political analyst says.

“The UK has always invested as it is abroad, but then you have to look at the nature of the investment,” Rodney Shakespeare, an author and political expert from London, told Press TV on Wednesday.

“Its purpose is to rip off the resources [of Africa] for the benefit of the local elites and (for) the United Kingdom,” he added.

Shakespeare said British Prime Minister Theresa May’s announcement during her South Africa trip that she wants the UK to become the largest investor in Africa from the developed world was a a repetition of an old propaganda line which seeks to plunder the wealth of nations under the title of foreign investment.

It was a disaster that left wildlife lovers around the globe appalled and baffled.

Eleven of Kenya's precious black rhinos were transferred to a new home in what was supposed to be a routine operation in a country fabled for its conservation.

So how did all of them end up dead?

The primary cause of death, an official report found, was due to toxic levels of salt in the water of their sanctuary.

But an AFP investigation has found that the problem was well known and deep concerns were ignored.

A U.S. DRONE BASE in a remote part of West Africa has garnered attention for its $100 million construction price tag. But according to new projections from the Air Force, its initial cost will soon be dwarfed by the price of operating the facility — about $30 million a year. By 2024, when the 10-year agreement for use of the base in Agadez, Niger, ends, its construction and operating costs will top a quarter-billion dollars — or around $280 million, to be more precise.

And that’s actually an undercount. The new projections from the Air Force do not include significant additional costs, such as salaries of the personnel stationed at the base or fuel for the aircraft flying out of Agadez. The facility, which is part of the expanded U.S. military footprint in Africa, is now the largest base-building effort ever undertaken by troops in the history of the U.S. Air Force, according to Richard Komurek, a spokesperson for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and Air Forces Africa.

While headlines were initially confusing, South Africa's controversial land confiscation reform, in which some white-owned land could be expropriated without compensation, is still going ahead through its constitutional change but authorities have confirmed that Zulu lands will not be impacted.

The following Bloomberg headline triggered buying in the rand...

*S. AFRICA EXPRORIATION BILL WITHDRAWN AMID CONSTITUTION REVIEW
While the market's kneejerk response has been positive, with the rand jumping on the news...

The Constitutional Court of South Africa recently ruled that 300,000 gun owners must turn in their firearms.

This judgement came in response to the North Gauteng High Court’s ruling in 2017 which said Section 24 and Section 28 of the Firearm’s Control Act were unconstitutional.

A report from The Citizen explains what Section 24 and Section 28 entail:

“Section 24 of the Act requires that any person who seeks to renew a licence must do so 90 days before its expiry date Section 28 stipulates that if a firearm licence has been cancelled‚ the firearm must be disposed of or forfeited to the state. A 60-day time frame was placed on its disposal, which was to be done through a dealer.”

Now that the High Court’s initial ruling has been overturned, gun owners who failed to renew their firearms licenses must hand in their firearms to the nearest police station, where authorities will then proceed to destroy them.

As South African President Ramaphosa's 'land reform' plans begin to confiscate white farmer-owned lands with no compensation, the rhetoric on both sides of the policy are beginning to signal little hope of avoiding direct inter-racial conflict, or another civil war.

Malthusian theory holds that depopulation (or zero population growth) is a necessity to control a species (namely humanity) that reproduces and consumes natural resources without limits. This is a “New Age” mantra adopted early on by Communists as far back as Marx and Lenin. The ball has been carried successively by Edward House and Woodrow Wilson, and further exacerbated by such “gems” as Kissinger, Bill Gates, Al Gore, and so forth. Much of the public and almost all of the youth (a recent poll taken showed young people prefer Socialism to Capitalism) have fallen for this mantra.

The “problem” for them is how to push it along quickly: war is one answer, and disease is another.

Earlier, UK Prime Minister Theresa May said that Britain would back South Africa's land reform program if it is implemented in accordance with the law.

South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), said on Tuesday that an expropriation bill passed by parliament in 2016 enabling the state to make compulsory purchases of land to redress racial disparities in land ownership had been withdrawn.

The expropriation bill was withdrawn so that the constitution could be amended in order to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation, the party said.

A bill allowing the South African government to seize private land without compensation has been withdrawn by the Portfolio Committee on Public Works pending further study, according to the ruling African National Congress.

In 2015, the ANC proposed a constitutional amendment allowing the government to seize and redistribute land without any compensation to its owners. The draft, which has not been adopted so far, evoked widespread international outrage and multiple media reports of alleged violence against white South African farmers, including murders.

The latest Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DNC) has claimed 67 lives, up from 55, according to Robert Redfield, director of the CDC. On Friday the WHO said that the virus has spread to an area of "high security risk," and that ongoing local conflicts have made finding and monitoring infected people extremely difficult.

He who believes he has a right to another man’s property ought to produce proof that he is its rightful owner.

