Free Republic

It was another devastating blow for black Africa’s most powerless from the world’s most powerful black American. Like in his 2009 African visit when he visited a former European slave depot in Ghana, during his recently concluded 2013 African tour U.S. President Barack Obama again deemed that the defunct trans-Atlantic slave trade was the only past black African slavery worthy of his attention. While paying homage to the victims of the trans-Atlantic trade is obviously necessary for myriad reasons, the U.S. president failed once more not only to mention Africa’s other historical slave trade, Arab slavery, that also involved millions...

Note: Photo included with article. SNIPPET: "U.S. authorities have transferred Younis al-Mauritani, held in Afghanistan, to Mauritania, officials in the West African nation said on Saturday. Pakistan said in September 2011 it arrested al-Mauritani, better known in his homeland Mauritania as Youssouf Al Mauritani, during a joint operation with U.S. intelligence services." SNIPPET: "Pakistani military authorities said Al Mauritani was planning to attack U.S. economic interests including pipelines, hydro-electric dams and oil tankers when he was captured."

Explanation: What on Earth is that? The Richat Structure in the Sahara Desert of Mauritania is easily visible from space because it is nearly 50 kilometers across. Once thought to be an impact crater, the Richat Structure's flat middle and lack of shock-altered rock indicates otherwise. The possibility that the Richat Structure was formed by a volcanic eruption also seems improbable because of the lack of a dome of igneous or volcanic rock. Rather, the layered sedimentary rock of the Richat structure is now thought by many to have been caused by uplifted rock sculpted by erosion. The above image...

We all know CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN or Fox wasn't going to do it. "Imam’s Terrorist Ties Exposed by Local News Station," from Judicial Watch, November 26 (thanks to Pamela Geller): While the Obama Justice Department tours the nation condemning unfounded discrimination against Muslims at their place of worship, a local Florida news station uncovers an imam’s ties to a blind sheik behind the first World Trade Center bombing in the early 90s. Not surprisingly, the administration’s campaign to combat mosque intolerance is being heavily promoted while the shocking imam terrorist story gets swept under the rug. We only know...

Israel Apartheid Week has come and gone this year....However much one says that Arabs in Israel suffer, and whoever is to blame for that alleged suffering, there is no apartheid in Israel. Meanwhile, however, in Sudan and Mauritania, racist Arab societies enslave blacks. Today. Most of the slaves are African Muslims. Yet there is no Arab Apartheid Week on American campuses. Why not? One might think American student activists would be upset about Mauritania, the West African country with the largest population of black slaves in the world – estimates range from 100,000 to more than a half-million. In Mauritania,...

Executive Summary:On March 21, 2012, a group of Army mutineers appeared on Mali's national television station to declare that they had ended President Amadou Toumani Toure's regime and put in place the “National Committee for the Return of Democracy and the Restoration of State” (CNRDR). In the days following the coup, the leader of the CNRDR – Captain Amadou Sanago, a virtually unknown junior officer, has shown an inability to command discipline from his troops – who have looted the capital. The disappearance of President Toure and the factional infighting of the Army have made the country defenseless against AQIM’s...

President François Hollande said on Thursday that Islamist groups holding French hostages in Africa were not trustworthy and should not be taken seriously after Al-Qaeda accused Paris of blocking negotiations for their release. There are a total of nine French hostages on the continent. On Tuesday the Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) said France was snubbing talks proposed by the group to free four French citizens abducted in Niger in September 2010. "The less one speaks, the better one can work," Hollande told journalists during a visit to Rungis, a giant wholesale food market just outside Paris. "There have been...

Republic of Korea: For the record. Pak Ku'n-hye (Park Geun-hye) of the New Frontier Party won South Korea's presidential election on 19 December, media reported. She is the daughter of Park Chung-hee and the first woman elected to be president of the Republic of Korea. That should confound the North! North Korea-Iran: According to a Japanese news service, an Iranian lawmaker told the service that North Korea informed Iran in October of its plan to launch a satellite. The head of an Iranian parliamentary delegation to North Korea, Hamid Reza Taraghi, revealed talks took place mid-October with the North's delegates...

But look on the bright side, at least it wasn’t Sudan, Syria or Saudi Arabia. I’m coming around to the opinion that we should do everything possible to keep the UN Human Rights Council around. Not only is it the greatest source of irony since fish in a blacksmith shop, but it’s also a living reminder that the United Nations is to human rights as an exploding train is to transportation safety. The UN Human Rights Council met today in Geneva and elected Mauritania as its Vice-President and Rapporteur for the next year, the second highest position at the world’s...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Alabama Men Arrested on Terrorism Charges U.S. Attorney’s Office December 11, 2012 Southern District of Alabama MOBILE, AL—U.S. Attorney Kenyen R. Brown of the Southern District of Alabama and Stephen E. Richardson, Special Agent in Charge of the Mobile Division of the FBI, announced that Mohammad Abdul Rahman Abukhdair, 25, and Randy Wilson, also known as Rasheed Wilson, 25, both U.S. citizens living in Mobile, were arrested today on terrorism charges filed in the Southern District of Alabama. A criminal complaint signed on December 10, 2012, charges Abukhdair and Wilson with conspiring to...

