₦airaland Forum

Check this out.

http://alusainc./2009/02/10/david-otunga-chicago-illinois/


http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2009/08/jennifer-hudson-gives-birth-to-david-otunga-jr/


I am sure when their child wishes to run for office 47 years from now, they will doubt the childs Chicago birth and scavange for Otunga's father kenyan background too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1r-7ZQK4m8&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2F2009%2F08%2F12%2Fclinton-presses-nigeria-o_n_257834.html&feature=player_embedded

whobemumu:
a bunch of fools

u dont snub the US

for any reason

Simple. Someone forgot to bribe the Nigerian minster for foreign affairs. The minister could not just receive Hillary with un-greased hands.

ajadrage:
Any rational observer of international relations can tell that the leadership morass in most African states today can be remotely traced to the structure of the international political economy.

It is hard to disagree with this. But only partially explains the mutation of leaders in the mold of Abacha, Bokassa, Amin, Nguesso, Bongo Omar etc. Global political economy is an ogre yes but certainly not an all consuming one. we would not be talking of such leaders as Seretse Khama and his successor Masire, the Great Mwalimu Julius Nyerere whose leadership could not be dimmmed by the sometimes maligned global economic dispensation. See the legacy they bequeathed their nations.

ajadrage:
This is not trumping up that obsolete notion that colonialism is to be blamed for the continents woes. However, we must be pragmatic enough to identify the role of the international system (including the United States) in the encouragement, preservation and support of inept leadership on the continent, especially when issues of "national interest/ security" is concerned. Right through the cold war era of the latter half of the 20th century into the contemporary "terror wars" of the 21st century, double standards and support for puppet regimes that assured the stability that the United States so desired from African states had led to the present situation where African leaders could do whatever they liked within the purview of their domestic polity as long as the apple cart as constructed by the United States and her allies were not upturned.

Again. this is another argument that is notoriously wedged in any argument where self criticism is by designed eschewed by all too knowing African eggheads. I am one of these so I a not saying this with a gratuitous. motive. I just find this argument trapped in the temporal period defined by colonialism. True colonialism and its effect account for most of the ills-for lack of a better word- we experience as African nation. But pray was Africa really autonomous economically during precolonial area? And were there bad and good governance in equal and at time disproportionate measures? And must African leadership depend on western tutelage and patronage to do the right thing?

The wall Street Journal's take on Hillary's Nigerian visit.



http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124998924043522393.html

Clinton Will Take Nigeria to Task on Corruption



By WILL CONNORS

ABUJA, Nigeria -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will arrive Tuesday evening in Nigeria, where she will hold talks with political and business leaders and address, among other issues, the shoddy electoral process, weak investment climate and rampant corruption in Africa's second-largest economy.

Entering the backstretch of her seven-nation African tour, Mrs. Clinton is expected to echo the theme of gently reproaching African countries laid out during U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Ghana last month.



"Nigeria is probably the most important country in sub-Saharan Africa," Johnnie Carson, the State Department's top official for Africa, told reporters on the eve of Mrs. Clinton's tour. "It is also a major source of petroleum imports. , U.S. investment in Nigeria in the oil production and service industry is well in excess of $15 billion." Nigeria is the fifth-largest supplier of oil to the U.S., and its "light sweet" crude oil is prized for the ease with which it is converted into gasoline.

"We are concerned about having a good energy relationship with them," Mr. Carson said. "We'd also like them to address issues of corruption and transparency. When there is an absence of transparency and when there is a great deal of corruption, it makes the business environment extremely difficult."

Nigeria is the most populous nation in Africa and was long its biggest oil producer, until Angola recently overtook it. But Nigeria is facing numerous domestic problems.

Unrest in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where militants have shut down more than one million barrels a day of oil with pipeline attacks, has cost the government billions of dollars in revenue and dented interest from foreign investors.

Clashes last month between a homegrown Islamic fundamentalist sect and security forces in northern Nigeria left more than 800 people dead, including the group's leader, who was killed while in police custody.

The sect, known locally as Boko Haram, meaning "Western education is prohibited," has attracted an increasingly devoted following over the past several years amid poverty and disillusionment with the local political and religious leadership.

During her visit, Mrs. Clinton will meet with President Umaru Yar'Adua, whose 2007 election was widely condemned as flawed by local and international observers.

Mr. Yar'Adua, already facing significant obstacles and criticized for his slow-moving government, is scheduled to travel to Saudi Arabia on Friday for medical treatment.

Despite these issues, in the lead-up to Mrs. Clinton's visit, Nigerian politicians have focused primarily on the perceived snub by Mr. Obama in choosing Ghana instead of Nigeria for his first trip to Africa.

