😈 1984 Thought Police! Wow. Now it’s illegal to pray?!?
💭 Arrest of Catholic woman protester for silently PRAYING outside abortion clinic sparks debate between her supporters who condemn ‘thought crime’ and critics who accuse her of harassing women patients in ‘buffer zone’
Anti-abortion group director was arrested for praying outside abortion clinic
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, 45, charged with four counts of violating buffer zone
She was arrested by police after she said she might have prayed in her head
Supporters said arrest was ‘thoughtcrime’ but critics say she harassed women
Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, director of anti-abortion group March for Life UK, was arrested after being accused of violating the council’s ‘buffer zone’ which bans protest nearby.
She was confronted by a police officer when she was standing on the street outside the BPAS Robert Clinic in Kings Norton, Birmingham.
The protestor, 45, was charged with four counts of violating the abortion clinic ‘buffer zone’ after she admitted that she might have been praying silently while standing outside.
She had been standing there some time, and was not carrying a sign, when an officer approached after a complaint from a member of the public on December 6.
The West Midlands Police officer told the campaigner that he had to caution her and then asked her: ‘What are you here for today?’
‘Physically, I’m just standing here,’ Mss Vaughan-Spruce, from Malvern, Worcestershire, replied.
‘Why here of all places? I know you don’t live nearby,’ the officer asked.
She responded: ‘But this is an abortion centre.’
The officer said: ‘Okay, that’s why you’re stood here. Are you here as part of a protest? Are you praying?’
She denied she was protesting but when asked if she was praying she said: ‘I might be praying in my head, but not out loud.’
The officer then arrested her on suspicion of failing to comply with a public spaces protection order.
She is now due to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on February 2 charged with four counts of failing to comply with a Public Space Protection Order.
Ms Vaughn-Spruce’s arrest has already sparked a fierce debate, with supporters saying she has effectively been arrested for ‘thoughtcrime’, a term which her legal representatives ADF UK used.
ADF UK are a British branch of American the conservative Christian legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, who have campaigned and lobbied against the right to an abortion and against the decriminalisation of homsexuality in the States.
‘Still surreal to observe a thought crime arrest in the West,’ said data scientist Justin Co on Twitter.
‘Good Lord. The thought police are with us,’ tweeted Tobye Pierce.
But John Michael Leslie criticised Ms Vaughn-Spruce, accusing of her harassing women.
He wrote on Twitter: ‘No, you’re in violation of if you repeatedly harass women going to a family planning clinic who might be asking for abortion advice.
‘”Praying in her head” is the spin from her supporters.’
Mrs Vaughn-Spruce said: ‘It’s abhorrently wrong that I was searched, arrested, interrogated by police and charged simply for praying in the privacy of my own mind.
‘Censorship zones purport to ban harassment, which is already illegal. Nobody should ever be subject to harassment.
‘But what I did was the furthest thing from harmful – I was exercising my freedom of thought, my freedom of religion, inside the privacy of my own mind.
‘Nobody should be criminalised for thinking and for praying, in a public space in the UK.’
MPs voted to introduce buffer zones around abortion clinics in October after Labour proposed an amendment to the Public Order Bill to make it an offence to intimidate or harass anyone within 150 metres of the buildings.
Anyone found guilty of breaching the zone to intimidate, threaten or persuade women will face a fine or six months’ imprisonment, increasing to two years for repeat offences.
Talking to Tucker Carlson on American news channel Fox News today she said: ‘To be arresting somebody for what they’re thinking… it’s actually quite surreal.
‘The amount of people that have used the word “Orwellian” to me to describe this, likening it to the 1984 novel – and it’s really seemed like that to me from start to finish.’
Carlson said: ‘Arresting someone for praying is an act of evil. Period.
‘And it just breaks your heart to think of all the people in charge… who are standing by and allowing this to happen.’
‘Isabel’s experience should be deeply concerning to all those who believe that our hard-fought fundamental rights are worth protecting,’ said Jeremiah Igunnubole, Legal Counsel for ADF UK.
‘It is truly astonishing that the law has granted local authorities such wide and unaccountable discretion, that now even thoughts deemed “wrong” can lead to a humiliating arrest and a criminal charge.’
‘Isabel, a woman of good character, and who has tirelessly served her community by providing charitable assistance to vulnerable women and children, has been treated no better than a violent criminal.
‘The recent increase in buffer zone legislation and orders is a watershed moment in our country. We must ask ourselves whether we are a genuinely democratic country committed to protecting the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of speech.
‘We are at serious risk of mindlessly sleepwalking into a society that accepts, normalises, and even promotes the “tyranny of the majority”.’
As part of her conditions for bail, Vaughan-Spruce was told that she should not contact a local Catholic priest who was also involved in pro-life work – a condition that was later dropped.
