The beginning of African Cup of Nations, (AFCON 2013) never gave the Super Eagles of Nigeria any green light to win the trophy. From the outset, Cote D'Ivoire was the favourite. Everyone believed the elephants will defeat any nation including Nigeria.
The first two matches saw Nigeria drawing with Burkina Faso and Zambia. Keshi was lambasted. He was heavily criticised. News started coming from different quarters that he would be replaced after AFCON. In all these, Keshi never shifted blame on anyone not even on his players.
All his words were words of encouragement and wisdom. He kept on charging his boys. He accepted all failures as his. This humility and silence would have triggered the players. It is a psychological warfare. We must not let down the boss. All the insults must be praises for him a posteriori.
This is a formidable feat. The hopelessness of a team was repackaged to hope with the dexterity of a coach. He did not say he is the most criticised coach in the history of Nigeria or the most insulted in the history of the world. He held on and became a hero.
Nigerian leaders should now learn humility and RESPONSIBILITY. The Nigeria is entrusted in their care, hence all that go wrong must be accounted for by them. No blame-shifting. Criticism and abuse must occur. So it is world-over. Keshi has taught them, let them learn.
Global Affairs on Africa's Prism
Sunday 10 February 2013
Glory of Nigeria
This is the glory of Nigeria. A prelude to something great. The unity has been restored. Now, we all must move the nation forward. This is not just a celebration of victory on the pitch, it is a call that there is hope in our hopelessness.
Cyber Rules on the Rise in Europe and the US
Cyber warfare, crime and security is assuming a muscular dimension in the world. Different rules flow from the United States down to Europe. The war seems to have been taken to the media and financial institutions fully.
New York Times, Bloomberg News and Associated Press have all complained of cyber attacks especially from China. The US rules of engagement on cyberattack tilts towards military response.
On the part of the EU, over 40,000 firms, including energy
providers, banks and hospitals could be required to report cyber-break-ins under
new rules proposed by the EU.
It is part of a move to intensify global efforts to fight cybercrime.
Digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said that Europe needed to improve how it dealt with cybersecurity.
But firms are concerned that reporting online attacks and security breaches might damage their reputations.
The EU is keen that member states share information about attacks and shore up their cyber-defences.
Under the proposals, each country would have to appoint a Computer Emergency Response Team and create an authority to whom companies would report breaches.
These new bodies would decide whether to make the breaches public and whether to fine companies.
Announcing the changes, Ms Kroes said: "Europe needs resilient networks and
systems and failing to act would would impose significant costs on consumers,
businesses and society."
According to the EU, only one in four European companies has a regularly-reviewed, formal ICT security policy. Even among ICT companies, the figure is only one in two, it said.
A recent study by accountants PwC suggested that three quarters of UK small businesses, and 93% of large ones, had recently suffered a cybersecurity breach.
French Gift to Mali Islamists
The revelation by the former US ambassador shows that most of the wars fought by Western Nations are wars they covertly or overtly financed. The heavy weapons used by Islamists in Mali came from NATO's supply against Gaddafi.
The ambassador reveals:
In recent years France and other European countries have channeled millions of dollars in ransom payments to Al Qaeda-linked militants, according to a former US ambassador to Mali. The militants are thought to be from the same groups now fighting French troops in the troubled North African state.
In an interview aired on a French channel on Friday, Vicki Huddleston, who served as ambassador from 2002-2005, said that France had paid $17 million to free French hostages seized from a uranium mine in its former colony Niger in 2010.
She added that at least $89 million could have been paid out through intermediaries by European countries between 2004 -2011. North Africa's AQIM military organization has been active in northern Mali since 2003. The militants have kidnapped dozens of hostages for ransom over the last 10 years.
The incoming invasion of Africa is really on course.
The revelation by the former US ambassador shows that most of the wars fought by Western Nations are wars they covertly or overtly financed. The heavy weapons used by Islamists in Mali came from NATO's supply against Gaddafi.
The ambassador reveals:
In recent years France and other European countries have channeled millions of dollars in ransom payments to Al Qaeda-linked militants, according to a former US ambassador to Mali. The militants are thought to be from the same groups now fighting French troops in the troubled North African state.
