Free Republic

Ted Cruz Called Racist for Saying ObamaCare Website Run by Nigerian Email Scammers By Noel Sheppard Created 10/24/2013 - 5:11pm These days it seems whatever Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.) says he's going to be called a racist for saying it. The latest such outrage stems from Cruz joking about the ObamaCare website being run by Nigerian email scammers. This evoked outrage from the usual liberal suspects. MSNBC's Michael Eric Dyson substituting for Ed Schultz on Tuesday discussed the racial overtones of Cruz's remark with Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Penn.). Salon's Joan Walsh - who like Dyson sees racism around every corner!...

(Reuters) - Pirates attacked an oil supply vessel off the Nigerian coast and kidnapped the captain and chief engineer, both U.S. citizens, an American defense official and security sources said on Thursday. Pirate attacks off Nigeria's coast have jumped by a third this year as ships passing through West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, a major commodities route, have come under threat from gangs wanting to snatch cargoes and crews. The U.S.-flagged, C-Retriever, a 222-foot (67 meter) vessel owned by U.S. marine transport group Edison Chouest Offshore, was attacked early Wednesday, UK-based security firm AKE and two security sources said. The...

Hong Kong (CNN) -- A new report claiming to be the most comprehensive look at global slavery says 30 million people are living as slaves around the world. The Global Slavery Index, published by the Australia-based Walk Free Foundation, lists India as the country with by far the most slaves, with an estimated nearly 14 million, followed by China (2.9 million) and Pakistan (2.1 million). The top 10 countries on its list of shame accounted for more than three quarters of the 29.8 million people living in slavery, with Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh...

Nine long-lost episodes of Doctor Who which have not been seen since the 1960s have been recovered after they were tracked down to a store room in Nigeria, gathering dust. The discovery will cause much excitement for devotees of the long-running series, for which there are dozens of missing episodes dating back to its early years The previously lost nine shows were among 11 traced to a television relay station and the find brings back to life an entire six-episode story, while another is almost complete. The newly found programs—which introduce the character of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, better known to audiences...

(Reuters) - Nigerian soldiers raided an Islamist bomb-making factory just outside the north's biggest city of Kano on Wednesday, seizing guns, fertilizer and equipment for assembling suicide vests, the military said. ... Despite a concerted military offensive since May aimed at trying to crush Boko Haram, the Islamist group remains the biggest security threat to Nigeria, Africa's top energy producer. Over the past week, Nigerian fighter jets have bombed suspected Boko Haram camps in the country's northeast in response to a massacre of students at an agricultural college that killed at least 40.

Sixteen students from Nigeria studying in Moscow have been arrested for thrashing a conference hall in their country's embassy in the Russian capital after an apparent dispute over financial aid issues, a Moscow police source said Tuesday. According to the source, police received a fax message late Monday from the Nigerian embassy asking for assistance in dealing with a crowd of enraged students who refused to leave the embassy building after a discussion on financial issues. The students are said to have destroyed the furniture in the conference hall and threatened further destruction in other sections of the embassy. Police...

<p>As if the senseless massacre of innocents in Nairobi’s Westgate mall was not horrific enough, reports are surfacing that the Islamic terrorists who seized the mall last weekend tortured, beheaded, raped, and mutilated their victims before killing them. A police doctor who entered the mall after the attack said these reports “are not allegations. Those are f***ing truths.”</p>

POTISKUM, NIGERIA Suspected Islamic extremists attacked an agricultural college in the dead of night, gunning down dozens of students as they slept in dormitories and torching classrooms, the school's provost said, reporting the latest violence in northeastern Nigeria's ongoing Islamic uprising. As many as 50 students may have been killed in the assault that began at about 1 a.m. Sunday in rural Gujba, Provost Molima Idi Mato of Yobe State College of Agriculture, told The Associated Press. "They attacked our students while they were sleeping in their hostels, they opened fire at them," he said.

Suspected Islamist gunmen have attacked a college in north-eastern Nigeria, killing up to 50 students. The students were shot dead as they slept in their dormitory at the College of Agriculture in Yobe state. North-eastern Nigeria is under a state of emergency amid an Islamist insurgency by the Boko Haram group. Boko Haram is fighting to overthrow Nigeria's government to create an Islamic state, and has launched a number of attacks on schools. Casualty figures from the latest attack vary, but a local politician told the BBC that around 50 students had been killed. The politician said two vanloads of...

"Nigerian Terror Suspect Flown to New York for Trial, Accused of Recruiting, Training for Al-Qaida Federal authorities say Lawal Babafemi received al-Qaida money to recruit English-speaking people to engage in acts of terror against America" SNIPPET: "A Nigerian terror suspect accused of trying to help al-Qaida in Yemen was flown to New York to appear Friday in a federal courtroom. Lawal Babafemi is accused of training with members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and using his English skills to help publish the terrorist magazine "Inspire." Judge John Gleason ordered Babafemi, also known as "Ayatollah Mustafa," held without bail." SNIPPET:...

