₦airaland Forum

Pakistan and Qaddafi’s Libya are open societies in comparison to Iran and North Korea. The regimes in Pyongyang and Tehran are highly ideological, where major policy decisions are made in a tight circle around the man on top—Kim Jong-un of North Korea and Ali Khamenei of Iran.

Both regimes have made nuclear weapons a vital strategic interest, in spite of sanctions that have sent the Iranian currency plummeting and brought North Korea to the brink of starvation. But sharing nuclear information gives both a way out. North Korea will get billions that Iran will happily pay for a bomb or blueprints. Iran, once in possession of the bomb, will see Europe and perhaps even the United States relax their sanctions regimes in the hopes of getting Iran to the negotiating table by playing nice.

If this is the case, Obama will go down in history as the American president who presided over global nuclear proliferation, including rogue regimes. After four years of restraining the Israelis, he may now be going to visit them next month for a good reason: to apologize.

If this sounds hyperbolic, consider the history of extensive North Korean-Iranian cooperation on a host of military and defense issues, including ballistic missiles and nuclear development, that dates back to the 1980s.

This cooperation includes North Korean sales of technology and arms, like the BM-25, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching Western Europe; Iran’s Shahab 3 missile is based on North Korea’s Nodong-1 and is able to reach Israel.

Iran has a contigent of Iranian weapons engineers and defense officials stationed in North Korea. Meantime, North Korean scientists visit Iran. And last fall, both countries signed a memorandum of understanding regarding scientific, academic, and technological issues.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/124222/why-iran-already-has-the-bomb?utm_source=outbrain&utm_medium=referral

The White House and President Obama’s supporters insist that he’s making his first trip to Israel next month to assure the Jewish state that if push comes to shove with Iran, he’ll have Israel’s back. But North Korea’s nuclear test Tuesday morning could indicate that it’s already too late for that. If North Korea has the bomb, then for all practical purposes Iran does, too. If that’s so, then Obama’s policy of prevention has failed, and containment—a policy that the president has repeatedly said is not an option—is in fact all Washington has.

A tax based economy like Lagos is what we should seek

If only we can have good governance in this country, our story will be different, NIGERIANS ARISE!!!

Every nation wants to strike oil, and after it happens, nearly every nation is worse off for it. It may seem paradoxical, but finding a hole in the ground that spouts money can be one of the worst things that can happen to a country.

Oil-dependent countries, writes the Stanford professor Terry Karl, “eventually become among the most economically troubled, the most authoritarian, and the most conflict-ridden in the world.” This phenomenon is called the resource curse.

Oil is the world’s most capital-intensive industry, so it creates few jobs. Worse, it obliterates jobs all across the economy. The export of oil inflates the exchange rate, so whatever else a country manufactures is less competitive abroad.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/13/avoiding-the-curse-of-the-oil-rich-nations/

Oil concentrates a nation’s economy around the state. Instead of putting resources into making things and selling them, ambitious people spend their time currying favor or simply bribing the politicians and government officials who control oil money. That concentration of wealth, along with the opacity with which oil can be managed, creates corruption.

Petro-dependence also leads to conflict. The conventional wisdom used to be that grievances were the cause of conflict, but that ended after the economists Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler found in a series of ground-breaking studies that more important was the opportunity to grab oil or other commodity resources. They showed that if a third or more of a country’s G.D.P. came from the export of primary commodities, the likelihood of conflict was 22 percent. Similar countries that did not export commodities had a 1 percent chance.

If a government can finance itself through the profits on oil, it needn’t collect taxes. Let me suggest that this is not a good thing. Taxes create accountability — citizens want to know how the government is spending their money. Substituting oil revenues decouples government from the people. The list of the world’s worst-governed countries today features many that are dependent on the production of oil: Nigeria, Angola, Chad, Venezuela, Libya, Equatorial Guinea.

LEADERSHIP WEEKEND further gathered that the bombers might be on their way to prepare ground for the eventual rescue of the foreigners.

The jet bombers were said to have arrived in the early hours of yesterday while their colours comprised three ash and two army green. The army green jets were marked “Royal Army”.

LEADERSHIP WEEKEND further observed some foreign soldiers putting on brown camouflage uniforms were entering one of the army green jets in preparation for departure.

It was further gathered that some of the jets had started leaving the airport for certain locations to assist in the rescue of the kidnapped foreigners.

The four grey-coloured jets departed the Abuja airport at about 5.55pm, leaving only the army-green jet at the airport as at press time.

