#uganda news network

[mariacallous]

Enormous floods have once again engulfed much of South Sudan, as record water levels in Lake Victoria flow downstream through the Nile. More than 700,000 people have been affected. Hundreds of thousands of people there were already forced from their homes by huge floods a few years ago and were yet to return before this new threat emerged.

Now, there are concerns that these displaced communities may never be able to return to their lands. While weather extremes regularly displace whole communities in other parts of the world, this could be the first permanent mass displacement due to climate change.

In the Sudd region of South Sudan, the Nile passes through a vast network of smaller rivers, swamps, and floodplains. It’s one of the world’s largest wetlands. Flood levels vary significantly from year to year, mostly caused by fluctuations in water levels in Lake Victoria and controlled releases from the dam in Uganda where the lake empties into the Nile.

The Sudd’s unique geography means that floods there are very different than elsewhere. Most floodwater cannot freely drain back into the main channel of the White Nile, and water struggles to infiltrate the floodplain’s clay and silt soil. This means flooding persists for a long time, often only receding as the water evaporates.

People Can No Longer Cope

The communities who live in the Sudd, including the Dinka, Nuer, Anyuak, and Shilluk, are well adapted to the usual ebb and flow of seasonal flooding. Herders move their cattle to higher ground as flood waters rise, while earthen walls made of compressed mud protect houses and infrastructure. During the flooding season, fishing sustains local communities. When floods subside, crops like groundnuts, okra, pumpkins, sorghum, and other vegetables are planted.

However, the record water levels and long duration of recent flooding have stretched these indigenous coping mechanisms. The protracted state of conflict in the country has further reduced their ability to cope. Community elders who spoke to our colleagues at the medical humanitarian aid charity Médecins Sans Frontières said that fear of conflict and violence inhibited them from moving to regions of safe ground they had found during a period of major flooding in the early 1960s.

Around 2.6 million people were displaced in South Sudan between 2020 and 2022 alone, a result of both conflict and violence (1 million) and flooding (1.5 million). In practice, the two are interlinked, as flooding has caused displaced herders to come into conflict with resident farmers over land.

Stagnant floodwater also leads to a rise in water-borne infections like cholera and hepatitis E, snakebites, and vector-borne diseases like malaria. As people become malnourished, these diseases become more dangerous. Malnutrition is already a big problem, especially for the 800,000 or so people who have fled into South Sudan from Sudan following the start of a separate conflict there in April 2023.

Many people are housed in internal displacement camps like at Bentiu, where close to 100,000 people reside. Bentiu is now an island in the floodwaters, protected by embankments that require continued maintenance. As such there are concerns about the long-term future and sustainability of the camp.

The new record levels in Lake Victoria this May raised the alarm over potential unprecedented flooding in the country this year. The two and a half months it takes for floodwaters to make their way downstream to South Sudan provides an early-warning system for communities and humanitarian agencies to prepare. However, forecast models are not able to accurately predict if the embankments at camps like Bentiu will hold.

Will People Ever Return?

Evacuating the camp may be inevitable, some say, because floods seem to be getting worse, likely linked to deforestation and anthropogenic climate change. However, while there is a clear upward trend to lake levels across East Africa, including Lake Victoria, this could also be due to the way water and land is being managed, as well as changes to precipitation.

Though there have been increases in the rainfall during the region’s short rains in October, November, and December, that’s balanced out by decreases in the rainfall season between March and May.

However, climate models indicate increases in precipitation in the catchment, as well as more frequent positive phases of the Indian Ocean Dipole (a weather phenomenon similar to El Niño in the Pacific), which caused the record rainfall in 2020 and 2023. With floods taking a long time to recede, even small increases in the frequency of these positive dipole phases, and small increases in rainfall, could lead to the Sudd wetlands growing—permanently.

Decisionmakers in a country affected by conflict are used to uncertain futures, but they will also need to consider a scenario in which an irreversible expansion of the Sudd wetlands could make the displacement permanent. Where these communities could be relocated is another question entirely.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Zipper at Vox:

Despite a recent slowdown in US sales, global forecasts for electric vehicles remain bullish. Countries across North America, Europe, and Asia are expanding charger networks and offering EV subsidies; global EV sales are projected to nearly triple by 2030, reaching 40 million vehicles annually. The incipient wave of EV purchases raises a question: What will happen to the millions of gas-powered cars whose owners no longer want them? The likely answer: Rather than scrapping used gas vehicles or selling them domestically, rich nations will dispatch them to developing countries where limited incomes and low levels of car ownership have created eager buyers for even older, substandard models.

An influx of used gas cars would be a welcome development for those in the Global South who aspire to automobile ownership, a luxury that many in affluent countries take for granted. But it would undermine efforts to mitigate climate change, since shifting gas guzzlers from one country to another doesn’t lower global emissions. For developing countries themselves, a sharp increase in car ownership could amplify calls to build auto-reliant infrastructure, making it harder to construct the dense neighborhoods and transit networks that can foster more sustainable growth. And since these imported used cars would be fueled by gasoline, air quality would further decline in cities that are already choked with smog. The world is in an era of polycrisis, facing concurrent challenges including climate change, toxic air, and extreme inequality. Difficult trade-offs are often inevitable. Such is the case with the thorny issue of what to do with the millions of gas cars that the rich world will discard as its fleets are electrified. Electrification is a necessary goal. And it’s natural for people in the developing world to desire the same luxuries that characterize middle-class comfort in wealthier countries. The question is how to manage a transition with enormous stakes that has largely been ignored. The experts who do pay attention are growing alarmed.

[...]

How used cars move from rich nations to poor ones

Although it generates few headlines, a massive industry transports used cars across borders every day, with exporters collecting lower-quality models from dealers and wholesale auctions. Ayetor noted that colonial legacies are reflected in the trade flows: the UK, with its car cabins designed for drivers who keep to the left, tends to ship to former colonies like Kenya and Tanzania that still follow the same rules.

According to a report issued in June by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), some 3.1 million used cars were exported in 2022, up from 2.4 million in 2015. Most come from Japan, Europe, and the United States. (In the US, around 7 percent of all cars no longer in use are sent abroad. The rest end up in junkyards where their parts and materiel are sold off.) About one in three exported used vehicles is destined for Africa, followed by Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. Imported models often dominate local auto sales, since international carmakers send few new vehicles to the Global South and rarely establish production facilities there. (In sub-Saharan Africa, only South Africa has local factories.) The developing world’s demand for cars is robust, in large part because comparatively few people own one. According to one 2020 estimate, the US had 860 cars for every 1,000 residents, while South Africa had 176, Morocco 112, and Nigeria just 56. Meanwhile, growing populations provide a steady supply of new potential customers. Africa is home to all of the world’s 20 fastest-growing countries, with Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger, and Uganda expanding their populations by at least 3 percent per year. (For comparison, the US population is growing at a 0.67 percent rate).

[...]