The woman in a full-length burka walked calmly into the drab government office. She moved close to the desk behind which an administrator was shuffling his papers. Others queued around her. Suddenly, without warning, she detonated the suicide vest she was wearing. The explosion flashed a brilliant white on the grainy CCTV before the cameras cut out, obliterating everything – and everyone – in the room.

Nigerian Obabiyi Aishah Ajibola wins Muslim beauty pageant rival to Miss World JAKARTA: A Nigerian woman tearfully prayed and recited Koranic verses as she won a beauty pageant exclusively for Muslim women in the Indonesian capital on Wednesday, a riposte to the Miss World contest that has sparked hardline anger. The 20 finalists, who were all required to wear headscarves, put on a glittering show for the final of Muslimah World, strolling up and down a catwalk in elaborately embroidered dresses and stilettos. But the contestants from six countries were covered from head to foot, and as well as beauty...

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria (AP) - Angry youths in a vigilante group mobbed and killed a policeman and threatened others Saturday in retaliation for the killing of one of their members in northeast Nigeria, police and military officials said, causing further friction in an area tense with violence from Islamic militants. The Civilian Joint Task Force was formed by residents to help capture Boko Haram suspects in and around Maiduguri, where the Islamic insurgents formed years ago.....

THE Dean of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, Archbishop Ignatius Kattey, was abducted at about 10.30pm on Friday, as he journeyed in the company of his wife, Beatrice, from Eleme to Port Harcourt. It was gathered that the abductors later freed the cleric’s wife, following a chase by the police. The Bishop was taken to an unknown destination. The State Police Public Relations Officer, Mrs. Angela Agape, who confirmed the incident, said it was the chase by policemen that forced the hoodlums to let go the cleric’s wife. She said that the Command has intensified efforts to rescue the bishop...

The governor of the Nigerian state of Imo has apologized to Christians and asked lawmakers to repeal a controversial law he signed which legalizes abortion for nearly any reason. The law, called the “Imo State Law of Nigeria Violence Against Persons (Prohibition) law No. 12” had been billed as a sweeping anti-violence law prohibiting all forms of violence – random violence, domestic violence, and traditional practices deemed harmful by the state – and ensuring justice for victims and their attackers. But hidden within the law were provisions authorizing abortion-on-demand. The law permits abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest...

France’s campaign in Mali exposes Europe’s unpreparedness for 21st-century war. WITH WELL-ARMED radical Islamist insurgents closing in last winter on Mali’s capital, Bamako, French President François Hollande suddenly decided to defend Western civilization. Plunging in the polls as the most unpopular French president since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958, he just might have had ulterior motives; diverting hostile public opinion at home with a military escapade abroad is a tried and true tactic for floundering chiefs of state. Be that as it may, French troops, mainly Foreign Legion, began deploying to Mali in Operation Serval on January 11....

(excerpt) ... our failure to appreciate that while al Qaeda central has been badly weakened by U.S. counterterrorism efforts, the group was never close to being extinguished. It adapted. It gave greater power to semi-independent affiliates, such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, and to more loosely connected groups, like Boko Haram in Nigeria. The West made the mistake of failing to effectively tackle these affiliates and their propaganda, dismissing them as local problems irrelevant to the war against al Qaeda. While groups like AQAP and Boko Haram initially did focus their violence locally, terrorists who endorse...

(CNSNews.com) – The leader of the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram – which the State Department so far has refused to designate as a foreign terrorist organization – boasted Monday that it was now strong enough to “comfortably confront” the United States. Boko Haram is not only fighting the cause of Islam in Nigeria, Abubakar Shekau said in a video message, but also against the leaders of the U.S., France and all other countries that do not rule according to the teachings of the Qur’an, the Lagos Guardian daily reported

Christians in Nigeria are an endangered species, according to Pastor Ayo Oritsejafor, president of the Christian Association of Nigeria. Oritsejafor met this week with U.S. lawmakers, pleading for help in combating the Islamist groups, which have mercilessly attacked Christian communities for the past several years—making Nigeria one of the most dangerous places in the world for Christians. …

Thirty-one migrants, including nine women, drowned off the coast of Libya during an attempted crossing to Italy on a dinghy according to survivors who managed to complete the journey. A dinghy carrying 53 migrants capsized on Friday evening, and witnesses said 31 of those who had been thrown off it drowned in the accident. The twenty-two survivors, who come from Nigeria, Gambia, Benin and Senegal, said the dinghy had capsized after three days at sea. They were rescued by a passing merchant ship and taken to Lampedusa island, the reports said.