Police also imposed restrictions, as part of her bail, on Vaughan-Spruce engaging in public prayer beyond the PSPO area, stating that this was necessary to prevent further offences.
A West Midlands Police spokesperson said: ‘Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, aged 45 from Malvern, was arrested on 6 December and subsequently charged on 15 December with four counts of failing to comply with a Public Space Protection Order (PSPO).
‘She was bailed to appear at Birmingham Magistrates Court on 2 February 2023.
‘The PSPO creates a zone around a specific facility to protect women from harassment by any means if they are seeking a medical procedure or advice at an abortion clinic.’
😛 Amazing! This „Toilette„ image looks exactly like the Islamic Black Stone of Mecca (The Kaaba) + The Hindu ‘Shiva’ temple.
💭 Pro-abortion activists play soccer with a Bible, commit acts of desecration. The activists threw the Seattle preacher’s Bible into a portable toilet outside.
Disturbing footage from Seattle shows pro-abortion activists playing soccer with a Bible before proceeding to completely desecrate and destroy the sacred book.
In the highly offensive footage posted to social media on Sunday, a group of pro-abortion activists can be seen kicking a Bible back and forth to each other as if it were a soccer ball.
Desecration of another persons Religious material is a HATE CRIME. If this was a Quran people would be outraged. People must really hate the WORD of GOD right now. pic.twitter.com/IjXqab1qma
When the man recording the footage – who goes by “The Seattle Preacher” on social media — explains to the anti-Christian protesters that it is a “hate crime” to destroy someone else’s religious texts, a voice in the background can be heard cackling with laughter.
The video proceeds to cut to the Seattle Preacher holding the now-damaged Bible, telling the protesters that they would not have treated the book with such disrespect if it were the Quran.
Immediately, one of the protesters snatches the Bible back from the man, and the next piece of footage shows the Bible sitting in human waste in the bottom of a portable toilet.
“That right there is a hate crime … That is ungodly and it is wrong,” the Seattle Preacher lamented, with his voice breaking.
The blasphemous footage sparked a large reaction on social media, with pro-lifers and Christians expressing their disgust with the anti-Christian actions of the pro-abortion activists.
“These people are truly the cancer of Earth. Everything they pretend to be against is *exactly* who they are,” reacted prominent songwriter “Five Times August.”
“One day, their souls will understand how foolish and blind they truly are,” added professional poker player turned Christian evangelist Anna Khait.
This display of sacrilege is only one incident of many similar events that have occurred in the United States since the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court last Friday.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, two Christian pregnancy centers were the target of vandalism over the weekend, with one of the centers being set ablaze after being spray-painted with pro-abortion messages and threats.
In addition to the pregnancy centers, a historic Catholic church in West Virginia was burned to the ground last weekend in what authorities are describing as a “suspicious” fire.
💭 Biblical swarms of giant Crickets are turning US farms to dust
Northern Oregon rangeland, Jordan Maley and April Aamodt are on the lookout for Mormon crickets, giant insects that can ravage crops.
“There’s one right there,” Aamodt says.
They’re not hard to spot. The insects, which can grow larger than 2 inches (5 centimeters), blot the asphalt.
Mormon crickets are not new to Oregon. Native to western North America, their name dates back to the 1800s, when they ruined the fields of Mormon settlers in Utah. But amidst drought and warming temperatures — conditions favored by the insects — outbreaks across the West have worsened.
Can they be a secret tool in the battle against climate change?
ETHIOPIA IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S RICHEST CENTERS of major and minor crop diversity. Ethiopian farmers have grown wheat, barley, sorghum, and peas for millennia, passing seeds from one generation to the next through an informal community-based seed sharing network.
Despite this tradition of agricultural biodiversity, Ethiopia is also an arid region, one vulnerable to climate change and drought. At a time of increasing globalization, Ethiopian farmers in recent generations have discarded seeds from hundreds of traditional grains in favor of a select few non-native industrial hybrids, but after many of these modern crops failed—partially due to climate change—farmers are shifting away from “modern” crops to safeguard the future and livelihood of Ethiopian rural communities.
Beginning in 2014, an ambitious project called Seeds for Needs, created with joint support from Ethiopian farmers and researchers at Bioversity International, Mekelle University, and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa, began researching Ethiopia’s past to reawaken ancient grains that might provide solutions to the country’s extreme vulnerability to drought and other environmental conditions.
TIGRAY IS ONE OF NINE REGIONAL STATES of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, a country with over 100 million people. It is a small region, with only 5.5 million people, most of whom belong to the Tigrinya ethnic group, a vital cultural and political fixture in the country’s social landscape. While the Ethiopian population is growing rapidly—the average woman has four children in her lifetime (World Bank)— its food systems cannot keep up with growing demand. Consequently, undernutrition contributes to a child mortality rate of 28%, with stunting affecting 38% of children under the age of five (UNICEF).