The world needs a plan to adapt

The risks of aged, polluting cars sent abroad will not be borne by the Global South alone. Climate change is a planetary phenomenon; driving a gas guzzler produces the same amount of emissions in Lusaka as it would in London or Los Angeles. Reducing greenhouse gasses requires reducing total vehicle emissions, not just shifting their location. In an ideal world, electrification would enable the rich world to scrap its most decrepit gas cars. Instead, wealthy nations are likely to ship them to poorer countries, which will be left to figure out what to do when even the most MacGyver-like mechanics cannot keep them running. “All of your worst vehicles end up here,” Ayetor said. “When we want to get rid of the vehicle, what do we do?” No wealthy nations currently screen exported vehicles to weed out those that flunk basic quality tests, Kopf said. But that may soon change. The European Union is now considering new regulations that would prohibit exporting “end of life” vehicles, requiring that cars shipped abroad obtain a certificate confirming their roadworthiness. Its adoption would be a “game-changer,” according to UNEP’s Akumu. (She and Kopf said they know of no comparable proposals under consideration in North America.)

With the increase of electric vehicles in the developed countries, used gas-fueled cars are headed to a developing country (aka the Global South) at increasing rates.

[dertaglichedan]

The writer said he was an identity thief — a ring leader on the dark web, with a network of “worms” placed throughout the United States.

In an email to The New York Times, he said his ring preyed on the dead, the unsuspecting and the elderly, especially those from Florida and California, using birth certificates and other documents to discover personal information that aided in their schemes.

“We figure out how to steal,” he said. “That’s what we do.”

Recently, the writer suggested, the group had turned its attention to a major target: the estate of Lisa Marie Presley, which last week faced a threat that Graceland was about to be foreclosed on and sold by a mysterious company, Naussany Investments & Private Lending LLC.

Media outlets often receive unsolicited emails from people who make outlandish claims. But this email arrived Friday in response to one sent by The Times to an email address that Naussany listed in a legal filing sent to a Tennessee court reviewing the foreclosure case.

In its email, The Times referred to the company’s claim that Ms. Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from it, using Graceland as collateral. In the responses, which came from the email address The Times had written to, the writer described the foreclosure effort not as a legitimate attempt to collect on a debt, but as a scam.

“I had fun figuring this one out and it didn’t succeed very well,” the email writer said. He said he was based in Nigeria and his email was written in Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda. But the filing with the email address was faxed from a toll-free number designed to serve North America; it was included in documents sent to the Chancery Court in Shelby County, Tenn., where the foreclosure case is still pending

[lboogie1906]

The Zanzibar Révolution of 1964, the most violent outbreak of anti-Arab violence in postcolonial African history, led to the demise of the Sultan of Zanzibar and his Arab government and the merging of the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba with the then-British colony of Tanganyika into the nation of Tanzania.

Arab control of what were once called the Spice Islands because they produced cloves, began in 1840 when Said bin Sultan, the Sultan of Oman, moved his capital from Muscat, Oman at the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula to Stone Town, Zanzibar. Arabs from Oman and other areas of the Arabian Peninsula had long inhabited the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba and from that base had established an extensive trading network that extended west into East and Central Africa and east to present-day India and Indonesia.

On December 10, 1963, Zanzibar became an independent constitutional monarchy under Sultan Jamshid Bin Abdullah. The formal declaration of Zanzibari's independence by the UK, however, exposed long-simmering racial, cultural, and economic tensions on the islands. The African majority, which could not envision social progress while power was in Arab hands, rose in rebellion only one month after independence was declared.

On January 12, 1964, African insurgents, led by John Okello, an immigrant from Uganda, and leader of the Afro-Shirazi Party, led approximately 800 followers who overwhelmed the nation’s small police force and overthrew Sultan Abdullah. An estimated 17,000 people were killed and thousands of refugees fled to Oman and other nations. Although Okello led the uprising, more moderate forces took control of the Revolution and established a new government led by Abeid Karume who was appointed President of Zanzibar. He immediately dismantled government policies that were racially biased in favor of the Arabs and instituted land reform and redistribution. He began working with the political leaders of soon-to-be independent Tanganyika. Those efforts were successful and led to the union of Zanzibar and mainland Tanganyika into the nation of Tanzania on April 26, 1964. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[maaarine]

Bibliography: articles posted on this blog in 2023

Posted in January

To grasp how serotonin works on the brain, look to the gut (James M Shine, Psyche, Jan 03 2023)

Thousands of records shattered in historic winter warm spell in Europe (Ian Livingston, The Washington Post, Jan 02 2023)

“Il faut que tu sois belle maintenant” : en Égypte, des femmes libérées du voile restent prisonnières des diktats (Aliaa Talaat, Al-Manassa via Courrier International, 20 nov 2022)

Mystery of why Roman buildings have survived so long has been unraveled, scientists say (Katie Hunt, CNN, Jan 06 2023)

Colombia’s surrogacy market: Buying a baby for $4,000 (Lucía Franco, El País, Jan 04 2023)

How to spot an eating disorder (Phillip Aouad & Sarah Maguire, Psyche, Jan 11 2023)

UAE sparks furious backlash by appointing Abu Dhabi oil chief as president of COP28 climate summit (Sam Meredith, CNBC, Jan 12 2023)

Don’t tell me that David Carrick’s crimes were ‘unbelievable’. The problem is victims aren’t believed (Marina Hyde, The Guardian, Jan 17 2023)

Baromètre Sexisme 2023 : "La situation est alarmante", estime le Haut Conseil à l'Égalité (Juliette Geay, Radio France, 23 janvier 2023)

—

Posted in February

Spain approves menstrual leave, teen abortion and trans laws (NPR, Feb 16 2023)

Are Men the Overlooked Reason for the Fertility Decline? (Jessica Grose, The New York Times, Feb 15 2023)

American teenage girls are experiencing high levels of emotional distress. Why? (Moira Donegan, The Guardian, Feb 16 2023)

Figures that lay bare the shocking scale of toxic influencer Andrew Tate’s reach among young men (Maya Oppenheim, The Independent, Feb 17 2023)

Why psychological research on child sex offenders is important (Meetali Devgun, Psyche, Feb 22 2023)

Derrière les chiffres des féminicides, des visages et un continuum de violences contre les femmes (Fanny Declercq, Le Soir, 27 fév 2023)

—

Posted in March

English is not normal (John McWhorter, Aeon, Nov 13 2015)

Are Iranian schoolgirls being poisoned by toxic gas? (BBC News, March 03 2023)

‘Why do we need a supermodel?’: Backlash after Fifa makes Adriana Lima Women’s World Cup ambassador (Henry Belot, The Guardian, March 02 2023)

New Human Metabolism Research Upends Conventional Wisdom about How We Burn Calories (Herman Pontzer, Scientific American, Jan 01 2023)

Polish woman found guilty of aiding an abortion in landmark trial (Harriet Barber, The Telegraph, March 14 2023)

How Diet Builds Better Bones: Surprising Findings on Vitamin D, Coffee, and More (Claudia Wallis, Scientific American, Jan 01 2023)

Met police found to be institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic (Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, March 21 2023)

Chinese Dating App Does the Swiping for Singles to Find Love (Nikki Main, Gizmodo, March 21 2023)

Aphantasia can be a gift to philosophers and critics like me (Mette Leonard Høeg, Psyche, March 20 2023)

—

Posted in April

Facts Don’t Change Minds – Social Networks, Group Dialogue, and Stories Do (Anne Toomey, The LSE Impact Blog, Jan 24 2023)