In an interview aired on a French channel on Friday, Vicki Huddleston, who served as ambassador from 2002-2005, said that France had paid $17 million to free French hostages seized from a uranium mine in its former colony Niger in 2010.
She added that at least $89 million could have been paid out through intermediaries by European countries between 2004 -2011. North Africa's AQIM military organization has been active in northern Mali since 2003. The militants have kidnapped dozens of hostages for ransom over the last 10 years.
The incoming invasion of Africa is really on course.
No Peace Accord for Israel and Palestine -Lieberman
Israel has no chance of signing a permanent peace accord with the Palestinians and should instead seek a long-term interim deal, the most powerful political partner of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday.
Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist whose joint party list with Netanyahu narrowly won a January 22 election while centrist challengers made surprise gains, seemed designed to dampen expectations at home and abroad of fresh peacemaking with the remarks.
In a television interview, ex-foreign minister Lieberman linked the more than two-year-old impasse to pan-Arab political upheaval that has boosted Islamists hostile to the Jewish state.
These include Hamas, rivals of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who control the Gaza Strip and spurn coexistence with Israel though they have mooted extended truces.
"Anyone who thinks that in the center of this socio-diplomatic ocean, this tsunami which is jarring the Arab world, it is possible to arrive at the magic solution of a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians does not understand," Lieberman told Israel's Channel Two.
"This is impossible. It is not possible to solve the conflict here. The conflict can be managed and it is important to manage the conflict ... to negotiate on a long-term interim agreement."
Abbas broke off talks in late 2010 in protest at Israel's settlement of the occupied West Bank. He angered Israel and the United States in November by securing a UN status upgrade that implicitly recognized Palestinian independence in all the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
Israel insists it will keep East Jerusalem and swathes of West Bank settlements under any eventual peace deal. Most world powers consider the settlements illegal because they take up land seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
Lieberman, himself a West Bank settler, said the ball was "in Abu Mazen's (Abbas') court" to revive diplomacy.
Abbas has demanded Israel first freeze all settlement constructions. With two decades gone since Palestinians signed their first interim deal with Israel, he has ruled out any new negotiations that do not solemnize Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev noted that Lieberman, in the Channel Two interview, had said he was expressing his own opinion.
Asked how Netanyahu saw peace prospects for an accord with the Palestinians, Regev referred to a speech on Tuesday in which the conservative prime minister said that Israel, while addressing threats by its enemies, "must also pursue secure, stable and realistic peace with our neighbors".
Netanyahu has previously spoken in favour of a Palestinian state, though he has been cagey on its borders and whether he would be prepared to dismantle Israeli settlements.
Lieberman's role in the next coalition government is unclear as he faces trial for corruption. If convicted, he could be barred from the cabinet. Lieberman denies wrongdoing and has said he would like to regain the foreign portfolio, which he surrendered after his indictment was announced last year.
Avigdor Lieberman, an ultranationalist whose joint party list with Netanyahu narrowly won a January 22 election while centrist challengers made surprise gains, seemed designed to dampen expectations at home and abroad of fresh peacemaking with the remarks.
In a television interview, ex-foreign minister Lieberman linked the more than two-year-old impasse to pan-Arab political upheaval that has boosted Islamists hostile to the Jewish state.
These include Hamas, rivals of U.S.-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who control the Gaza Strip and spurn coexistence with Israel though they have mooted extended truces.
"Anyone who thinks that in the center of this socio-diplomatic ocean, this tsunami which is jarring the Arab world, it is possible to arrive at the magic solution of a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians does not understand," Lieberman told Israel's Channel Two.
"This is impossible. It is not possible to solve the conflict here. The conflict can be managed and it is important to manage the conflict ... to negotiate on a long-term interim agreement."
Abbas broke off talks in late 2010 in protest at Israel's settlement of the occupied West Bank. He angered Israel and the United States in November by securing a UN status upgrade that implicitly recognized Palestinian independence in all the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza.
Israel insists it will keep East Jerusalem and swathes of West Bank settlements under any eventual peace deal. Most world powers consider the settlements illegal because they take up land seized in the 1967 Middle East war.
