Libyan Troops Go Wild in England

“What a stupid Country and people we have become. How can you expect people to follow our law and customs when we turn every corner of our own Country into something resembing the middle East. If we worried about our own people as much as we do the rest of the World we would be so much better off. Sending them home? Bet the Human Rights Lawyers are queuing up outside to help them stay here.”

They were supposed to be the ‘new’ Libyan army. Instead they allegedly went crazy in the streets of Cambridge, assaulting strangers and brutally raping one young man.

LONDON, England — The mantra that we need to train the forces of friendly governments and, for that matter, rebel groups, may have become a staple of every 21st century Western intervention in the Middle East, but sometimes things just go wrong. Really wrong.

A new generation of the Libyan army was supposed to be trained in the West as part of international efforts to rebuild the country after the ouster of Muammar Gaddafi. Hand-picked recruits were invited to rural England for basic infantry and junior command training.

On Tuesday, however, the British Ministry of Defense announced that all 300 trainees would be sent home early after a string of sexual assaults were perpetrated against the residents of Cambridgeshire, culminating in the alleged gang rape of a young man.

Britain had pledged to train 2,000 Libyan recruits in total, but that commitment is now under review.

Libyan Army cadets stationed at Bassingbourn barracks are alleged to have left the military camp on raids into the nearby university town of Cambridge, where a spate of sexual attacks were reported on the cobbled streets around the ancient college buildings.

Two of the recruits have admitted to two sexual assaults and a bicycle theft in Market Square right at the center of the old town. They also pleaded guilty to threatening a police office. Another cadet, aged 18, has been charged with three sexual assaults.

Continue reading…

• Inside a village under siege: How one of the most peaceful corners of England was turned into a state of anarchy by Libyan cadets accused of rape and violence… that left residents in constant fear

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A Leap of Faith! Ethiopia’s ‘Church in The Sky’ is Perched on a 2,500ft Cliff… With a Wall of Rock Devotees Must Climb Barefoot

• Abuna Yemata Guh has been on the clifftop on Northern Ethiopia since 5th century AD
• To visit requires a six-metre climb up sheer wall of rock with no ropes and crossing narrow ledges with 200m drops
• Lonely Planet Traveler features the church in a new ‘bookazine’ of the most inspiring destinations

It would certainly be a test of even the most faithful’s devotion.

At 2,500 feet, Ethiopa’s ‘church in the sky’ is arguably the most inaccessible place of worship on earth, perched on top of a vertical spire of rock, with sheer, 650 feet drops on all sides.

To reach the extraordinary church on a clifftop in Tigray, one must scale a sheer 19 feet-high wall of rock without any climbing ropes or harnesses, inching along narrow ledges and crossing a rickety makeshift bridge.

And people are willing to risk the ascent: Families have brought their newborn babies up here to be baptised, and corpses have been carried up to be buried on the mountain.

It is said that in 5th century AD Egyptian priest Father Yemata walked to Ethiopia, climbed the mountains and quarried the church out of the rock.

‘Father Yemata, it seems, liked a dose of extreme sports with his divinity,’ writes Lonely Planet Traveller. The magazine features the church, Abuna Yemata Guh, in its new bookazine collating the best and most inspiring destinations visited by the publication.

Abuna Yemata Guh has survived for 15 centuries, and in that time ‘nobody has fallen’ on the way up, according to the current priest Kes Haile Silassie.

It is not known what motivated Father Yemata to establish his church here. Theories suggest that he simply wished to pray alone in the clouds, while some say he needed to escape raiders.

Photographer Philip Lee Harvey made the astonishing journey to Abuna Yemata Guh in summer 2014.

Despite coming prepared with specialty rock-climbing footwear, Harvey’s guide tells him the ascent is best made barefoot.

‘It’s easily the most inaccessible place I’ve ever been asked to photograph,’ the photographer says. ‘It was easier getting to Antarctica.’

‘It’s the most extraordinary place I’ve ever been.’

Inside, frescoes on the roof and walls depict angels and apostles, while candle wax puddles on the floor.

Some of the priests at the church have not been down the mountain in 30 or 40 years.

Lonely Planet reporter Oliver Smith tells of his own experience climbing to the church in the sky in the bookazine. ‘I begin the walk up to Yemata Guh, and views of vast, Old Testament landscapes unfurl to the horizon.

‘Cloud shadows shift across the farmland, and shepherds guide flocks over the stony soil,’ he writes.

‘The adrenaline rush of the climb makes stepping inside the church all the more sublime, your pulse slowing and eyes adjusting to the darkness, watching angels and archangels emerging from the shadows.

‘It is a place of the utmost sanctity and tranquillity. That is, but for one small consideration – taking just three paces outside that same timber door means certain death.’

Ethiopia is home to some of the world’s oldest strands of Christianity – a tradition that traces its origins to the time of the Old Testament.

