Wikipedia: "Our Standards of Neutrality"

"Art workers across so-called-Canada demanding cultural institutions divest from settler colonialism and genocide."

"[Stop Art Washing] is hosting a Wikipedia 101 session [with] hands-on editing [on October 22 at an undisclosed location]."

"[The purpose of the event is] to populate Wikipedia entries honouring martyred Palestinian artists and exposing the Canadian, Zionist backers of genocide."

 "Against attempts to erase Palestinian martyrs and conceal the Imperialist perpetrators of Israel’s genocide, this Wiki Edit-a-Thon remedies the narrative, towards Palestinian liberation."

Stop Art Washing 

Canadian group hosts Wikipedia “Edit-a-Thon” to honor Palestinian artists                     Roya News

 

Yet another anti-Zionist group in Canada to be heard from. Palestinians and their groupies just cannot think up schemes fast enough to satisfy their rapacious appetite for celebrating Palestinians' penchant for terrorism and their insalubrious joy at any opportunity to take credit for originating everything that the world ever depended upon to advance toward prosperity and comfort as authentic Palestinian initiatives. The one Palestinian initiative that few care to imitate or take possession of is their pathological drive to prove how courageous their death-cult is.

 

That even as they everlastingly boast of their victimhood to  elicit empathy from those who are quick to have their inner core of Jew-hate elevated to a 'just cause', they take pride in their devotion to the goal of killing Jews in Israel while in the West where they migrate to infiltrate socially, academically, as noble victims of Israeli colonialist-grabbing land claimed by Palestine as their own with no historical or ancestral attestation other than that which identifies it as the traditional heritage of Judea, they claim indigeneity is theirs, not that of Jews. 

 

What a novel idea, to use Wikipedia as a platform to celebrate the courage and honour inherent in suicide bombing by lone martyrs, or swarms of Palestinian terrorists streaming in their thousands into Israel from Gaza in an organized bedlam of savage bestiality to maim and to rape, burn entire families alive in their homes, raze farming villages, looting and shooting as they race toward the next unaware civilian enclave to destroy the lives of children, their mothers and grandparents. What courage that takes!

 

Instagram

 

 Now the advertising of a training session to prepare avid Jew-haters for the practical work of using and abusing Wikipedia's popular influence on the unwary and the trusting to present the nobility of mass murderers as victims of Islamophobic Jews whose mission in life is solely to destroy the presence of Palestinians in a fell swoop of genocide is underway. The plan to flood Wikipedia with these special entries to persuade the undecided that they too can aspire to raving lunacy on the platform is set to go.

 

Needless to say Wikipedia, considering itself a reliable purveyor of facts and statistics for the purpose of educating and informing, has policies in place for the platform not to be defiled as "a soapbox, a battleground, or a vehicle for propaganda". All content, it insists, must be composed and presented from a strictly neutral point of view; say for example, how the BBC and the CBC present news coverage of the Middle East; 'just the facts, Ma'am'... 

 

Coverage on Wikipedia of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the wake of the atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 "has surged significantly". Leading to "criticism from advocates on both sides for perceived bias". Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, was asked about an entry on the "Gaza genocide" described as an "ongoing, intentional and systematic destruction of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip carried out by Israel". 

 

His response was that "It needs to change. I think it's just terrible. It doesn't live up to our standards of neutrality, and I think it's very problematic." Earning the ire of the very 'unbiased' composers of the page in question. No fewer than 27 unbiased writers contributed to a Wikipedia page on the genocide case against Israel lodged by South Africa at the International Court of Justice. Researchers in their turn identified "patterns of anti-Israel bias among power-user editors". 

"Alarming patterns of bias [revealed] that can cascade through the digital information ecosystem, infecting everything from search engine results to academic citations to social media posts and even AI training data."

Research analysis  

Toronto Scoop

 

 

 

Uprising in Kazakhstan ... Control Re-Established in Kazakhstan

"For us it’s absolutely mandatory to make sure that Ukraine never, never, ever becomes a member of NATO. We do not trust the other side.”

"We need iron-clad, waterproof, bulletproof, legally binding guarantees. Not assurances, not safeguards, guarantees with all the words ‘shall, must’, everything that should be put in, ‘never ever becoming a member of NATO’. It’s a matter of Russia’s national security."

"Unfortunately we have a great disparity in our principled approaches to this. The US and Russia in some ways have opposite views on what needs to be done."

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov

 

"The events in Kazakhstan are not the first and not the last attempt at interfering in the internal affairs of our states from the outside."

Russian President Vladimir Putin 

"[The demonstrations were instigated by] terrorists [with foreign backing]."

"[I will reveal to the world] additional evidence [of a] terrorist aggression [against Kazakhstan.The demands of peaceful protesters have been] heard and met by the state [and the unrest that followed involved] groups of armed militants [whose goal was to overthrow the government]."

"What kind of talks can we hold with criminals and murderers?"

"We had to deal with armed and well-prepared bandits, local as well as foreign. More precisely, with terrorists. So we have to destroy them, this will be done soon."  

Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

 

"The situation has been stabilized in all regions of the country."

"A number of strategic facilities have been transferred under the protection of the united peacekeeping contingent of the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization] member states."

Presidential Office statement

A crane loads a military truck, which was burned during clashes onto the platform in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. (Vladimir Tretyakov/NUR.KZ via AP)

 Russian President Putin and Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev may be singing out of different hymnals. Both speak of 'terrorist' and foreign influence involvement in the recent violence taking place in Kazakhstan following peaceful protests against the government. But while Mr. Putin considers the United States and NATO's malign influence in the region the cause of unrest, Mr. Tokayev seems to feel otherwise pointing to the involvement of "mostly Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan," and some from Mideast nations.

