₦airaland Forum

Mind you, the claim you guys (you and @realchange) made is that there were military action and genocide (by the nigerian military) on the Eastern border PRIOR to the official declaration of independence.

So I would very much like dates of when these skirmishes took place........

Consult one of your 5+ books and provide a date

Err. Any responses to the posts from page 7? In particular, why you are using a law and court from the year 2000+ to condemn actions that occurred in the 1960s?

naw, akure-based roadside mechanic is closer

so share the money, bros

Nothing wrong with his question

Nor is there anything wrong with ridiculing him

There is room for both in this thread

dayokanu: You dey mind the mor0n?

It is always enjoyable to poke fun at id1ots like the OP

ballabriggs: Rate this brain

How can we rate the brain of a brainless fellow like Billyonaire

This thread is pretty hilarious

This is pretty standard. If you move to Texas for example, at some point you'll need to exchange your Utah driver's license, license plates, etc and register yourself with Texas.

I'm actually surprised that one could in the past have used e.g. Kano plates in Lagos, despite the vehicle being based in Lagos.

I am surprised only 52%.

Antivirus92: blind man. Is it igbo coupe or is it a coupe led by an igbo?

lol. not trying to be grammar nazi, but for some reason this sentence brought up the following lyrics for me:
"coupe the color of mayonnaise
I'm drunk and high at the same time, drinkin' champagne on the airplane"

youths earnestly ask for abacha

Romney won, unfortunately.

The African National Congress is the greatest party in Nigeria.

Can someone please tell Cambridge to correct the website for their mathematics department. They spelled it 'maths', for some reason:
http://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/

Jennifer Bristol recently lost one of her oldest friends—thanks to a Facebook fight about pit bulls.

The trouble started when she posted a newspaper article asserting that pit bulls were the most dangerous type of dog in New York City last year. "Please share thoughts… 833 incidents with pitties," wrote Ms. Bristol, a 40-year-old publicist and animal-welfare advocate in Manhattan.


Her friends, many of whom also work in the animal-welfare world, quickly weighed in. One noted that "pit bull" isn't a single official breed; another said "irresponsible ownership" is often involved when dogs turn violent. Black Labs may actually bite more, someone else offered.

Then a childhood pal of Ms. Bristol piped up with this: "Take it from an ER doctor… In 15 years of doing this I have yet to see a golden retriever bite that had to go to the operating room or killed its target."

That unleashed a torrent. One person demanded to see the doctor's "scientific research." Another accused him of not bothering to confirm whether his patients were actually bitten by pit bulls. Someone else suggested he should "venture out of the ER" to see what was really going on.

"It was ridiculous," says Ms. Bristol, who stayed out of the fight. Her old buddy, the ER doctor, unfriended her the next morning. That was eight months ago. She hasn't heard from him since.

Why are we so nasty to each other online? Whether on Facebook, Twitter, message boards or websites, we say things to each other that we would never say face to face. Shouldn't we know better by now?

Anonymity is a powerful force. Hiding behind a fake screen name makes us feel invincible, as well as invisible. Never mind that, on many websites, we're not as anonymous as we think—and we're not anonymous at all on Facebook. Even when we reveal our real identities, we still misbehave.

According to soon-to-be-published research from professors at Columbia University and the University of Pittsburgh, browsing Facebook lowers our self control. The effect is most pronounced with people whose Facebook networks were made up of close friends, the researchers say.

Most of us present an enhanced image of ourselves on Facebook. This positive image—and the encouragement we get, in the form of "likes"—boosts our self-esteem. And when we have an inflated sense of self, we tend to exhibit poor self-control.

"Think of it as a licensing effect: You feel good about yourself so you feel a sense of entitlement," says Keith Wilcox, assistant professor of marketing at Columbia Business School and co-author of the study. "And you want to protect that enhanced view, which might be why people are lashing out so strongly at others who don't share their opinions." These types of behavior—poor self control, inflated sense of self—"are often displayed by people impaired by alcohol," he adds.