Earlier Tuesday, in the war-torn eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mrs. Clinton pledged $17 million to assist victims of sexual violence. After Nigeria, she will head to Liberia and the small, stable nation of Cape Verde.

Tayo-D:
@ajadrage,

And what has she said wrong?

I cannot help but agree unequivocally with Dayo-T this time. There is nothing wrong Hillary said. Is there?

When are they naming something after Ojukwu? It is long overdue.

Tayo-D:
@naliakar,
Why am I not surprised that you are one of those tribalists? Little wonder you have some racist tendencies.

Tayo-D
Take it easy man. Since when did Igbos become tribalists? My interest is in JeSoul, a gem and a true paragon of beauty. Keeping away competitors especially those with complexes away. Me a racist!! If your accusation is analogous to that of birther's or Health reform protesters" calling Obama a NAZI, I welcome it as a compliment.

tpia.:
is naliakar male?

funny, his posts and user id seem so feminine.

It seems you have been reading Virginia Woolf's "A Room of one's own". That is okay as long you you don't give me the attributes of a DRAG, which practice I loathe handsomely. Tell, me if Flora Nwapa's or Buchi Emecheta's names were removed from their works, would you determine their gender group based on "how they write?"

JeSoul:
Look at this yeye Cambridge boy
Who the hell cares about whether or not he was born in Hawaii or on the moon? He still survived a brutal election against the Clintons if he wasn't a citizen he should be awared the status just becos of that.

Do not take it seriously. You know Orly Taitz ppears to be a mental case.
Where are you Je Soul my dear? I made you an offer of a drink in Cambridge and I have not heard from you in this regard. Has Tayo placed some Yoruba charm on you or what? That would be tragic.

chinook:
@narlikar

nairobi is the the third largest city and third best city out side the 2 south africa cities and cairo egypt. check wikipidea for references.

Kwani wewe ulisoma wikipedia gani. Ni hii hapa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_metropolitan_areas_in_Africa

Next time utaniambia ati Saba Saba is larger than Karatina? These Kenyans never cease to amaze me.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/world/africa/05congo.html?_r=1&ref=world
[img]
Jehad Nga for The New York Times
GOMA, Congo — It was around 11 p.m. when armed men burst into Kazungu Ziwa’s hut, put a machete to his throat and yanked down his pants. Mr. Ziwa is a tiny man, about four feet, six inches tall. He tried to fight back, but said he was quickly beaten down.

“Then they raped me,” he said. “It was horrible, physically. I was dizzy. My thoughts just left me.”

For years, the thickly forested hills and clear, deep lakes of eastern Congo have been a reservoir of atrocities. Now, it seems, there is another growing problem: men raping men.

According to Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, United Nations officials and several Congolese aid organizations, the number of men who have been raped has risen sharply in recent months, a consequence of joint Congo-Rwanda military operations against rebels that have uncapped an appalling level of violence against civilians.

Aid workers struggle to explain the sudden spike in male rape cases. The best answer, they say, is that the sexual violence against men is yet another way for armed groups to humiliate and demoralize Congolese communities into submission.

The United Nations already considers eastern Congo the rape capital of the world, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to hear from survivors on her visit to the country next week. Hundreds of thousands of women have been sexually assaulted by the various warring militias haunting these hills, and right now this area is going through one of its bloodiest periods in years.

The joint military operations that began in January between Rwanda and Congo, David and Goliath neighbors who were recently bitter enemies, were supposed to end the murderous rebel problem along the border and usher in a new epoch of cooperation and peace. Hopes soared after the quick capture of a renegade general who had routed government troops and threatened to march across the country.

But aid organizations say that the military maneuvers have provoked horrific revenge attacks, with more than 500,000 people driven from their homes, dozens of villages burned and hundreds of villagers massacred, including toddlers thrown into open fires.

And it is not just the rebels being blamed. According to human rights groups, soldiers from the Congolese Army are executing civilians, raping women and conscripting villagers to lug their food, ammunition and gear into the jungle. It is often a death march through one of Africa’s lushest, most stunning tropical landscapes, which has also been the scene of a devastatingly complicated war for more than a decade.

“From a humanitarian and human rights perspective, the joint operations are disastrous,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The male rape cases span several hundred miles and possibly include hundreds of victims. The American Bar Association, which runs a sexual violence legal clinic in Goma, said that more than 10 percent of its cases in June were men.

Brandi Walker, an aid worker at Panzi hospital in nearby Bukavu, said, “Everywhere we go, people say men are getting raped, too.”

But nobody knows the exact number. Men here, like anywhere, are reluctant to come forward. Several who did said they instantly became castaways in their villages, lonely, ridiculed figures, derisively referred to as “bush wives.”

