₦airaland Forum

the machine for the Lagos Big Boyz

https://www.luxury-insider.com/uploads/news/2012/07/aston-martin-one-77-cycle_2.jpg?width=600

http://www.factorbikes.com/astonmartin/about.html

The Aston Martin One-77 Cycle is the world's most technologically advanced road bicycle. Designed, engineered and built in Britain, the One-77 Cycle features technology and innovations derived from racing car technology, together with the highest levels of fabrication and craftsmanship.


https://images.wordlesstech.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Aston-Martin-One-77-Cycle-2.jpg


_________________________

an affordable good quality economic brand from China

https://sheldonbrown.com/harris/images/giant2.jpg


model of one of my commute to work bikes

https://www.giant-bicycles.com/_generated/_generated_us/bikes/models/images/2000/Sedona_black-gold.jpg

http://www.giant-bicycles.com/en-us/bikes/model/sedona.black.gold/9025/48883/

big up to the 9ja fa$hion industry



October 29, 2012
European Fashion Buyers Look to Nigeria


LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — A model struts the runway wearing a flowing newspaper print gown in this African megacity where international high-end fashion buyers are looking beyond the country's bleak headlines to uncover the next new thing.

There have been steady efforts to turn Lagos, a city with a fearsome reputation, into a fashion destination. They reached new heights at the MTN Lagos Fashion & Design Week that ran from Oct. 24 to 27 and drew European high-fashion brands such as the United Kingdom's Selfridges & Co. and Munich-based MyTheresa.com to Nigeria for the first time.

Ituen Basi's newspaper inspired Spring/Summer 2013 collection was among 39 collections spotlighted at the city's latest major fashion week. The Nigerian's collection evoked fun and glamour through its use of print and color — characteristics which have come to define the vibrant local fashion scene.

With local brands seeking wider platforms and international retailers hungry for novelty, designers and buyers see opportunities for collaboration.

"There's something about the fresh, the unknown, the possibility of seeing a new brand springing forth into the limelight. ... These are becoming interesting to people outside Nigeria," said Omoyemi Akerele, the fashion week's founder and creative director.

An encouraging response to African-inspired designs by top Western labels gives buyers confidence that designs straight from the continent will also sell.

"Over the past few seasons, there's been a strong trend for print," said Bruno Barba, the brand public relations manager at Selfridges. "If you look at the collection of Burberry inspired by Africa last year; there was also Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith. ... They've made that inspiration quite mainstream now. So, for us, it was interesting to take that trend and take it from its roots in Africa."

Online retailer MyTheresa.com, which ships top designers' clothes including Miu Miu, Givenchy, Lanvin and Isabel Meron to clients in 120 different countries, is also looking for products in Nigeria that will sell well. The company hopes that will set it apart from the competition in a fast-paced industry.

"For me, Nigeria represents a fun individualism," the company's buying director Justin O'Shea said. He also said that MyTheresa.com was looking to work closely with designers and adapt products for their clientele if needed.

Previously, several Nigerian designers have helped put the West African nation on the global fashion map.

Deola Sagoe has gained recognition from U.S. Vogue editor Andre Leon Talley and Oprah Winfrey. London-based Duro Olowu is considered one of Michelle Obama's favorite designers. Maki Oh has dressed American singer Solange Knowles and Hollywood actress Leelee Sobieski from her Lagos workshop. Jewel By Lisa, who has also dressed celebrities, designed limited edition BlackBerry mobile phone skins and jeweled cases for Canadian manufacturer Research In Motion Ltd.

While looking to Nigeria could bring much-needed novelty to clothes targeted to global audiences, it could also endear a Nigerian clientele. Though the majority of the nation lives on less than $2 a day, the nation's wealthy elite have a growing appetite for top-shelf brands. Luxury goods stores are increasingly opening in a country where seemingly gratuitous displays of wealth are the norm.

"Nigerians are part of our Top 10 highest-spending foreign customers," Barba said. "It felt right for us to try and find a response that would appeal to them, excite them and be over and above what they already buy, almost as a recognition that they're an important part of our consumer base."

____

JEWEL BY LISA

Fashion week after fashion week, Lisa Folawiyo, the creative director of Jewel By Lisa, is a consistent Nigerian designer. She recently started retailing at the New York-based online luxury store Moda Operandi and continues to draw attention from international buyers and labels looking for a modern interpretation of African style.

Her Spring/Summer 2013 collection is named "Fula" after the Fulani women it draws inspiration from. The Fulani are a nomadic people spread across several African countries, including Nigeria.

Their women typically have fine traits and slender frames, not unlike the models that took to the catwalk with soundtrack that crossed the high-pitched melody of the African guitar and the heavy bass of house music.

The Jewel by Lisa collection turned traditional loop earrings into a motif that repeated itself throughout her satin fabrics across stunning color combinations.

ANITA QUANSAH LONDON

Anita Quansah London is a prolific one-woman operation based in a London workshop. The Ghanaian-Nigerian designer describes her work as a "labor of love." She sells to a global market including Asians and Europeans. She says she is now in talks to build a diffusion line to meet up with the growing demand of her work that has caught the eye of such designers as Christian Delacroix.

Her Spring/Summer 2013 collection is dramatic for "ladies who want to make a statement when they walk in to a room."

Her show-stopping bib necklaces are embellished with intricate bead work. The beads include imitation coral beads used for traditional outfits in southern Nigeria. Some bibs are lined with chicken feathers which also evoke traditional heirlooms.

Her dresses were understated and mostly in solid black, ceding the limelight to the jewelry that included suggestive chain designs inspired by bondage. Quansah said she wanted to show "women that weren't afraid to be sexy."

LANRE DASILVA AJAYI

Designer Lanre DaSilva Ajayi is well-known in Nigeria's fashion scene for her love of 40s elegance. International buyers such as Selfridges & Co. expressed interest in her designs for retail at their UK stores.

Her ultra-feminine collection used a color palette ranging from cool nude and turquoise to warm orange and gold.

She showed flowing silhouettes and easy-to-wear maxi dresses, using chiffon, raw silk lace and the lace used in traditional Nigerian outfits to carve European shapes.

Her clothes are for the woman on the move, bold and sophisticated.

JOSH SAMUELS

The MTN Lagos Fashion and Design Week 2013 was also the culmination of a months-long competition for new talent. The competition winner was menswear designer Josh Samuel, an architect turned designer that offered a geometric collection.

"I like things organized and appropriate," said Samuel who won the equivalent of $25,000 and the opportunity to be stocked in some Nigerian boutiques

His collection called "Casanova" included finely tailored clothes with classic checkered and houndstooth patterns and matching string ties.