Uganda’s failure to jail child rapists as teen pregnancies soar (Tamasin Ford, BBC News, April 17 2023)

Italy risks ‘ethnic replacement’ because of low birth rate and high immigration, says minister (Nick Squires, The Telegraph, April 19 2023)

Putin, Trump, Ukraine: how Timothy Snyder became the leading interpreter of our dark times (Robert P Baird, The Guardian, March 30 2023)

India overtakes China to become world’s most populous country (Hannah Ellis-Petersen, The Guardian, April 24 2023)

—

Posted in May

Des crèches ferment toutes les semaines, « et ce n’est pas près de s��arrêter » (Le Soir, 5 mai 2023)

People in comas showed ‘conscious-like’ brain activity as they died, study says (Hannah Devlin, The Guardian, May 01 2023)

Chinese woman appeals in battle for right to freeze her eggs (The Guardian, May 09 2023)

Women CEOs: Why companies in crisis hire minorities - and then fire them (The Guardian, DG McCullough, Aug 08 2014)

Glass cliffs: firms appoint female executives in times of crisis as a signal of change to investors (Max Reinwald and Johannes Zaia and Florian Kunze, LSE Business Review, Aug 19 2022)

—

Posted in June

Afghan women in mental health crisis over bleak future (Yogita Limaye, BBC News, June 05 2023)

Support Of Amber Heard Alongside French Feminists & Cinema Figures (Melanie Goodfellow, Deadline, June 05 2023)

Why is Japan redefining rape? (Tessa Wong & Sakiko Shiraishi, BBC News, June 07 2023)

Catching the men who sell subway groping videos (Zhaoyin Feng & Aliaume Leroy & Shanshan Chen, BBC News, June 08 2023)

Netherlands to provide free sun cream to tackle record skin cancer levels (Kate Connolly, The Guardian, June 12 2023)

The Cause of Depression Is Probably Not What You Think (Joanna Thompson, Quanta Magazine, Jan 26 2023)

—

Posted in July

‘Farsighted impulsivity’ and the new psychology of self-control (Adam Bulley, Psyche, Feb 03 2021)

Can a perfectionist personality put you at risk of migraines? (Shayla Love, Psyche, July 25 2023)

—

Posted in August

How Loneliness Reshapes the Brain (Marta Zaraska, Quanta Magazine, Feb 28 2023)

Why religious belief provides a real buffer against suicide risk (David H Rosmarin, Psyche, Aug 07 2023)

—

Posted in September

What Are Dreams For? (Amanda Gefter, The New Yorker, Aug 31 2023)

Rape Cases Seize Italy’s Attention and Expose Cultural Rifts (Gaia Pianigiani, The New York Times, Sep 03 2023)

Councils in England in crisis as Birmingham ‘declares itself bankrupt’ (Heather Stewart and Jessica Murray, The Guardian, Sep 05 2023)

Nearly one in three female NHS surgeons have been sexually assaulted, survey suggests (Jamie Grierson, The Guardian, Sep 12 2023)

Domination and Objectification: Men’s Motivation for Dominance Over Women Affects Their Tendency to Sexually Objectify Women (Orly Bareket and Nurit Shnabel, Sep 09 2019)

In Spain, dozens of girls are reporting AI-generated nude photos of them being circulated at school: ‘My heart skipped a beat’ (Manuel Viejo, El País, Sep 18 2023)

When the human tendency to detect patterns goes too far (Shayla Love, Psyche, Sep 19 2023)

—

Posted in October

My Brain Doesn’t Picture Things (Marco Giancotti, Nautilus, Oct 04 2023)

“Inverse vaccine” shows potential to treat multiple sclerosis and other autoimmune diseases (Sarah C.P. Williams, The University of Chicago, Sep 11 2023)

Poland election: exit polls point to Law and Justice defeat as Tusk hails ‘rebirth’ (Shaun Walker, The Guardian, Oct 16 2023)

—

Posted in November

What I have learned from my suicidal patients (Gavin Francis, The Guardian, Nov 22 2019)

Did natural selection make the Dutch the tallest people on the planet? (Martin Enserink, Science, Apr 07 2015)

Tumblr Is Always Dying (Elizabeth Minkel, Wired, Nov 14 2023)

How accurate is the new Napoleon film? Sorting fact from fiction (Andrew Roberts, The Sunday Times, Nov 19 2023)

Far-right party set to win most seats in Dutch elections, exit polls show (Jon Henley and Pjotr Sauer and Senay Boztas, The Guardian, Nov 22 2023)

Climate change: Rise in Google searches around ‘anxiety’ (Lucy Gilder, BBC, Nov 22 2023)

—

Posted in December

The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms (Anna Moore, The Guardian, June 15 2021)

Afghanistan: Taliban sends abused women to prison - UN (Nicholas Yong, BBC News, Dec 15 2023)

Longitudinal Associations Between Parenting and Child Big Five Personality Traits (University of California Press, Nov 18 2021)

Scientists Pinpoint Cause of Severe Morning Sickness (Azeen Ghorayshi, The New York Times, Dec 13 2023)

[notwiselybuttoowell]

“We are here to break male dominance in the field of birding,” says Judith Mirembe, the chair of the Uganda Women Birders Club, as the group reaches the botanical gardens on a day where the weather cannot decide between light rain and sunshine.

Mirembe, in the check shirt, with other female birders, using their phones to find out details about a bird they’ve spotted.

“There are very few female birders in Uganda. The tourism industry in general is yet to fully appreciate women,” she adds.

Two dozen women follow Mirembe in silence, hoping to spot a “lifer” – a bird on their wishlist. “Everyone has a different lifer,” says Linda Nakalema, one of the club’s 80 members. “We see the red-chested cuckoo all the time in Uganda but people from South Africa are very excited when they see it because it only migrates there seasonally. It is their lifer. For others it is the marabou stork that we see scavenging through our rubbish every day. It looks so elegant when it flies.”

Tour companies describe Uganda as a paradise for birdwatchers. About 50% of Africa’s bird species, and 11% of the world’s, are found here. Uganda has the highest concentration of birds in Africa. The country’s birders have an ambitious target of bringing in an annual $700m in tourist revenue by 2030. In 2019, tourism in Uganda generated about $1.37bn, about 3.6% of total GDP.

Mirembe believes that female birders are entitled to a share of these earnings. At the International Conference for Women Birders the club hosted in Uganda earlier this month, female enthusiasts from all over the world met to discuss their unique challenges and discuss how, together, they can bring more money to women in the sector.

“Birding is expensive and many Ugandan women are struggling to meet costs such as buying binoculars, telescopes and cameras to record and share the birds they sight with other people,” she says, adding that cultural expectations of women as caregivers mean their spouses may not let them go for week-long birdwatching tours. “This is our reality. Even tourist operators do not take women seriously and we know that we must work twice as hard as men to get the same respect.”

Members of Uganda’s Women Birders Club, which started in 2013, meet in Entebbe every Sunday. It is a training ground and a support network. Many of the women already have careers in tourism and wildlife. Others join to make new friends and learn.

After the satisfaction of spending hours looking for birds and the joy that reverberates through the group when someone sights, accurately names and describes a bird, the women sit down for lunch in a restaurant. Over smoked beef and matooke (mashed green bananas), they speak of a time when birding could be a hazardous pursuit for women.

