💭 Across Africa, lobbyists, philanthropists and businesspeople are working to open up the continent to GMOs. They argue that GMOs can provide a miracle solution to two of Africa’s biggest problems: famine and malaria.
One of the main supporters of the movement is Bill Gates, one of the world’s wealthiest individuals and founder of the most powerful philanthropic foundation in history. The film shows how the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became the main funder of genetic experiments underway on the continent.
Discreetly and beyond the reach of critical voices, scientists are conducting research on the genetic modification of cassava plants and mosquitoes as a solution to the malaria problem.
The role of the EU here is an ambiguous one: Whereas the bloc was initially skeptical about genetic engineering because of the potential risks to health and the environment, now the EU is working together with the Microsoft founder’s nonprofit conducting experiments that would be banned in Europe.
Genetic modification in Africa is about power, but it is also about money. And this puts the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in the firing line: by financing genetic engineering experiments in Africa, the organization is playing into the hands of big western agribusiness.
“Africa, GMOs and Western Interests” shines a light on the brave new world of philanthrocapitalism, where humanitarian aid has a stubborn aftertaste of business, famine programs are often a pretext to introduce GMOs and public investments can serve private interests.
💭 Spokesperson for the TPLF, Getachew Reda congratulating the cruel anti-Christian Oromos for their pagan and superstitions ‘Irreecha’ festival.
This festival is a practice of the heathens. The non-Christian Oromos worship evil spirits and practice blood sacrifices of humans and animals,. That’s why they went to massacre millions of Christians just in the past four years, since they came into power. Right on the eve of this evil devil worshiping festival the Oromos massacred hundreds of non-Oromos in Tigray and Wollega regions of Ethiopia after they covered/painted trees with butter. ‘BLOOD SACRIFECE for IRREECHA’
No wonder they chose to celebrate this anti-Christian festival just a week after Christians celebrated the annual Christian festival of the Meskel (which means “CROSS” in Ethiopic), marking the finding of the “True Cross” on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The festival is one of the major religious celebrations of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia.
💭 The following report is from the Emirati National News:
The UAE has sent a plane carrying 30 tonnes of food items to Mekele, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.
The shipment will help more than 7,000 people, including 5,600 women and children.
“The UAE is keen to support the humanitarian situation in the Tigray region, and to meet the needs of the population in light of food shortages,” said Mohamed Salem Al Rashidi, UAE ambassador to Ethiopia.
“The UAE has consolidated its global position in providing support and humanitarian aid. It is at the forefront of extending a helping hand, and taking swift action to provide emergency relief to countries and people that need it.
“The UAE places great value in the importance of supporting countries in need, while putting people at the top of its priorities without discrimination and without any other considerations.”
Last year, the UAE, in co-operation with the World Food Programme, sent eight planes carrying 337 tonnes of relief and food items to Mekele for more than 80,000 people, including 63,000 women and children.
The assistance included 200 tonnes of vegetable oil. The region also received 18.5 tonnes of medical supplies as part of efforts to tackle the coronavirus pandemic.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on October 20, 2021
💭 A regional conflict is now becoming a national crisis which the country’s leaders seem unable to solve, and the lives of millions of Ethiopians are at stake.
➡ „Crow (Oromo) Making Two Cats (Northerners: Tigrayan & Ahmara & Afar) Fight„
💭 The Gallas had little to contribute to the Semitized civilization of Ethiopia; they possessed no significant material or intellectual culture, and their social organization differed considerably from that of the population among whom they settled. They were not only the cause of the depressed state into which the country now sank, but they helped to prolong a situation fromwhich even a physically and spiritually exhausted Ethiopia might otherwise have been able to recover far more quickly
➡ Edward Ullendorff – “The Ethiopians: An Introduction to Country and People.” Oxford University Press, 1960
✈️New air strikes hit capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region Mekelle.✈️
New air strikes have hit the capital of Ethiopia’s Tigray region, residents said Wednesday, as video showed injured people with bloodied faces being helped into ambulances and thick black smoke rising into the sky. Ethiopia’s government said it was targeting facilities to make and repair weapons, which a spokesman for the rival Tigray forces denied.
Meanwhile, the United Nations told The Associated Press it is slashing by more than half its Tigray presence as an Ethiopian government blockade halts humanitarian aid efforts and people die from lack of food.
The war in Africa’s second-most populous country has ground on for nearly a year between Ethiopian and allied forces and the Tigray ones who long dominated the national government before a falling-out with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
There were no immediate details of deaths from the new air strikes in Mekelle, reported by Kindeya Gebrehiwot of the Tigray external affairs office and confirmed by a resident and a humanitarian worker.
“Indeed there have been air strikes in Mekelle today,” Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu told the AP, saying they targeted facilities at the Mesfin Industrial Engineering site that Tigray forces use to make and repair heavy weapons. Legesse said the air strikes had “no intended harm to civilians.”
“Not at all,” Kindeya with the Tigray forces told the AP, calling the site a garage “with many old tires. That is why it is still blazing.”
The attack came two days after Ethiopia’s air force confirmed air strikes in Mekelle that a witness said killed three children. The air force said communications towers and equipment were attacked. Mekelle hadn’t seen fighting since June, when Tigray forces retook much of the region in a dramatic turn in the war.
The air strikes have caused fresh panic in a city under siege, where doctors and others have described running out of medicines and other basic needs.
Despite pleas from the UN and others to allow basic services and humanitarian aid to Tigray’s 6 million people, Ethiopia’s government this week called those expectations “absurd” while the Tigray forces now fight in the neighbouring regions of Amhara and Afar. Hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced there, widening the deadly crisis.
“Although not all movements have yet taken place, there will probably be a reduction from nearly 530 to around 220 UN staff on the ground in Tigray,” UN humanitarian spokesman Saviano Abreu told the AP. The decision is “directly linked to the operation constraints we have been faced with over the last months” along with the volatile security situation, he said.
The lack of fuel and cash because of the government’s blockade on Tigray “has made it extremely challenging for humanitarians to sustain life-saving activities” at the time they’re needed most, Abreu added.
Some 1,200 humanitarian workers including the reduced UN presence will remain in Tigray, he said.
The AP in recent weeks has confirmed the first starvation deaths in Tigray under the government blockade.