___

Online:

Lagos Fashion & Design Week: www.lagosfashionanddesignweek.com

new episode


93 - ANSWERS OF AN ALIEN FROM ANDROMEDA - Nibiru and Events


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2xMF77bOac

British Thespian David Oyelowo Set to Play Sugar Ray Robinson in ‘Sweet Thunder’

by blackthespian on October 19, 2012

https://blackthespian.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/David-Oyelowo.jpg

Actor David Oyelowo will putting on the boxing gloves to play iconic boxer Sugar Ray Robinson in a biopic based on the Wil Haygood biography, Sweet Thunder: The Life And Times Of Sugar Ray Robinson.

According to Deadline.com, Moneyball producer Rachael Horovitz and Game Change writer Danny Strong will produce, and Oyelowo will executive produce. Haygood has already written the first draft of the script but the project hasn’t attached a director yet.

The project came together on the set of the Lee Daniels-directed The Butler, the film that Oyelowo stars in with Oprah Winfrey and Forest Whitaker.

Oyelowo is a thespian on the rise and is recognized for his work on the British spy series MI-5, and he recently starred in the critically-acclaimed film Middle Of Nowhere. He was also in the film The Paperboy, and this fall he stars opposite Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher.

The 36-year-old Brit also appears in a small role in Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln with Daniel Day-Lewis.

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[img]http://2.bp..com/-HX1c6zqxMNs/T1u2y1MRqWI/AAAAAAAACyk/ThpAYqu5Z4M/s1600/MuhammadAli_SugarRayRobinson_JoeLouis.jpg[/img]

[b]David Oyelowo comes out of 'Nowhere' to become star


https://naijalife.freehostia.com/mag/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/slideshow_1002307829_redtails-david-oyelowo.jpeg

Andrea Mandell, USA

This month, David Oyelowo premieres two films back-to-back: romantic indie 'Middle of Nowhere' (in select theaters this weekend) and Lee Daniels' erotic noir 'The Paperboy,' which opened on Friday.

10:46AM EDT October 11. 2012 - STUDIO CITY, Calif. — David Oyelowo is in the middle of a moment.

Last year, the British actor broke out in two big roles, as a preacher in The Help and a nefarious biotech boss in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Both films dominated the box office in August 2011.

This month, he's premiering two films back-to-back: romantic indie Middle of Nowhere (in select theaters this weekend) and erotic noir The Paperboy, which opened Friday.

His résumé continues to expand over the holidays. It's Oyelowo's voice that intones the Gettysburg Address in the first Lincoln trailer; he plays a Union cavalryman in the film, out Nov. 9. And in December, Jack Reacher, in which he stars opposite Tom Cruise, will round out his year.

This moment feels "cumulative," he says as he settles into a booth at Ye Olde Kings Head Pub, not far from the home he shares with his wife, actress Jessica Oyelowo, and their four children, ages 10 months to 10 years.

Born in the United Kingdom and raised for part of his childhood in Nigeria, Oyelowo trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Five years ago, he moved from London to L.A. with his family, and he has since found friends in the right places. After meeting Lee Daniels (Precious), Oyelowo first signed on to play Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, a Daniels project that lost funding mere months before it went into production.

When the director moved on to The Paperboy, he rewrote the character of Yardley, an aristocratic Miami Times journalist submerged in a racially charged investigation in 1960s-set Florida, as black for Oyelowo.

"He didn't want to play it at first," says Daniels. "He didn't understand it. I said, 'Look it, I told you I was working with you. My word is my word. You're working on my next film. This is my next film. You're with me.'"

"I literally remember saying to him, 'What are we doing?'" says Oyelowo, who led a prayer circle with Daniels, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Conaughey and John Cusack before one the The Paperboy's lurid sex scenes. "What we had been talking about for two years was Martin Luther King Jr. This is from heaven to hell right here. I had to really pray about it before I signed on to it."

The risk paid off. USA TODAY critic Claudia Puig lauded the film's ensemble cast, and Oyelowo has since wrapped Daniels' next film, The Butler, playing the increasingly radical son of Forest Whitaker's character, a White House butler, and Oprah Winfrey's.

On Friday, Oyelowo shows off a softer side in Middle of Nowhere, which won a tweet of praise from Winfrey on Tuesday, commending director Ava DuVernay on "an excellent job, especially with no money." In the indie, Oyelowo plays a romantic lead, a role akin to the characters he admired in Spike Lee films growing up: "black characters who have a voice who are the center of their own story, there's a poeticism and a lyricism to them, they're three-dimensional," he says. "I love getting to play an ordinary African American who was falling for a woman, and it wasn't about being a player. It was just boy meets girl."

But the best day of his career? That was being pulled from a hillside on the set of Lincoln at Cruise's request to film a last-minute car crash on Jack Reacher. "I had 24 hours where I was with Daniel Day-Lewis and Spielberg by day, (then) Tom sent a jet for me. He was like, 'We've got this stunt, and we need you.'"

"For me, that day kind of crystalized the epitome of what you could hope for as a young actor in Hollywood, because I got to be with, for me, the actor's actor in the shape of Daniel Day-Lewis (playing Lincoln) and the movie star's movie star in the shape of Tom Cruise. It was a moment, shall we say."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2012/10/10/david-oyelowo-the-paperboy-and-middle-of-nowhere/1620649/[/b]

2. To show off dancing skills



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPrZE_Jf1Oc



https://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m822lpfvyN1qetby9.gif



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EaI0U1_IW4

[b]

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Img214339493.jpg


China Leader's Persona Forged by Harsh Early Life


LIANGJIAHE, China (AP) — The next leader of China spent much of his youth living in a dug-out cave.

Xi Jingping's seven years in this remote northern community meant toiling alongside villagers by day and sleeping on bricks by night, in stark contrast to his pampered early years in Beijing. He was born into the communist elite, but after his father fell out of favor with Mao Zedong — and before his later rehabilitation, the younger Xi was sent to a rural hinterland to learn peasant virtues at age 15.

The Liangjiahe years are among the scant details known about Xi's life and personality partly because he himself chronicled them as a formative experience. They are part of the vague picture of a man who has drawn little attention during much of his political career but is poised to become ruling party chief next month and president next year of an increasingly assertive China.

What is clear is that Xi has excelled at quietly rising through the ranks by making the most of two facets: He has an elite, educated background with links to communist China's founding fathers that are a crucial advantage in the country's politics, and at the same time he has successfully cultivated a common man mystique that helps him appeal to a broad constituency. He even gave up a promising Beijing post in his late 20s to return to the countryside.

He did not at first come willingly, however, to Liangjiahe, a tiny community of cave dwellings dug into arid hills and fronted by dried mud walls with wooden lattice entryways. He tried to escape and was detained. Villagers remember a tall bookworm who eventually earned their respect.

"He was always very sincere and worked hard alongside us. He was also a big reader of really thick books," said Shi Chunyang, then a friend of Xi and now a local official.