The entry of the jets, the military source said, was to prevent the recent failed rescue operation in Sokoto where the terrorists killed the foreigners before they could be rescued by the security agencies, including foreign officers.

When contacted over the unusual sighting of the jets, the British high commissioner in Nigeria, Mr. Rob Fitzpatrick, told LEADERSHIP WEEKEND, “This is routine military-to-military engagement.”

Two hostages, Chris McManus (Britain) and Franco Lamolinara (Italy), were found dead in Sokoto on March 9, 2012, during a failed joint rescue mission by the British special forces and the Nigerian military. A group that claimed ties to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, which happened in May 2011.

The rescue attempt began in the morning in Sokoto’s Mabera neighbourhood, a sprawling maze of sandy roads and single-storey cement homes on what used to be fertile farmland surrounding the city of 500,000 people. Residents said a seemingly unending barrage of gunfire followed, as did an attack led by a military armoured personnel carrier.

Once inside in the compound, soldiers found the two men had been killed. But details of how and when they died remained unclear

Information from the raid came from individuals arrested by Nigeria’s security agencies before the operation, a senior official in Nigeria said. However, British officials worried the kidnappers would realise “the net was closing” on their location.

The rescue effort ended months of uncertainty about what happened to McManus and Lamolinara. McManus was working for construction company B.Stabilini when he was kidnapped on May 12, 2011, by gunmen who stormed his apartment in the city of Birnin-Kebbi, about 110 miles (180 kilometers) away from Sokoto. Lamolinara was also abducted.

A German colleague managed to escape by scaling a wall, but a Nigerian engineer was shot and wounded.

A video later released showed the kidnappers claiming they belonged to al-Qaida and threatening to kill McManus and Lamolinara if their demands were not met.

While the story is that these US troops are there to keep an eye on Mali I'm betting that at least a few of those drones in Niger are going to be heading south to keep an eye on Northern Nigeria. As well they should.


Boko Haram can kiss their asses goodbye. Goodbye, terrorists

the cost of 1,000 drones equals the price of an F15 Eagle jet. If we talk

about the latest models, like the Predator, it costs $10 million while the cost of an F16 is $350 million and the fuel for 200 flights of a drone equals the fuel consumed by one flight of F4 Phantom jet. The training of a pilot of a Tornedo costs 1 million Pound Sterling while training a drone operator costs nothing and it takes only three months.

Therefore, the Americans have chosen a comfortable war

Earlier this week, France sent its special forces to Cameroon in search of seven French tourists who were kidnapped in the north of the country on Tuesday. Paris accused the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram of being behind the abduction. On Thursday, the kidnapped tourists were reportedly found alive in an abandoned house in Nigeria.

France – whose presence in Africa used to be rather strong – still has several military bases and hundreds of troops on the continent. In the past several years, Paris’ has intensified its activity in former colonies.

First, there was its mission in the Ivory Coast. And in January this year, France launched a military operation in Mali to help the local government fight Islamist rebels. Finally, this week its troops entered northern Cameroon.

If the main product of Mali, for example, were mushrooms, there would be no French troops there or in Niger. But the main export is uranium. And that’s very important to the French. And that’s why the French are there, that’s why NATO is there, that’s why – unfortunately - Canada is there as well.

I think the main point is this is unfortunately a trend. Like the 19th century race for colonies, we have we have the 21st century race for colonies beginning. That’s a tragic fact.

RT: With militants being active in Algeria, Mali, Nigeria, and Cameroon - what is really happening in West Africa?

KS: It’s a complicated situation. Many of the national boundaries that were drawn by the colonial powers have no parrying at all on the location of the indigenous nations of Africa. So, people are divided on different sides of boundaries. Most people don’t even recognize many of the boundaries in the Saharan region and the sub-Saharan region.

There’s a further problem. The West has introduced Al-Qaeda-type terrorists into Africa where they want them, where they didn’t exist in any significance before. So that has created a can of worms.

The main point though is that the Western powers – the European neo-colonial powers, the US and NATO – have no right to act as the police of the world.

In the 19th century race for colonies, they said that they had the white man’s burden to carry on their shoulders to civilize the people of Africa. In the 21st century they call it the “humanitarian intervention to protect the human’s rights.” Those are both frauds and the Western countries really have absolutely no say in what goes on in West Africa. They should have no say.

RT: What are the chances the special-forces deployment in Cameroon could escalate into a full-scale operation, like in Mali?