The researchers conducted a series of five studies. In one, they asked 541 Facebook users how much time they spent on the site and how many close friends they had in their Facebook networks. They also asked about their offline lives, including questions about their debt and credit-card usage, their weight and eating habits and how much time they spent socializing in person each week.

People who spent more time online and who had a high percentage of close ties in their network were more likely to engage in binge eating and to have a greater body mass index, as well as to have more credit-card debt and a lower credit score, the research found. Another study found that people who browsed Facebook for five minutes and had strong network ties were more likely to choose a chocolate-chip cookie than a granola bar as a snack.

In a third study, the professors gave participants a set of anagrams that were impossible to solve, as well as timed IQ tests, then measured how long it took them to give up trying to solve the problems. They found people who spent more time on Facebook were more likely to give up on difficult tasks more quickly. A Facebook spokesman declined to comment.

Why are we often so aggressive online? Consider this recent post to this column's Facebook page, from someone I don't know: "Why should I even bother writing you? You won't respond."

We're less inhibited online because we don't have to see the reaction of the person we're addressing, says Sherry Turkle, psychologist and Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of the social studies of science and technology. Because it's harder to see and focus on what we have in common, we tend to dehumanize each other, she says.

Astoundingly, Dr. Turkle says, many people still forget that they're speaking out loud when they communicate online. Especially when posting from a smartphone, "you are publishing but you don't feel like you are," she says. "So what if you say 'I hate you' on this tiny little thing? It's like a toy. It doesn't feel consequential."

And for Facebook, its very name is part of the problem. "It promises us a face and a place where we are going to have friends," says Dr. Turkle, author of the book "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other." "If you get something hurtful there, you're not prepared. You feel doubly affronted, so you strike back."

It's high season for online bickering about politics, as Chip Bolcik well knows. Mr. Bolcik, 54, a TV announcer and registered Independent from Thousand Oaks, Calif., likes to pose political questions on his Facebook page. "I am very interested in how people think who have different views than mine," he says. "And sometimes I will write a provocative question for the entertainment purpose of watching people yell at each other."

Over the past few months, Mr. Bolcik lost two real-life friends because of online political spats. The first friend got mad at him after he posted a status update asking people to debate whether Mormons are Christians. ("You are so off base you don't know what you are talking about," she wrote on his page, followed later by: "You're an idiot." Mr. Bolcik blocked her from his page. "I will allow free discussion until you irritate me," he says. Sometimes, he erases entire conversation threads.

The second friendship ended even more abruptly, after one of Mr. Bolcik's old friends offended several of his Facebook friends, as well as Mr. Bolcik himself, by repeatedly posting his views. "He was spouting about politics, rather than discussing," Mr. Bolcik says. Mr. Bolcik wrote his friend and told him he was going to block him from the page if he didn't pipe down. In response, his friend told him off using vulgar language and unfriended him. "I was pretty upset," Mr. Bolcik says.

Still, he sometimes can't restrain himself from fanning the flames. When a political discussion thread becomes heated and he doesn't like the way it is going—"right or left," he says—he privately messages one of his "attack dog" friends and suggests he or she join the discussion. "I will say, 'Gee, this discussion doesn't seem right to me, what do you think?' " he says. "Then they will go on there and berate the person who is upsetting me, and I will look like the good guy."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030351784405148.html

Well, so after that debate I'm going to donate some cash to Obama, help my boy out a bit. Didn't go the way I expected.

[quote author=Ileke-IdI]I've been seeing this and Im wondering if it's a new trend?

I'm not as "hip" as I used to be. Is cray the same thing as crazy?

Wow, I don old o.[/quote]It is from Watch the Throne, that album from last year. See this: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cray

Think of all the preparation required for a debate like this. Cray

I don't feel like watching this any more...i'm getting high blood pressure

Romney is doing a good job in this debate.

yes ma'am

Free stream on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/2012thevoiceof?feature=inp-lt-ype-63

So, exactly as I said. Nigeria offered relief flights, Biafra rejected them.

Unlike you, ACM10, I do not make claims unless I have facts to back them up.