Improving nutrition is made increasingly difficult by climate change, which now impacts healthcare, the environment, and the productivity of many crops and livestock. Thanks to its rich heritage of agricultural biodiversity, Ethiopia has the capacity to address undernutrition by enhancing agrobiodiversity, which spreads agricultural “risk” by growing a range of crops to meet the challenges of uncertain times. Unfortunately, most agronomic research is generally overlooked, while policymakers incorrectly assume that indigenous crops developed by hundreds of generations of farmers are less productive and unable to contribute significantly to food security. Policymakers have recently encouraged farmers to grow a small collection of modern grains to please food processors and international markets. This approach, which rarely includes traditional varieties, now threatens the country’s agricultural biodiversity and with it the survival of the country’s food production system.
One solution may come from the country’s near past. The Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute, the largest and oldest Seed Bank in Africa, holds 6,000 accessions (different varieties) of teff, 7,000 accessions of durum wheat, and 12,000 accessions of barley. Can the bio-regional genetics of these seeds provide clues that may aid in the struggle against climate change? The international coalition behind Seeds for Needs thinks so. Led by Bioversity International, Scuola S. Anna in Pisa, Mekelle University, Amhara Region Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI), and the Ethiopian Biodiversity Institute (EBI), this project has adopted a holistic, participatory action-driven approach to researching whether traditional varieties can help solve today’s agricultural challenges. The program, which has grown to include GIZ, the World Bank, the Integrated Seed System Development (a Dutch initiative), and the Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture, uses extremely simple yet effective logic: if 4000 ancient grain varieties kept in the National Gene Bank’s seed vaults survived and adapted for millennia on farmers’ fields, they may provide benefits if returned to the very farmers who first developed and saved them. In Tigrinya, the farmers have a name for the initiative: Wehabit … or “We got it back”.
💭 Exotic, Gluten-Free Grain Grows in Popularity — Enough to Cause a Dust-Up in Eastern Oregon
A little-known grain from the Horn of Africa — billed as the next wave in America’s quest for healthy foods — is proving that competition for a hot commodity can get downright nasty.
Only a few thousand acres of Oregon farmland are believed devoted to the production of teff. But people suffering from gluten intolerance together with immigrants hungry for traditional Ethiopian and Eritrean ethnic dishes are driving up the domestic demand for the iron-rich grain.
All of which appears to have played into an angry clash between rival teff traders in the out-of-the-way Starlite Cafe last year in Vale.
Tiny grain
In Ethiopia:
Sometimes known as “love-grass,” teff was domesticated in Ethiopia in ancient times and is commonly grown the country’s highlands. While it’s the preferred grain of the Ethiopian people, it also is the country’s most expensive grain. It covers the greatest area of farmland of any Ethiopian crop, but has low per-acre yields and requires labor-intensive harvesting and processing techniques.
In U.S.:
How much teff is grown here is difficult to determine. OSU Extension agent Rich Roseberg calls it a “specialty crop.” “It’s a very attractive plant,” he says. “There are some types that have a purplish seed head and leaf that we are looking at as potentially ornamental.”
Nutrition:
Teff is 11 percent protein, 80 percent complex carbohydrates and 3 percent fat, according to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. It’s an excellent source of essential amino acids, particularly lysine, often deficient in grain foods. It’s gluten-free, making it an alternative to wheat, rye and barley.
Wayne Carlson of Caldwell Idaho, founder of The Teff Co., has pleaded guilty in Malheur County Circuit Court to a misdemeanor harassment charge in the incident with Tesfa Drar, who was born in Ethiopia and now lives in Minneapolis.
“This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” said Drar, a U.S. resident since 1981. “I was shocked.”
Court records say Carlson sat down beside Drar, who was meeting with a prospective teff grower in the cafe, and accused him of cheating growers and smuggling seed into the U.S. from Ethiopia. The two had never before met face-to-face, and Carlson allegedly used a racial epithet and told Drar to go back to his own country.
Carlson was sentenced in April to 12 months of probation, community service and ordered to write an apology to Drar.
The confrontation raised a lot of eyebrows. Teff production is a mere blip on the annual U.S. Department of Agriculture’s major agricultural crop charts. It stands in obscurity alongside organically grown Kamut, an ancient khorasan wheat from Egypt, and quinoa from the Andes of Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, in the ranks of exotic grains newly popular among health food consumers.
Drar said he thinks Carlson is afraid he’s going to take over the international teff business. “I have better access to the consumers who buy it,” he said.
Carlson and his attorney, Mike Mahoney of Vale, didn’t return phone calls for comment.