It is in the nature of China's politics that relatively little is known about Xi's policy leanings. He is not associated with any bold reforms. Aspiring officials get promoted by encouraging economic growth, tamping down social unrest and toeing the line set by Beijing, not by charismatic displays of initiative.

Xi's resume in provincial posts suggest he is open to private industry and some administrative reforms as long as they don't jeopardize the Communist Party's monopoly on power. He likes Hollywood flicks about World War II and has a daughter at Harvard University under an assumed name, though he has signaled he may be a staunch Chinese nationalist.

Tall, heavyset and married to a popular folk singer in the military, Xi is at ease in groups, in contrast to China's typically stiff and aloof leaders, such as current President Hu Jintao.

A Xi administration is expected to pursue a more forceful foreign policy based on Beijing's belief that its chief rival Washington is in decline and that China's rise to global pre-eminence is within reach.

"Xi was chosen in part because he has the large, assertive, confident personality to lead in that kind of strategy," said Andrew Nathan, an expert on Chinese politics at New York's Columbia University.

Xi will confront daunting challenges. After two decades of fast-paced growth and social change, the economy is flagging and China is under strain. A polarizing gap has left a few wealthy and many struggling and resentful. Rampant corruption is corroding already low reserves of public trust in officialdom.

Beyond home, China is locked in sharp elbowing over territory with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors. At the same time, Beijing feels hemmed in by the U.S., which is shoring up ties with countries on China's edge.

As son of one-time Vice Premier Xi Zhongxun, the younger Xi spent the 1950s in a world of comfortable homes, chauffeur-driven cars and the best schools when most Chinese were desperately poor.
https://www.chinatoday.com/who/x/xijinping_with_father.jpg

But the elder Xi fell afoul of the increasingly paranoid communist chief, and Mao demoted him in 1962. The son was dispatched to rural Shaanxi province in 1969 as part of Mao's campaign to toughen up educated urban youth during the chaotic Cultural Revolution. When caught returning to Beijing, he was sent to a labor camp for six months. Back in Liangjiahe, he helped build irrigation ditches.

"Knives are sharpened on the stone. People are refined through hardship," Xi said in a rare 2001 interview with a Chinese magazine. "Whenever I later encountered trouble, I'd just think of how hard it had been to get things done back then and nothing would then seem difficult."

Local Communist Party officials and police in Liangjiahe followed reporters on a visit and asked them to leave, showing how the party wants to control information about Xi's past. But they did allow brief interviews, including with Shi, described by villagers as Xi's former "iron buddy."

Shi stood across from the now-abandoned, one-room home where Xi lived with a local family, and recalled the day Xi departed at age 22. "No one wanted to see him go," Shi said.

Rejected for Communist Party membership nine times due to his father's political problems, Xi finally gained entry in 1974 and then attended the elite Tsinghua University.

He would later return to Liangjiahe only once, in 1992, when he gave an alarm clock to each household, Shi said.

Xi went on to earn a chemistry degree, by which time Mao had died and his father been restored to office. Xi next secured a plum position as secretary to Defense Minister Geng Biao, one of his father's old comrades.

But Xi took the unusual step three years later of jumping to a lowly post in rural Hebei province, because he wanted to "struggle, work hard, and really take on something big," Xi told Elite Youth magazine's now-deceased editor Yang Xiaohuai.

Xi landed in the rural town of Zhengding, where people traveled by horse cart.

While there, he made the most of state broadcaster China Central Television's plans to film an adaptation of the classical Chinese novel "Dream of Red Mansions." Hoping to create a tourist attraction, Xi built a full-scale reproduction of the sprawling estate at the heart of the tale.

"You could tell Xi was thinking ahead. By doing this, he created lots of jobs and lots of revenue for Zhengding back when there was very little here," said Liang Qiang, a senior caretaker at the film set, which still draws tourists.

Xi biked around town dressed like an army cook and insisted he be introduced only as county party secretary without reference to his family links, former colleague Wang Youhui recalled.

"He always paid for his food. He didn't want any special treatment," state media quoted Wang as saying years later.

Xi's elite background plugged him into to a web of personal connections that were especially important early in his career, ensuring support from Beijing for local projects. As party leader, Xi should easily command the respect of officials and the military, in part because of deference to his father's status.

At the same time, Xi's years in the provinces protect him from accusations of pure nepotism and lend him credibility as someone who understands the struggles of working Chinese and private businessmen who are creating the bulk of new jobs.

With help from his father, Xi jumped in 1985 to a vice mayorship in the port of Xiamen, then at the forefront of economic reforms. Over the next 17 years, he built a reputation for attracting investment and eschewing the banqueting expected of Chinese officials. He hung a banner saying "Get it done" in a provincial office lobby.

He later took the top position in neighboring Zhejiang province, a hotbed of private industry, a lively civil society, non-communist candidates for local assemblies and a thriving underground church movement. Xi was seen as allowing minor local administrative reforms, while not initiating any of them.

"He's not going to do anything to weaken party control, but at the least you can say he's concerned with the lives of farmers and ordinary people," said Li Baiguang, a human rights lawyer in Zhejiang at the time.

Xi tried to dramatically reverse the government's poor reputation for accountability by clearing a backlog of citizen complaints in a one-day blitz in the city of Quzhou. He set up 15 temporary offices to address complaints over land seizures, job benefits and other issues, drawing 300 petitioners and resolving 70 cases.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson once called him a "guy who really knows how to get over the goal line." <--- (a compliment from a former Goldman Sachs international banker?)

After a brief spell in charge of Shanghai, Xi was brought to Beijing and handed the high-profile task of overseeing the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He's also in charge of managing relations with the former British colony of Hong Kong.

Some evidence of a strong nationalist streak emerged last month when he lectured U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on China's claim to East China Sea islands held by Japan.

"China's neighbors, including the U.S., should be prepared to see a Chinese government under Xi being more assertive than that under Hu," said Steve Tsang, director of the China Police Research Institute at Britain's University of Nottingham in Britain.

Xi's career has been lent a touch of glamor by his wife, folk singer Peng Liyuan, who for much of their marriage was far better known than he was. Although Xi isn't known to have visited his daughter at Harvard, Xi Mingze's American education adds to Xi's unusually rich exposure to the U.S., having made up to half-a-dozen trips to the country.


https://www.whatsonxiamen.com/news_images/2625_1.jpg

Xi, who likes the Hollywood film "Saving Private Ryan," showed a human side during his official visit to the U.S. earlier this year. He took in a Los Angeles Lakers game and stopped in Iowa to visit families who hosted him during a study tour there in 1985. Asked by California schoolchildren about his hobbies, Xi listed reading, swimming, and watching sports, but said to laughter that finding more personal time was "mission impossible."

Former U.S. ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman said Xi is a man "who is quite different from Hu Jintao" in that Xi appears at ease.

"He's someone who you can connect with," Huntsman said.


