200 Nigerian School Girls kidnapped...WTF??

[InChiefsHell]

I have not seen this on the Planet yet, so sorry if Q. Check out the link for the CNN video, and yes, this cut and paste sucks for formatting:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/06/world/...bducted-girls/

Abuja, Nigeria (CNN) -- Nigeria defended its response to the kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls by the terror group Boko Haram, even as details emerged Tuesday about a second mass abduction, adding to a growing global outrage over the fate of the children.
President Goodluck Jonathan has been under fire over accusations the government initially ignored and then later downplayed the abduction of the girls, who have become the focal point of a social media campaign demanding their safe return.
"The President and the government (are) not taking this as easy as people all over the world think," Doyin Okupe, a spokesman for Jonathan told CNN.
"We've done a lot -- but we are not talking about it. We're not Americans. We're not showing people, you know, but it does not mean that we are not doing something."
In detailing the government's response, two special battalions have been devoted to the search for the missing girls, Okupe said. That includes 250 locations that have been searched by helicopters and airplanes.
Anger grows over 200 missing girls Obama: 'This is a terrible situation' London joins campaign for kidnapped girls
It was unclear whether these were additional troops being dispatched or were forces already in place. More troops, he said, are also on the way.
But the father of two of the schoolgirls taken by Boko Haram told CNN there has been no sign of the military in the days and weeks following the abduction.
He accused the government of "playing" with the parents of the missing girls, treating them as "fools."
"Had there been these military men who went into the bush to rescue our daughters, we would have seen them," said the father, who declined to be identified for fear of reprisals by the government and the terror group. "...We have never seen any military man there."
U.S. offer of military help
In a sign that Nigeria may be bowing to international pressure and outrage, the government announced the creation of an information center dedicated to answering questions and providing daily updates about rescue efforts, Okupe said.
Nigeria's President also accepted an offer of U.S. military support in the search for the girls.
"So what we've done is — we have offered, and it's been accepted — help from our military and our law enforcement officials," U.S. President Barack Obama told NBC News on Tuesday. "We're going to do everything we can to provide assistance to them."
That help includes the creation of a "coordination cell" to provide intelligence, investigations and hostage negotiation expertise, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. The cell will include U.S. military personnel, she said.
The joint coordination cell will be established at the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Abuja, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the work is expected to begin immediately.
But even as the help was offered to Jonathan, new details were emerging about the abduction of at least eight girls between the ages of 12 and 15, who were snatched Sunday night from the village of Warabe.
The village is located in the rural northeast, near the border of Cameroon, an area considered a stronghold for Boko Haram, a group that U.S. officials say has received training from al Qaeda affiliates.
Villagers in Warabe told CNN that gunmen moved from door-to-door late Sunday, snatching the girls and beating anybody who tried to stop them.
The latest abductions come amid international outcry over the April 14 kidnapping of more than 200 girls. According to accounts, armed members of Boko Haram overpowered security guards at an all-girls school in Chibok, yanked the girls out of bed and forced them into trucks. The convoy of trucks then disappeared into the dense forest bordering Cameroon.
Boko Haram: A bloody insurgency, a growing challenge
'Western education is sin'
Boko Haram translates to "Western education is sin" in the local Hausa language, and the group has said its aim is to impose a stricter enforcement of Sharia law across Africa's most populous nation, which is split between a majority Muslim north and a mostly Christian south.
Kidnapper: I will sell them in the market
Nigerians protest over kidnapped schoolgirls Nigerians protest over kidnapped schoolgirls
Map: Where the girls were kidnappedMap: Where the girls were kidnapped
The United States has branded Boko Haram a terror organization and has put a $7 million bounty on the group's elusive leader, Abubakar Shekau.
In recent years, the group has stepped up its attacks, bombing schools, churches and mosques.
But it is the abductions of girls that has spawned the biggest outrage, with a #BringBackOurGirls campaign that initially began on Twitter and then quickly spread with demonstrators taking to the streets over the weekend in major cities around the world to demand action.
6 reasons why the world should demand action
On Tuesday, the United Nations human rights chief blasted Boko Haram, saying the group's claim of slavery and sexual slavery of girls are "crimes against humanity."
"The girls must be immediately returned, unharmed, to their families," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a news release.
'I abducted your girls'
A man claiming to be Shekau appeared in a video announcing he would sell his victims. The video was first obtained Monday by Agence-France Presse.
"I abducted your girls. I will sell them in the market, by Allah," he said, according to a CNN translation from the local Hausa language. "There is a market for selling humans. Allah says I should sell. He commands me to sell. I will sell women. I sell women."
In the nearly hourlong, rambling video, Shekau repeatedly called for an end to Western education.
"Girls, you should go and get married," he said.
Pillay, along with three other African United Nations women leaders, sent a letter reminding the Nigerian government of its "legal responsibility to ensure that girls and boys have the fundamental right to education and to be protected from violence, persecution and intimidation," according to her statement.
In the United States, all 20 women serving in the Senate signed a bipartisan letter calling on Obama to take action.
"More can be done by this administration. I would like to see special forces deployed to help rescue these young girls. Some of these girls are as young as nine years old," Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told CNN. "...They're being sold into slavery, forced into marriages, required to convert. This is just horrible."
More than 355,000 people, including celebrities and lawmakers, to date have signed a change.org petition that calls upon the world to act to save the girls.
The petition calls on Jonathan and the government "to ensure all schools are safe places to learn, protected from attack."
'You can never rule out surprise'
Nigerian Minister of Information Labaran Maku told CNN that despite international reaction and media reports, there have been some successes in combating Boko Haram.
But when asked about bombings in Abuja, which came the same day as the mass abduction of schoolgirls, he said: "In the case of insurgency and guerrilla warfare, you can never rule out surprise here and there."
He also declined to agree that misinformation released by the military in the aftermath of the April kidnapping added to the growing outrage.
First, the military said all the girls had been released or rescued. But after the girls' families began asking where their daughters were, the military retracted the statement.
"When they made that statement, it was based on a report they received," the minister said.
Nigeria's finance minister said Monday that her country's government remains committed to finding the girls but should have done a better job explaining the situation to the public.
"Have we communicated what is being done properly? The answer is no, that people did not have enough information," Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala told CNN's Richard Quest.
What's at stake in war against girls' kidnappers?
CNN Freedom Project: Ending Modern-Day Slavery