“As the old legal adage goes, ‘Possession is nine-tenths of the law,’ as it is the best evidence in our uncertain world of legitimate title. The burden of proof rests squarely with the person attempting to alter and abolish present property titles.” (From “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South-Africa”.)

It is to this potent principle that democratic rule in South Africa has taken an axe - or, rather, an assegai.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has defended land reform plans that include property expropriation days after the US President Donald Trump questioned the policy.

“This is no land grab. Nor is it an assault on the private ownership of property,” Ramaphosa wrote in his column for the Financial Times. “The proposals will not erode property rights, but will instead ensure that the rights of all South Africans, and not just those who currently own land, are strengthened.”

The ruling African National Congress (ANC) party has proposed a constitutional amendment allowing the government to seize and redistribute land without any compensation to its owners. The draft, which has not been adopted so far, evoked widespread international outrage and multiple media reports of alleged violence against South African white farmers, including murders.

Former US envoy to Russia Michael McFaul said it was “weird” that RT was covering what he described as “threats” –in quotation marks– to white farmers in South Africa, retweeting a conspiracy linking RT’s coverage to Fox News.
South Africa summoned the US chargé d’affaires in Pretoria on Thursday, after US President Donald Trump tweeted his concern over reports that South African authorities were planning to seize land from white farmers without compensation. Trump credited Fox News’ Tucker Carlson for bringing up the issue.

On Thursday evening, Andrew S. Weiss, a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment’s Russia and Eurasia Program, channeled Captain Renault from Casablanca to declare his shock about RT “pushing a storyline that’s similar” to Carlson, pointing to a story about an Afrikaner family looking to relocate to Russia.

The Spanish government has—to all observers’ surprise—reactivated a 1992 agreement with Morocco and has deported all 116 African invaders who broke through the border fence this week, ending their attempt to enter Europe and parasite off white liberal largesse.

South Africa’s white farmers have been desperately trying to sell their lands at record pace ahead of planned government land seizures, according to a local farmer’s union. However, there are no buyers.

As Ryan Martinez writes for PlanertFreeWill.com, tensions among the country’s white farming community have been rising since the election of Cyril Ramaphosa who assumed office earlier this year and committed his African National Congress (ANC) to land expropriation.

“You shouldn’t own more than 25,000 acres of land. Therefore, if you own more it should be taken without compensation.”

“People who are privileged never give away privilege as a matter of a gift,” he continued. “And that is why we say, to give you the tools, revisit the constitution so that you have a legal tool to do it.”

South African authorities have reportedly started seizing white-owned land after negotiations on buying out the properties stalled. The first seizures are targeting game farms in the Northern province of Limpopo.
The government had tried to buy the lands owned by Akkerland Boerdery Ventures for one-tenth of the land’s value, reports City Press, a Johannesburg-based news outlet. The company, which has been running a 3200 hectare (32 square kilometers) game farm, reportedly asked for 200 million rand ($18.7 million) for the land while the government was ready to offer them just 20 million rand.

“Notice is hereby given that a terrain inspection will be held on the farms on April 5, 2018 at 10 a.m. in order to conduct an audit of the assets and a handover of the farm’s keys to the state,” reads the letter received by Akkerland Boerdery earlier this year.

Two farms in the Limpopo province in South Africa have become the first properties to be seized without any court process and in the past week, two more orders for final appropriation for other farms have been signed—the first wave of the promised land seizures in that country, the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper Rapport has revealed.

In a truly stunning report, Theresa May’s government appears to be backing the Soviet-style policy of “land expropriation without compensation” aimed at dispossessing South Africa’s white farmers.

Breitbart London has seen a letter written by Harriet Baldwin MP, Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), to Sir Paul Beresford MP, who enquired what the government’s stance on the policy was on behalf of a concerned constituent.

“The British government understands the need for land reform in South Africa”, Baldwin asserted, adding that they “welcomed” promises from President Cyril Ramaphosa that “the process of land [re]distribution would be orderly within South African laws” and be carried out “without negatively affecting economic growth, agricultural production and food security”.

SOUTH Africa's government has been accused of drawing up a list of almost 200 farms it allegedly wants to seize from white farmers.

Activists are concerned that Veolia, the company linked with the Flint, Michigan water crisis, is on the shortlist to manage two-thirds of water system in Lagos, Nigeria, where many children die from water-borne diseases.
"I feel Veolia is a snake, and they slithered over to Lagos to try to increase their profit margins," Nayyirah Shariff, director at Flint Rising activist group, told BuzzFeed News. "They have a history of poisoning black communities in the US, and they should not be poisoning the largest African city on the continent."

The campaigner said she was "shocked and extremely angry" when she found out that the French-owned water management company is among the three bidders for the Adiyan II project in the Nigerian capital, Lagos, which is the seventh largest city in the world.