[/b]

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/china-leaders-persona-forged-harsh-early-life-17543523#.UI0B0Wc5OVo


____________________________________

Leaders call for closer China-Africa ties

http://www.china.org.cn/world/2012-07/11/content_25881170.htm

China.org.cn, July 11, 2012


https://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20120713/001372a9ae05116a09ba23.jpg

African leaders called for more cultural communication between the two sides to promote the Sino-African strategic relationship at the 2012 China-Africa People's Forum in Suzhou.

@ op great truth info site



http://whatreallyhappened.com/


he linked this story today ...



"I am sick to death at the notion of another proxy war, billed as an extension of the US's "war on terror", which is really a war against the Mali people, who have the gall to be sitting over some mightily prized gold reserves the West wants to expropriate for itself.

And I am willing to make a rather cynical, but probably accurate, prediction: this proxy war will go just as well as has the war in Afghanistan, and probably for a longer period of time."
M.R.


African Union: Western Nations to Bankroll Mali Invasion
Britain, Others Expected to Fund African-Led War


http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/26/african-union-western-nations-to-bankroll-mali-invasion/

Just heard that this story was been blocked (censored )in China a couple of hours after it was published. A long article but interesting.


Billions in Hidden Riches for Family of Chinese Leader

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html?hp&pagewanted=all

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/10/21/business/video-wen-jibao/video-wen-jibao-thumbWide.jpg





-

check out the anointed one @ 2:35



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEgS2uDMEF4

warning spicy language .... vid is topic related


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg6Wu7h6ZeI

[b]Beware of Greeks bearing gifts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Proverbs 22:7 The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.



Spain and Greece are explicit examples of avoiding DEBT to the vulcher BANKERS!


By PATRICK MCGROARTY in Johannesburg and PRABHA NATARAJAN in New York

African countries are winning over investors scrounging for profits in a world of falling interest rates and lackluster growth.

Last month, Zambia raised $750 million with a 10-year global bond in an auction that drew offers worth more than 15 times that amount. Nigeria in September sold 30 million naira ($192,000) in five-year bonds, to demand twice as high. Spurred by the heavy interest, Rwanda wants to issue a global bond by June and Kenya is planning one as early as next year.

Investors' willingness to step up to buy African bonds is another sign of their thirst for yield. Efforts by the Federal Reserve and other major central banks to push down interest rates and buy developed-market bonds have driven investors further and further afield.

Africa, a continent of more than 50 countries, is considered one of the last investing frontiers—many of its nations have been isolated from international markets, in part due to a history of default by some countries.

But the continent, bolstered by increased political stability, is coming out of its shell. Capital flows into funds focused on Africa have increased 15% to $2.53 billion in the year through Aug. 31 over the previous 12 months, according to EPFR Global.

The yields on global bonds issued by Ivory Coast, Senegal, Nigeria and Namibia dropped an average of about 2.5 percentage points this year through October, according to Capital Economics.

https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MI-BR989_AFBOND_D_20121023185104.jpg
Yields on some African bonds are only slightly higher than the yield on the debt of some troubled European economies. Spain, which Standard & Poor's rates triple-B-minus, sold €4.6 billion in bonds at a yield of 5.3% last week. A global bond issued by Zambia, rated four notches lower, last month priced to yield 5.6%. Now the bond is trading at a yield of 5.3%, offering investors an immediate return. Falling yields mean higher prices.

At least three more countries are expected to issue global bonds next year, connecting most of Africa's most dynamic economies to international markets.

"Investors have been forced to move to this new frontier due to this search for yield," said Marcelo Assalin, head of emerging-market sovereign debt at ING Investment Management, which has $377 billion in assets. Mr. Assalin has been buying Nigerian treasury bonds since the start of this year.

The search for yield is coupled with growing faith in Africa's stability, as the continent holds more democratic elections and governments become more transparent and keen for foreign capital, economists say.

This year, 23 African countries are expected to hold multiparty elections; In 1989, only three African countries were considered democracies, according to the Africa Research Institute, a London think tank.

That is setting the stage for currencies in countries such as Ghana and Egypt to stabilize and even rise, economists say.

"All these currencies now have huge opportunities to gain, as they stabilize," said Steven Bailey-Smith, head of African research at Standard Bank Group.

Many African countries are fundraising to build modern highways, ports and power grids. Using traditional sources of funding—aid or loans from rich nations and multinational lenders—invites more bureaucratic and political uncertainty than floating overseas bonds.

Still, many African countries are far from ready for their date with international investors.

Armed conflicts simmer across the continent, from an oil dispute between Sudan and South Sudan to rebellion in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those rebels were supported by the government of neighboring Rwanda, often seen as one of Africa's most welcoming countries to investors.

Ivory Coast issued global bonds worth $2.3 billion in 2010, months before the outbreak of a power struggle that brought the economy to its knees. The country defaulted on the debt, missing three payments, although President Alessane Ouattara has since promised to repay bondholders. Investors remain worried about the fate of other African countries such as Nigeria, which faces sectarian violence.

"We appreciate that yields are higher, but obviously those yields represent the risks that are clearly there in investing in Nigeria," said Michael Lee, a manager at Wells Fargo's WFC -1.83% Advantage Local Currency Fund. Mr. Lee is considering buying bonds from Nigeria and other African countries, but hasn't done so.

Still, investors are buying into countries with stronger growth and less immediate turmoil.

Dave Robbins, portfolio manager of TCW's emerging-market funds, is looking to buy local government bonds in Ghana and Kenya, a year after first purchasing Nigerian bonds. "High yields and potential currency appreciation are attractive, but these trades are less liquid and have a lot higher volatility, so they don't always work out," he said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203406404578074520933315136.html



[/b]

new kung fu movie coming out soon


For RZA, Hip-Hop Was Just a Prelude to Kung Fu


Now his artistic wanderings have led to a $20 million movie, “The Man With the Iron Fists,” which RZA directed and stars in, and which Universal will release on Nov. 2. As befits its creator’s eclectic style, the film is a martial-arts mini-epic set in a mythical Chinese feudal state, where a dispute between a monarch and a nefarious gang draws in a rogue British soldier (played by Russell Crowe), a madam (Lucy Liu) and a humble blacksmith (RZA).


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/movies/for-rza-hip-hop-was-just-a-prelude-to-kung-fu.html?hpw&pagewanted=all


https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/10/21/arts/21RZA1_SPAN/21RZA1_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg
RZA, the actor, rapper and mastermind of hip-hop’s Wu-Tang Clan.


https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/10/21/arts/21RZA2/21RZA2-popup.jpg
Universal Pictures

Russell Crowe is one of the stars of “The Man With the Iron Fists,” a martial-arts mini-epic set in a mythical Chinese feudal state.