Since being raped several weeks ago, Mr. Ziwa, 53, has not shown much interest in practicing animal medicine, his trade for years. He limps around (his left leg was crushed in the attack) in a soiled white lab coat with “veterinaire” printed on it in red pen, carrying a few biscuit-size pills for dogs and sheep.

“Just thinking about what happened to me makes me tired,” he said.

The same is true for Tupapo Mukuli, who said he was pinned down on his stomach and gang-raped in his cassava patch seven months ago. Mr. Mukuli is now the lone man in the rape ward at Panzi hospital, which is filled with hundreds of women recovering from rape-related injuries. Many knit clothes and weave baskets to make a little money while their bodies heal.

But Mr. Mukuli is left out.

“I don’t know how to make baskets,” he said. So he spends his days sitting on a bench, by himself.

The male rape cases are still just a fraction of those against women. But for the men involved, aid workers say, it is even harder to bounce back.

“Men’s identity is so connected to power and control,” Ms. Walker said.

And in a place where homosexuality is so taboo, the rapes carry an extra dose of shame.

“I’m laughed at,” Mr. Mukuli said. “The people in my village say: ‘You’re no longer a man. Those men in the bush made you their wife.’ ”

Aid workers here say the humiliation is often so severe that male rape victims come forward only if they have urgent health problems, like stomach swelling or continuous bleeding. Sometimes even that is not enough. Ms. Van Woudenberg said that two men whose joysticks were cinched with rope died a few days later because they were too embarrassed to seek help. Castrations also seem to be increasing, with more butchered men showing up at major hospitals.

Last year, Congo’s rape epidemic appeared to be easing a bit, with fewer cases reported and some rapists jailed. But today, it seems like that thin veneer of law and order has been stripped away. The way villagers describe it, it is open season on civilians.

Muhindo Mwamurabagiro, a tall, graceful woman with long, strong arms, explained how she was walking to the market with friends when they were suddenly surrounded by a group of naked men.

“They grabbed us by the throat and threw us down and raped us,” she said.

Worse, she said, one of the rapists was from her village.

“I yelled, ‘Father of Kondo, I know you, how can you do this?’ ”

One mother said a United Nations peacekeeper raped her 12-year-old boy. A United Nations spokesman said that he had not heard that specific case but that there were indeed a number of new sexual abuse allegations against peacekeepers in Congo and that a team was sent in late July to investigate.

Congolese health professionals are becoming exasperated. Many argue for a political solution, not a military one, and say Western powers should put more pressure on Rwanda, which is widely accused of preserving its own stability by keeping the violence on the other side of the border.

“I understand the world feels guilty about what happened in Rwanda in 1994,” said Denis Mukwege, the lead doctor at Panzi Hospital, referring to Rwanda’s genocide. “But shouldn’t the world feel guilty about what’s happening in Congo today?”

MrCrackles:
Topic
Who cares if his Kenyan umbilical cord was found!

Real America (the Birther's brand) does. can't you see?

adconline:
Naliakar,
Go ask her brothers and sisters in the north wetin be boko haram university

I located it. Wow. No wonder Naija has such intellectual bottom feeders. Thank God I am not part of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/opinion/04herbert.html?ref=opinion

Bob Herbert's view

Op-Ed Columnist
Innocence Is No Defense


The New York Times
By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 3, 2009

False Arrests, Convictions and Imprisonments

Last August the president of Harvard University, Drew Gilpin Faust, set up a committee to respond to the concerns of black faculty members and students who were uneasy, and in some cases upset, about the treatment of blacks by the campus police.

The arrest last month of Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. did not occur in a vacuum. While his encounter was not with the Harvard University Police Department (he was arrested by a member of the Cambridge force), it was the latest in a series of troubling incidents that have left law-abiding members of the Harvard community feeling as though they were unfairly targeted and humiliated because of their race.

The incident that ultimately led Ms. Faust to establish the committee concerned a black high school student who was working in a youth employment program at Harvard. The Harvard police, responding to a phone call, spotted the youngster attempting to remove a lock from a bicycle. He tried to explain that the bike was his and that his key had broken off in the lock.

One of the officers reportedly pulled a gun and pointed it at the teenager. The frightened youngster said he did not have any photo identification, but he showed the officers his library card. Traumatized, he started to cry at one point. When the boy’s story was eventually confirmed, he was allowed to leave with his bike.

In 2004, the campus police stopped S. Allen Counter, a distinguished professor of neuroscience at the Harvard Medical School as he was strolling across Harvard Yard. Professor Counter, who is black and had been at Harvard for 30 years when the incident occurred, was viewed by the police as a robbery suspect. They asked him if he belonged at Harvard.