Teff is increasingly embraced as a high-quality horse hay and grown in at least 25 states, according to the University of Nevada Extension Service. Nevada is emerging as a big teff state, with 15 variations grown in Churchill County alone, mostly for cattle and horse forage.
Farmers in Oregon cultivate about 3,000 acres of teff for hay, said Rich Roseberg, an
Oregon State University Extension agentin Klamath Falls. They grow another 1,000 acres for food grain, he estimated.
Nationally, fewer than 10,000 acres are believed dedicated to food grain production of teff for milling into flour.
That’s in stark contrast to 53 million acres of wheat, 73 million acres of corn and 73 million acres of soybeans harvested annually in the United States.
Consumers, however, are catching the buzz that teff is nutritious, gluten-free and can be baked into breads, cookies, pizza crusts and other pastries. It’s widely used in East Africa for a flatbread called injera, for a porridge similar to cream of wheat and as a fermented alcoholic beverage.
Neil Koberstein, purchasing manager at Bob’s Red Mill Natural Foods of Milwaukie, buys about 18,000 pounds of teff every 45 days to be stone ground into flour and sold, he said. That’s up from 7,500 pounds a decade ago.
“We’ve had remarkable growth in the last 10 years,” Koberstein said.
Teff seeds are so tiny, about 1.25 million to the pound, that “if you were to puncture a bag, it pours out like water,” Koberstein said. It takes about 150 teff seeds to equal a single grain of wheat.
For some people, flat breads and other pastries made from teff flour are an acquired taste, he noted. Taste descriptions range from sour to bland to delicious.
“Injera is sort of like a sourdough pancake,” said Brian Charlton, an OSU Extension agronomist in Klamath Falls who enjoys Ethiopian cuisine. “I liked it right away. I wish somebody would open a restaurant in Klamath Falls. I’d eat there all the time.”
Drar is adamant: Teff is the food of the future, and he wants everybody to eat it. His enthusiasm for the offbeat grain borders on the mystical and mythic:
“Ethiopians are always No. 1 as marathoners. Why do you think?” he asked, having dinner recently in the Hamley Steakhouse in Pendleton, where teff is definitely not on the menu. “It’s teff! They eat it three times a day!”
The word teff in the ancient Ethiopic language means “lost,” because the grains are prone to blowing away in the faintest breeze, he said. Three-thousand-year-old teff seeds have been found in Egyptian pyramids, he says.
Then, stealing a march on the biblical mustard seed, Drar added, “This is the smallest seed on Earth!”
Drar immigrated to America to study computer science and later to earn his living as a commodities trader. He was dismayed to find the injera that he was accustomed to having with his meals was absent from stores. He longed for it constantly.
Eventually, Drar flew to Ethiopia and brought 20 pounds of teff seed back to Minneapolis. He began cultivating a few acres, talked others into doing likewise and ultimately marketed his “Selam” brand of teff flour to ethnic grocery stores and restaurants.
These days, he travels the nation six months a year, using his van, smartphone and laptop as a mobile office. He takes orders for teff from ethnic stores and restaurants and works hard to convince farmers to partner with him in growing and marketing the grain.
Someday, he hopes to export American-grown teff to Ethiopia, which is too parched to grow enough for itself, he said.
“Teff is in my blood,” Drar said. “I don’t want to see people hungry.”
I spent the last week of February teaching Old Testament at the newly-formed Trinity Fellowship Pastors College in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is by far the oldest nation I’ve visited, one of the few Old Testament nations still on the map. Its existence is a theological fact, testimony to the reliability of God’s promises.
According to the “primeval history” of Genesis, descendants of Cush settled the area that is now Ethiopia and Sudan soon after the flood. The Da’amat Empire was established in the tenth century B.C. by Menilek I, reputedly the son of Solomon and Makeda, queen of Sheba. According to the Kebre Negast (“The Glory of the Kings”), which was compiled in the fourteenth century A.D., Queen Makeda made a pilgrimage to Israel to learn statecraft from Solomon, who seduced her. Makeda conceived and went home to give birth to her son. As a boy, Menilek visited his father in Jerusalem, where Solomon anointed him as king of Ethiopia. As retribution for the humiliation of his mother, Menilek stole the Ark of the Covenant and levitated it across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, where it purportedly remains to this day. It’s a persistent national myth. Until Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, Ethiopian leaders claimed to be sons of Solomon, lions descended from the Lion of Judah.
There’s nothing of this legend in Scripture. To ancient Israelites, Ethiopia wasn’t an ally but an uncanny and terrifying threat. Cush’s son Nimrod founded Nineveh and Babylon (Gen. 10:8–12), cities that later conquered Israel. Aaron and Miriam objected when Moses took a Cushite wife (Num. 12:1). During the reign of King Asa, Zerah the Cushite came over the southern horizon to invade Judah with hundreds of chariots and a million-man army (2 Chron. 14).