[b]

birdman: You beat me to it. I was just about to post that. A relevant excerpt:



I have to lay the blame at the feet of african americans (recent or not) for dropping the ball here. They are so enamored with Obama, that they have refused to put any sort of moral pressure to prevent this from happening. If Obama wins, he has only another 4 year term. What then? These laws will last another century, and the the next president will laugh at attempts to overturn it. If you didnt complain while Obama was president, why wait until I'm in power? Such short-sightedness.

not all African Americans are asleep and not involved in the struggle.


https://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/imagecache/feature400/black_is_still_back-nov3-2012.jpg

http://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/break.shtml

https://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/images2/1.jpg

Nov 3, 2012 10AM - March and rally @ Malcolm X Park 16th St & Euclid St NW Washington, DC
Nov 4, 2012 12 Noon- Conference @ Soul 57 1326 Florida Avenue NE Washington, DC

On November 3 and 4th the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations is sponsoring a rally, march and conference in Washington, D.C. to break the silence surrounding the escalation of the historical oppression of our people in the U.S. and throughout the world.

At the time when the U.S. is declaring an end to its wars against the peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan, our people are enduring oppressive conditions that can only be likened to a state of warfare in every community where we are located within the U.S.

We are being violently attacked by state-imposed poverty and joblessness intensified by the mass incarceration of our young people that takes away potential breadwinners through imprisonment and the subsequent denial of work because of past convictions.

We suffer an economic embargo as intensive as those imposed on declared enemies of the U.S. government that leads to economic sanctions that deny bank loans and trade opportunities – such as we have seen imposed on Zimbabwe, Cuba, Iran and Syria.

Our children are forced to endure brutally mind-numbing indoctrination that is euphemistically referred to as education. They are stuffed into institutions that crush their spirits and punish their curiosity with the support of police agencies that normally push the students into the cavernous jaws of a U.S. prison system that is the largest in the world, half of whose inhabitants are black.

This is the same prison system that has swallowed up some of our best men and women who have voluntarily put their lives on the line to struggle for the freedom of our people during some of our darkest days of oppression. These are political prisoners, the existence of which is denied by a U.S. government that postures on the world stage as a messenger of freedom and democracy, sometimes as justification for attacking and occupying other countries and peoples.

We must break the silence surrounding the fallacious idea of a “post-racial” America that is used to muffle the cries of the dispossessed from Hurricane Katrina, of the mothers and loved-ones of black men shot down every 36 hours by the police, of thousands of our young people brutalized in children’s prisons, of the millions unjustly stopped and frisked and the thousands sentenced to life without parole while criminal bankers walk free.

We must protest the dispossession from the foreclosures caused by the subprime mortgage fraud created by prestigious financial institutions and supported by the U.S. government with the explicit intent of looting the meager resources of already impoverished black and Latino communities.

Our voices must be heard!

We must break the silence! We must rally and march and plan a future that will revoke the current trend of religious and national persecution of Muslims and Arabs who are thrown into prisons in the U.S. and elsewhere to prevent their voices being heard in protest of U.S. foreign policy objectives resulting in rapacious wars and occupation.

We must challenge the retroactive sanctity of U.S. borders that are used to prevent entry by many of the people who remain impoverished and oppressed from the moment they were robbed of their land by European interlopers who have now designated others as aliens, illegals and undesirables.

We protest the continuing deadly oppression of the indigenous people upon whose land European invaders established a parasitic economy based on slave labor and an inherently unjust State to defend its insatiable appetite for conquest. We will demonstrate our disgust and opposition to the existence of the life-sucking concentration camps that are hidden by the convenient euphemism of Indian reservations.

Our voices must be heard in protest of the brutal continuation of centuries of exploitation of Africa, something that was begun with our capture, dispersal and enslavement in the U.S. and throughout the world.

We must declare loudly that Africa is for Africans! Those at home and those abroad! We oppose the continuation of the historical looting of Africa that leaves our people on that continent, perhaps the richest in the world in natural and human resources, barely existing from hand to mouth while fattening the bellies and bank accounts of predators that benefit from the misery of our people.

We must vociferously oppose the U.S. created Africa Command or AFRICOM that has been tasked with the responsibility of keeping Africa and Africans impoverished and keeping the resources of Africa for the U.S. at the expense of Africans and other imperialist competitors.

Let us break the silence surrounding the plight of our brothers and sisters in Haiti who continue to be punished for having the audacity to win the first slave and worker’s revolution in history and opening its doors to the enslaved of the world during the heyday of slavery in the early 19th Century.

We will not be silent as the U.S. government continues to support the white nationalist settler state of Israel that stands on the throats of the Palestinian people.

We refuse to be a party to the U.S.-led war on Libya and the lynching of its President Muamar Ghaddafi, an advocate of the unification of Africa and an opponent of the U.S. military outpost state of Israel.

No attempts by the white ruling class media can confuse us about the U.S. threats against Iran, that secured its freedom from a U.S.-imposed, U.S.-armed and U.S.-supported tyrant in 1979. We are clear that the U.S., with the largest nuclear arsenal in the world and the only country to have ever used atomic weapons in human history, has no moral grounds to stand on as it threatens war against Iran for an unsupported claim that Iran is developing nuclear weapon capacity.

And, while most of the traditional peace and anti-war movement has been shamefully silent in the face of the imperialist aggression now being suffered by Syria, with the U.S. playing a primary role, we will not be silent. Black is back.

After the brutal murders of our leaders in the 1960s successfully decapitated our movement, after the assassinations of Dedan Kimathi, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King, Lawrence Mann, more than 30 members of the Black Panther Party and untold numbers of other black leaders in the U.S. and abroad, black is back!

We are here and we are becoming better organized each day. We are providing our movement with its greatest potential for unity since the magnificent worldwide revolution of the 1960s.

On November 3rd we rally in Malcolm X Park in Washington, D.C., from every community in the U.S. Here we will make our united voices heard; here we will declare our united will to join with the peoples of the world to change the course of history that has enslaved and impoverished the majority for the benefit of the parasitic few.

We will bring the issues that plague our communities and the Earth to public view. We will loudly proclaim our right to live healthy, informed lives without violence, poverty, early death, prison and fear.

We will disavow the charlatans, poseurs and sycophants who have been chosen by our oppressors as our leaders.

On November 4th we will hold a conference to organize and plan. We will collectively decide what to do to tell our own story and to place our own aspirations, values and plans on the agenda for human progress and the conquest of social justice, peace and reparations.

[/b]

http://www.blackisbackcoalition.org/index.shtml

the light bulb


Saturday, October 13, 2012


"Put the White Back in the White House": How Will Conservatives Spin This Photo from Mitt Romney's Rally on Friday?


[img]http://3.bp..com/-Rxs1j-YHppo/UHkbQDp7z4I/AAAAAAAAA_g/nBL3LbCH4_c/s320/romneywhitenationalist.jpg[/img]



Once more, conservatives show you who they always have been and are. I couldn't care less about one data point swimming about in a sea of information. But given Romney's naked appeals to white racism, how white supremacist have heard his "dog whistles" loud and clear, Romney and Ryan's repeated assertions that Obama, the country's first black President, does not understand "American" values, and the Right's use of some of the worst and most racist stereotypes about black people in the Age of Obama, this photo which was taken at a Mitt Romney rally on Friday should come as no surprise.