He did not have his identification with him. In a particularly humiliating ritual, the officers went to University Hall and asked two students to confirm that the professor had an office there. They did.

As these types of incidents accumulate, resentments build. Black students that I’ve spoken with at Harvard over the past week have not complained about overt racism or widespread police misconduct. Rather, they have expressed their sense of unease over encounters that others might dismiss as aberrations or think of as trivial but that collectively make the students feel as if they are being treated differently — unfairly — at their own school, and they don’t like it.

Nworah Ayogu, a senior who is studying neurobiology, told me about a well-known incident that occurred in 2007 when a number of black students were playing games like dodge ball and capture-the-flag on the Quad as part of an annual field-day-type celebration. White students called the Harvard police to investigate.

The police showed up on motorcycles and asked the black students for identification, even though the students were wearing all kinds of Harvard regalia — caps, crimson T-shirts with “Harvard” emblazoned in white, and so forth. Mr. Ayogu said the cops actually seemed to be embarrassed by the situation and were not confrontational.

“The whole thing made us feel like we didn’t belong,” he said. “What was most offensive was that our own classmates called the police on us.”

Harvard has made an aggressive effort to deal with these situations and create what the school describes as a more welcoming atmosphere for everyone. But it should be easy to understand that one distasteful encounter after another — not just at Harvard or in Cambridge, but nearly everywhere in this country — cannot help but lead to the expectation among blacks that cops will target people and treat them badly solely because of their race.

Too often that expectation is realized, sometimes tragically. Think Amadou Diallo, who died in a hail of police bullets (fired for no earthly reason) outside of his home in the Bronx.

No one is immune. Colin Powell told Larry King that he had been profiled many times. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke last week about how humiliated he felt as a college student when a cop made him stop his car and open the trunk so it could be searched for weapons.

No one is too young. I traveled to Avon Park, Fla., a couple of years ago to write about the arrest of a black 6-year-old named Desre’e Watson. She threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class. The police were called, and the terrified child was arrested, handcuffed (the handcuffs were too large to fit her wrists, so she was cuffed on her upper arms) and driven off to headquarters.

When I asked the police chief about the incident, he said: “Do you think this is the first 6-year-old we’ve arrested?”

Young, old, innocent as the day is long — it doesn’t matter. Your skin color can leave you perpetually vulnerable to a sudden and devastating criminal injustice.

David Brooks is off today.

adconline:
why is this  woman so absorbed with obama's immigration status even she wasnt born in the us? looks like she got her miseducation from boko haram university.

Adconine

Pray, which university be boko haram now?

Finally they latch onto something! What will Tayo-D say now?
Who is fooling who. I wonder.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/03/kenyan-birth-certificate_n_249850.html

@Poster

Is this thread a joke. The only way the utterances of Rawlings would make sense is if and when Yaradua abdicates his seat on account of not having won free and fair elections in Nigeria in the first place.

How on earth did Nigeria allow south Africa to take the lead in science and technology? Where have we gone wrong? That, if you ask me should be a Nigerian satellite.

davidylan:
you people shld have a beer summit and stop wasting your energy on a dead issue.

You do know something about ex-post assessment. Don't you David?

JeSoul:
Is this scenario a purely hypothetical one or fondly reminisced one?

It has the trappings of a cherished hobi.

chinook:
@mwanamiwa
thanks men for the airport pictures. Nairobi is undoughtfully a nice city.

I wonder why some of our brothers and sisters from Nigeria can't agree to this.Nairobi is the third largest city in Africa after Jo'burg South Africa and Cairo Egypt.

Do you have any pictures from westland skyscraper and any other construction going on there,how about the famous sarit center?

Here you use the superlative adjective LARGEST

chinook:
@naliakar

you are misinformed about the african cities,google top 50 or 10 best cities in africa in their order of ranking, Wikipedia will answer your doubts.

you'll then tell me if there is any nigeria city appearing among the top 10.

And here you use again a superlative but this time it is BEST

There is a big difference between LARGEST and BEST

Unanielewa

johnsonpal:
If u are to leave nigeria.we country u prefer 2go and tell us why ,

Of course  NSUGBE will be the first destination: my sweetheart lives there. Then Ghana second;all Nigerians secretly wish they were Ghanaians!!

Tippy Top:
What a tard.
What has his looks to do with governance?
Is this the kettle calling the pot black? If the poster (novaman) is an oil painting himself the least he could do would be to have a picture of himself on his profile.