Now, can you back up this assertion of yours of villages on the Eastern border being attacked even before the declaration of independence? This was your and @realchange's justification for why the declaration of independence was necessary..

The top of page 245 from the de St. Jorre book:

"This I think, unfairly maligns his intentions and underestimates his authority. He did, after all, not only fulfil Nigeria's commitment to the Geneva Conventions, but go some ways beyond it. He turned a blind eye to the illegal night-flying into Biafra for fifteen months; he accepted the presence of an International Observer Team to allay fears of genocide and keep an eye on the conduct of the Federal troops (that the team was a British suggestion does not detract from Gowon's merit in accepting it); and he did agree to the daylight relief flights to Biafra provided that they planes were checked by the government and followed routes of its choice -- both normal controls under the Geneva Conventions. That the Biafrans did not accept these conditions does not mean Gowon was insincere in his offer."

Hold on a second, my confused friend ACM10.

You are citing a law associated with the International Criminal Court, an organization that did not exist until after 2000.

So, even assuming that your interpretation is correct, are you really judging a war in the late 1960s using laws from 2000+?

This is why I asked you to cite your reference well...I was pretty sure that you'd be full of crap.

Where is my own portion of the money, ndu_chucks

More to the point...if the Biafran side knew that their civilians were starving due to this blockade, are they not just as culpable morally?

Or is the claim that there is no moral burden for them to care for their own civilian population more than the Nigerian side?

ACM10: Pls do! Your ignorance on this topic is so glaring.




Article 8 (2) (b) (xxv)
War crime of starvation as a method of
warfare
Elements
1. The
perpetrator
deprived civilians
of objects
indispensable to
their survival.
2. The
perpetrator
intended to starve
civilians as a
method of warfare.
3. The conduct
took place in the
context of and was
associated with an
international armed
conflict.
4. The
perpetrator was
aware of factual
circumstances that
established the
existence of an
armed conflict.

www1.umn.edu/humanrts/instree/iccelementsofcrimes.html

Then doesn't it follow that ANY blockade which also blocks the flow of food is a war crime?

Yet, there have been many total blockades over the past 50 years in history. Is your claim then that all of those blockades were war crimes?

If so, then Nigeria is in good company.

ACM10: I've responded to this question already. I get bored with mindless repetition.

Your response wasn't good enough, is my point. Do you not get that? The answer to my question is, "there is no way to ensure that the food you give to the civilians doesn't end up feeding military.

I was expecting you to name this book. Mr, you are still ignorant on this topic. Widen your scope.

Why would I name the book, when I mentioned its author? He only has one book on the Nigerian civil war (though it was republished again under a different name).

Should I also mention the color of my book, the font used to print the title, etc?

Anyway......more to the point, name these villages and towns you and @realchange claim that Gowon was killing and genociding on the Biafra border before your declaration of independence.....

I have to go run some errands...back in a few

ACM10: It's ok to justify your position, but it's unfair to justify it with false assumption. Does Gowon need Ojukwu's permission before searching any shipment to Biafra? Gowon already controls the entry point, so the argument of "permision" is plain ludicrous, if not silly.

I will even find a quote justifying this when I get home and have my civil books handy. Don't worry.

Are you really serious? How many international conventions can you recite?

If one claims that X is illegal, shouldn't you at least know what the law says about X? I.e., which law discusses X? Otherwise, why should I believe you?

How was the blockade of everything different from deliberate policy of starvation?

So, any total blockade then is equivalent to a "deliberate policy of starvation"? Is this your claim? If this is your claim, we will follow through the implications of this..

ACM10: This can be easily worked out between the aid agency and the side that placed the blockade. There are some areas that were mapped out as "no fire" zone where civilians can come, be identified and receive food, medicine and relief materials. Though the process aint perfect. Some eventually ends up in the hands of the fighters. But this is not enough reason to starve civilians

Indeed, the process "ain't perfect", as you say. Now, how does one ensure that 90%+ of the material doesn't end up in the hand of military? What prevents this from happening?

Can you list 5 books on this topic that you've read so far?

I haven't read 5 books. The primary resource I used was the John de St. Jorre book.