The bolded part makes me go Oh SHIT!

I'm behind the times, I had not heard of this until yesterday, but I guess it's been going on since mid-April. These dudes are admirers of Al-Quaeda, who they got training from...good thing Al-Quaeda is gone eh?

[FishingRod]

Originally Posted by loochy

I wish we had a Kenyan President.

They do have a plesant accent.

[Detoxing]

Originally Posted by loochy

I wish we had a Kenyan President.

Why do you hate Jews so much?

[loochy]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

Why do you hate Jews so much?

Because it's my anniversary.

[Detoxing]

Originally Posted by loochy

Because it's my anniversary.

Well, if you don't like Obama, that pretty much makes you anti-semitic. Here's a completely irrelevant article with no link that backs up my argument, racist.

It’s pretty natural to do a double-take when talking to Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo, Jewish half-brother of US President Barack Obama. Even speaking on the phone from China, Ndesandjo’s deep tones and Midwestern twang are startlingly similar to those of the president.

That’s a familiarity and connection that Obama Ndesandjo is counting on as he makes his way around the newspaper and television circuit, publicizing his self-published book, “Cultures: My Odyssey of Self-Discovery,” which deals in large part with his family and his presidential brother. Part of the book proceeds will be dedicated to his foundation, The Mark Obama Ndesandjo Foundation, whose goal is to promote cultural exchange between Asia, Africa and America, with a focus on young and disadvantaged children.


“It’s a difficult process to write about yourself,” said Obama Ndesandjo. “Autobiographies differ from most books because they touch not only on the writer but on real, live people and have a real impact. It’s a big responsibility.”

Now based in Shenzhen, having lived for the last 12 years in China, where he met and married his wife, Obama Ndesandjo is a writer, musician and calligrapher who decided to write the autobiography just as Barack Obama’s journey as a politician was gaining in intensity, during his initial run for president.

He is one of the president’s five known half-siblings, born to the same father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., and Obama Sr.’s third wife, Ruth Ndesandjo, an American Jew from Boston. (Warning: This gets complicated.) Obama Ndesandjo grew up in Kenya — far from his half-brother who was raised in the US by his mother, anthropologist Ann Dunham, Obama Sr.’s second wife (who later discovered that her husband hadn’t divorced his first wife back in Kenya). Dunham and Obama Sr. divorced in 1962 and Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, with whom she had Barack Obama’s half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng. Soetoro, his stepfather, passed away in 2011.

Meanwhile, Obama Ndesandjo, whose parents married in 1964, remained in Africa with his mother and younger brother, David, when their parents divorced in 1972 following the much-discussed abusive relationship between them.

The material for “Culture” started accumulating for Obama Ndesandjo as his brother sought the presidency, and it tells his story as a mixed-race person brought up in Kenya, educated in the US and now living in China, as well as discussing the mix of cultures and the Obama family, he said.

“It’s always been an issue of trying to follow my own path,” he said. “And in the process of that, I also felt it was important to talk about the Obama family and it’s important that people understand more about this family because in some ways it’s very opaque and there’s a lot of questions about it. Every question brings up more and I wanted to discuss and share more and talk about my relationship with my brother.”