Lieberman, himself a West Bank settler, said the ball was "in Abu Mazen's (Abbas') court" to revive diplomacy.
Abbas has demanded Israel first freeze all settlement constructions. With two decades gone since Palestinians signed their first interim deal with Israel, he has ruled out any new negotiations that do not solemnize Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev noted that Lieberman, in the Channel Two interview, had said he was expressing his own opinion.
Asked how Netanyahu saw peace prospects for an accord with the Palestinians, Regev referred to a speech on Tuesday in which the conservative prime minister said that Israel, while addressing threats by its enemies, "must also pursue secure, stable and realistic peace with our neighbors".
Netanyahu has previously spoken in favour of a Palestinian state, though he has been cagey on its borders and whether he would be prepared to dismantle Israeli settlements.
Lieberman's role in the next coalition government is unclear as he faces trial for corruption. If convicted, he could be barred from the cabinet. Lieberman denies wrongdoing and has said he would like to regain the foreign portfolio, which he surrendered after his indictment was announced last year.
The Coming Invasion of Africa
The Real Invasion of Africa Is Not News, and a License To Lie Is Hollywood’s Gift
by John Pilger, February 01, 2013
A full-scale invasion of Africa is under way. The United States is deploying troops in 35 African countries, beginning with Libya, Sudan, Algeria and Niger. Reported by Associated Press on Christmas Day, this was missing from most Anglo-American media.
The invasion has almost nothing to do with "Islamism", and almost everything to do with the acquisition of resources, notably minerals, and an accelerating rivalry with China. Unlike China, the
US and its allies are prepared to use a degree of violence demonstrated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Palestine. As in the cold war, a division of labour requires that western journalism and popular culture provide the cover of a holy war against a "menacing arc" of Islamic extremism, no different from the bogus "red menace" of a worldwide communist conspiracy.
Reminiscent of the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century, the US African Command (Africom) has built a network of supplicants among collaborative African regimes eager for American bribes and armaments. Last year, Africom staged Operation African Endeavor, with the armed forces of 34
African nations taking part, commanded by the US military.
Africom’s "soldier to soldier" doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. Only pith helmets are missing.
It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite whose "historic mission", warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the promotion of "a capitalism rampant though camouflaged".
A striking example is the eastern Congo, a treasure trove of strategic minerals, controlled by an atrocious rebel group known as the M23 , which in turn is run by Uganda and Rwanda, the proxies of Washington.
Long planned as a "mission" for NATO, not to mention the ever-zealous French, whose colonial lost causes remain on permanent standby, the war on Africa became urgent in 2011 when the Arab world appeared to be liberating itself from the Mubaraks and other clients of Washington and Europe. The hysteria this caused in imperial capitals cannot be exaggerated.
NATO bombers were dispatched not to Tunis or Cairo but Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi ruled over Africa’s largest oil reserves. With the Libyan city of Sirte reduced to rubble, the British SAS directed the "rebel" militias in what has since been exposed as a racist bloodbath.
The indigenous people of the Sahara, the Tuareg, whose Berber fighters Gaddafi had protected, fled home across Algeria to Mali, where the Tuareg have been claiming a separate state since the 1960s.
As the ever watchful Patrick Cockburn points out, it is this local dispute, not al-Qaida, that the West fears most in northwest Africa …."poor though the Tuareg may be, they are often living on top of great reserves of oil, gas, uranium and other valuable minerals".
Almost certainly the consequence of a French/US attack on Mali on 13 January, a siege at a gas complex in Algeria ended bloodily, inspiring a 9/11 moment in David Cameron. The former Carlton TV PR man raged about a "global threat" requiring "decades" of western violence. He meant implantation of the west’s business plan for Africa, together with the rape of multi-ethnic Syria and the conquest of independent Iran.
Cameron has now ordered British troops to Mali, and sent an RAF drone, while his verbose military chief, General Sir David Richards, has addressed "a very clear message to jihadists worldwide: don’t dangle and tangle with us. We will deal with it robustly" – exactly what jihadists want to hear. The trail of blood of British army terror victims, all Muslims, their "systemic" torture cases currently heading to court, add necessary irony to the general’s words.