Against this background, the heroism of Ebed-Melech is all the more notable (Jer. 38). Ebed-Melech was a Cushite eunuch who served in the court of King Zedekiah during the last days of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah counsels Zedekiah to surrender to Babylon. Enraged by this message, Jerusalem’s officials force Zedekiah to approve their plan to put the traitorous prophet to death. Like Joseph, Jeremiah is tossed into a muddy cistern without water, left to die of thirst.
Ebed-Melech bursts onto the scene as an unexpected deliverer. As the wonderfully-named Deusdedit Musinguzi points out in a monograph on the passage, Ebed-Melech is a model of compassion, justice, and courage. Though a foreigner, he charges Jerusalem’s leaders with “evil” in open court, and persuades the king to let him pull Jeremiah up from the pit. Ebed-Melech’s name, “Servant of the King,” indicates he’s Zedekiah’s servant, but he proves himself loyal to the King. As a Gentile deliverer, he foreshadows Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. He literally rescues Jeremiah from death, raising him from beneath the earth, a figure of the Spirit who brings a greater Prophet from the grave. In every way, Ebed-Melech is the antithesis of the corrupt Jewish courtiers, a Gentile without Torah who keeps the Torah written on his heart (Rom. 2:14–15).
Ebed-Melech is firstfruits of a great harvest from the land of Cush. According to Orthodox tradition, Christianity came to the country in the late third century through two shipwrecked Syrian boys, the brothers Aedisius and Frumentius, who were brought to the court of the Axum emperor. Through their faithful service, the boys rose to high positions, and their witness convinced the emperor to become a Christian. In 305, the emperor’s successor sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the patriarch—none other than Athanasius—to send a bishop to Axum to promote evangelism and church construction. Athanasius ordained Frumentius, who returned to baptize Emperor Ezana, who made Christianity the official religion of his empire. Ethiopia is among the oldest of Christian nations.
In Acts, Luke tells us that Christianity arrived in Ethiopia already in the early first century. The first known Gentile to be baptized was another Ethiopian eunuch, a latter-day Ebed-Melech, who meets Philip in a Spirit-arranged encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8). Though “cut off” like the Suffering Servant in the text he reads, the Ethiopian eunuch becomes fruitful, with a place in the house of his God (Isa. 56:1–8; Deut. 23:1–5).
Already in the old covenant, when the very name “Cush” could send chills down Israelite spines, the Lord promised he would one day adopt Ethiopia as a “home-born” son and a child of Zion (Ps. 87:4). One day, he promised, Cush would bring tribute to Jerusalem (Isa. 45:14). These promises form the story arc of Ethiopia’s long history. Every time you see Ethiopia is still on the map, you’re seeing real-world proof of the faithfulness of God.
👉 Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
Controlling the terrestrial origin of all winds that create storms, tornados and hurricanes (Zion-Ethiopian Mountains) is the clandestine mission of the Luciferians. The on-going operation against ancient Christians of Ethiopia, against its churches and monasteries being as part of this mission.
The Holy Bible speaks of the north wind, the south wind, the east wind and the west wind. The four directions have immense spiritual significance. The west wind is symbolic of restoration. The west wind is mentioned only once in the Bible. The east wind brought the locusts and completely destroyed the vegetation in Egpt. But God brought the west wind to remove all the locusts in the land of Egypt and bring about restoration.
„And the LORD turned a very strong west wind, which took the locustes away and blew them into the Red Sea. There remained not one locust in the territory of egypt.“ [Exodus 10:19]
St. Thomas The Apostle brought Christianity to the south of the Indian Subcontinent to the current Kerela State in 52 AD. The west wind brought such European travelers and explorers like Marco Polo and Vasco da Gama to witness this. Vasco da Gama’s fleet reached India in 1498, the Portuguese were surprised to find Christian communities thriving in Southern India. They were even more surprised by the locals’ certainty that their church had been established by St. Thomas. They shouldn’t have been, as countless travellers, including Marco Polo, had claimed that the saint’s grave was there. St. Thomas had preached to the Hindus and the Jews of southern India and had won thousands of converts.
It was the west wind which brought The Holy Apostle Thomas, the apostle of Jesus Christ to begin God’s spiritual restoration of the Country of India. It must be also remembered that St Thomas landed on the West Coast, but was killed on the East Coast. St. Thomas was martyred on 3 July 72 AD, at Parangimalai, Chennai, in the Chola Empire, India.
🔥 GOING, GOING, GONE! Moment Church Spire Dramatically Topples to Ground in Storm Eunice Gales
THIS is the shocking moment a church spire snaps off and crashes to the ground after it was battered by Storm Eunice.