 

Strange business this, apprehending an insurrection, accusing foreign elements and 'terrorists' of invading and leading an insurrection, yet taking draconian steps on the part of the government to arrest the nation's top security officials for what effectively amounts to treasonous activities. There's an echo here of Ukraine, with its still-ongoing conflict with ethnic Russian Ukrainians in the east of the country intent on taking possession of the Donbas as, effectively, Russian territory.

 

In essence, Russian troops invaded eastern Ukraine and fought alongside Russian-Ukrainians leading to Moscow taking possession of Ukrainian territory when it secured the Crimean Peninsula into Greater Russia, violating Ukraine's sovereign territory and scheming to take Mariupol to secure a more direct link for itself to Crimea. In this instance, the reverse has occurred where internal strife in Kazakhstan with citizens rising against a corrupt government turned violent and Russia intervened to save a post-Soviet ally's sovereignty.

 

A Central Asian country that, given its rich market of natural resources of oil and uranium bringing international investment of huge proportions basks in wealth, but little of it, unsurprisingly, given the autocratic nature of its government, trickles down to the population. The original protest arose when the price of fuel rose and the population smarted with indignation. The reversal that quickly followed to appease the anger fizzled, however, people's aggrieved state at their governance continued and when the military used violent tactics the protesters responded in kind.

An estimated 8,000 people have been detained and imprisoned after the torching of public buildings and reciprocal killings between protesters and security forces. President Tokayev had issued shoot-to-kill orders to end the violence caused by "bandits and terrorists". A controversial figure of 164 killed during the riots is being contested, caused by the clashes between protesters and security agents. President Tokayev invited Moscow to help tamp down the insurrection.

The Kremlin responded by calling into action the alliance of ex-Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Well, isn't that interesting, somewhat reminiscent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization whose creeping presence in eastern Europe which Vladimir Putin considers Russia's 'near abroad' is a matter of such consternation to Russia. Member states of the CSTO sent in their battalions and the violence subsided, wearing itself out in the presence of tanks, armaments and soldiers.

Now, Kazakhstan's president is anxious that the CSTO and Russia in particular vacate his country, thank you very much. Mr. Tokayev is prepared to settle his nation's own internal conflict and consolidate his authority, separating his rule from that of his corrupt predecessor who has now resigned all holdover posts and whose spokesperson said: "[He] and the head of state have always been 'on the same side of the barricades' ... In these difficult days they have demonstrated the monolithic nature of state power for all of us"; and that the population must rally around President Tokayev.

As a first order of business he awarded 'prizes' for bravery to the 16 police and army officers who were killed in the violence. "The counter-terrorist operation ... will be continued until the complete elimination of the terrorists", promised Deputy Defence Minister Sultan Gamaletdinov. According to Russian paratrooper commander Andrey Serdyukov, the CSTO force completed its deployment to Kazakhstan and is preparing to remain until complete stabilization is assured.

 

Haiti in Criminal Free-Fall

"Heavily armed bandits are no longer satisfied with current abuses, racketeering, threats and kidnappings for ransom."

"Now, criminals break into village homes at night, attack families and rape women."

Petition for police action

 

"The motive behind the surge in kidnapping for us is a financial one."

"The gangs need money to buy ammunition, to get weapons, to be able to function."

Center for Analysis and Research for Human Rights, Port-au-Prince

 

"It's madness -- you try to work for the country, to build something, provide jobs, and they do this to you."

"Where is this going? Where is this country going? It's a total mess."

42-year-old businessman 

A street vendor walks past tires set fire at a closed gas station as part of a protest against fuel shortages in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. (Joseph Odelyn/The Associated Press)

 

Safety and security of the person in Haiti? The country was always rife with criminality and corruption but now it is an absolute basket case of a crime wave that knows no boundaries. Violence is surging across the country from its capital to its rural areas where entire towns have been taken over by criminal gangs, and the residents have fled in terror. 

In Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, gangs are estimated to control about half of the city. One day alone this month saw gangs shoot at a school bus in the capital with five people injured, and another group of criminals hijacked a public bus. It made international news, however, when one of Haiti's most ambitiously notorious gangs kidnapped a group of 17 social workers with the Christian Aid Ministries.

 

This is a country economically bankrupt. International aid has always reached Haiti but the country's needs are now so great such aid is no longer even a stop-gap. There are shortages of everything; from fuel to basic foodstuffs and medical supplies. People are desperate for relief, many are on the brink of starvation, and violent protests against government inaction take place on the streets. There is no end in sight for the country's misery.

The businessman who was bewailing the state of lawlessness in his country had himself been kidnapped on his way home from work, in a bullet-proof car. In fear of reprisals, he used only his first name, Norman, in describing his kidnapping where he went unfed for the first four days of his captivity when children who appeared to him no older than ten, beat him with machete handles or gun butts.

Finally released after 12 days when $70,000 in ransom was offered, a considerable reduction from the $5 million the gang demanded to spare his life, he speaks of at least ten others he knows who were snatched by gangs demanding ransom be paid, among them his mother. The group associated with the Chrisian Aid Ministries were on a visit to an orphanage outside Port-au-Prince.

 

A protester threatens to throw stones at motorists trying to pass a road block set by anti-government demonstrators in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. (Odelyn Joseph/The Associated Press)

 

The shock assassination of President Jovenel Moise appeared to unleash the country's security as its politics disintegrated, seemingly leaving no one in charge. In Croix-des-Bouquets, a suburb of the capital, the criminal gang known as 400 Mawozo, the same gang that kidnapped the sixteen Americans and single Canadian in the latest bold escapade demanding ransom, controls the town.