I once experienced Sir David’s "robust" ways when I asked him if he had read the courageous Afghan feminist Malalai Joya’s description of the barbaric behaviour of westerners and their clients in her country. "You are an apologist for the Taliban" was his reply. (He later apologised).
These bleak comedians are straight out of Evelyn Waugh and allow us to feel the bracing breeze of history and hypocrisy. The "Islamic terrorism" that is their excuse for the enduring theft of Africa’s riches was all but invented by them.
There is no longer any excuse to swallow the BBC/CNN line and not know the truth. Read Mark Curtis’s Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (Serpent’s Tail) or John Cooley’s Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (Pluto Press) or The Grand Chessboard by Zbigniew Brzezinski (HarperCollins) who was midwife to the birth of modern fundamentalist terror.
In effect, the mujahedin of al-Qaida and the Taliban were created by the CIA, its Pakistani equivalent, the Inter-Services Intelligence, and Britain’s MI6.
Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, describes a secret presidential directive in 1979 that began what became the current "war on terror". For 17 years, the US deliberately cultivated, bank-rolled, armed and brainwashed jihadi extremists that "steeped a generation in violence". Code-named Operation Cyclone, this was the "great game" to bring down the Soviet Union but brought down the Twin Towers.
Since then, the news that intelligent, educated people both dispense and ingest has become a kind of Disney journalism, fortified, as ever, by Hollywood’s licence to lie, and lie.
There is the coming Dreamworks movie on WikiLeaks, a fabrication inspired by a book of perfidious title-tattle by two enriched Guardian journalists; and there is Zero Dark Thirty, which promotes torture and murder, directed by the Oscar-winning Kathryn Bigelow, the Leni Riefenstahl of our time, promoting her master’s voice as did the Fuhrer’s pet film-maker. Such is the one-way mirror through which we barely glimpse what power does in our name.
APC of Nigeria: Theory of the Armoured Personnel Carrier
The battle began, for the survival of a nation at war with itself. Cloudburst sounds all over the sky. Citizens wail. At the battlefield, victory is being announced. A party in the war wins. Yes! Victory. Years gone, the war never ends, the opposing sides are fragmented. With maximum chutzpah, the victorious says it will stay on for 50 years. 50 what?! The citizens cry. Agonies and pains. All expect transformation, though not miraculous but in deed and in truth they wait to see. Disappointment speaks. The homeland of tears.
The divided oppositions try yearly to offset the balance and strength of the massive firepower employed by the victor. Though seemingly poorly trained in the art of statecraft, soldiers in the victorious wing understands the esoteric undertone of stirring the water to catch fishes. Divide and Rule; victory is assured. It sets up different tiny and minute groups within the opposition, funds them and deploy them as a veritable too of distraction.
The only alternative is the voice. The united voice of the oppositions. Though all animals are equal in crime and the anomalies combating the homeland but some are more reasonable than others. Soldiers trapped in the trench call out loud. They clamour for change over the loss on the battlefield. They echo the cries of the homeland. They are all culpable though for the destruction but some soldiers are better of. They have their Armoured Personnel Carrier packed in the thick jungle of war but cannot get there because they lack the voice.
Selfish and vainglorious interests impede change and charge. The only way to counter the trenches and 'formidable' fortress of the winning and victorious side is the deployment of the APC and its monumental missiles. The missiles of the people. The undaunting voice. The commanders of the different units have never agreed on any single line of action but the APC smiles from afar in wait of usage. Covered with dust, it seems the last option otherwise the entire homeland will blow up beyond repair. Critics and foreign rapists already pray for that.
Here comes the armoured personnel carrier, a dancing golden weapon of war. The stealth of fear and perplexity for the victorious party. A drone with a political mission. The soldiers are the same but the mission is of the people only if the people will look at the years of pains and inhumanity. They have to rise. The APC must shield all from the bullets of the ruling party. It must break the trenches of warfare already planned. All must be able to queue at its back for utmost protection. All the landmines of poverty must be uprooted.
