In the forest

Bodunrin Kayode gives us some useful background on the Sambisa Forest.

A few months ago, the name Sambisa Forest meant nothing to many Nigerians. Not anymore. It has come to signify terror and home to the terrorist group Boko Haram. The forest is now almost mythical for so many people within the Lake Chad basin who have come to align the complex north-eastern vegetation with Boko Haram, instead of the game reserve the colonialists meant it for.

The colonial government had marked the forest out as a game reserve. Today, Sambisa has become one of the strongest bases of the Boko Haram insurgents who run back into its dark recesses anytime they have finished their slaughter of harmless citizens. [Read more…]

Her voice breaking as she recounted the nightmare

The Guardian reports that the families of the enslaved schoolgirls are losing hope.

Hamma Balumai, a farmer whose 16-year-old daughter Hauwa was snatched, pooled his savings with other parents and ventured on a two-day trek into the forest this week. “Even my wife was begging to come as she is so disturbed she hasn’t been able to eat anything. Our daughter Hauwa is only 16 years old and she has been missing for 11 days now,” he told the Guardian. [Read more…]

He knows some knowing people who know things

Oh good grief, a conspiracy theorist about the Nigerian kidnapped schoolgirls. Yes really. He says he’s getting flags (by which he seems to mean warnings) from “those familiar with events inside Nigeria.” Oooooooooooh that sounds important – until you look at it and realize it doesn’t. He says (this is in a Facebook group) “some” compare it to the Kony 2012 campaign. Oh yes, I totally see that, except that that was a movie and this is a whole bunch of news reports, including from people who are actually there, like the BBC’s correspondent and CNN’s reporter and the local history teacher whose article I blogged about a few hours ago.

I asked some questions, like who are these people and why are you suspicious of the story, and he replied that “We are going through details right now” – and I said “who’s we?” and he got all coy. This went on for awhile – increasingly annoyed questions from me and pompous bullshitting from him. It might be funny if it weren’t for the fact that this is real people’s real lives AND the fact that the people involved want the story given more attention and here’s this self-important asshole trying to convince people it’s a fake. Ugh.

Can’t people just stick to the Loch Ness monster and leave the serious shit alone?

But always allow for exceptions

Morocco is considered fairly liberal compared to most of its neighbors, but what liberality there is may be more formal than real.

There’s that 2004 revision of the family code that raised the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18. The trouble is it allowed for “exceptions” where a judge could rule that young Miss 15 was actually old enough – and guess what. Lots of judges are ruling just that.

A 2014 World Bank report entitled “Ten Years After Morocco’s Family Code Reforms: Are Gender Gaps Closing?” indicates that of the 44,134 underage marriage petitions in 2010, 99 percent involved underage girls and 92 percent of said requests received judicial approval. [Read more…]

Living in fear of Boko Haram

Kyari Mohammed, who is a teacher in north-east Nigeria – Boko Haram territory – writes in the Guardian about what it’s like to live in fear of Education Forbidden.

I live in fear of Boko Haram. The group’s insurgency began in Nigeria in 2009. Yola in Adamawa state, where I live and teach history, is relatively calm at the moment. But following the imposition of a state of emergency in 2013 many of my colleagues have fled. [Read more…]

Abuse at the hands of the brothers who had been entrusted with their care

Amanda Banks at the West Australian tells us how the Catholic church in Western Australia dealt with abuse victims. With generosity and remorse and eagerness to make amends? No. With self-interested self-protective fighting and coercion.

The Catholic Church and Christian Brothers fought a class action by abuse victims from WA orphanages at every turn, using their strong legal position to open settlement negotiations with the offer that the men pay their costs.

By “the men” she means the abuse victims – so the church opened negotiations by demanding that the victims pay the church’s costs. The victimizer opened negotiations with a demand that the victims pay costs. [Read more…]

Beautiful simplicity

Texas Freedom Network points and laughs at David Barton’s views on why the Constitution forgot to say that women could vote. He says it’s because the family is one, not many.

And you have to remember back then, husband and wife, I mean the two were considered one. That is the biblical precept. That is the way they looked at them in the civil community. That is a family that is voting and so the head of the family is traditionally considered to be the husband and even biblically still continues to be so …

See? It makes perfect sense. The family is one, and that one is the husband. Everybody else doesn’t count (until the male children grow up of course, but Barton forgets to explain about that), because the husband is the head and the family is one. It eliminates all confusion and arguing.