Shopkeepers on the town's main street were kidnapped and ordered to sell their possessions to pay off the ransom demanded by 400 Mawozo. As soon as they were able, they all fled to safety elsewhere, but for the fact there is no 'elsewhere' where there is safety in the impoverished country where criminality is rampant and the population cowers in fear, unable to go to work, to send their children to school.

Gang members recruit local children, encouraging youths to beat people as part of their training, with the intention of producing a more violent generation of gang members. Churches have become frequent targets, priests kidnapped while addressing their congregations, even when a church ceremony is being streamed live on Facebook. 

Seven Catholic clergy, five Haitian, two French were among ten people kidnapped in Croix-des-Bouquets by the 400-Mawozo gang in April; eventually released once ransom was paid, but  unlikely to have been the $1 million demanded by the gang. The ransom demanded for the 17 kidnapped aid workers is $1 million for each to be released, a total of $17 million. One priest whose ransom had been paid, has never been released.

People protest for the release of kidnapped missionaries in Titanyen, north of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Tuesday. (Joseph Odelyn/The Associated Press)

Judge, Jury and Executioner

Joe Biden  Reuters

"I said, I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars. I said, you're not getting the billion, I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours."

"I looked at them and said: I'm leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money."

"Well, son of a bitch [laughing], he got fired."

Former U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden 

Social media platforms have become powerful influences well beyond their importance as a site where people can exchange opinions and post notices. They have taken the place of the office water cooler, the small-press regional newsletter, the daily gossip column, and hard news disseminator. And have become as influential as any big-city newspaper of reputation and renown or network television empire. They rate high in the public social gossip anchorage of casual society but they have also over the years challenged reputable news media as a venue for active, not passive participation in popularizing news content and populist political opinion.

They flex their media muscles as purveyors of news and influencers appealing to their large followings and channeling their own political sympathies for greatest effect, while punishing in subtle ways those using their platforms as a loudspeaker for their own, media-unapproved ideologies and preferences and political-right-spectrum allegiances. They convey 'fake' news without a blush. Plump for candidates for high political office whose politics they approve, and try to 'silence' views that run counter to their own. They don't take criticism with equanimity as deserved for veering off neutrality as a social media platform.

The Trump campaign posted a screenshot as evidence that Kayleigh McEnany's account was locked  Getty Images

 

The evidence is not hard to find; the detested President Donald Trump's off-hand and off-kilter remarks on Twitter come with reality-check warnings. The White House communications officer representing the president of the United States has been banned on Twitter. In the upcoming presidential election set for early November, the Democratic candidate is given preference, the Republican short shrift. Both Twitter and Facebook which take the giant's share of social media popularity and usage have taken it upon themselves to act as political mentors to their following, pointing them in the 'right' direction.

Even people within the international community-users of the platforms who detest Mr. Trump are -- or should be -- dumbfounded at the activist role embraced by the social media rulers of note. When the New York Post reported that "a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer" left at a repair shop and then forgotten, revealed that the son of the former vice-president of the United States and current Democratic candidate for president on November 3 had or was in pursuit of lucrative associations with Ukrainian and Chinese companies it immediately became news to be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter.

The use and abuse of political influence at the elite executive level for personal gain? Who cares? There's an election to be won. And not by the detestable Trump. That's the new news, evidence of corruption in the Biden family. Yes, it's old news, actually, but news never given the attention it deserved, as when Joe Biden gave his own proud public account when he used his status as vice-president to force the government of Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor on the threat of withholding a U.S. aid grant to Ukraine.

 

Joe Biden and son Hunter. According to the New York Post, emails from a recovered laptop indicate the younger Biden had or wash pursuing multiple lucrative arrangements with companies in Ukraine and China. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

 

The Ukraine's chief prosecutor was engaged in an anti-corruption campaign, a campaign that the current president of Ukraine promised during his own pre-election speeches. The recovered laptop held emails that validated what was already suspected; Hunter Biden introducing a top Burisma executive to his father. Burisma, Ukrainian energy company, was facing a criminal investigation, the very company that Hunter Biden was involved with, and was lucratively on contract with for his 'services'. In a talk to the Council on Foreign Relations, seen on YouTube, Joe Biden boasted of his successful threat to have the chief prosecutor fired and the investigation and his son's implication buried.

Any attempts by Facebook and Twitter users to post those findings courtesy of the New York Post were censored. But it wasn't only the social media giants who censored that new information on gross interference in other governments, on insider trading on family influence, on acquiring lucrative contracts in exchange for the inside-ear on U.S. policy and connections, but the greater U.S. news media for whom the revelations were an instant no-story yawn. Censorship, suppression of a kind normally associated with corrupt, totalitarian governments which 'own' national news media.

The accuracy of the New York Post's revelations has been validated. The story details, however, were acquired through the active intervention of Rudolph Guiliano who when he was mayor of New York during the 9/11 atrocity was a hugely respected public figure, but now that he represents Donald J. Trump, a caricature in many respects who has managed to lead the U.S. in unexpected ways but has never succeeded in rehabilitating himself other than as a crude egotist, cannot be viewed as a purveyor of truth and thus the story was fated to be entombed.

Perhaps the real issue is that it doesn't really matter beyond the arrogant impudence of the news media ignoring an important story to shield a favoured political candidate running for high office, because the public which should be alerted so they are fully apprised before casting their vote, really has a feeble choice in any event. Either the bombastic, clumsy current president returns for a second term in office, or a feeble-minded, lying, corrupt ex-vice-president is returned as president of the great United States of America.

"Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey — the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter — are being ordered to Capitol Hill to answer for their companies’ censorship of The Post’s expose on the Biden family’s foreign business dealings in Ukraine and China."

"'Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans on Thursday authorized subpoenas for the execs after accusing them of engaging in “suppression and/or censorship; of The Post’s reporting."

The New York Post

Twitter blocked users from posting links to the New York Post article critical of Joe Biden, an unprecedented step against a major publication. Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images

 

Brazil, a Sad Tale of Government Failure

"Every shift it was like that [a lack of ventilators forcing doctors to choose who might survive and whose condition was so dire they might not, to decide who would get the ventilator and the opportunity to survive COVID-19]."

"Sometimes, I would give them [seriously ill patients] sedatives just so that they didn't suffer. Eventually, they would pass away." 

"It's very difficult to accept things you know are wrong."

Dr.Pedro Archer, surgeon, municipal hospital, Rio de Janeiro

"It ended up creating a perfect storm for corruption."

"The pandemic allowed governments to spend significant resources very quickly while internal controls were relaxed due to the emergency."

Guilherme France, research director, Transparency International, Brazil

The Maracana campaign hospital is seen next to the Maracana stadium amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil September 16, 2020. REUTERS/Pilar Olivares

 

 

In Brazil the public health system was quickly flooded with COVID-19 patients, where people struggling to breathe were mentally divided into two groups; the health-impaired elderly who might not survive even if heroic efforts were made on their behalf, and the others who were though ill with the virus, in superior physical shape who were more likely to survive with the use of a ventilator. Ventilators in such short supply that doctors had little option but to quickly gauge such situations and come to a reluctant determination that some would live and others would not.

This is a scenario that played out elsewhere, not just in hard-hit Brazil. Italy and Spain too were overwhelmed by COVID cases, their hospitals stretched to their limits and beyond. Ventilators were in short supply everywhere. Even in Canada where the first wave of COVID cases failed to inundate hospitals as expected with more patients than they could care for, those very same scenarios of choosing who would survive played out beforehand as a potential scene that thankfully failed to materialize.

The deaths in Brazil are now viewed as entirely avoidable in theory though practise and reality made it otherwise. Federal and state prosecutors allege top officials in the country were more fixated on enriching themselves personally than planning for legitimate, trustworthy contracts to provide the badly needed health supplies and personal protection equipment, which resulted in the critical shortage of medical devices to face the emergency of respiratory distress due to COVID.

Top officials in the country saw $72.2 million ending up in their bank accounts thanks to corrupt schemes to steer inflated state contracts to allies in self-serving plots to defraud the country and deny it the equipment to leverage control over the virus and save Brazilian lives, according to prosecutors. Three contracts for a thousand ventilators, claim the prosecutors, were signed with the intention of favouring corrupt officials' bank accounts, and in the event most of the ventilators were never received.

In July, Rio state Health Secretary Edmar Santos was arrested, charged with corruption related to those contracts. Rio state Governor Wilson Witzel was suspended from office in August, reflecting concern he could interfere with the investigations, even while he is facing impeachment proceedings over alleged graft. Even as Latin America as a whole has been stunned by the ferocity of the pandemic, with 8.9 million cases by September 24, over 139,000 COVID deaths have been registered in Brazil alone.

Bolsonaro greets supporters upon arrival at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, on May 24, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

 

Over ten thousand people have perished from COVID-19 in the city of Rio itself; 18,000 in the state of Rio de Janeiro. Poverty and crowded urban conditions are partially to blame for the situation. And it has been anything but helpful that Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro has minimized the severity of the epidemic; infamously he has compared the disease to a common cold. Perhaps he feels differently now that he has the experience of recovering from the virus.

Brazilian prosecutors have zeroed in on what they describe as a series of interrelated criminal enterprises where contracts for masks, coronavirus tests and hand gel sanitizers have all been rigged, expressing the opportunistic corruption so irresistible to those in authority who feel they will be able to mask their corrupt plans for enriching themselves, robbing the population of the necessary safety equipment to see them safely through the pandemic.

 

As Latin American countries cope with the pandemic, investigators are probing whether funds to pay for protective equipment, medicine and other essentials are being misused © AFP via Getty Images

 

The state called for seven field hospitals to be built for the treatment of COVID-19 patients, where the state health ministry -- SES -- awarded contracts to the value of $151 million to a non-profit health group, IABAS was directed to construct the structures to open by the end of April. Of the seven, two were opened to date, one in May, the other June, long after the first surge of COVID-19. These contracts are seen to comprise a portion of a kickback racket managed by a local entrepreneur.

That man, Mario Peixoto, had been arrested in May on charges of defrauding the Rio state health system, federal court documents describing a complex scheme where Peixoto's associates arranged for bribes routed to government officials in the interests of securing public health contracts, among them for the field hospitals. IABAS had drafted its winning proposal prior to the SES having solicited offers. Four of the seven field hospitals were incomplete in early June when Rio state cancelled the contract with IABAS and took control of all project sites.

A little-known company, Arc Fontoura, was awarded a contract worth $12.3 million  for 400 ventilators to be delivered immediately, toward the end of March. The health ministry, according to state auditors, paid close to a 200 percent markup from the market price for the ventilators, only a small batch of which had been received from the company, leaving hospital workers complaining the machines that were delivered were lacking key components.

Two additional firms were awarded contracts to the value of $20.9 million to supply 300 ventilators each. According to court documents, these shady enterprises submitted their proposals less than an hour after SES opened the tender, though it hadn't been advertised beforehand; clearly indicating the companies had inside knowledge, according to prosecutors. Of the one thousand ventilators Rio's state health department had ordered, a mere 52 had been delivered, all from the original firm.