KS: It could. But it’s not likely. Ever since their colonial rule ended, the French’s had a policy of ‘force de frappe’ – which is striking force, an expeditionary force, a special force – where they go in and they deal with a certain immediate problem and they leave. They do not have the stomach to maintain an occupation for a long period of time.

The problem for neo-colonial powers like France is that the so-called ‘rebels’ or Jihadists or whoever it may be, merely have to melt into the bush wait and out the expeditionary force. And when the expeditionary force leaves they come right back in. And the problem is that there is no permanent fix to this.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/02/22/us-usa-niger-forces-idUSBRE91L0NN20130222


(Reuters) - About 40 U.S. military personnel have arrived in Niger, President Barack Obama told Congress on Friday, the last of a deployment of about 100 to help coordinate intelligence sharing with French forces operating in Mali.

The U.S. forces are equipped with "weapons for the purpose of providing their own force protection and security," Obama said, and are there with Niger's consent.

France intervened in Niger's neighbor Mali last month as Islamist forces, who seized control of the north in the confusion following a military coup in March 2012, pushed towards the capital Bamako.

That had pushed Mali to the forefront of U.S. and European security concerns, with fears the Islamists would turn the country into a base for international attacks.

Niger gave permission for U.S. surveillance drones to be stationed on its territory to improve intelligence on al Qaeda-linked Islamist fighters in northern Mali and the wider Sahara, a senior Niger government source said in January.

The U.S. ambassador to Niger, Bisa Williams, made the request at a meeting with President Mahamadou Issoufou, who immediately accepted it, the source said.

"U.S. Africa Command protects and defends the national security interests of the United States by strengthening the defense capabilities of African states and regional organizations and, when directed, conducts military operations, in order to deter and defeat transnational threats and to provide a security environment conducive to good governance and development."

http://www.africom.mil/about-the-command/mission

Activated in 2008, US Africom is a direct response to China's growing influence in Africa. If you peruse the Africom website, you will not find one mention of securing resources. However, despite the atypical platitudes of ensuring national security and helping the Africans fight terrorism in the region, it is quite obvious that it is an incursion with the ultimate prize being Africa's treasures. It is a pillaging, just as egregious as Pizzaro's Spanish conquest of the Incan Empire.

TEXT OF A LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT TO THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE OF THE SENATE

February 22, 2013

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President

On February 20, 2013, the last elements of a deployment of approximately 40 additional U.S. military personnel entered Niger with the consent of the Government of Niger. This deployment will provide support for intelligence collection and will also facilitate intelligence sharing with French forces conducting operations in Mali, and with other partners in the region. The total number of U.S. military personnel deployed to Niger is approximately 100. The recently deployed forces have deployed with weapons for the purpose of providing their own force protection and security.

I directed this deployment of U.S. forces in furtherance of U.S. national security interests, and pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct U.S. foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive.

I am providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution (Public Law 93-148). I appreciate the support of the Congress in this action.

Sincerely,

BARACK OBAMA

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-22/obama-dispatches-100-us-troops-niger-support-predator-drone-base

As we speculated from the very beginning, and as was reaffirmed in "Is Nigeria, And Its Light Sweet Crude, About To Be Drawn Into The Mali "Liberation" Campaign?", the "French" (with complete and fully-comped US support) Mali campaign is slowly but surely migrating to its intended target: Nigeria, and rather its holdings of light sweet crude. And while the US presence in this latest resource land grab, this time in Africa, was so far rather stealthy, it appears the time for pre-intimacy is over and moments ago Obama told congress has has dispatched 40 more American troops to Niger this week, bringing the total U.S. military presence in the west African country to 100. Let's hear it for the full retroactive transparency demanded by the War Powers Resolution.


The Hill reports: "The troops have been deployed to support the intervention in neighboring Mali, where French troops have been helping local forces rout Islamist militants from the country's north since last month. The Obama administration is also planning to build a base in Niger for unarmed Predator drones to conduct surveillance on militants in the region, The New York Times reported last month. On Wednesday, “the last elements of a deployment of approximately 40 additional U.S. military personnel entered Niger with the consent of the Government of Niger,” Obama wrote to the House and Senate leaders." Next: extensive weapons of mass destruction are discovered in Abuja while Al Qaeda terrorists are seen making threatening gestuers and using harsh language at Nigerian oil rigs which is the international acknowledged symbol that the US has to do its sworn globocop duty and liberate all that oppressed Nigerian crude.

More importantly, China is surely delighted over what as everyone can now understand, is an imminent confrontation over who owns what in Africa.

Education must be given on the risk of Pulmonary Embolism and sudden death from deep venous thrombosis associated with long flights.