People would see women with binoculars, accuse them of trying to steal land and beat them up. Others could be hostile to the women because they wore trousers – a taboo in some Ugandan cultures. They recall tour operators who would send them to the field with drivers who’d sexually harass them and tourist accommodation where the women would be put in a shared room with men.

Miremebe watches the younger enthusiasts with pride as she tells them how Uganda was the first country in Africa to start a female birders’ club, and how there are now similar associations in Rwanda and Kenya.

“We must not let fear hold us back from opportunity. We need to keep it going against all odds,” is Mirembe’s farewell cry, as the women leave the restaurant and head back into Entebbe alongside the tired beachgoers and weary market-sellers.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

Tonight (May 30) at 6:30PM, I’m at the NOTTINGHAM Waterstones with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Christian Reilly (MMT Podcast).

Tomorrow (May 31) at 6:30PM, I’m at the MANCHESTER Waterstones, hosted by Ian Forrester.

Then it’s London, Edinburgh, and Berlin!

#20yrsago Everquest social networks need the Mafia https://web.archive.org/web/20030301000000*/http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/papers/Jakobsson.pdf

#20yrsago Streisand suing environmentalists over California Coastline project https://www.californiacoastline.org/streisand/lawsuit.html

#15yrsago English nurseries fingerprinting parents “for security” https://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/kent/7430709.stm

#15yrsago Happy First Sale day! https://everybodyslibraries.com/2008/06/01/100-years-of-the-first-sale-doctrine/

#10yrsago Coloring the Haunted Mansion https://longforgottenhauntedmansion.blogspot.com/2013/06/stroll-around-grounds-until-you-feel-at.html

#10yrsago What is the social media style of protest? https://technosociology.org/?p=1255

#10yrsago Turkish Spring: Taksim Gezi Park protests in Istanbul https://occupygezipics.tumblr.com/post/51867772932/people-chanting-off-with-the-government-as-they

#10yrsago Mouldering city built of bread is a metaphor for Earth without humans https://web.archive.org/web/20130728143258/http://www.adesignaward.com/design.php?ID=28463

#5yrsago Leaks show that Google expected its modest AI-for-drones business to expand exponentially https://theintercept.com/2018/05/31/google-leaked-emails-drone-ai-pentagon-lucrative/

#5yrsago Vermont offers remote workers a $10,000 subsidy to relocate to the state https://qz.com/work/1289727/vermont-will-pay-you-10000-to-move-there-and-work-remotely

#5yrsago Oregon employers warn that the state has run out of workers who can pass a drug test https://www.wweek.com/news/2018/05/30/oregon-is-running-out-of-workers-who-can-pass-a-drug-test/

#5yrsago Customs stole a US citizen’s life savings when he boarded a domestic flight, now he’s suing to get it back https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/05/31/a-64-year-old-put-his-life-savings-in-his-carry-on-u-s-customs-took-it-without-charging-him-with-a-crime/

#5yrsago The most interesting thing about the “Thanksgiving Effect” study is what it tells us about the limits of data anonymization https://www.wired.com/story/the-thanksgiving-effect-and-the-power-of-phone-data/

#5yrsago Uganda’s unenforceable social media tax is augmented by a biometric requirement for SIM card purchases https://globalvoices.org/2018/06/01/netizen-report-ugandas-whatsapp-tax-and-sim-card-regulations-will-make-it-harder-to-stay-connected/

#5yrsago Vanuatu will use drones to deliver vaccines across its remote chain of tiny islands https://spectrum.ieee.org/drone-delivery-becomes-a-reality-in-remote-pacific-islands

#5yrsago Spain’s austerity-loving, authoritarian Prime Minister loses no-confidence vote and is replaced by a socialist https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/spain-government-collapse-no-confidence-vote-mariano-rajoy-a8378586.html

#5yrsago At ex-CIA panelist’s insistence, Oxford Union reneges on promise to upload video of whistleblowing debate https://www.dailypublic.com/articles/05312018/irony-oxford-union-wont-release-video-whistleblowing-panel

#1yrago Inflation is caused by too little capacity: Not too much money https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/01/factories-to-condos-pipeline/#stuff-not-money

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Nottingham, Manchester, London, and Berlin!

[mbijigohruthblog-blog]

Social Media’s Role in Youths Quest for Change.

The world evolves with time and many things witness a rapid or gradual swift. One of these areas that have undergone great change is that of communication. Being the vehicle of information for ages, it has undergone a lot of metamorphosis. Traditional means of communication have given birth to modern ways. In the past, communication though effective was not as smooth as it is today and this is because the world has embraced new, effective and efficient means of communication. We have examples like mails, emails, cell phones, computers, smart phones and online collaboration. All these cited means embody what is known today as the social media- the ways of interactions amongst people through the creation and sharing or exchange of information and ideas in virtual communities and networks. As examples of the social media here include Facebook, WhatsApp,  YouTube ,Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin , Tiktok, etc . It is the fastest and reliable and though an exigency for all is in the active hands of youths. Unlike in the past where youths were axed to silence through the unaccommodating means of exchange , today, the social media have come to give them the voice and they space they had been clamoring for.  It is believed that 75 percent of young people have one functional social media profile and 51 percent visit the social media daily which is partly because of their mastery of communication tool and the role the social media plays in modern day lives .This paper tries to x-ray the current place of the social media and its use as a weapon by the youths to have their voices heard and an attempt to change the narratives and perspectives. It is an opportunity to see how the social media has given to the youth, their voices to make their choices and be part of the national and international debates.

To begin with, the social media is a home for youths to share their worries which they do through advocacy and social media activism. Youths have been able to use these to raise awareness about their problems, stand as a common group to spur social change .They have succeeded to contribute their own quota to social change and a lot of issues in life. Youths have been able to be engaged in politics through the use of the social media and one can quote examples of Bobi Wine of Uganda, Kah Wallah of Cameroon and the Obedient movement in Nigeria that stood firmly behind presidential hopeful Peter Obi and are still deploring the poor conduct of the elections .Youths to denounce these ills use Hashtags  on social media handles like Instagram , Facebook ot Twitter  to express their anger and disappointment . Some examples used were that to raise awareness about the climate chahge, mental health, corruption, electoral malpractices,GBV ,  EndSARS in Nigeria etc.

In addition, the rise of the social media has given birth to new professions which are predominantly manned by youths and they have used it to jealously project their issues and even propose solutions. An example is the case of the recent FIFA world cup in Qatar where social media influencers were used to market and showcase the potentials of the host nations. This is the reason why some influencers like Cabrel Nanjip, Hoga le Pichchi, Tenor and Queen Eteme were selected from Cameroon to visit the host country, and sell the potentials of the country and of Cameroon. Their mission was to take the competition to their generation and talking about influencers, we can note that it is a newfound job handled by youths. It talks about current issues and brings general issues to the table for discussion.  like their names stipulates, they are a reference and models to youths and that explains why they can be able to rally youths and try to  brief them on the societal anomalies that they witness. Their ways of handling information are gradually replacing mainstream journalism , their closeness to the masses makes them their choice as they in most cases are agents of change . Examples of such influencers include Boitumelo Thulo,Khaby Lame,

When the Anglophone crises in Cameroon got the point that the government was arresting members of the Consortium that was manning the grievances of Anglophones, power was quickly transferred abroad. It was handled by two youths, Tapang Ivo and Mark Baretta who continued to share the aspirations of the people by directing the Anglophone crises popularly known as the struggle through the use of the social media especially Facebook and Twitter to expose the grievances of the people of the English part of Cameroon.  Given that they were far away from home, their power was only exercised through the social media. They directed and animated the struggle from a distance through daily updates on the issues on the ground and through circulars that they released online. We can conclude that they succeeded to mobilize their audience.