Leading the SES to cancel its contract with one of the companies reflecting "the company's inability to deliver" the ventilators. Dr.Archer, the surgeon in Rio de Janeiro, is beyond bitter over his experience leaving him helpless to give needed medical assistance to patients during the peak of the pandemic in April and May when as many as 30 of his patients were left waiting for the arrival of the machines. Many of those patients too unstable to move to hospitals elsewhere and who ended up dying.

"It gives you a feeling of impotence and anger to know that you could have saved more lives and helped more people if resources were not diverted, if supplies were not overpriced,."

"The pandemic comes to expose all these dirty politics and its schemes -- and we are the ones who are the frontline suffering from their actions."

Micaella Melo de Paula, respiratory physiotherapist in a Rio de Janeiro public hospital

Military police walk outside the official residence of Rio de Janeiro Gov. Wilson Witzel on May 26 after a raid by Federal Police as part of an investigation into the alleged embezzlement of public resources.

Zimbabwe, Where Hunger Stalks

"Inflation is a rampant problem and people said, 'We'd prefer the food."
"[This month the World Food Program plans a switch to a] fully in-kind food program [for the first time, to distribute monthly rations of grain, oil and nutritional supplements for children under five]."
"The weather forecasts are basically saying we're looking at a very dry growing season." 
Gerald Bourke, spokesman, southern Africa operations, World Food Program

"Life is hard, all things are expensive, there are no price controls and inflation just keeps getting worse."
"The money here is valueless now."
Benjamini Dunha, 57, plumber, Harare

"I cannot stress enough the urgency of the situation in Zimbabwe."
"[Sixty percent of the country's 14 million people are] food-insecure, living in a household that is unable to obtain enough food to meet basic needs."
Hilal Elver, United Nations human rights expert on food security

"We used to buy favourite foods, such as ice cream, cheese, bacon, sausages and ham, and prepare good breakfasts for our families."
"These things are a vision of the past now."
Moreblessing Nyambara, 35, Harare schoolteacher

"This is not just a food crisis. It is a wider, more complicated situation."
"People have to make choices: Do I seek H.I.V. treatment or food?"
Ursula Mueller, deputy emergency relief coordinator, United Nations

Children in Mafomoti village, in Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi district, wait while their mothers prepare their only meal of the day. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

This is former President-turned-tyrant Robert Mugabe's legacy for Zimbabwe. He began as an African independence hero, wresting his country from British colonial rule, transforming Rhodesia into the independent Republic of Zimbabwe. Freedom fighter to President, he then became a dictator, ruling like an African potentate. White farmers who had remained in Zimbabwe after independence, who considered themselves citizens, and whose farming expertise helped Zimbabwe become an African cornucopia of produce sufficient to feed its population and trade the surplus, became targets of land confiscation.

The 'freedom fighters' whose exploits as Mugabe entitled stalwarts were given title to confiscated farms. Black Zimbabweans who had worked on the white-owned farms found themselves out of work, and Mugabe's friends who then owned the farms were disinterested in farming, knew nothing about it and cared less, and the land went fallow. From that point on, food became scarce and was imported, inflation rose, the Zimbabwean currency became useless, unemployment soared.

The more recent droughts that have impaired crops and created even greater scarcity of food arrived at a time when Zimbabwe's new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, who had been an ally of Mugabe, was ostensibly attempting to turn the economy around, and bring stability back to the country, but he doesn't appear to be much less of a despot than his predecessor, and just as haplessly corrupt in his inept administration.

Food aid is desperately needed. The crisis is being attributed to southern Africa's climate crisis, with drought conditions ensuring fewer crops to harvest. With insufficient nutrition people's health declines and crime increases along with other "negative coping mechanisms", according to Ursula Mueller of the United Nations. Basic maladministration, corruption and gross incompetence come to the fore in Zimbabwe, just as it all does in all too many areas of the African Continent.

People line up, anxious and early for the opportunity to buy subsidized maize meal offered by the government-operated Grain Marketing Board depot. Affordable prices for many, enabling them to have food for their families. So hundreds of people patiently wait in line for hours until a guard exits the depot to announce that the supply is rotten, removing it for sale for the day. Frustratingly enraging; is the food going elsewhere, and the story being circulated untrue? They will never know.

Benjamin Dunha earns 700 Zimbabwe dollars monthly as a plumber, the equivalent of $38 at official exchange rates. His salary less than a year earlier was worth closer to $700.00. He has eight children to feed. He has been able to provide them with vegetables and sadza, a thick porridge of boiled maize meal. Now that porridge will be absent until he is able to find another source.

Hunger haunts Africa. In Zimbabwe, the annual inflation rate is the world's highest, at 300 percent, according to the International Monetary Fund. Buying any food beyond maize meal is considered a luxury. The World Food Program plans to double the number of aid recipients in Zimbabwe to four million, this year.

A woman pours food aid into a sack at a distribution point for Mafomoti primary school in Zimbabwe’s Mwenezi district. Photograph: Aaron Ufumeli/EPA

The Pride of Africa

"Nigeria is facing a demographic tidal wave."
"The long-term viability of the Nigerian economy -- and the state itself -- hinges on the government, religious, and traditional institutions developing a plan to address this challenge before it becomes impossible to remedy."
Matthew Page, associate fellow, Africa Programme, Royal Institute of International Affairs, Britain

"They used car engine belts and electrical cables to flog us."
"Teachers used to sexually harass us -- They tried to loosen my pants once but I fought them off and was beaten."
"They beat us everywhere in the house, even in the mosque. If you asked to speak with your family, they would shackle you."
"When the police raided the school the whole place was in pandemonium, we were so happy."
"What I want now is to return home. I'll be a good boy."
Suleiman, 15, former student, Kaduna Muslim institution

"The teachers and prefects raped boys. Those who were sexually molested were enticed with canned fish. Those of us who refused were caned."
"They used planks of wood to beat us."
Jibril, 17, former student, Kaduna Muslim institution

Television Continental / Reuters TV | People are pictured after being rescued from a building in the northern city of Kaduna, Nigeria, on September 26, 2019, in this grab from a video.