She died from a fatal Pulmonary(LUNG) EMBOLUS.

We need to move around the aircraft during long haul flights to prevent stasis of blood in our limbs which can lead to this.

RIP GOLDIE!!!

The average IQ OF NIGERIANS IS BELOW 70, that means the average Nigerian is mentally slow.

Since OBJ left have we not being selling crude at twice the production capacity of OBJ ERA with no significant drop in price yet people are bringing comparative values to insinuate the money is still there.

It is because of the well known fact that Nigerians are fools that made that Director and the Corrupt Judge not fear giving a 750,000 Naira fine for a theft of 23 Billion Naira and for him to return a meager 5 Billion Naira ( people are shot for lesser offences than that in CHINA TODAY ).

ADMIT THAT WE ARE MORALLY DOOMED BUT WE WILL CONTINUE TO GROW ECONOMICALLY SOLELY DUE TO POPULATION DYNAMICS and the residual oil wealth that seeps from the obese bellies of our Bourgeois.

The average IQ OF NIGERIANS IS BELOW 70, that means the average Nigerian is mentally slow.

Since OBJ left have we not being selling crude at twice the production capacity of OBJ ERA with no significant drop in price yet people are bringing comparative values to insinuate the money is still there.

It is because of the well known fact that Nigerians are fools that made that Director and the Corrupt Judge not fear giving a 750,000 Naira fine for a theft of 23 Billion Naira and for him to return a meager 5 Billion Naira ( people are shot for lesser offences than that in CHINA TODAY ).

ADMIT THAT WE ARE MORALLY DOOMED BUT WE WILL CONTINUE TO GROW ECONOMICALLY SOLELY DUE TO POPULATION DYNAMICS and the residual oil wealth that seeps from the obese bellies of our Bourgeois.

The average IQ OF NIGERIANS IS BELOW 70, that means the average Nigerian is mentally slow.

Since OBJ left have we not being selling crude at twice the production capacity of OBJ ERA with no significant drop in price yet people are bringing comparative values to insinuate the money is still there.

It is because of the well known fact that Nigerians are fools that made that Director and the Corrupt Judge not fear giving a 750,000 Naira fine for a theft of 23 Billion Naira and for him to return a meager 5 Billion Naira ( people are shot for lesser offences than that in CHINA TODAY ).

ADMIT THAT WE ARE MORALLY DOOMED BUT WE WILL CONTINUE TO GROW ECONOMICALLY SOLELY DUE TO POPULATION DYNAMICS and the residual oil wealth that seeps from the obese bellies of our Bourgeois.

The average IQ OF NIGERIANS IS BELOW 70, that means the average Nigerian is mentally retarded.

Since OBJ left have we not being selling crude at twice the production capacity of OBJ ERA with no significant drop in price yet people are bringing comparative values to insinuate the money is still there.

It is because of the well known fact that Nigerians are fools that made that Director and the Corrupt Judge not fear giving a 750,000 Naira fine for a theft of 23 Billion Naira and for him to return a meager 5 Billion Naira ( people are shot for lesser offences than that in CHINA TODAY ).

ADMIT THAT WE ARE MORALLY DOOMED BUT WE WILL CONTINUE TO GROW ECONOMICALLY SOLELY DUE TO POPULATION DYNAMICS and the residual oil wealth that seeps from the obese bellies of our Bourgeois.

From statistics provided by the medium, South-South states received the highest allocations, with Akwa-Ibom receiving N217,776,188,886.07, followed by Rivers State which received N177,488,261,117.17. Bayelsa State got N115,743,144,031.67; Delta State got a total of N156,052,071,645.19, while Edo State got N68,169,040,433.24. Cross River State N63,894,575,941.74

Lagos State in the Southwest got a total of N168,688,367,207.00 (the highest in the region), followed by Oyo State, which received a total of N93,524,683,879.60. Other states in the region: Ondo, got N78,416,358,272.47 (apart from 13 per cent derivation funds); Osun, N72,200,789,928.64; Ogun, N68,975,959,765.69 and Ekiti, N50,303,046,508.

These are monies shared in the past one year alone

http://tribune.com.ng/news2013/index.php/en/component/k2/item/3913-fg-36-states-shared-n88trillion-in-2012-•akwa-ibom-n21777618888607-•osun-n7220078992864-•lagos-n168688367207-•ogun-n6897595976569-•oyo-n9352468387960

One cannot but ask what exactly does symbolise with this level of brazen misappropriation of public resources? Where did all that money go?