On August 23, 2011 the FBI arrested Imam Abu Taubah aka Marcus Dwayne Robertson. The charge was possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon, Case Number: 6:11-mj-1380 Attached to Imam Abu Robertson’s case is a Notice of Intent To Use Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Information (FISA). The U.S. Government’s intention to use its FISA powers signals probable cause to charge Imam “Taubah” Robertson “the target of such search is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power”. The facts presented in these filed charges leads this reporter to suspect an element of foreign intrigue may be...

Small teams of special operations forces arrived at American embassies throughout North Africa in the months before militants launched the fiery attack that killed the U.S. ambassador in Libya. The soldiers' mission: Set up a network that could quickly strike a terrorist target or rescue a hostage. But the teams had yet to do much counterterrorism work in Libya, though the White House signed off a year ago on the plan to build the new military task force in the region and the advance teams had been there for six months, according to three U.S. counterterror officials and a former...

Syria will be suspended from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation on Wednesday for its violent suppression of a 17-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, a diplomat said on Monday ahead of an emergency OIC summit in Mecca. "The resolution regarding the suspension of the Syrian membership in the OIC is not facing obstacles ... It will be approved," said the diplomat, speaking on the sidelines of a preliminary foreign ministers meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He said the decision was likely to be formally announced at the end of the second day of the summit, which was called by Saudi...

Israeli official: By blocking Israel's involvement in NATO events, Turkey also keeping 6 other regional countries from taking part. Turkey’s opposition to Israeli participation in NATO events blocks the inclusion of six other regional countries, something irritating other NATO states and increasingly becoming a contentious issue inside the alliance, Israeli diplomatic officials said Monday. According to the officials, the issue was raised last week at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels. The officials denied Turkish media reports that Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu blocked Israel’s participation in the NATO summit in Chicago at the end of May, saying...

As a member of Mauritania's slave-owning class, Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane could have had anything he wanted as a present for his circumcision ceremony: a toy, money, a camel, or, as his brother would choose, a bicycle. But the 7-year-old wanted something more sinister. He chose Yebawa Ould Keihel, a young boy with skin the color of coal. At that moment, Abdel became a slave master. It's an experience that's common here in Mauritania, a vast country in West Africa's Sahara Desert where activists and the United Nations estimate 10% to 20% of people are enslaved -- usually dark-skinned people...

Mauritanian authorities acting with French help arrested Muammar Gaddafi's former chief of intelligence, Abdullah al-Senussi, as he entered the West African country on a false passport, officials said on Saturday. Senussi, who for decades before the late dictator's fall inspired fear and hatred in ordinary Libyans, is sought by the Hague-based International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity. The whereabouts of Senussi, the last major figure at large from Gaddafi's regime, had been unclear for months.

The AU wants Africa to manufacture and export finished products to its trading partners rather than just selling them the raw materials as it does now. She cited China, India, the EU and US and other rising stars in trade with the continent, including Turkey and Latin America, and said the AU had held talks on the new breed of partnerships with some of them. The AU also wants Africa to have a veto-wielding seat on the UN Security Council, and a place at the G20 negotiating table, Ali said. The peace and security that have eluded Africa for decades...

The Arab League voted to suspend SyriaÂ’s membership at its meeting on Saturday and said it would impose economic and political sanctions against the regime of Bashar al-Assad as well as call for the withdrawal of Arab ambassadors from Damascus. The Arab foreign ministers meeting at the LeagueÂ’s headquarters in Cairo also called on the Syrian army to cease its involvement in the killing of civilians and invited the Syrian opposition for transition talks. Opponents of Assad were hoping that the Arab League would suspend SyriaÂ’s membership after Assad pressed ahead with a military crackdown on the unrest despite an...

Despite repeated attempts to abolish slavery in Mauritania and the criminalization of its practice in 2007, the practice is still commonplace and particularly affects the Haratin, the vast majority of whom continue to live as slaves. Even when freed, slaves often continue to work for their former ‘masters’ due to psychological and economic dependence that has been established through years of enslavement. Discrimination is a significant factor in the difficulties facing freed Haratin in finding work; the few who are able to secure employment have been limited to providing manual labour in markets, airports and water ports. The UNPO –...

Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz called for closer ties with China on Monday during a visit to the Asian country, the official AMI news agency reported. "The Mauritanian government wants more infrastructure and bigger involvement of the CTCE company in Mauritania's development," the agency quoted the president as saying, referring to the China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group. Ould Abdel Aziz arrived in the central city of Hefei late Sunday accompanied by several members of his government and on Monday visited the CTCE. New China news agency said he was the guest of honour at a Chinese-Arab economic and trade...