Still about the Anglophone crises, unlike in the past where some hideous crimes went unnoticed, the social media became the police of the people. A typical example is that killing of school children of the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba by unidentified gun men . The drastic reaction from youths especially using  the #EndAnglopheCrisis- Cameroon hashtag  brought to the knowledge of many about the existence of the current crisis in that nation. The Norwegian Refugee Council saw it as the most ignored crisis in the world but the mobilization of the youths gave it the desired attention.

In 2020, protesters in the streets of Liberia forced their president – George Weah to succumb to their demands and put in place measures that can curb violence against women. This was triggered by a boy of 19 who is said to have mutilated the genitals of a three year old and was planning to rape her and the waves of rape cases recorded by the country since 2015.Given the power of the social media, the president can be held responsible if he fails to implement the promised measures and in that case, only an online hashtag can bring him to order.

Young women in South Africa protested in2019 against gender based violence by marching in the streets and later storming social media with a call for an end to their woes ad later marched in front of parliament urging the president to put in place a budget and a team to handle the crises, the same case occurred in Namibia when young women shared pictures  of  their October demonstration against  GBV and femicide .  Youths rose in joy when president Mugabe of Zimbabwe resigned and prayed for a new nation with the new president but three years later, were compelled to protest against the violation of human rights and the press censorship. Most of the protests were done on social media for fear of being tracked down by the regime. Thus, we can see that the social media being a tool for change is an escape road for the youths who may not use the streets but the tweets that can save many lives.

The church has not been left out of this situation because many youths now use the social media as a tool to share the gospel .The gospel through preaching is used online and messages shared through platforms by youths to other youths. The case in point is that of the passion of Christ that was celebrated last week where youths used videos from the theatric representation of the suffering of Christ to share on social media. We also have the case of young Pastor Korede Komaiya who makes a lot of money from YouTube and that is been done through preaching and evangelism. This is a clear indication that the youths use the social media for very divergent reasons and that it is an effective tool for exchanges and contact.

The social media appears to be a sharp blade in the hands of youths ready to fall any tree standing on their way. As it is now possible to use a phone to effect change, one is certain that as technology is evolving, youths being the core of it will be at the centre of any decision made to affect their destiny. The social media far from being a good tool has also been wrongly used by many youths. This has resulted in many negative acts like cyber criminality, sexual harassment and scamming. Therefore a better use of the social media by all youths can be the beginning of a new dawn especially in Africa .

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[safaripackages-blog]

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[mariacallous]

Uganda’s parliament is set to debate a new anti-gay bill next week, as the country’s president called for a “medical opinion” on the deviancy of homosexuals. The bill, besides criminalizing homosexuality, also criminalizes the “promotion” and “abetting” of homosexuality and follows a January parliamentary investigation into an alleged promotion of homosexuality in schools. It’s no surprise, given how rampant anti-gay sentiment is in the country.

In September, I came across a video that was going viral on Twitter in Uganda. In the video, 26-year-old Elisha Mukisa, who is reported to have been previously imprisoned on defilement charges, speaks for a little over eight minutes detailing how he was lured as a minor into acting in gay porn by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG)—a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in Kampala working to support and defend LGBTQ+ persons in the country.

The video caught my attention for several reasons. The first was the anti-gay rhetoric it catalyzed in the following days and the corresponding moral panic. In the ensuing conversation on social media, SMUG was defined as a threat to children that parents had to watch out for. One Twitter user, @Ashernamanya, wrote: “Uganda must be for God Almighty not for Bum lickers the Gays. SMUG an NGO is recruiting young children into Homosexuality and acting the gay. They need to be arrested.”

The previous month, the Ugandan government had shut down the organization. The country’s NGO board released a statement after the announcement, claiming that SMUG’s registration was rejected for being “undesirable.” Mukisa alleged in this video that the shutdown was because of evidence he had provided to the NGO board.

The second reason the video kindled my interest was that it added to the growing list of instances of mass media being weaponized in Uganda to propagate the “ex-gay” narrative, in which a person claims to have been “lured” and “recruited” into homosexuality. It was also organized by the Family Life Network’s Stephen Langa, who in March 2009 put together a similar seminar called “Exposing the Homosexuals’ Agenda.” The language and presentation of luring and recruitment (as though it were a job listing) were not, in fact, novel to my ears, and it is a phenomenon I have seen across African news media.

It has deep links to white evangelical Christianity and is an export of a made-in-the-USA movement and ideology that is polarizing African countries and harming and endangering LGBTQ+ people.

While it looked innovative, it was not the first time such a press conference was creatively planned to spark panic and parade out a person claiming to be ex-gay. It was also not peculiar to Uganda; it is a method that was and continues to be used in both puritanical and evangelical Christianity in countries from Ghana to Kenya and Nigeria.

From the days of European colonialism, when sodomy warranted the death penalty, the church has been the face of the anti-LGBTQ+ movement and has deployed language and framing consistent with present-day ex-gay movements.

The rhetoric relies on a “prodigal son” framing that checks out with the Bible, in which gay people are only valid as long as they turn away from their sexuality. (In the Bible story, the prodigal son’s welcome was contingent on his return in the same way the evangelical church would only welcome gay people on account of their conversion.)

When the pro-conversion therapy Christian group Exodus International put Yvette Cantu Schneider and other ex-gay spokespeople on TV in the 2000s to talk about being formerly gay, it was because of such beliefs. Schneider herself wrote on Instagram that a straight white male leadership team handpicked her. (Exodus International ceased operating in 2013.)

The post reads in part: “They were looking for a spokesperson who had been gay. And I was told, ‘you’re gonna be great because you’re young, you have the Hispanic last name, and you don’t look gay.’”

This same belief seemed to spawn the Mukisa video, the homosexual recruitment press conference, and other such events. The prodigal son parable has propped up the ex-gay movement in Uganda, ensuring there are open arms to gay people who can speak about previously being in that life of “sin” and denounce their gayness publicly. It seems that as the ex-gay movement lost its grip in the United States, it started to reach for relevance elsewhere.

In 2009, George Oundo, whom news reports described as a former trans woman and LGBT activist, went on a media tirade in Uganda on how they got initiated into homosexuality at 12 years old. Oundo said in a TV interview that they “recruited many, many boys in Jinja”—a town in southeast Uganda. They also published a book titled My Long Journey to Victory: Bound by the Chains of Homosexuality.

In 2018, Val Kalende, an LGBTQ+ rights activist who even went on a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour in 2010 for her activism, went on TV during a church service to renounce lesbianism. Kalende in 2022 wrote an op-ed titled “Unchanged: A lesbian Christian’s journey through ‘ex-gay’ life,” in which she apologized to Uganda’s LGBTQ+ community for her renunciation.

