Free Republic

Where is the hardest place in the world to be a Christian citizen? North Korea, perhaps? Saudi Arabia? According to Lars Widerberg of Intercessor's Network, it is the nation of Somalia. There are thought to be no more than a thousand Christians in a resident population of 8 million people, with perhaps a few thousand more in the diaspora. The Islamist Shabab militia, which controls most of southern Somalia, is dedicated to hunting these remaining Christians down and eliminating every one of them. Christian men attend mosques on Fridays, so as not to arouse suspicion. Bibles are kept hidden. There...

Here's how to pitch this (true) story to Hollywood: Ordinary guy named John, ordinary Sunday, cycling home into a setting sun. Monster roars out of the bushes! John abandons his bike, flees in terror. The creature smashes the bicycle, catches him in a few short strides, grabs him by the shirt. But he slides out of his shirt and falls to the ground. It picks him up again and he slips out of his trousers. Naked, too afraid to even to scream, he scrambles away. But he doesn't get far. The shrieking monster smashes him against a tree. Camera pans...

Following up on my posting of Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin's speech at University of the Witswatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, PEU Report/State of the Division has done yeoman's work in digging deeper into what the power elite are up to in Africa. Here's some of what he has discovered, most of which originally appeared as comments by PEU Report to my original post: Alice Albright, formerly of the Carlyle Group & JP Morgan and daughter of Madeleine Albright, joined the Ex-Im Bank. Their October report is clearly focused on Africa. Here's their blurb: EX-IM BANK WELCOMES ALICE ALBRIGHT We welcome...

A 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will eventually become a new ocean or sea, researchers now confirm. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005. Some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied.

Ardipithecus ramidus is an extinct primate whose fossilized remains were first found along the Awash River in Ethiopia about fifteen years ago. Many fragments were collected, including shattered bones from a four-foot-tall female nicknamed "Ardi." She was chosen to represent her kind, apparently because of the comparative completeness of her remains. Now Ardi's discoverers believe they have collected enough data to reconstruct her history--but what does their data actually reveal? ...

Four Tanzanians have been sentenced to death by hanging for killing an albino man last year - one of a spate of such murders in the country. The court, in the northern town of Shinyanga, convicted them of murdering the man and removing his head and legs. In September three men were sentenced to death for murdering an albino boy - the first such ruling in Tanzania. Witchdoctors sell good-luck potions made from the body parts of albino people for thousands of dollars. More than 50 albino people are thought to have been murdered in the past two years in...

"This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln," gushed Rocco Landesman, the new chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Landesman was referring, of course, to Barack Obama, specifically for Obama's presumed role as author of the acclaimed 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father. As evidence that Obama did not exactly write Dreams mounts, Landesman gives us a good indication of how America's cultural honchos will react. For a century, in fact, they have been heaping uncritical praise on undeserving artists of...

Ghana’s first Catholic Cardinal, Peter Appiah Turkson is closer to becoming the first black pope ever of the Catholic Church. Saturday October 24, 2009, Pope Benedict appointed Cardinal Turkson to head the Vatican’s justice and peace office. This position is a high-profile one that cements his reputation as a possible future candidate for the papal office, according to the Associated Press. The justice and peace office is responsible for promoting the church’s social teachings on justice issues, such as war, the death penalty and human rights. Turkson told reporters three weeks ago there was no reason there couldn’t be a...

Bill Gates took on the Famine Lobby while addressing a forum on the world food supply in Iowa. Speaking at the World Food Prize Symposium in Des Moines, Gates took aim at the chorus of environmental leftists and organic food advocates who believe Africans should starve rather than eat genetically modified (GM) foods. “Some voices are instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity. They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on earth, population is growing faster than productivity,” he said.The opposition is significant, because Gates is left-of-center himself. The Bill and Melinda...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

A mob in central Kenya has beheaded two suspected members of the Mungiki, a gang itself famous for decapitating its victims, police say. The two young men were beheaded and had their fingers chopped off... Twenty-one men who had been charged over the April violence were freed on Friday alongside former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga. Once a pseudo-religious group of dreadlocked youths who worshipped spirits in Mount Kenya and embraced rituals such as female circumcision, the Mungiki has evolved into an extortionist gang notorious for beheading its victims.

