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Pullout of UN peacekeepers has started, DR Congo says. – HICGI News Agency
(hicginewsagency.com)
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this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Thanks for the fact check!
I reported this source for being weird, though "looks weird" is just scratching the surface of the weirdness, dear friends!
tl;dr this source is WEIRD.
First, "Have It Cheap Group International News Agency" is a weird name. I can't figure out what Have It Cheap Group International actually does, but their website is dead (www.haveitcheap.com) and their name mostly appears in posts written by their president. The logo from their wordpress blog says:
So I guess they just do EVERYTHING. Where else can you one stop shop for an actress, two solar panels, and a negotiated agreement on Arctic sovereignty? Quit making me drive around for this stuff, people!
Their editor-in-chief, Earnest Kivumbi Benjamin, does seem to be the owner/president of both companies. He claims to be an award-winning journalist, though I can't find a record of that either. He also claims to have been frequently covered by al-Jazeera and the BBC but I cannot find a single reference to him. He says that the UN named him one of the "Top 5" journalists in Uganda. I don't think the UN actually does that! The African Centre for Media Excellence gives out awards, though, and guess what? He's never been nominated for one. In fact, he doesn't appear on any list of Ugandan journalists I've seen, including this one.
He announced his intention to run for President of Uganda in 2021, though he was definitely not a candidate and he's considering running for President of Africa in 2027 which, to my knowledge, is not a real office. On his blog, where he refers to himself as "Africa's Future President", he speculates that Trump was made President by God to bring Christianity back to the US by re-criminalizing homosexuality and sodomy through the SCOTUS (May 3, 2022). So he's a colourful guy.
He's also the CEO of Heal The Planet Global Organization, another opaque, nebulous organization, that just seems to mostly host videos of him speaking. The topics are all over the map but here's one of him thanking God for directing Putin to help Syria. Here's one titled "Heal The Planet Letter to Obama Daughters Could Avert World War III" that's just a silent photo montage of the Obamas.
At least some of the news agency content is purely self-promotional. This "Special Report" says that this - so far as I can tell - obscure man, E K Benjamin, is "on spotlight by key United States Agencies including CIA as a potential visionary young man to take on mantle of a continent". Yowza.
Neither he nor the organization seem to have much reach. EKB's Instagram account has about 1000 followers and almost none of his posts have even a single like or comment. The news organization has about 2100 Facebook followers, 2000 Twitter followers, and their highest view count on YouTube is 250. None of the people or entities involved have Wikipedia pages.
Moderation decisions aside (I'm fine with whatever), can we just acknowledge that that is a festive bowl of weird? It's kind of impressive how weird it is. I don't think there's anything really sinister going on here, but I'm pretty confident this whole operation is the self-aggrandizing grift of one strange but fascinating man.
It is, as you say, a festive bowl of weird! And yeah, my initial thought was "Are we SURE this isn't some kind of 419 scam?"
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/nigerianscam.asp
But sitting down and actually reading it, it's well written, well sourced, and cross referenced with other news sources, accurate.
It's tough getting ANY kind of news out of the Congo so, for now, I think the source is fine.
If it goes off the rails talking about Trump being chosen by God or rabidly homophobic slurs we'll have to re-visit that opinion. :)
If anyone is interested on a good book on the topic of the UN and Congo, I highly suggest "No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo" by Redmond O'Hanlon who had previously written about his travels to Borneo and the Amazon.
Be advised, it gets incredibly dark. Everyone involved is lucky they made it back.
Cool cool. Sounds reasonable enough to me :)
Thanks for talking about your reasoning in-thread!
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