Together, white racism and racial resentment is the brand name of the Tea Party GOP. Consequently, Romey's public knows exactly what they are buying coming November 2012 when they vote against Barack Obama.

Conservatives and the Right-wing echo chamber have a great gift for reframing reality. In the post-truth era, if you think a thing is true, and you believe it to be so (and say it enough) said fiction must be therefore be real. The New Right are also conspiranoids who believe in rigged public opinion polls, white victimology, birtherism, phantom buses full of "illegal" minority voters, and that the most recent unemployment numbers have been manipulated in a grand ploy to defeat Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. As such, conservatives are capable of believing whatever the echo chamber births from its mania-state of perpetual epistemic closure, and a befouled womb.

They will excuse away and make excuses for the white nationalist who supports the Tea Party GOP, what is the country's de facto White Political Party. Let's get ahead of the curve and use our imaginations to figure out how conservatives will frame the following photo as its circulates throughout the Internet and other media this weekend.

Here a few suggestions:

1. No Republican or conservative can ever be racist! Only the Democrats and liberals see race because they founded the KKK! This man must be an Obama supporter!

2. Agent provocateur! He must be a member of the SEIU and a supporter of Saul Alinsky and a fascist Marxist. Liberals will do anything to make Mitt Romney and the Tea Party look bad.

3. The Romney logo on his t-shirt is a sticker. Just like the Democrats did when they infiltrated the Tea Party rallies a few years ago, the liberals are making their own t-shirts, sending out fake protesters, and doing whatever they can to make us look bad! If he was a real racist the Romney supporters would have kicked him out!

4. Scratch a liberal and you get a racist. He must be a libtard who supports Obama!

5. Okay, let's just use our imaginations and say the guy showed up uninvited to the Romney rally. Why blame all the good conservatives there? Reverse racists, anti-white bigots on TV, black liberal bigots, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the Internet, all hate conservatives. We have black conservatives at all of our rallies.

6. If Republicans hated the blacks why they be so prominently featured by us at our meetings? We are the party of Abe Lincoln. The liberals are race obsessed and sick and they keep the blacks on the liberal plantation. Dems don't believe in what Dr. King said about being color blind.

7. If Obama and his supporters really cared about racism they would put the New Black Panthers in jail, prosecute Fast and Furious, impeach Eric Holder, and stop the cover-up about the embassy attack in Libya!
.
.
.
What would you add to this list? How would you help the Tea Party GOP spin and excuse-make for the white nationalists and other racists in their midst?



http://wearerespectablenegroes..com/2012/10/put-white-back-in-white-house-how-will.html

hot off the www


Don’t Vote For Evil

Paul Craig Roberts,

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/10/dont-vote-for-evil.html#more

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Lesser-of-Two1.jpg
Anthony Freda/Dan Zollinger Art

I'm very much surprised that NL members have not been following or posted anything on the Delta/Shell case.


Obama on Wrong Side in Shell Oil Human Rights Case

http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama-wrong-side-shell-oil-human-rights-case-0

https://blackagendareport.com/sites/www.blackagendareport.com/files/imagecache/feature400/nigeria-oil-fire2.jpg





Nigeria oil spills: Shell rejects liability claim

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19905694

https://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/63432000/jpg/_63432933_016207721.jpg

The Nigerian farmers and their legal team argue that Shell could have prevented the spills

some ppl church online these days


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x9WkR0HQbs

[b]This story is more political than music.


Buju Banton: Five More Years in Jail

By Chris Sweeney Thursday, Oct 11 2012

https://media.miaminewtimes.com/buju-banton-five-more-years-in-jail.8248803.40.jpg

Jonathan Mannion
Options are running out for Buju Banton.


Early in 2009, legendary reggae performer Buju Banton stood behind a microphone at his Gargamel Studio in Kingston, Jamaica, and belted out what now seems to be a frighteningly prophetic tune: "Innocent."

"Jah knows I'm innocent. Jah knows I'm innocent," the track opens, the 39-year-old artist's gravelly sing-song style stretching the last syllable for emphasis. After the brass section kicks in, he wails, "The forces have gathered, for what I don't know, I really don't know."

A few months after recording the song, Buju was 600 miles away from his homeland, loafing around his Tamarac duplex in pajamas. Then there was a knock at the door. From outside, a female voice claimed to be a graduate student doing research for a dissertation on reggae. After pulling on some shorts and opening the door, the five-time Grammy-nominated singer and father of 13 was arrested on federal drug and gun charges.

The forces who had gathered against him in this scenario were a shady Colombian snitch once caught bringing 700 kilos of blow into Florida and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Now, nearly three years after Buju — real name Mark Myrie — was sent to a federal prison outside Tampa, his case continues to drag along. But that hasn't slowed his musical success. Last year, he won a Grammy for an album, Before the Dawn, that was completed behind bars. This past July, he won an International Reggae and World Music Award for "Jah Army," a song on which he collaborated with Stephen and Damian Marley. The track has amassed nearly 5 million views on YouTube.

In August, when famed reggae radio personality Clinton Lindsay published a list of the 50 most important reggae albums of all time to coincide with Jamaica's 50th year of independence, Banton's 1995 'Til Shiloh was the only contemporary record to make the cut.

"Almost every other person in Jamaica knows who Buju Banton is, so of course people miss Buju," says Markus Myrie, Banton's 18-year-old son, who has recently started producing and collaborating with well-known artists, including Bounty Killer. "His performances, his big stage shows — I think that's what people miss most."

Rather than tour and perform, Buju has recently been spending his days at the Federal Correctional Institution in South Miami-Dade, chipping away at a decade long sentence and penning lyrics to new songs he won't be able to record for years. And it now seems inevitable that he'll be forced to spend even more time behind bars than anyone — even the trial judge and jurors — anticipated.

On October 30, he will return to a federal courtroom in Tampa, where Judge James Moody is expected to add five years to his sentence on a dubious firearm charge.

But exclusive interviews conducted by New Times with three jurors reveal that the reggae star nearly walked free after a 2011 retrial. Most alarming: All three jurors interviewed say the gun charge is without merit. "When we first got back into the room," recalls juror Brian Postlewait, an IT specialist, "it was ten to two for not guilty."

At first, Postlewait voted against conviction during deliberations, which lasted three days in February 2011. In a backroom of Tampa's courthouse, the jurors pored over the instructions, dissected the transcripts, watched and rewatched grainy surveillance video captured by the DEA, and vigorously debated the four charges — attempting to possess and distribute cocaine, conspiring to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine, using a phone to facilitate a drug-trafficking offense, and possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense. They listed each count on a whiteboard accompanied by check boxes and consulted with the judge to clarify a few aspects of the case.