Clearly, it’s the material about his brother that has brought Obama Ndesandjo the most attention. He’s found that each time he’s met with Barack Obama — from their first meeting in 1988 in Kenya through several more in later years — the contacts were intense.

“We are very similar,” said Obama Ndesandjo, pointing out that both have American mothers, were born a few years apart, attended Ivy League schools — Mark went to Brown (and has an MBA from Emory) — are of mixed race and, of course, had the same father and suffered from his absence or presence. Barack, born in 1961, is four years older than half-brother Mark.

“In some ways, our father runs through our lives and as Barack said in his book, sons often spend their lives trying to achieve their father’s dreams or correct their mistakes,” he said. “In a sense, Barack has been trying to achieve, and I’ve been trying to correct mistakes.”

Like Barack Obama, Obama Ndesandjo also had a strong mother who “navigated choppy waters,” he said. Ruth Baker Ndesandjo, who still lives in Nairobi with her second husband, was born in the US to a family that fled the pogroms in Lithuania, and then made their way to Boston.

She broke with tradition in many ways, said her son, particularly when she chose to marry a black man in the 1960s and move to Africa.

“My grandparents were very against her going to Africa to marry this foreign person,” he said. “She’d never been on a plane in her life but he invited her, and she went.”


Ruth Baker met Barack Hussein Obama Sr. while he was studying at Harvard University in Boston and married him in 1964, following him to Africa. She stayed in Kenya after their divorce but broke off all ties with her ex-husband’s family. Obama Ndesandjo — whose younger brother David later died in a car accident — said he hated his father, refusing to use his name and taking his stepfather’s surname, Ndesandjo, until Barack Obama indirectly changed his mind.

“I hadn’t had contact in [two] decades with the Obamas, because I had shut them out of my life,” he said. “And then I saw Barack doing such amazing things, and everywhere I turned, I saw him and I was proud of the impact he was having. My father pushed me away from my heritage, and in a sense, Barack made me proud and eventually I reached out to him.”

It was a nighttime dream that finally prompted Obama Ndesandjo to make contact with his brother, just prior to Barack Obama’s 2008 debate in Austin against Hillary Clinton.

“Daniel in the Torah talks about dreams and the power of dreams,” he said. “I woke up in a cold sweat, having dreamed about Barack, and my wife was my Daniel, telling me to go see Barack. Otherwise I would have gone back to bed and eaten Grape-Nuts the next morning. It was time to reconnect.”

They did, and it was their first time seeing each other in nearly 20 years. When Barack Obama became president, his half-brother visited him in the White House in 2009, but there hasn’t been much contact since between the two brothers. Obama Ndesandjo feels it’s now up to his sibling to make the next move. He knows it will take some time.

“Our family’s not a normal family when it comes to smoothing things out,” he said. “We’re pretty bumpy and there are moments of intense elation and intense disappointment which have characterized my sibling relationships. We’re like a herd of cats, and putting us together like a normal family is going to be a little difficult.”

[RNR]

Originally Posted by InChiefsHell

Also, I can't help but think Procal Harum when I see the name of the terrorist group...Boko Harem

...a whiter shade of pale...

Are there sixteen vestal virgins involved?

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by Detoxing

Now based in Shenzhen, having lived for the last 12 years in China, where he met and married his wife, Obama Ndesandjo is a writer, musician and calligrapher who decided to write the autobiography just as Barack Obama’s journey as a politician was gaining in intensity, during his initial run for president.

What a coincidence!

I for one am looking forward to interesting details of his calligraphy exploits.



Wait a second--Obama just magically produces a questionable birth certificate right out of the clear blue sky, and he's got a half-brother who just happens to be a calligrapher!? Nothing to see here folks...just keep moving...

[welcher99]

You guys should enjoy this.

[cosmo20002]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

You guys should enjoy this.

No class. That's just despicable.

[blaise]

Saving the world through hashtags.

[Trolly McTrollson]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

You guys should enjoy this.

Is there nothing this administration won't do to distract the public from Benghazi?

[HonestChieffan]

Michelle is such an amazing person. We are blessed to have her . Boko Haram is within their rights to support Islam and do what they feel is right . 300 girls sold into slavery is nothing in the big picture of freedom to bring Islam, the religion of live to the world . Cosmo be blessed allah akbar.

[listopencil]

Originally Posted by suzzer99

You guys should enjoy this.

She looks kind of cute in that pic.

[listopencil]

But is she twelve dollars cute?

[welcher99]

Originally Posted by cosmo20002

No class. That's just despicable.

The arrogance. The mendacity.

[Why Not?]

Originally Posted by Pennywise

I wish we had a good President.

Oh yeah. That also