It is no secret that South Africa’s current president is neither a fan of BRICS nor of Russia.

Ramaphosa’s predecessor Jacob Zuma had a warm relationship with Putin and in 2014 spent six days in Russia, to recover from an attempt to poison him in which Ramaphosa was implicated.

Putin only arrived in South Africa two hours before the BRICS leaders’ summit was due to start, at 09:00 on Thursday. He did not make a grand entrance at the Convention Centre in Sandton where the media was waiting either, but was scuttled through the backdoor, sources told FWM.

In May already, an unnamed official told the South African weekly, the Mail&Guardian, that the “issue” of South Africa’s relationship with Russia once Ramaphosa became president “was not managed properly”.

Activists in Tunisia are celebrating victory after dockworkers forced a cargo ship chartered by the Israeli shipping company Zim to abandon efforts to land at the port of Radès.

The Cornelius A, which had disappeared from maritime tracking websites early Wednesday, reappeared on Thursday.

On Thursday morning the vessel was north of the Algerian coast and heading away from Tunisia and towards Spain.

The German Development Minister’s proposal for what essentially amounts to a one-way EU-Africa free trade agreement is an awful idea that would trigger a massive outflow of transnational capital from the bloc, decimate its remaining middle class alongside its medium-sized economies, and accordingly provoke serious tensions between the newly impoverished European natives and the foreign migrants in their countries that they’ll have to more fiercely competing against for jobs.

A former French Prime Minister unveiled a detailed and very ambitious plan to form a Eurafrican Axis in the New Cold War as a means of “balancing” between East and West, but what he’s really calling for is a policy of ‘controlled’ ‘replacement migration’ coupled with refined neo-imperial political and economic models for making France the ‘missing’ African hegemon.

Dominique de Villepin, a career diplomat and France’s former Prime Minister from 2005-2007, unveiled a detailed and very ambitious plan to form a Eurafrican Axis while speaking at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) at the beginning of the week. His strategic proposal deserves to be examined in depth because of the overall significance that it holds in the context of the New Cold War, especially in regards to what he says are his larger motivations in suggesting it.

In recent months, Tunisia’s government and the powerful Tunisian worker union UGTT (Union générale tunisienne du travail) have negotiated an agreement that aims to improve the socio-economic situation of the country. On 13 July, they finally reached a deal, confirming the participation of this powerful organisation in the government, and launching negotiations for further policy goals. While this new modus operandi perpetuates the political influence of an unelected institution and slows down the reform process, it also offers realistic chances to allow inclusive growth.

Could mercenaries help to unwind the growing nexus of terrorism and criminality in Africa?

Notice that at a Human Rights Day rally in Mpumalanga, “human rights” is associated with “cutting the throat of whiteness.” This legitimizes the murder and dispossession of South African whites, who have been in the country longer than most blacks, as an exercise in human rights. The leader of the new black party that is challenging the one to which the former white government handed over power even has a song about shooting whites.

How many years before it happens in “diversity multi-cultural” Europe and America?

What is wrong with the Russians that they want to be associated with a West that is actively pursuing self-destruction? How long before it is not only white South Africans who are fleeing to Russia to save their lives?

Experts have said the country will face dire consequences if plans to alter the country’s constitution are pushed through.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa recently announced plans to allow white people’s land to be taken without compensation.

It will then be distributed to black people in a move Ramaphosa said will be good for the economy.

But critics worldwide have blasted the proposed change, saying it will spark riots as well as a deep economic recession.

The four captives are walked off to the side of the road. The younger woman is blindfolded. The other woman, seated on the ground, bows her head. “Yes, come here, little girl,” one of the men says to the child, pulling her shirt up and wrapping it around her face so she cannot see. The baby on the woman’s back is still looking around. And then the soldiers open fire with their assault rifles.

It is all filmed with remarkable calm, even the repeated shots to the head of the woman with the infant, and the infant as well, and then what appears to be a coup de grace for the little girl.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said the ruling African National Congress must initiate a parliamentary process to enshrine in the constitution a proposed amendment, paving the way for land grabs without compensation.
Ramaphosa, who vowed to return the lands owned by the white farmers since the 1600s to the country's black population after he assumed office in February this year, said on Tuesday that the ANC would introduce a constitutional amendment in parliament.

"The ANC will through the parliamentary process finalize the proposed amendment to the constitution that outlines more clearly the conditions under which expropriation of land without compensation can be effected," Ramaphosa, a prominent trade union leader and a close associate of Nelson Mandela, said in a televised address on Tuesday.