Islamic schools such as the one in Kaduna, Nigeria , called Almajiris, can be found commonly in the mostly Muslim north of Nigeria. According to Muslim Rights Concern, situated locally, an estimated ten million children are sent to attend these Islamic schools. Nigeria's Muslim President Muhammadu Buhari undertook an initiative to encourage school attendance with a program guaranteeing free school meals that 9.8 million children in 32 of Nigeria's 36 states can take advantage of.

Nigeria, with one of the strongest economies on the continent, and a huge population of 190 million people and a wealth of oil resources has been unable to provide adequate school places for its population. That gap is an invitation for unregulated institutions such as the Kaduna institute for religious studies to offer their services to indigent families. Primary education in Nigeria is free officially, but around 10.4 million Nigerian children, five years of age to 14 do not attend school.

The oil producing state of Nigeria whose finances are drained by endemic corruption, spends a mere 0.5 percent of gross domestic product on health for the population, while allocating 1.7 percent on education, representing the lowest worldwide among others, according to the International Monetary Fund. With so few options available to poor families, there are some parents quick to defend the Kaduna institution which charges 35,000 naira ($114) each term.

The pink two-storey building is a prison-like structure surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. It has an imposing gate, with more than a dozen rooms, with small windows for ventilation. Reuters

A tailor living next to the combined mosque/school institution attested that two of his children attending the schools had never been abused. "It was good for them, they became calm. They showed them how to read the Qur'an. I liked it." How to read the Qur'an, but since it is in Arabic, the meaning of the Arabic words which they were then able to quote as required, eluded them. "There is no problem in this school", Zainab, a mother of seven children at the institution where she cooked meals, insisted.

The institute's sign is also in Arabic, describing itself as "House of Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal for the Application of Islamic Teachings". Some parents paid the fees in the belief it was an Islamic school, describing it as a good institution, dismissing abuse allegations while others saw it as a correctional facility, although it was never formally registered as required, as either. The two-story house used as a religious school is emerging as a place of horror visited upon men and boys, some of whom had been there for years.

Those who managed to escape the prison that the large, complex building represented to return home, were frequently returned by their families with some parents claiming their wayward children required discipline. And then there were other parents who were too poor, they said, to look after all their children. At least 77 boys under 18 years of age were held in the house, the  youngest age five. According to the victims, there were frequent, regular beatings; children and men often shackled.

Some detainees were as young as five years old  Reuters

Food was served at 10 a.m. and 11 p.m. only, and in short supply. Suleiman was sent to the institution by his older brother as punishment for skipping school. He studied Arabic and Islam's holy book, the Qur'an. When he was ten years old, Jibril, now 17 was hung by his arms after attempting to escape. He was left hanging until bones in his shoulders broke. He struggles now, years later, to raise his arms. Directly after the incident he was sent home to recover, and when he had healed his family returned him to the school.

A complaint by an uncle who was denied access to his nephew (a regular feature at the school where family members were not permitted admittance) alerted police who dispatched about 40 officers to raid the building where they found several boys and men in chains. Shackled to broken power generators, some boys dragged them around after themselves, including to bed or to the bathroom. Police arrested seven men they found to be in charge of the place where starving children caught trying to steal food would be stripped and whipped. In total several hundred men and boys were kept prisoner there and subsequently freed.

Only several days later, a house in Lagos was raided by police, where ten young women who had been kidnapped were kept prisoner, raped, to became pregnant and bear children to be sold for profit. How many of such operations exist? When Boko Haram, the Islamist terrorist group, kidnapped hundreds of school girls as 'brides' for their fighters from a private all-girls' school, the country was aghast, and a search for the girls was undertaken by the Nigerian military. Much good came of it.

Four children were rescued along with 19 women

Some of the girls managed to escape, some with babies whom their villages refused to accept. The country, in a sectarian divide between Muslim and Christian, is destabilized by the presence of marauding terrorists who torch villages, slaughter the men and kidnap and rape women, and has created a dilemma for the government whose underfunded and demoralized military would rather flee from confrontation with Boko Haram and other terrorist groups claiming affinity with Islamic State than fight and destroy their ability to terrorize the population..

Dysfunction is so widespread and deep that the presence of international aid agencies and other humanitarian groups trying to provide medical care and food for poor Nigerians is viewed askance; they are are accused by the government of giving aid and succor, along with funding support to the very terrorist groups whose victims they are engaged in offering care to, now finding themselves shut down, declared foreign interventionists causing problems in the country.