The nation the APC is about to lead to battle is the trigger of Africa. Africa waits for Nigeria. If Nigeria divides, Africa falls. Neo-colonialism will assume an unprecedented dimension. The launchpad of the APC should not be personality attacks. The warheads should not be abuse and senseless unethical views. Arguments are for advancements. Arguments must occur but it must be for developments not who gets what, when and how. Arguments must be about Nigeria not Hausa, Igbo, Niger Delta or Yoruba.
The APC must be a guardian angel. Internal Democracy must be the prism through which all arguments and discussions shall be viewed. The people not only cry of the battle but also because their homeland lacks any concrete ideology. Programmes and course of actions must be explicit in the new theatre of political war. Being tired of the ruling and winning party is not the main headache, the main morass is being led without focus. The people are led blindly. We have indigenous acts before Europe, the dynamism of the APC on the battlefield will be the marriage of history and modernism.
The principle of soldiers in an APC is always 'All for One, One for All.' Soldiers in an APC fight together as one for surviaval and victory. None looks for personal glory. If one falls, others weep. Need and aspirations must be based on societal demands not personal aggrandizement. Soldiers in the APC must learn to SACRIFICE for the people not SACRIFICE the people like the Boko Haram and various unknown gunmen as well as militant events. The people must SPEAK through the APC.
The divided oppositions try yearly to offset the balance and strength of the massive firepower employed by the victor. Though seemingly poorly trained in the art of statecraft, soldiers in the victorious wing understands the esoteric undertone of stirring the water to catch fishes. Divide and Rule; victory is assured. It sets up different tiny and minute groups within the opposition, funds them and deploy them as a veritable too of distraction.
The only alternative is the voice. The united voice of the oppositions. Though all animals are equal in crime and the anomalies combating the homeland but some are more reasonable than others. Soldiers trapped in the trench call out loud. They clamour for change over the loss on the battlefield. They echo the cries of the homeland. They are all culpable though for the destruction but some soldiers are better of. They have their Armoured Personnel Carrier packed in the thick jungle of war but cannot get there because they lack the voice.
Selfish and vainglorious interests impede change and charge. The only way to counter the trenches and 'formidable' fortress of the winning and victorious side is the deployment of the APC and its monumental missiles. The missiles of the people. The undaunting voice. The commanders of the different units have never agreed on any single line of action but the APC smiles from afar in wait of usage. Covered with dust, it seems the last option otherwise the entire homeland will blow up beyond repair. Critics and foreign rapists already pray for that.
Here comes the armoured personnel carrier, a dancing golden weapon of war. The stealth of fear and perplexity for the victorious party. A drone with a political mission. The soldiers are the same but the mission is of the people only if the people will look at the years of pains and inhumanity. They have to rise. The APC must shield all from the bullets of the ruling party. It must break the trenches of warfare already planned. All must be able to queue at its back for utmost protection. All the landmines of poverty must be uprooted.
The nation the APC is about to lead to battle is the trigger of Africa. Africa waits for Nigeria. If Nigeria divides, Africa falls. Neo-colonialism will assume an unprecedented dimension. The launchpad of the APC should not be personality attacks. The warheads should not be abuse and senseless unethical views. Arguments are for advancements. Arguments must occur but it must be for developments not who gets what, when and how. Arguments must be about Nigeria not Hausa, Igbo, Niger Delta or Yoruba.
The APC must be a guardian angel. Internal Democracy must be the prism through which all arguments and discussions shall be viewed. The people not only cry of the battle but also because their homeland lacks any concrete ideology. Programmes and course of actions must be explicit in the new theatre of political war. Being tired of the ruling and winning party is not the main headache, the main morass is being led without focus. The people are led blindly. We have indigenous acts before Europe, the dynamism of the APC on the battlefield will be the marriage of history and modernism.
The principle of soldiers in an APC is always 'All for One, One for All.' Soldiers in an APC fight together as one for surviaval and victory. None looks for personal glory. If one falls, others weep. Need and aspirations must be based on societal demands not personal aggrandizement. Soldiers in the APC must learn to SACRIFICE for the people not SACRIFICE the people like the Boko Haram and various unknown gunmen as well as militant events. The people must SPEAK through the APC.
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