Exactly? My questions too. You cannot photoshop a scary picture and claim from the roof top that this is our president. Be true patriots guys.

chinook:
@mwanamiwa
thanks men for the airport pictures. Nairobi is undoughtfully a nice city.

I wonder why some of our brothers and sisters from Nigeria can't agree to this.Nairobi is the third largest city in Africa after Jo'burg South Africa and Cairo Egypt.

Do you have any pictures from westland skyscraper and any other construction going on there,how about the famous sarit center?

You surely do not need us to validate a lie. Nairobi will never be Africa's third largest city. Look. This is the order.

1. Cairo
2. Lagos
3. Ibadan
4. Kano
5. Joburg
6. Capetown
7. Kinshasa
8. Nairobi
etc.

Get your facts right. Mwanamwiwa's photo-overkill will not suddenly make Nairobi bigger than the Victoria Island borough of the Lagos metropolis. never abeg.

@Volina
i love to post photos that i shoot. I shot this from my office.
ACK parking (behing Bishop's tower

Volina

Ahaa. sasa fanya hivi. Use your camera to get picha nzuri nzuri za vyuo vya Kenya. At least the ones in Nairobi then post. They are sorely missing out from this thread and yet I believe, they are major landmarks in NBI-at least before Njeri-Anyango like Chinedu's Akinyi sent me packing back to Enigu. Get good angle pichas za UON (including main, chiromo, kabete, and ; parklands campuses), The Aga Khan University, CUEA in Karen. Strathmore. K-Polytechnic campus. KU, etc. Mwanamwiwa hawezi jukumu hili. If you do that, nitarudi Nairobi.

Quote
"Are they white, black or Hispanic?" the dispatcher said.
Only RichyBlack can conclude from the above statement that racism is implied. The dispatcher just wanted a simple description of the people breaking in. did you notice he/she mentioned 'White' first? Going by what has been written here so far, one would think the dispatcher could never suspect crime to be commited by any White person.


Well I do and I am no Richy Black. By the way Tayo, what do you understand by racial profiling? And please don't froth in the mouth as you answer. Just be gentle deliberate and insightful for once.

If anyone doubted the racist undertones in police law enforcement tendencies in NE especially in the Boston/Cambridge areas, the following should sober them up. So much for the liberal and inclusive Northeast.

Boston Police Calls gates a Jungle Monkey

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/20215609/detail.html

Boston Globe

BOSTON -- A Boston police officer was placed on administrative leave after he allegedly used a racial slur when referring to Henry Louis Gates Jr.



In a mass e-mail, Officer Justin Barrett, 36, called Gates a "jungle monkey," according to a law enforcement source.

Gates, a black Harvard scholar, was arrested at his home earlier this month on a disorderly conduct charge after he tried to budge open the door of his Cambridge home.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis found out about the e-mail on Tuesday and immediately stripped Barrett of his gun and badge, officials said. The e-mail was first sent anonymously to the Boston Globe and then to local members of the National Guard, where he is a member.

The e-mail was in response to a Globe article about Gates' arrest. In the e-mail, Barrett writes, "(Gates') first priority should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a ,  jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance."

"I just say that we want to rid our department of the cancer, and that is what we did -- rid the department of the cancer. All the police officers I know don't condone any of that," Boston Mayor Tom Menino said. "An individual preaching hate has no place in our society."

Barrett is assigned to District B-3. He was placed on administrative leave pending a termination hearing.

The officer has had a badge with the department for two years and received extensive training in racial profiling prevention while in the academy.

"People go through these courses and they pass them and you don't know what they are going to do in a situation," Menino said.

The July 16 arrest sparked a national debate about race relations in America and set the stage for a meeting between President Barack Obama, the arresting officer Sgt. James Crowley and Gates.

The trio is set to meet at the White House on Thursday and discuss the incident over a beer.

Earlier Wednesday, the woman who called 911 to report the possible break-in at Gates' home said she was vilified and called a racist after the incident and hopes the release of the police tapes "will help heal the community" as they have helped restore her reputation.

Whalen told the 911 dispatcher that she saw the men trying to push open a front door.

"I don't know if they live there and they had a hard time with their key, but I noticed they had to use their shoulder to barge in, and they got in. I didn't notice if they had a key or not, because I couldn't see from my angle," Whalen said.

"Are they white, black or Hispanic?" the dispatcher said.

"There were two larger men. One looked kind of Hispanic, but I am not sure. The other one entered, and I did not see him at all," she said.

Editor's Note: While we realize some readers may find the use of Justin Barrett's exact quote offensive, we felt it was important to the full understanding of the story to report it verbatim.

Who has a clear idea of the median cost of housing in Abuja. 3 to 4 Br. apartments or bungalows?