Damage to the Grade II listed building, built in 1856, has sparked concerns now arisen over its structural stability.
Matt Hodson, 17, who filmed the footage, told ITV news that he noticed the wind take a sudden violent turn when he went into his back garden.
“I was shocked – it was quite a surreal moment. I didn’t really expect it to actually fall – I was just filming just in case,” he said.
Reverend Claire Townes, a priest in at the church, added: “I literally thought to myself the church will be ok, it’s been here since Victorian times – and then two, three minutes later I had a telephone call from the police.”
The church said in a statement on Facebook: “Please do not come to the church to look at the fallen spire.
“We are awaiting the arrival of a structural surveyor as currently we cannot assure safety within the grounds until we know it is safe.”
Thankfully, nobody was injured by the the fallen spire.
Anglican Church Bans Women From Vicar’s Job on ‘biblical’ Grounds
An Anglican church has banned women from applying to its vacant post of vicar on ‘biblical’ grounds.
Holy Trinity Church in Wallington in south west London will now issue a job advert that specifically excludes female clerics from seeking the job.
The Church of England said such a move was rare but not unique. A spokesman said that because vicars and priests are ‘postholders’ rather than employees, the church does not fall foul of equal opportunities laws.
The decision to bar women from the £25,000 a year job was taken after a vote by Holy Trinity’s parochial church council.
The announcement made in the parish newsletter handed out to the congregation stated: “At our recent open evening we explained the parish church council’s view that the position of the overall leader (vicar) should be male for biblical reasons. Thank you to all those who shared their questions, views and points.
“We have now produced a summary sheet setting out the principle reasons from scripture for maintaining the historic position of this church on this matter.”
Women were first ordained as Church of England priests in 1994. Parishes can opt out of appointing female vicars by applying to the local diocese for ‘alternative oversight’ from a more conservative bishop.
A spokesman from the Diocese of Southwark said: “Although women play a full part in helping to lead a number of activities at Holy Trinity, Wallington they have asked for alternative oversight.
“Bishop Christopher Chessun has agreed to this and such oversight will be provided by the Bishop of Maidstone.
“This allows them to say, as a congregation, that they do not wish to receive the ministry of a woman Bishop or priest and thus to be able to advertise for a male priest.”
The campaign group Women and the Church (Watch) said it hoped that in the future discrimination against women priests would be outlawed but accepted the right of congregations to opt for men-only vicars.
A spokeswoman said: “Although Watch pray for the day when women and men, without caveat, can apply for any role within the Church of England, we accept that this is not currently the case. We endeavour to continue to work together with those with whom we disagree on this point.”
On the afternoon of November 2 last year, Gebremichael Teweldmedhin, a Tigrayan jeweller and father of nine, headed to work in Gonder, a city in the Amhara region of northern Ethiopia where he had lived for more than three decades.
When Gebremichael arrived in the city, he found a mob looting his nephew’s workshop. Gebremichael begged them to stop. Instead, they turned on him.
One relative, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, told the Bureau: “The looters took them, Gebremichael along with another 10 or 11 people who worked in that area – by vehicle. We tried to follow them but we were not able to get their whereabouts.
“Then other people told us they were killed. They are buried in a mass grave.”
Gebremichael was not political, his relative said. He was not educated, and did not engage with the hatred and misinformation that swamps Ethiopian social media. Yet his relative claimed online hate campaigns and calls for violence – particularly on Facebook – played a key role in not only his killing, but many others.
“The worst thing that contributed to their killing are the so-called activists who have been spreading hate on social media,” he told the Bureau. Some posts, he claimed, would name individuals or even post photos helping create an atmosphere “inciting attacks, killings and displacements”.
Thousands have died and millions more have been displaced since fighting broke out between government forces and armed opposition groups from the country’s Tigray region in November 2020. The government has also been fighting an armed group from the Oromia region, and the UN secretary general António Guterres said last November that “the stability of Ethiopia and the wider region is at stake”.
On November 9, Mercy Ndegwa, Facebook’s public policy director for East Africa, and Mark Smith, its global content management director, used a blog post to offer reassurances that Ethiopia “has been one of our highest priorities” and that their company “will remain in close communication with people on the ground”.
But the Bureau’s investigation has uncovered a litany of failures. The company has known for years that it was helping to directly fuel the growing tensions in the country. Many of those fighting misinformation and hate on the ground – fact checkers, journalists, civil society organisations and human rights activists – say Facebook’s support is still far less than it could and should be.