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Behind the Mask of Altruism: Monsanto and The Gates Foundation in Africa

Since 2006, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has funded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) to the tune of almost $420 million. Activists from Zimbabwe,Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda, and Ethiopia recently attended the US-Africa Food Sovereignty Strategy Summit in Seattle to argue that the Foundation’s strategy for agriculture in Africa is a flawed attempt to impose industrial agriculture at the expense of more ecologically sound approaches.

Daniel Maingi works with small farmers in Kenya and belongs to the organization Growth Partners for Africa. The Seattle Times reported him as saying that while the goal of helping African farmers is laudable, the ‘green revolution’ approach is based on Western-style agriculture, with its reliance on fertilizer, weed killers and single crops, such as corn [1].

Maingi was born on a farm in eastern Kenya and studied agriculture from a young age. He remembers a time when his family would grow and eat a diversity of crops, such as mung beans, green grams, pigeon peas, and a variety of fruits now considered ‘wild’.

The Seattle Globalist reported him as saying:

“In the morning, you make porridge from maize and send the kids to school. For lunch, boiled maize and a few green beans. In the evening, ugali, [a staple dough-like maize dish, served with meat]… [today] it’s a monoculture diet, being driven by the food system – it’s an injustice.” [2]

As much of Africa is so dry, it’s not suited for thirsty crops, and heavy use of fertilizer kills worms and microbes important for soil health. Maingi argued that the model of farming in the West is not appropriate for farming in most ofAfrica and that the West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology.

Growth Partners Africa works with farmers to enrich the soil with manure and other organic material, to use less water and to grow a variety of crops, including some that would be considered weeds on an industrial farm. For Maingi, food sovereignty in Africa means reverting back to a way of farming and eating that pre-dates major investment from the West.

Mariam Mayet of the African Centre for Biosafety in South Africa says that many countries are subsidizing farmers to buy fertilizer as part of the chemical-industrial model of agriculture, but that takes money away from public crop-breeding programmes that provide improved seeds to farmers at low cost.

Seattle Times quoted her:

“It’s a system designed to benefit agribusinesses and not small-scale farmers.”

She added that so many institutions, from African governments to the World Bank, have ‘embraced’ the ‘green revolution’ that alternative farming methods are getting short shrift.

Elizabeth Mpofu, of La Via Campesina, grows a variety of crops in Zimbabwe. During a recent drought, neighbours who relied on chemical fertilizer lost most of their crops. She reaped a bounty of sorghum, corn, and millet using what are called agro-ecological methods: natural pest control, organic fertilizer, and locally adapted crops.

Anna Goren of The Seattle Globalist reported that panelists at the Summit discussed the loss of traditional diets and ways of life and were also concerned about the increased reliance on expensive inputs and the dramatic drop in price of crops. This has resulted in poverty for the small farmer.

Goren quoted Daniel Maingi:

“What the World Bank has done, the International Monetary fund, what AGRA and Bill Gates are doing, it’s actually pretty wrong. The farmer himself should not be starving”.

He added that what AGRA is doing is “out of sync with the natural process” by bringing in imported seeds, which are not adapted to the land and require excessive fertilizer and pesticides.

Maingi has every right to be concerned. While small farms produce most of the world’s food, recent reports show they face being displaced from their land and are experiencing unnecessary hardship [3,4].

AGRA is part of a global trend that is being driven by big agritech that seeks to eradicate the small farmer and undermine local economies and food sovereignty by subjecting countries to the vagaries of rigged global markets [5,6].

Giant agritech corporations like Monsanto with their patented seeds and associated chemical inputs are working to ensure a shift away from diversified agriculture that guarantees balanced local food production, the protection of people’s livelihoods and environmental sustainability.

Small farmers are being displaced and are struggling to preserve their indigenous seeds and traditional knowledge of farming systems. Agritech corporations are being allowed to shape government policy by being granted a strategic role in trade negotiations [7].

They are increasingly setting the policy/knowledge framework by being allowed to fund and determine the nature of research carried out in public universities and institutes [8]. They continue to propagate the myth that they have the answer to global hunger and poverty, despite evidence that they do not [9,10].

The Gates Foundation, Monsanto and Western governments are placing African agriculture it in the hands of big agritech for private profit and strategic control under the pretext of helping the poor [11].

Of course there is another major concern pertaining to the motives of the Gates Foundation and Monsanto in Africa and elsewhere; that of depopulation via vaccines and/or genetically modified organisms [12,13].

These two entities are not just linked together through their involvement in AGRA. Bill Gates has substantial shares in Monsanto [14]. With Monsanto’s active backing from the US State Department [15] and the Gates Foundation’s links with USAID [16], together they comprise a formidable geopolitical strategic force.

Given that the Gates Foundation is about to be hauled through the Indian legal system for its vaccination programme in that country [17] and Monsanto has a decades’ long track record of deception and criminality [18], it is important for everyone (not least the mainstream corporate media) to question why agriculture is being handed over to such entities.

“… take capitalism and business out of farming in Africa. The West should invest in indigenous knowledge and agro-ecology, education and infrastructure and stand in solidarity with the food sovereignty movement.” Daniel Maingi, Growth Partners for Africa.

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