Spain is the new center of Europe's migrant crisis – and the conservative Popular Party leader Pablo Casado has blamed the socialist government after they accepted migrant rescue boat 'Aquarius,' which Italy had turned away.
The rescue boat, which carried 630 migrants, has been operated since February 2016 by SOS Mediterranee and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). Italy and Malta rejected the rescue boat in June, sparking a bitter row within the European Union, with the two countries demanding another member of the bloc take in the migrants on board. The ship ended up docking in Valencia; a move that Casado warned may be seen as a welcome sign for more arrivals.

The key take away from the BRICS summit in Johannesburg is that Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – important Global South players – strongly condemn unilateralism and protectionism.

The Johannesburg Declaration is unmistakable:

“We recognize that the multilateral trading system is facing unprecedented challenges. We underscore the importance of an open world economy.”

Closer examination of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech unlocks some poignant details.

Xi, crucially, emphasizes delving further into “our strategic partnership.” That implies increased BRICS and Beyond BRICS multilateral trade, investment and economic and financial connectivity.

And that also implies reaching to the next level;

“The ANC will through the parliamentary process finalize the proposed amendment to the constitution that outlines more clearly the conditions under which expropriation of land without compensation can be effected.”

Russian MPs have supported the idea of a bill offering social guarantees to reporters working in “hot spots” and on other dangerous missions after three Russian journalists were killed in the Central African Republic.
The head of the Lower House Committee for Information Policy and Communications, MP Leonid Levin (Fair Russia), said in comments with RIA Novosti that he personally expected the State Duma to pass the bill during the next parliamentary session.

“The sad incident is yet another reminder about the dangers and risks that are an inseparable part of mass media’s work. I expect that the bill on social guarantees to journalists who work in hot spots will be passed during the fall session,” RIA Novosti quoted the lawmaker as saying on Wednesday. He also expressed his condolences to friends and relatives of the killed journalists.

According to The Economist, polygamy is a key factor in civil wars and conflict. How convenient to blame it all on ‘the natives’ and their ‘backward’ customs, obscuring the role of the US and its allies in destabilizing regions.
In the 1930 Marx Brothers comedy ‘Animal Crackers’ Groucho Marx proposes to two women at the same time. One protests: “But that's bigamy!” Groucho replies: “Yes and that's big-a-me, too. It's big of all of us. Let's be big for a change. I'm sick of these conventional marriages!”

We know the Economist isn’t a great fan of Karl Marx, and it’s doubtful it would approve of Groucho much either – or at least the idea of him taking two wives. You see, it would probably lead to armed conflict.

Sylestine Awino rests on her faded brown couch, covering herself with a striped green shuka, a traditional Maasai fabric.

It's exactly past noon in a noisy neighbourhood at the heart of Kibera, Kenya's largest slum, and the 34-year-old has just finished her daily chores.

Directly opposite Awino, her two daughters are busy studying for an upcoming math exam.

The family will not have lunch today.

"We don't afford the luxury of having two consecutive meals," says Awino, a mother of three. "We took breakfast, meaning we will skip lunch and see if we can afford dinner".

The United States military's Africa Command has confirmed that its forces began deploying armed drones in Niger earlier this year.

The West African country's government granted American forces permission in November 2017 to arm their drones - but neither side had previously confirmed their deployment.

"In coordination with the Government of Niger, US Africa Command has armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft already in Niger to improve our combined ability to respond to threats and other security issues in the region. Armed ISR aircraft began flying in early 2018," Samantha Reho, spokeswoman for US Africa Command told The Associated Press on Monday.

The armed drones are currently deployed to Niger's Air Base 101 in the capital, Niamey. Reho said the effort was supported by Niger's government, describing it as part of the long-term strategic partnership between the two countries to counter armed groups in the region.

With Sri Lanka already looking to make an “oil for tea” trade deal to keep buying oil from Iran without violating an US prohibitions, Iranian officials continue to explore other barter solutions around the world as an alternative to US-dominated banking.

Hassam Khosrowjerdi, the president of the Iran-Africa Council for Economic Cooperation, suggested that trading Iranian oil directly for gold would be a potential solution that would avoid US banks. Major African gold producing nations would be likely customers.

Ghana was specifically mentioned in Iranian state media reports, noting that Ghana imports oil and other oil products from Iran, and is also the second biggest exporter of gold in all of Africa.

This would not only allow Iran to avoid international banks, but potentially could be a boost for their struggling currency. Iran has been importing gold recently already, according to reports, and a big increase in state-owned gold reserves would doubtless be good for the rial.

The United States military's Africa Command has confirmed that its forces began deploying armed drones in Niger earlier this year.

The West African country's government granted American forces permission in November 2017 to arm their drones - but neither side had previously confirmed their deployment.

"In coordination with the Government of Niger, US Africa Command has armed intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) aircraft already in Niger to improve our combined ability to respond to threats and other security issues in the region. Armed ISR aircraft began flying in early 2018," Samantha Reho, spokeswoman for US Africa Command told The Associated Press on Monday.