Slowly, momentum shifted in favor of the prosecution. Ultimately, it was the video of Buju in a warehouse dabbing his tongue with cocaine that sealed his fate. Jury instructions required them to convict on the gun charges if they believed the conspiracy claims, Postlewait says: "Once we got him on the first main charge, the gun [charge] had to go with it... which was unfortunate."

It wasn't easy on anyone in the jury room. Marie Hodge, another juror from the Tampa area, said she was sick to her stomach. "This was a wonderful person with all this great talent," she says, referring to Buju. "This guy seemed more idiot than criminal."

On the other hand, Hodge was forced to swallow the fact that Alex Johnson, the informant who has earned roughly $3.5 million for snitching on people over the past 14 years, was little more than a "credible scumbag who can make drug deals and talk the talk" on behalf of the government, she says.

The jury found Buju guilty on three of the four charges, but when sentencing came around in June 2011, Judge Moody threw out the gun allegation, which carried a mandatory minimum sentence of five years. It seemed reasonable: Buju never met or spoke with James Mack, a man who was arrested after driving from Atlanta to Florida with $135,000 cash and a gun stashed in a hidden compartment within his car to buy five kilos of coke. In fact, Buju wasn't even at the drug bust, and it's still unclear whether he knew the deal was taking place.

After the gun count was dismissed, Buju was sentenced to ten years on the two remaining drug charges.

This summer, however, an Atlanta appeals court, at the behest of the federal prosecutor, overturned Moody's decision. The judge has few options but to add the mandatory five years to Buju's sentence later this month

Even Susan Devlin, a bespectacled redhead and one of the two jurors who initially voted guilty, is queasy over the prospect of the reggae star's getting more time. "None of us thought that he had anything to do with [the gun]," she says. "When the judge threw it out, I thought, 'That's good,' because we really didn't want to charge him with the gun."

In light of these revelations from jurors, one can't help but wonder why the feds have gone to such extremes to lock up one of the most critically important voices to come out of Jamaica since Bob Marley. (Of course, Buju is also well-known for homophobic lyrics, which have angered almost as many people as his songs have pleased.)

Options are running out, but Chokwe Lumumba , Buju's newly appointed attorney, is already planning an appeal. "The result on the gun charge is obviously unjust. And I can see full well why the judge saw fit to throw it out," Lumumba says. "Buju wasn't even there when the gun was possessed. There's very flimsy evidence as far as we can see that he would have actually known what was going on."

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-10...ars-in-jail/2/

_______________________________________________________________________________


The informant was reportedly paid $50,000 for his work on the case
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buju_Ba...l_drug_charges




Buju Banton is innocent
By Chris Sweeney Thursday, Feb 9 2012


http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-02...-drug-charges/


On the morning of December 10, 2009, authorities busted Thomas and a guy from Georgia named James Mack at the Sarasota warehouse, where the two were caught with a gun and $135,000 in cash while trying to buy several kilos. Cops then pulled Buju from his Tamarac home and placed him under arrest on two charges: conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute cocaine and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug-trafficking offense — even though the firearm at issue was carried by Mack, not Buju.

It's a case built upon the handiwork of a mendacious snitch — Alex Johnson, AKA Junior — with an extensive criminal history and clear financial motives to see Buju arrested. An aggressive federal prosecutor spent big in two weeklong trials in Tampa to secure a celebrity conviction. The saga sheds light on how far the government will go and how dirty it will play to win the few big battles left in the long-ago failed War on Drugs. Now, while one of the most successful and controversial Jamaican artists — a man who won a Grammy for best reggae album a year ago — sits in a Miami penitentiary, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals is considering whether unconstitutional tactics were used to nail a man who had no known criminal record.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2012-02...-drug-charges/[/b]

HNosegbe: So people still do socialism, in the 21st century?

Well good luck Venezuela, but remember that there's more to an economy than oil. Case in point: Nigeria.

The Meaning of 21st Century Socialism for Venezuela

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1834


Venezuela Pays Off IMF, World Bank Debt, Finance Minister Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=latin_america&sid=awr5d6zntU.Q

https://media.miamiherald.com/smedia/2012/10/07/22/57/hgAeD.Em.56.jpg

President Hugo Chávez wins historic election in Venezuela

BY JIM WYSS

President Hugo Chávez was declared the winner late Sunday of a hotly contested election that threatened to undo more than a decade of Socialist policies.

The head of the The National Election Council, or CNE, announced after a day of heavy voting that Chávez had been reelected with 54.42 percent of the vote. Henrique Capriles, his chief rival, received 44.97 percent.

Before the vote was announced, both factions were touting exit polls that gave their candidates an edge.

Late Sunday, Capriles’ Campaign Manager Armando Briquet said he could not talk about election results but “there are enough reasons to be happy.”

Chávez’s campaign manager Jorge Rodríguez , also hinted at good news, calling the day “one of the most glorious pages in the history of Venezuela.”

Chávez, a 58-year old former military officer, has been in power since 1999 and used the nation’s oil wealth to promote socialist reforms and welfare programs that have made him a hero to the poor. He said he would use the additional six years to build more public housing, end unemployment and create 10 new public universities.

Capriles, 40, has pledged to bridge the country’s deep ideological divides and roll out Brazilian-style reforms that would jump-start the economy without leaving the poor behind.

Wearing a long-sleeve blue shirt, Chávez cast his vote in the working-class 23 de Enero neighborhood surrounded by family, cabinet members and international celebrities, including Hollywood’s Danny Glover and Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú of Guatemala.

https://i.imgur.com/dTxQG.jpg

Amid speculation that Chávez might be reluctant to hand over power, the leader vowed to respect Sunday’s outcome.

“Whether it’s a one vote difference or 3 million votes, the responsible political actors must recognize the results,” he said. “Also, this is an electoral system that is absolutely transparent.”

Minutes later, Capriles cast his vote in the municipality of Baruta, where he was once mayor.

After pushing through a crowd of supporters and showing reporters his “lucky shoes” that have helped him win four consecutive elections, he also vowed to play by the rules.

“What the people say today is a sacred word,” Capriles said. “To know how to win, you also have to know how to lose.”

The words seemed to have a calming effect on a nation that often fretted that either side might not accept defeat. In the waning days of the campaign, Chávez had gone as far as to suggest that his loss might spark a civil war.

Carolina Haskour, 41, was wearing a shirt that read “You snooze you lose” and waiting at the Baruta polling station hoping to catch a glimpse of Capriles.

She said she voted for the former mayor, governor and legislator because she’s tired of the nation’s political polarization and soaring crime rate.

“I want the country to be what it was before,” she said. “There’s so much hate now. I want a country where we don’t fight with each other just because we have different political views.”