The church has been involved in manufacturing and sustaining the ex-gay framework in more than subtle and metaphorical ways. Evangelical preachers have traveled across Africa, verbalizing this harmful language.

In the early 2000s, American evangelical Scott Lively was part of a series of anti-gay events that culminated in Uganda’s 2009 “Kill the gays” bill, which called for the death penalty for what it described as “aggravated homosexuality.” Lively had written books such as The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party and Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child against what he described as “pro-homosexual indoctrination.” The bill—which Lively opposed as too harsh—was introduced after Lively spoke at the March 2009 conference organized by Langa that hosted U.S. representatives of the ex-gay movement.

On that same trip and speaking at the same conference as Lively were evangelicals Caleb Lee Brundidge, who said he was formerly gay, and Exodus International board member Don Schmierer. Schmierer spoke on a lack of good upbringing as a cause of homosexuality and was quoted as saying that 56 percent of homosexuals experienced abuse as children, which turned them into homosexuals.

Following that conference, Lively also spoke to the Ugandan Parliament, where he framed homosexuality as a Western import intending to spread “the disease” to children.

This recasting of homosexuality as akin to pedophilia, alongside the widespread use of similar language, is meant to legitimize the response and crackdown by governments and institutions. If gay people are not successfully framed as predators, then extreme measures against them could be questioned. However, the violence that LGBTQ+ people experience in Africa has been justified by these anti-gay groups through the construction of a narrative of intent by “them” to target children.

That same rhetoric drawing connections between homosexuality and pedophilia has remained largely unchanged from how evangelicals created panic around gay people in the early days of the anti-gay movement. In a 1981 letter, U.S. preacher Jerry Falwell described gay people as out to “recruit,” saying “many of them are out after my children and your children” and that they “must not be recruited to a profane lifestyle.” Falwell also added that gay people threatened families because they didn’t reproduce.

It is similar to the rhetoric of individuals such as Peter LaBarbera, who in 2007 falsely claimed that there was “a disproportionate incidence of pedophilia” among gay men.

These comments on recruitment, destruction, and being a threat to families now cloud much of the discourse around homosexuality in several African countries. They were present in the Mukisa press conference, are currently in use as Ghana’s Parliament debates a draconian anti-gay bill, and continue to swirl across the anti-LGBTQ+ movement on the continent. In an African context, visits and speeches from prominent Americans such as Lively and Falwell have the effect of legitimizing homophobia; their straight white male identities crown it with credibility.

I do not mean to exonerate Uganda, Ghana, or other African countries of homophobia or suggest that they are incapable of it without external backing. They are.

Even though LGBTQ+ identities had existed in Africa since before colonialism, their existence was not always welcomed and tolerated. For instance, while homosexuality to the Zande people in South Sudan was indigenous and commonplace, they were harsher on women; lesbianism was considered witchcraft and could even warrant execution.

Abrahamic religions have exacerbated homophobia, and it might have become prevalent on the continent without U.S. evangelical backing. This trend is clearest in Senegal, a majority-Muslim country, where the capital, Dakar, used to be considered Africa’s “gay capital” but is now experiencing rising homophobia. Just last year, protesters lined the streets of Dakar demanding stricter laws and longer prison sentences for gay people in the country.

However, claiming that homosexuality is uniquely Western offers the United States’ ex-gay movement the opportunity to present itself as being on the right side of history, as being close to the sources of “moral decadence” but still resisting it. For Ugandan and African homophobes, the reverse is the case. It gives them a premise for absolution—an anticolonial veneer that allows them to say, “This was brought here from abroad, and we need to eradicate it.”

Proponents of ex-gay and anti-gay philosophies depend on the permanence of gay people for their message to be relevant. They require an enemy for their fight to be valid, and they go to great lengths to construct this enemy as a well-funded and all-powerful foreign movement while falsely presenting the local anti-gay movement as a grassroots underdog, despite its heavy reliance on U.S. evangelicals for publicity.

[fudengtrailer]

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[spadesurvey]

Best Market Research Agencies in Uganda

Uganda is a developing country with a growing economy and lots of opportunities. To better understand the complexities of its market, market research is needed. With the utilization of market research, businesses can make strategic actions and well-informed decisions. To get better market research, partnering with a market research company in Uganda is all you need. Whether you are new to the market or a seasoned business, you can observe a huge difference when you associate with market research firms in Uganda.  

Through this blog, we have shortlisted the best market research companies in Uganda that have a proven track record and are known for their quality services.

Here is the list of the best market research companies in Uganda:

1.IPSOS Uganda:

IPSOS is one of the leading social research companies in Uganda, which has been known for reliable market research. This company offers a wide range of services like opinion polling, consumer insights, and media monitoring. With its data-driven strategies, advanced analytics, and innovative methodologies, companies rely on this market research firm for their decision-making. IPSOS is known for its local expertise and extensive global network.

2.Spade Survey:

Spade Survey is another market research firm that has been trusted by businesses for many years. Being one of the top social impact consulting companies in Uganda, this company is known for its reliable methodology and tailored solutions.

Spade Survey offers several services like market research, customer satisfaction surveys, and feasibility studies. Well-known for its client-centric approach and commitment to delivering actionable insights, this company has expertise in providing both qualitative and quantitative research. Another benefit of associating with this firm is getting all amazing services at affordable prices.

Spade Survey is a reputable market research firm in Uganda that specializes in offering full insights and analysis to businesses. Spade Survey’s expertise in data collection, market surveys, and consumer research helps firms make educated decisions and drive growth. They provide useful information and strategic ideas to help organizations remain competitive and grow in dynamic market settings.

3.Research World International:

Research World International is another market research firm that has a strong presence in Uganda. Trusted by many businesses, this company offers a wide range of services, including consumer behavior insights, brand health insights, and public opinion insights. RWI is known for providing amazing research services to both the private and public sectors. Also, businesses rely on this company for its data collection process.

4.Frontline Research:

Another leading market research firm that has been delivering quality services through data collection and analysis. It specializes in market research, monitoring & evaluation, and social research. This company focuses on technology-driven research to deliver actionable insights.

5.TNS Kantar:

TNS Kantar is a global leader in market research. It provides premium quality market research services, including customer experience studies, brand tracking, and advertising effectiveness. It utilizes advanced tools, techniques, and methodologies to cater to all requirements of its clients.

These are a few market research companies in Uganda that have been delivering actionable insights to their clients for many years. Associating with the right market research firm is very important if you want to understand the challenges and opportunities of the market in Uganda. These market research agencies help businesses to reach their target audiences and make well-informed decisions.

Read More: Social Research Companies in Angola

How Spade Survey Works:

Spade Survey is a leading market research company in Uganda. We are a full-service quantitative and qualitative market research fieldwork company committed to providing high-quality data collection and market research services. 

We are one of Uganda’s best market research companies for recruiting difficult-to-reach groups and collecting high-quality data, and we have extensive expertise applying appropriate methodology across a wide range of industries, locations, and cultures. We regularly have an impact on the success of our clients’ businesses.