A senior member of Ethiopia’s media accused Facebook of “just standing by and watching this country fall apart”. Others told the Bureau that they felt requests for assistance had been ignored and that meetings failed to materialise. These failures, they said, were helping to fuel a conflict that has already led to reports of ethnic cleansing and mass rape. Amnesty International has accused both sides in the conflict of carrying out atrocities against civilians.
All the while posts inciting violence or making false claims designed to encourage hate between ethnic groups in Ethiopia have been allowed to circulate freely. The Bureau has identified and spoken with relatives of people allegedly killed in multiple different attacks, but has not been able to cross-check specific details on the ground because of the ongoing violence.
Facebook said it had worked for two years on a comprehensive strategy to keep people in Ethiopia safe on their platforms, including engaging with civil society groups, fact checking organisations, and forming a special policy unit.
Gebremichael’s family cited one Facebook user in particular: Solomon Bogale, an online activist with more than 86,000 followers on Facebook. Though listed on Facebook as living in London, Bogale’s social media indicates that he has been in Ethiopia since August 2021, with posts of him in fatigues and carrying an assault rifle often accompanied by statements praising the Fano, an Amharan nationalist vigilante group.
In the opinion of one of Gebremichael’s family members, Bogale’s “inciteful posts” had resulted in many attacks on Tigrayans in Gonder.
In the weeks before Gebremichael’s killing, Bogale called for people to “cleanse” the Amhara territories of the “junta”, a term often used by government supporters to refer to the Tigrayan forces fighting the government and Tigrayans more generally. The post continued: “We need to cleanse the region of the junta lineage present prior to the war!!”
On October 31, two days before Gebremichael’s disappearance, Bogale posted an image of an elderly woman holding grenades, with the caption: “#Dear people of Amhara, there are mothers like these who are fighting to destroy Amhara and destroy Ethiopia! The main solution to save the #Amhara people and to protect Ethiopia is we Amharas have to rise up!! Get together Amhara.”
The Bureau has verified that both posts remained up on Facebook almost four months later, along with many others from various sources containing hate speech, calls for violence and false claims. Throughout the conflict misinformation and hate have been deployed on Facebook and other social media, inflaming tensions and influencing the outcome of military operations.
Contacted over Facebook, Bogale denied that any Tigrayans were killed in Gonder in early November, saying all Tigrayans in the city were safe. He also claimed that Tigrayan forces had killed ethnic Amharans in the region.
He also said he would delete the posts cited by the Bureau.
Facebook said it had reviewed the posts flagged by the Bureau and had removed any content that violated its policies. The Bureau found one post had been removed. At the time of publication, the post of the woman holding grenades remained online.
Criticism of Facebook’s failings is made more damning by the extensive evidence that the company has known of the risk of such problems for years, according to disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by the legal counsel of Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen. The redacted versions received by Congress were reviewed by a consortium of news organisations, including the Bureau.
As early as January 2019 an internal report into various countries’ “On-FB Badness” – a measure of harmful content on the platform, including hate and graphic violence – rated the situation in Ethiopia as “severe”, its second-highest category.
By June 2020, Facebook had become even more starkly aware of the problem. An internal document discussing measures used to assess the level of harmful content said it had “found significant gaps in our coverage (especially in Myanmar and Ethiopia)”.
Six months later, Ethiopia had risen to the top of Facebook’s list of countries where it needed to take action. In a presentation circulated on December 10 2020, the risk of societal violence in Ethiopia was ranked as “dire” – Facebook’s highest threat warning. It was the only country to be given that ranking.
More than a year on, the Bureau’s investigation has found that Facebook is said to have frequently ignored requests for support from fact checkers based in the country and some civil society organisations say they have not met with the company in 18 months. The Bureau has learned from multiple sources that Facebook only appointed its first senior policy executive from Ethiopia to work on East Africa in September.
Facebook does run a third-party fact-checking programme, providing partners with access to internal tools and payment for fact checks. As its website states: “We rely on independent fact checkers to review and rate the accuracy of stories through original reporting.” But it has not partnered with a single organisation based in Ethiopia to tackle the misinformation spread by all sides in the country’s conflict.
Abel Wabella, founder of the Ethiopian fact-checking initiative HaqCheck said Facebook had failed to support his organisation since he first approached executives more than a year ago.
“They told me, ‘OK, we can help you, just write to us, our email.’ They gave me their cards. And I wrote to them,” he told the Bureau. But he heard nothing back. “At that time, our initiative was very small, so I thought they didn’t find something good in our platform, so they wanted to keep silent because of that.”
Wabella sent two further emails over the next few months, the second to the new Facebook executive from Ethiopia he had heard had been appointed. Despite assuring him that she would take action in September, he said he had heard nothing from the company since.