The Sordid Saga of a Prime Minister's Culpability

"[Evidence] abundantly shows that Mr. Trudeau knowingly sought to influence Ms.Wilson-Raybould [former Attorney-General of Canada] both directly and through the actions of his agents."
"As prime minister, Mr. Trudeau was the only public office holder who, by virtue of his position, could clearly exert influence over Ms.Wilson-Raybould. The authority of the prime minister and his office was used to circumvent, undermine and ultimately attempt to discredit the decision of the director of public prosecutions as well as the authority of Ms. Wilson Raybould as the Crown's chief law officer."
"Because SNC-Lavalin overwhelmingly stood to benefit from Ms.Wilson-Raybould's intervention, I have no doubt that the result of Mr. Trudeau's influence would have furthered SNC-Lavalin's interests. The actions that sought to further these interests were improper since the actions were contrary to the constitutional principles of prosecutorial independence and the rule of law."
"During this examination, nine witnesses informed our office that they had information they believed to be relevant, but that could not be disclosed because, according to them, this information would reveal a [cabinet] confidence."
"Despite several weeks of discussions [with the Privy Council Office] the offices remained at an impasse over access to Cabinet confidences. Because of the decisions to deny our office further access to Cabinet confidences, witnesses were constrained in their ability to provide all evidence."
"I was, therefore, prevented from looking over the entire body of evidence to determine its relevance to my examination."
"[Despite these limitations, Mr. Trudeau] directly and through his senior officials, used various means to exert influence over Ms. Wilson-Raybould."
Public Sector Integrity Commissioner Mario Dion

Federal Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion released a report Wednesday about the SNC-Lavalin affair, finding Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was guilty of violating the Conflict of Interest Act. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Quebec-based SNC-Lavalin enjoys close relations with the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, a government that was determined to ensure that the global company charged with bribing Libyan government officials in 2001 and 2011 to the tune of $48 million, facing a ten-year ban on qualifying for federal contracts on conviction would avoid a trial. SNC-Lavalin lobbied hard and successfully to have the government introduce a process called remediation agreement to circumvent a criminal trial.

Despite which the public prosecutor deigned not to offer a remediation agreement to the company and to proceed with trial, a decision that then-Attorney General and Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould decided not to overturn. That decision led to a persistent campaign from the Prime Minister's Office, the prime minister himself, and senior government officials to urge her to change her mind. To all of which overtures she firmly insisted that hers was the final word given her official capacity and justice would be done.

Time and again the Attorney General indicated that she had no intention of instructing the prosecutorial services to reverse the decision to bring SNC-Lavalin to trial on criminal charges levied against it. And that the pressure being applied to her was illegal, and must be stopped. Time and again the aggravating overtures continued through various sources, all obviously under the imprimatur of the prime minister who himself informed her that nine thousand jobs in Montreal were at stake, and an election campaign was in the offing.

Finally, Ms. Wilson-Raybould was shuffled out of the position of Minister of Justice and Attorney General and given the down-graded ministry of Veterans Affairs. An unidentified source leaked all of this background information to the press and from then on a publicly-revealed drama of political malfeasance hit headlines, day after day with each new charge, contradiction and denial. Ms. Wilson-Raybould was frozen out of Cabinet, and one of her colleagues resigned her cabinet position with Treasury Board.


As the revealing controversy simmered on with occasional flare-ups amid accusations and denials, both women were dismissed from cabinet and caucus, to sit as independents, denied the opportunity to represent the Liberal Party in the forthcoming October election. An internal Parliamentary Committee investigation, half-hearted given the majority member makeup of Liberals commenced and was summarily shut down as more embarrassing revelations ensued. Leading to the Ethics Commissioner's own investigation.

With the conclusions he reached presented publicly yesterday; unequivocal and damning, representing the second time in two years that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been found guilty of ethics violations; the first time for accepting an expenses-paid exotic Christmas holiday family trip to an island luxury getaway as guest of the Aga Khan, a lobbyist and beneficiary of government funds for his projects, clearly breaking parliamentary ethics rules.

"Even though I disagree with some of his [Dion's] conclusions, I fully accept this report and take responsibility for everything that happened. Where I disagree with the commissioner, amongst others, is where he says, and takes a strong perspective, that any contact with the [attorney general] on this issue was improper."
"We recognize that the way this happened shouldn't have happened. I take responsibility for the mistakes that I made. I think we recognize that what was done over the past year, as we tried to both defend judicial independence, of prosecutorial independence, and stand up for Canadian jobs and workers, wasn't exactly the right way to do things. And we thank the ethics commissioner for the hard work that he did in highlighting that."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks about a watchdog's report that he breached ethics rules by trying to influence a corporate legal case regarding SNC-Lavalin, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, August 14, 2019.   Andrej Ivanov / Reuters

Egotistically, patronizingly dismissive. Predictably stylistic. The accusations like water off a duck's back. It is not his place to unabashedly contradict such a finding. He 'accepts' the ultimate responsibility, but will not accept that he did anything out of the ordinary, abridging parliamentary rules, much less the basic rules of decency in lying and plotting, deceiving and playing the innocent while slandering someone who will not bend to his edicts. The royal 'we' aside, this man is shameless.

While the commission investigation was underway, Trudeau's lawyers sent a missive to Mr. Dion describing Ms. Wilson-Raybould in the most unflattering terms as difficult to work with; inherent in the message that anything that might have gone awry was her fault for being inflexible, not his for being ethically compromised. His concern for workers in Montreal failed to manifest equally with the far greater number of workers who have lost employment in Alberta resulting from Mr. Trudeau's complex machinations and hypocritical stance on the environment versus petroleum extraction.

A situation where the Canadian extraction industry is hobbled, investment has been halted, pipeline construction has been refused, to transport oil from the west to the east coast of Canada. Instead Canada continues to import oil from Saudi Arabia for domestic use, despite that Canada's proven reserves match those of the Saudis. And Canadian oil exports mostly to the United States, for lack of efficient transport, sell at below market value, cheating Alberta and Canada out of needed revenue.

"Justin Trudeau is guilty again. What we have now is a clear picture [of] who Justin Trudeau truly is, and it's not who he promised he would be. He promised he would be accountable and ethical. Instead, time and again, he has used the power of his office to enrich himself, reward his friends and punish his critics", charged the Conservative leader of the opposition, Andrew Scheer. While the RCMP has stated it is "examining this matter carefully with all available information and will take appropriate actions as required".