“Where is the accountability for the use of both these resources and the additional several hundred dollars realised from oil sale by the two administrations that have governed our nation in the last five years? How were these resources applied, or more appropriately misapplied? Tragic choices.”

A former Vice President (Africa), World Bank, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has said the Umaru Yar’Adua and President Goodluck Jonathan administrations need to tell Nigerians how they spent the $45bn left in the foreign reserves account and $22bn in the Excess Crude Account by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration.

Ezekwesili, who was a former Minister of Solid Minerals and Education under Obasanjo, said at the convocation lecture of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, on Thursday, that Nigerians had lost dignity because of ravaging poverty arising from poor choices of the elite, corruption and lack of investment in education.

Noting that the country had enjoyed five cycles of oil boom, she decried the failure to convert oil income to renewable assets through training of human capital, development of other sectors and investment in foreign assets as other resource-rich countries did with their oil income.

Ezekwesili, a founding director of Transparency International, said, “The present cycle of boom of the 2010s is, however, much more vexing than the other four that happened in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

“This is because we are still caught up in it and it is more egregious than the other periods in revealing that we learned absolutely nothing from the previous massive failures.”

The former minister lamented the “squandering of the significant sum of $45bn in the foreign reserves account and another $22bn in the Excess Crude Account being direct savings from increased earnings from oil that the Obasanjo administration handed over to the successor government in 2007.”


http://www.punchng.com/business/business-economy/ezekwesili-queries-how-yaradua-jonathan-spent-67bn/

Says Nigeria has no territorial ambition in Mali

•Five beheaded in Maiduguri


President Goodluck Jonathan yesterday described the Islamic terror group, Boko Haram, as a threat not only to Nigeria, but also to the entire African continent and called for international efforts to curb its activities.

Jonathan, while fielding questions on a CNN programme, Amanpour, from the World Economic Forum, Davos said the sect was not fuelled by corruption or misrule as suggested by a section of the international community.

Earlier on Tuesday, the president, while addressing Nigerians resident in Switzerland, had explained that Nigeria’s involvement in the military campaign in Mali to rout Islamic militants from the Sahelian country was not for territorial gains.

The Embassies of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany and Canada on Wednesday advised their citizens not to travel to Nigeria for fear of insecurity.

The fresh warnings came on the heels of the deployment of troops in northern Mali.

The countries fear attacks on Nigeria by Islamic terrorists, who are supporting the course of for the Malian rebels.

The Canadian embassy on its website described the country’s situation unpredictable, saying there was a high risk of terrorism, crime, inter- communal clashes, armed attacks and kidnappings.

“Increased threat of attacks and kidnappings Military clashes are occurring in Mali between armed rebels and government forces. Since January 11, 2013, the French military has been assisting the Malian government in efforts to repel these rebels.

“Terrorist groups in the region have declared their intention to increase attacks and kidnappings, targeting Westerners. Citizens of countries supporting the military intervention are at particular risk, but all travellers should exercise increased vigilance in the region.

“There is a high threat of domestic terrorism in the northern states of Gombe, Yobe, Borno, Kano and Kaduna, where the extremist group, Boko Haram, which often claims responsibility for terrorist attacks, is based.

Clinton said a "Pandora's Box" of weapons had been opened in North Africa, starting with Libya. She said militants who had fought for Gadhafi raided his "warehouses" and took weapons to Algeria, Mali, Syria and elsewhere. She said the US had tried to recoup the weapons it shipped to the Libyan rebels.

He insisted killing the enemy was not what motivated him to become an attack helicopter pilot.

“It’s not the reason I decided to do this job,” he said. “The reason to do this job was to get back out here and carry on with a job.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/9816905/Prince-Harry-confirms-he-killed-Taliban-as-he-returns-from-Afghanistan-saying-Take-a-life-to-save-a-life.html


He said his job as co-pilot gunner was “a joy…because I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think that I’m probably quite useful”.


There were fears on Sunday night that his comments could inflame tensions in the region and in north Africa, as they became public in the immediate aftermath of the hostage massacre in Algeria, which showed that al Qaeda has spread its influence, and its threat to Britons, to new areas.


The Prince, known as Captain Wales in his role with 662 Squadron, 3 Regiment Army Air Corps, shrugged off a question about whether he had killed enemy fighters, saying: “Yeah, so lots of people have. The squadron’s been out here. Everyone’s fired a certain amount.

“Take a life to save a life, that’s what we revolve around, I suppose. If there’s people trying to do bad stuff to our guys, then we’ll take them out of the game, I suppose.