Rehobot Ayalew, HaqCheck’s lead fact checker, said the lack of support had severely hampered her team’s work. “Most of the people have low media literacy, so Facebook is considered to be credible … So working with Facebook, and also checking and verifying Facebook content, is the major way to counter this disinformation.” Wabella added: “The problem is not specific to Tigray. Ethiopian citizens from every corner across ethnic groups were severely affected by hateful content circulating online, specifically Facebook.”
The other major independent fact-checking organisation based in Ethiopia, Ethiopia Check, is also not part of Facebook’s partner programme.
Facebook said it had constantly engaged with civil society organisations and human rights groups on the ground, but did not partner with HaqCheck and Ethiopia Check because neither was certified by the International Fact-Checking Network.
Facebook does work with two fact-checking organisations on content from Ethiopia – PesaCheck, which runs a small team in Nairobi, and Agence France-Presse (AFP) – but both of them are based outside the country. We understand that AFP has just one fact checker in the country but in response to our story Facebook told the Bureau that “both PesaCheck and AFP have teams based in Ethiopia for fact-checking”. While misinformation flagged by PesaCheck and AFP has often been labelled as false or removed by Facebook, content investigated and debunked by HaqCheck has largely remained unaltered and free to spread.
This has included false declarations of military victories on both sides, false allegations of attacks on civilians and false claims of captured infiltrators. On November 25 last year, the Ethiopian government banned all unofficial reporting of battles, further enforcing an information vacuum in which misinformation spreads easily.
“As far as I know, support for fact checkers in Ethiopia by Facebook is almost non-existent,” said the senior person working in Ethiopian media, who asked to remain anonymous. “Facebook doesn’t pay the attention Ethiopia needs at this crucial moment, and that’s contributing to the ongoing crisis by inflaming hatred and spreading hate speech.”
A number of civil society groups have similar complaints of feeling ignored and sidelined. Facebook organised a meeting with several groups in June 2020, to discuss how the platform could best regulate content before scheduled elections. As of November, two of the organisations involved said they had heard nothing about any subsequent meetings.
“The recent development has been overwhelming. Facebook should have had a similar consultation,” said Yared Hailemariam, executive director of the Ethiopian Human Right Defenders Center. “Facebook also ought to have a working group, collaborating with human rights organisations and civil society groups.”
Haben Fecadu, a human rights activist who has worked in Ethiopia, said the hate speech issue was flagged to Facebook years ago but the company had still not provided adequate resources to deal with it
“There’s really no excuse and I wish someone had come down harder on them about it,” she said. “I’ve doubted they have invested enough in their Africa content moderation, and doubt that the Africa team has had enough resources to moderate content properly. They don’t have enough moderators … I suspect they didn’t have a Tigrinya-speaking moderator until very recently.”
Facebook’s owner Meta said in January that it would “assess the feasibility” of complying with a recommendation by its independent oversight board that it launch a human rights assessment of its activity in Ethiopia. The recommendation came after the board directed Facebook to remove a post that claimed Tigrayans were involved in atrocities in the Amhara region.
Ayalew, the HaqCheck fact checker, said the inadequate support from one of the world’s richest companies was demoralising. “We usually come across sensitive content, images that are horrifying and hateful content. It’s hard by itself,” she said. “And when you know that, even though you’re trying, you’re not getting the support from the platform itself, that is allowing this kind of content.
“You ask yourself why? Why am I doing this? Because you know that they can do more, and they can change the situation. They have a big role in this, and they’re not doing anything. You’re trying alone.”
Mercy Ndegwa, speaking on behalf of Facebook, said: “For more than two years, we’ve invested in safety and security measures in Ethiopia, adding more staff with local expertise and building our capacity to catch hateful and inflammatory content in the most widely spoken languages, including Amharic, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya. As the situation has escalated, we’ve put additional measures in place and are continuing to monitor activity on our platform, identify issues as they emerge, and quickly remove any content that breaks our rules.”
Just over three weeks after Gebremichael’s murder, Hadush Gebrekirstos, a 45-year-old who lived in Addis Ababa, was arbitrarily detained by police who heard him speaking Tigrinya.
“After they knew he was a Tigrinya speaker, they said, ‘This one is mercenary!’ and took him to a nearby police station … They were beating him hard,” said a relative, who also wished to remain anonymous and who was told what happened by witnesses.
“Two days after – on November 26 – his body was found dead, about 200 to 150m from the police station. They threw his body out there.”
Again, Hadush’s relative said he had no political or social media engagement. Again, he believes that it was lies and hate on Facebook that played a key role in causing the killing.
“It really does. Irrespective of reality, because people do not have the ability to verify what was posted on Facebook. Like calling people to kill Tigrinya speaking residents – as a result of hatred and revenge feelings … You don’t even know who is killing you, who is detaining you and who is looting your property. It’s total lawlessness.”
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 