"There should be sanctions because there aren't any currently (for misbehaving parliamentarians. One should not ignore the dissuasive effect that sanctions can have. They help to focus the mind. They also provide Canadians with the assurance that there are consequences for breaching the act that are more serious than what has been called 'naming and shaming'", Mr. Dion once said. But under current rules there is no degree of 'punishment' that can be meted out to Mr. Trudeau, other than at the ballot box in October, and it's debatable how many voters who will 'trust' this man irrespective of anything he has done and will continue to do, would vote against his return for a second four years of misrule.

He will, as usual, wrap himself in the condescending cloak of entitlement and continue to hoist the standard of progressivism and globalism in a country he considers to be an example of post-nationalism under his knowledgeably exalted realm.

Trudeau rejects call for apology in wake of Ethics Commissioner's findings. Globe and Mail

Aid to Palestinian Refugees

"They say, if you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. But if you teach someone to fish, they can learn to feed themselves for a lifetime. And so is the quandary of the United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) – an agency that was specifically designed to keep Palestinians refugees."
"It’s the only UN agency specifically set up in 1949 and internationally funded for a designated group of people – to keep them under refugee status for eternity or as long as Israel exists. Since the Second World War, millions of refugees have successfully resettled around the world, including over 860,000 Jews fleeing Arab countries, but UNRWA has kept Palestinians reliant on aid and as pawns in the Middle East conflict."
Avi Benlolo, President and CEO of Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies 

Palestinian children attend a class at the UNRWA elementary school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, in April 2013. (AP/Hatem Moussa/File)

"...Dujarric [UN spokesman] said Guterres [UN Secretary General] considers UNRWA’s work 'essential to Palestinian refugees' and calls on U.N. member nations and others to continue supporting the agency’s 'crucial work'."
"Guterres told reporters later that he has been 'acting quite significantly to make sure that we strengthen UNRWA and UNRWA’s capacity to deliver'."
"He said he has been appealing to all countries to support UNRWA, stressing that 'we should distinguish what are the revelations made, or accusations made, in relation to members of the management of UNRWA from the needs to preserve UNRWA, to support UNRWA, and to make UNRWA effective'."
"Asked if Krahenbuhl should resign, the secretary-general said he supports 'due process' and any action he may take will be based on the results of the investigation."
Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press

A Palestinian woman stands outside a closed school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), during a strike by the agency's employees union to protest against job cuts, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip October 2, 2018. (photo credit: IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA / REUTERS)

"If the claims are correct, then that is totally unacceptable."
"In anticipation of the independent investigation, we are going to stop our further payments [following the step taken by the Netherlands and Switzerland]."
"We will take a critical look at the report ... It is not because you stand up for a good cause that you can do whatever you want."
Minister of Development Alexander De Croo, Belgium

"[The organisation] regrets [the decision by Switzerland and the Netherlands."
"There is an ongoing investigation concerning UNRWA, and nothing that is being disseminated or discussed are findings of the investigation, only allegations and rumors."
"[The public should] wait for the actual conclusions of the investigation." [Donors should] keep their funding in place [for the Palestinian refugees]."
UNRWA spokesperson Tamara Alrifai

But why? Why should the international community continue to fund a vastly outdated United Nations arm whose purpose is to perpetuate ad infinitum the refugee status of people who fled a geography 70 years ago, and whose succeeding generations have swelled the refugee count by millions in an interminable choreography of victimhood? Where 'refugee' status is maintained as a deliberate political, religious statement of non-acceptance of the presence of a religious-ethnic group reclaiming their heritage geography.

The Commissioner of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has been revealed to have utterly corrupted an already-corrupted entity whose theoretical purpose is to provide support to Palestinian refugees, in the provision of food, shelter, education, health care and any other recognized necessity of life. He ruled UNRWA like an entitled despot, engaged in sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation, discrimination and overall abuse of authority.

This, aside from the culture of supported anti-Semitism within the structure and sentiments of the UN agency that was a great employer of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, among those employees being members of Hamas, the terrorist group whose sole function is reflected in their mandate's guiding principle, as the destruction of Israel. UNRWA has acted as a self-sustaining bureaucracy, a fiefdom answerable to the whims of its executives. Its hostility to Israel has always been recognized.

UNRWA, in representing an institution that by definition is meant to avoid politics and in a spirit of global neutrality seeks to guide its nation-communities toward peace, reconciliation, opportunity, equality and fairness to all, fails to reflect that imperative. An internal United Nations report revealed allegations that UNRWA Commissioner Krahenbuhl fostered all manner of operational irregularities in the obvious belief that no criticism would ever come his way, as an inviolable arbitrator of 'justice' for the Palestinians.

Throughout UNRWA schools for Palestinian children educational curriculum is rife with anti-Semitic tropes. UNRWA has always acted with total impunity, its decisions going unquestioned, its obvious tilt accepted, and despite its staff openly engaging in anti-Semitic slander, and the UNRWA authority going so far as to support Hamas in its defiance of condemnations against its assaults upon Israeli civilians, even found during conflict with the IDF to accede to weapons storage in UNRWA schools, it is left unscathed by such revelations.

That it is the United Nations itself looking into UNRWA affairs, perhaps in an effort to quell increasing complaints and reports from former UNRWA officials, bodes ill for the quality of the investigation and its eventual findings. That the UN report had been 'leaked' to AFP and Al-Jazeera, two news organizations particularly known for their virulent anti-Israel bias should come under close scrutiny.

The Netherlands and Switzerland also decided earlier this week to suspend their contributions [File: Mohammed Ballas/The Associated Press]