But others still see Chávez as the only person willing to fight for them.

“I am 82 years old and I can tell you we’ve never had a president as good as this,” said María Pinzón who lives in Antimano. “He’s made mistakes, but there’s no one else like him.”

On the campaign trail, Chávez highlighted his social programs and presented himself in his motto and jingles as the “heart of the nation.”

If that’s the case, then “I voted for a heart transplant,” said Jorge San Martin, a 48-year-old computer engineer. San Martin said he had to wait three hours due to voting-machine failures in his neighborhood, La Florida.

For many, the day kicked off at 3 a.m. when fireworks began popping over Caracas, followed later by sound-trucks playing reveille. Chávez had told supporters to rise early to assure his victory before noon.

At several voting centers, groups of pro-government motorcycle drivers, known as motorizados, honked their horns and popped wheelies. Many feared these groups might stir up trouble or disrupt the vote.

But as of 7 p.m., Gen. Wilmer Barrientos, who is in charge of election security, said it was a largely peaceful event with no major incidents to report.

Even so, Capriles campaign officials asked the military to control the gangs Sunday night.

“Please restrict these bands of motorcyclists,” Briquet, the campaign manager, asked the military, “because we want a night that was like our day — peaceful.”

At a polling station in Caricuao, a group of Chávez supporters huddled under a red tent and kept a list of everyone in their community who had voted. The effort is part of the administration’s plan to minimize abstention, which tends to hurt the ruling party.

“We’re seeing a massive turnout,” said Tania Peña, one of the organizers. “We’re here because we want socialism, equality and all the social missions.”

At the technical school where Chávez cast his vote, the walls are covered in pictures of the young president and Karl Marx. It also has a quote from Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar scrawled on one wall that might apply to either candidate.

“You can lose all of the battles,” it reads, “except for the last one.”

El Nuevo Herald staff writer Juan Tamayo contributed to this report from Caracas.

[b]President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela Wins Re-election

October 7, 2012

Chavez Wins Re-election, Electoral Council Says
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez won re-election on Sunday, defeating challenger Henrique Capriles, Venezuela's electoral council said.

With most votes counted, Chavez had more than 54 percent of the vote, and Capriles had 45 percent, National Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said. She said 81 percent of the nearly 19 million registered voters cast ballots.

It was Chavez's third re-election victory in nearly 14 years in office. The victory gives Chavez another six-year term to cement his legacy and press more forcefully for a transition to socialism in the country with the world's largest proven oil reserves.

Fireworks exploded in downtown Caracas, and Chavez's supporters celebrated waving flags and jumping for joy outside the presidential palace.

Chavez won more than 7.4 million votes, beating Capriles by more than 1.2 million votes, Lucena said. [/b]

ezeagu: Of course, everybody is a brilliant military strategists in hindsight. Every group, and that means every group has the right to self determination. The war was initiated by Britain via Nigeria. The decision to secede wasn't just Col. Ojukwu's decision as nairaland has lead you to believe. Col. Ojukwu didn't single handedly create the flag, national anthem and naming all by himself. He didn't force kids to raise up Biafran flags. He certainly isn't forcing any of the young MASSOB members of today. Biafra wasn't even solely Igbo as people like to believe for convenience sake. Anyone who is distant and out of tune with eastern society will not understand the significance of Biafra enough among the Igbo to understand why Col. Ojukwu is revered.

I'm glad you said it. Many don't realize the cunning nature of the British Empire that rules without ruling. The U.K. Foreign Office and MI6 trained the CIA in America.

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu

Alma mater Lincoln College, Oxford University, King's College, Lagos


Bomb warnings forced British VIPs to cancel Nigerian visit

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/bomb-warnings-forced-british-vips-to-cancel-nigerian-visit-2096272.html

Sunday 03 October 2010



The former prime minister Gordon Brown and other senior UK dignitaries pulled out of Nigeria's 50th-anniversary celebrations this weekend after security warnings, the Foreign Office admitted yesterday. Bomb attacks before the opening ceremony in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, killed 12 people on Friday. Seventeen others were seriously injured.

Foreign Office officials said they had received "indications of a heightened security risk" prior to the parades taking place. As a result, the Duke of Gloucester, who was scheduled to attend as the Queen's personal representative, withdrew and Mr Brown cancelled his visit to the country altogether.



Gordon Brown avoids Nigeria bombings after security warning
Gordon Brown escaped becoming caught up in the Nigeria terrorist attacks after a warning from British intelligence officers.

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/842835-gordon-brown-avoids-nigeria-bombings-after-security-warning#ixzz28diWzajl

[b]recent news from yankee

https://saharareporters.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/news-page-images-480-wide/page_images/news/2012/Screen%20shot%202012-10-06%20at%2011.09.52%20PM.png

Protesters Force Labaran Maku To Abandon New York Independence Day Parade
Posted: October 7, 2012

Members of the New York-based Nigeria Liberty Democratic Forum (NLDF) earlier today staged a dramatic flash protest that forced Nigeria’s Minister of information, Labaran Maku, to abandon the annual New York City Independence Day parade. The parade is an annual event organized by the Nigerian government and some Nigerian organizations in the US.

The NLDF protesters were led by Bukola Oreofe, an official of the group. The protesters had joined the colorful parade from 51st Street and 2nd Avenue when word spread that Mr. Maku was the “Parade Marshal” and led a troupe of Nigerian diplomats who waved the Nigerian flag at different groups as they danced the Nigeria House on 44th Street.

The NDLF members staged their traditional protest march past the Nigerian government officials. Shortly after, the protesters penetrated the area where the Nigerian minister and other officials were and began a flash protest. The protesters sang protest songs against the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Facing the minister, they shouted, “Go Home!” They also accused Nigerian officials of corruption and insensitivity to the plight of the vast majority of Nigerians.

One of the protesters told a correspondent that Mr. Maku “should return to Nigeria and sympathize with millions of Nigerians who are currently besieged by a massive flood disaster that has affected 22 states.” So far, the floods have claimed the lives of 148 Nigerians.

Other protesters demanded that the minister help to fix Nigeria’s myriad problems to ensure that Nigerians can celebrate their Independence Day in public without fear of terrorist attacks.

As the protests became charged, the Nigerian officials called in police officers from the New York Police Department to drive the protesters away. However, the NYPD officials showed no inclination to force out the protesters. Instead, the officers stood guard around the protesters to forestall any breakdown of law and order.

Once it became clear to the Nigerian delegates that NYPD officers would not force the protesters to leave, Mr. Maku and the diplomats left the stage and hurriedly retired inside the Nigeria House. Their disappearance brought the parade to an abrupt end.

The jubilant protesters continued to sing protest songs and addressed onlookers about the deplorable condition of their country. They warned that more protests against Nigerian officials visiting the US would be planned and staged.[/b]

fyi



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4wIH_Hn-mc