We have professionals who can provide expert advice and help to businesses and individuals looking to conduct research or analyze data. They can work in a range of industries, including market research, social sciences, and healthcare, among others.

We can assist you with designing research studies, collecting and analyzing data, and producing reports describing the findings. We also advise on statistical analysis and research methods, as well as providing insights and recommendations based on their knowledge.

We ensure the accuracy of all data collected, which is critical to the integrity of research. We are a research firm that focuses on gathering, analyzing, and offering insights into various sorts of data and information. Our primary purpose is to perform research on behalf of our clients so that they may make informed decisions regarding their businesses, products, services, and markets.

Our team is experienced in executing research approaches, including quantitative and qualitative data collection methods. All of our team members have previously worked in a research team and have collaborated with international researchers on international research initiatives. We are committed to offering individual service, are well-trained, and are adaptable to satisfy our clients’ research needs.

Conclusion:

Market research companies in Uganda provide world-class services suitable to the country’s diversified consumer base. Businesses that collaborate with one of India’s top market research organizations can gain useful insights and develop informed strategies for achieving and maintaining success.

In the ever-changing world of Indian business, market research firms play an important role in offering key insights. From detailed data analysis to trend spotting, these companies provide businesses with the knowledge they need to make sound decisions.

Businesses can gain a competitive advantage, reduce risks, and open up new growth prospects by working with an Indian market research firm. So, don’t be scared to harness the expertise of these industry players to carry your firm to new heights.

[ivankahasbeentreatedsounfairly]

The NY Times

By Selam GebrekidanJustin ScheckSarah Hurtes and Pete McKenzie

Nov. 30, 2024

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is in line to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the next Trump administration, is well-known for promoting conspiracy theories and vaccine skepticism in the United States.

But Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has also spent years working abroad to undermine policies that have been pillars of global health policy for a half-century, records show.

He has done this by lending his celebrity, and the name of his nonprofit group, Children’s Health Defense, to a network of overseas chapters that sow distrust in vaccine safety and spread misinformation far and wide.

He, his organizations and their officials have interfered with vaccination efforts, undermined sex education campaigns meant to stem the spread of AIDS in Africa, and railed against global organizations like the World Health Organization that are in charge of health initiatives.

Along the way, Mr. Kennedy has partnered with, financed or promoted fringe figures — people who claim that 5G cellphone towers cause cancer, that homosexuality and contraceptive education are part of a global conspiracy to reduce African fertility and that the World Health Organization is trying to steal countries’ sovereignty.

One of his group’s advisers, in Uganda, suggested using “supernatural insight” and a man she calls Prophet Elvis to guide policymaking. “We do well to embrace ethereal means to get ahead as a nation,” she wrote on a Ugandan news site this year.

These people, more than leading scientists and experienced public health professionals, have existed in Mr. Kennedy’s orbit for years. The ideas spread by him and his associates abroad highlight the unorthodox, sometimes conspiratorial nature of the world occupied by a man who stands to lead America’s health department, its 80,000 employees and its $1.8 trillion budget.

Mr. Kennedy did not respond to a list of questions about his organization’s work abroad. His personal email automatically replied with a link to a Google form for people to apply to work with him in government — and name their own job titles. Mary Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, said that Mr. Kennedy was the group’s “chairman on leave” and had not been involved in the day-to-day operations in over a year.

As health secretary, Mr. Kennedy would have the opportunity to reshape health policy. The department has a hand in negotiations for an international pandemic-response treaty, is the parent agency of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and finances global projects like vaccine campaigns.

He undermined confidence in the measles vaccine ahead of a deadly outbreak in Samoa.

Mr. Kennedy visited the Pacific isl

and of Samoa in June 2019 in the aftermath of a public health tragedy.

During routine measles immunizations a year earlier, nurses had mistakenly mixed the vaccine with a muscle relaxant, leading to the death of two infants.

Measles, a highly contagious disease, is preventable, thanks to vaccines that have been proven safe since the 1960s.

But vaccine skeptics seized on the death of the two children as evidence that the vaccines should not be trusted. The Samoan government temporarily suspended its immunization program.

Mr. Kennedy arrived in Samoa, on the invitation of a local anti-vaccine activist, and amplified doubts about the vaccine’s safety. It was a crucial moment. Vaccination rates had plummeted, and the World Health Organization called for Samoa to ramp up immunization as soon as possible.

Mr. Kennedy met with the prime minister and other officials. He told activists that vaccines shipped to Samoa might be of a lower quality than those sent to developed countries.

“With his last name, and the status attached to it, people will believe him,” said Dr. Take Naseri, who met with Mr. Kennedy at the time as Samoa’s director general of health.

A measles outbreak began a few months after his visit. Eighty-three people died, most of them children, a staggering loss in a nation of about 200,000 people.

During the outbreak, Mr. Kennedy falsely suggested that defective vaccines could have caused the deaths. He later dismissed the outbreak as “mild” and denied any connection to it. “I never told anybody not to vaccinate,” he said last year.

When Edwin Tamasese, the anti-vaccine campaigner who arranged Mr. Kennedy’s visit, was arrested and charged with incitement for interfering with vaccinations, Children’s Health Defense helped him obtain legal advice and paid for his lawyers, according to Mr. Tamasese.

The measles outbreak in Samoa ended after 95 percent of the eligible population received vaccinations, according to the W.H.O.

He and his organization promote AIDS falsehoods.

Sex education has been central to the global fight against the spread of AIDS in Africa for decades.

But officials with Children’s Health Defense Africa, one of Mr. Kennedy’s nonprofit groups, see a conspiracy at play.

Wahome Ngare, a Kenyan physician who sits on the group’s advisory board, argued at a conference in Uganda this year that contraception and health education were part of a global plot to reduce Africans’ fertility. He attended the conference alongside the head of the Children’s Health Defense Africa, who presented slides bearing the organization’s logo and web address.

Mr. Kennedy himself has questioned the accepted science behind AIDS. He falsely said that AIDS may have been caused by the recreational use among gay people of the drug amyl nitrite. It is caused by the virus H.I.V.

Last year, Children’s Health Defense posted a video promoting a book that questions the link between H.I.V. and AIDS. Another of the group’s interview subjects this year said that the former U.S. government scientist Anthony Fauci should be imprisoned or “taken off this Earth.”

Dr. Ngare is among the many people in Mr. Kennedy’s orbit whose views conflict sharply with those of the health agency that Mr. Kennedy stands to lead.

In an interview with NPR in 2015 before joining Children’s Health Defense Africa, Dr. Ngare mused about stories that “vaccines have been used for spread of H.I.V.” and called for a boycott of polio vaccines. The U.S. government is a major sponsor of polio vaccine campaigns worldwide. Dr. Ngare did not respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Holland, the chief executive of Children’s Health Defense, said those were Dr. Ngare’s personal views, not those of Mr. Kennedy’s organization.

At the conference in Uganda, Dr. Ngare spoke to far-right lawmakers and activists who support draconian punishments, including life in prison, for people convicted of having gay sex.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Ugandan officials over that law.

He aligned himself with fringe figures, including people who ended up on German security watch lists.

When Mr. Kennedy started his nonprofit group’s European chapter in August 2020, he floated questions about whether the Covid-19 pandemic was part of “a sinister game” played by governments to control people.

“A lot of it feels very planned to me,” he said in Berlin.

The next day, he rallied about 38,000 people at a protest over Covid-19 measures. The protest was organized by a German group called Querdenken. Its leaders have since ended up on a government watch list for fomenting antigovernment sentiment.

Promoters used Mr. Kennedy’s name to drum up attendance, saying that he personally wanted people to take to the streets and fight back. After the event, hundreds of protesters tried to storm the Reichstag, Germany’s Parliament.

Mr. Kennedy was not in attendance at the Parliament. “That whole Reichstag thing was completely unrelated to the demonstration,” Ms. Holland said.

Mr. Kennedy’s influence in Germany lives on, at least in online forums. Recent data from CeMAS, a research group that monitors conspiracy movements, shows that his name is often invoked on conspiracy-focused German Telegram channels, coming up more than 6,000 times this year alone.

His European chapter paid a British lawmaker to speak at a conference promoting vaccine skepticism.

Children’s Health Defense’s chapter in Europe has cultivated relationships with members of the European Parliament.

In January 2022, the organization held a news conference in Brussels demanding a “moratorium on health restrictions.” An anti-vaccine rally that followed the event turned violent, with protesters smashing windows at the European Union’s diplomatic headquarters.

In April 2023, Children’s Health Defense Europe helped organize a conference on the grounds of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. At the conference, lawmakers criticized a proposed pandemic treaty being considered at the World Health Organization.

The chapter has hosted press events with European lawmakers and encouraged Parliament to reject vaccination certificate rules.

In 2023, the European chapter paid a member of Britain’s Parliament, Andrew Bridgen, to speak at a conference it had helped organize. The conference discussed opposition to government pandemic measures and promoted vaccine skepticism. The sum was small, at just under $800, according to Mr. Bridgen’s financial disclosures. Such payments are legal in Britain.

Mr. Bridgen has repeatedly compared the Covid-19 vaccine rollout to the Holocaust, including in an interview with the Children’s Health Defense online television station.

Children’s Health Defense spent $315,000 in Europe last year, including in Iceland and Greenland, its U.S. tax filings show. Ms. Holland said that as of this year, the European chapter was run by volunteers and no longer funded by the U.S. operation.

His Africa chapter pushes measles misinformation and risky remedies.

In 2021, a South African herbalist named Toren Wing reached out to Mr. Kennedy about his effort to ban 5G cellphone towers over health concerns.

In an email, Mr. Wing recalled in an interview, he invoked a rousing speech about liberty that Mr. Kennedy’s father had delivered as a senator visiting apartheid South Africa in 1966.

“This is so cool,” Mr. Kennedy responded, according to a copy of the email. He looped in a Children’s Health Defense lawyer. The anti-5G effort fizzled, Mr. Wing said, but it laid the groundwork for a Children’s Health Defense chapter in Africa.

At the chapter’s launch, Mr. Kennedy said the continent was “a testing and clinical trial laboratory for multinational pharmaceutical companies that see African people as commodities.” His group sent just over $15,000 for “setup expenses” in 2022, U.S. tax filings show.

Shabnam Palesa Mohamed, who leads the chapter, is a frequent host of the nonprofit’s online show. She interviews doctors promoting unproven Covid-19 remedies and rails against vaccines.

After a measles outbreak started in Cape Town, Ms. Mohamed appeared in a video discussing supposed negative effects of “alleged measles injections” in South Africa.

⁠In 2023, Unicef reported a 30 percent decline in confidence in childhood vaccines in South Africa after the Covid-19 pandemic, coming amid the world’s “largest sustained backslide in childhood immunization in 30 years.” The group cited factors including “growing access to misleading information.”

Ms. Mohamed and others affiliated with Children’s Health Defense Africa pushed the discredited theory that the drug ivermectin will treat Covid-19. They also sued the South African government, unsuccessfully, to stop Covid-19 vaccinations. Ms. Mohamed thanked Children’s Health Defense for supporting the case.

Ms. Mohamed has promoted conspiracy theories against the World Health Organization, Bill Gates and two of the world’s biggest money managers, BlackRock and Vanguard. Ms. Mohamed declined to answer questions about her work.

“I don’t think she was speaking on behalf of C.H.D.,” said Ms. Holland, who said the Africa chapter was a volunteer organization. “She’s an individual. She has her own views.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/30/world/africa/rfk-jr-kennedy-international-work-public-health-policies.html

[theankoletimes]

Uganda Airlines to Launch London and Asia Routes by 2025

(Kampala) – Uganda Airlines has announced plans to expand its network significantly, targeting international destinations like London, Saudi Arabia, and China, along with new intra-Africa routes to Cape Town, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) by mid-2025. The airline’s Chief Commercial Officer, Adedayo Olawuyi, shared the details of the planned expansion at a travel agents…

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 10.9 (after 1920)

1934 – An Ustashe assassin kills King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou, Foreign Minister of France, in Marseille. 1936 – Boulder Dam (later Hoover Dam) begins to generate electricity and transmit it to Los Angeles. 1937 – Murder of 9 Catholic priests in Zhengding, China, who protected the local population from the advancing Japanese army. 1941 – A coup in Panama declares Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia Arango the new president. 1942 – Australia's Statute of Westminster Adoption Act 1942 receives royal assent. 1950 – The Goyang Geumjeong Cave massacre in Korea begins. 1962 – Uganda becomes an independent Commonwealth realm. 1963 – In Italy, a large landslide causes a giant wave to overtop the Vajont Dam, killing over 2,000. 1966 – Vietnam War: the Republic of Korea Army commits the Binh Tai Massacre. 1967 – A day after his capture, Ernesto "Che" Guevara is executed for attempting to incite a revolution in Bolivia. 1969 – In Chicago, the National Guard is called in as demonstrations continue over the trial of the "Chicago Eight". 1970 – The Khmer Republic is proclaimed in Cambodia. 1980 – Pope John Paul II greets the Dalai Lama during a private audience in Vatican City. 1981 – President François Mitterrand abolishes capital punishment in France. 1983 – South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan survives an assassination attempt in Rangoon, Burma (present-day Yangon, Myanmar), but the blast kills 21 and injures 17 others. 1984 – The popular children's television show Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends, based on The Railway Series by the Reverend Wilbert Awdry, premieres on ITV. 1986 – The Phantom of the Opera, eventually the second longest running musical in London, opens at Her Majesty's Theatre. 1986 – Fox Broadcasting Company (FBC) launches as the fourth US television network. 1992 – The Peekskill meteorite, a 27.7 pounds (12.6 kg) meteorite crashed into a parked car in Peekskill, New York 1995 – An Amtrak Sunset Limited train is derailed by saboteurs near Palo Verde, Arizona. 2006 – North Korea conducts its first nuclear test. 2007 – The Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its all-time high of 14,164 points before rapidly declining due to the 2007–2008 financial crises. 2009 – First lunar impact of NASA's Lunar Precursor Robotic Program. 2012 – Pakistani Taliban attempt to assassinate outspoken schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai. 2016 – The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army launches its first attack on Myanmar security forces along the Bangladesh–Myanmar border. 2019 – Turkey begins its military offensive in north-eastern Syria.