The US has imposed a travel ban on a senior Kenyan government official for obstructing efforts to rid the country of corruption. Johnnie Carson, the US state department Africa chief, said he was considering bans on three other officials - but declined to release any names. Kenya agreed to carry through reforms after 1,300 people died in post-election violence last year. But the US believes some officials have deliberately been blocking the reforms.

‘Moderate’ Islamist group had long suspected woman in Puntland was Christian. Three masked members of a militant Islamist group in Somalia last week shot and killed a Somali Christian who declined to wear a veil as prescribed by Muslim custom... Members of the comparatively “moderate” Suna Waljameca group killed Amina Muse Ali... in her home . Ali had told Christian leaders that she had received several threats from members of Suna Waljameca for not wearing a veil, symbolic of adherence to Islam. She had said members of the group had long monitored her movements because they suspected she was a...

South African traditional leaders plan to perform ritual animal slaughters to bless stadiums for the 2010 World Cup tournament ahead of the start of the showcase event next June, they said on Friday. Zolani Mkiva, chairman of the Makhonya Royal Trust, a grouping responsible for co-ordinating cultural activities, said the tournament, the first to be held in Africa, needed to be blessed in true "African style." "We must have a cultural ceremony of some sort, where we are going to slaughter a beast (cow)," said Mkiva. South Africa is set to host the World Cup -- the world's most watched...

(CNN) -- Rape has turned into a weapon of war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, with the number of attacks on women having grown threefold over the past few years, human rights activists said in October. Anneke van Woudenberg, senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, told Christiane Amanpour that 200,000 women and girls have been raped in Eastern Congo since 1998, and the condition of women has become more dire as the Congolese army has pressed a military campaign against armed groups in the countryside. "Rape is being used as a weapon of war in eastern Congo. So we...

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary ___________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release October 23, 2009 White House Announces Global Technology and Innovation Fund During his speech in Cairo on June 4, the President announced that the United States would "launch a new fund to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries." As the latest step in delivering on this commitment, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation announced this week a call for proposals for a Global Technology and Innovation Fund. This fund will help catalyze and facilitate private sector investments that promote...

Humans were living and thriving on open grassland in Africa as early as 2 million years ago, making stone tools and using them to butcher zebra and other animals... All of the other earlier hominins that have been found in the geological record -- such as Ardipithecus ramidus and Australopithecus afarensis -- known as Ardi and Lucy, respectively -- lived either in dense forest or in a mosaic of woodland, shrub and grasses, says Plummer... Plummer's team first started excavating Kanjera South in the 1990s, in search of primitive toolkits consisting of hammer stones, stone cores that were struck to...

KARONGA, Malawi (Reuters) – The latest discovery of pre-historic tools and remains of hominids in Malawi's remote northern district of Karonga provides further proof that the area could be the cradle of humankind, a leading German researcher said. Professor Friedemann Schrenk of the Goethe University in Frankfurt told Reuters that two students working on the excavation site last month had discovered prehistoric tools and a tooth of an hominid.

Obama is losing his bid to socialize medicine in this nation, he is losing favor with Americans, and he is losing respect for America and for himself on the world stage. So the best he can do is try to pick on a Fox News?( http://www.nowpublic.com/worst-african-dictators-all-times-past-and-present) The worst accusations he can make is that Fox News is a leader , not a follower; and that they fact checked his staff, (and found them to be lying)? He is calling the other News Stations to "boycott" Fox News for not being nice to Obama, as if those stations are his to...

A foundation set up to award a $5m (£3m) annual prize for good governance in Africa has said there will be no winner this year because it could not find anyone to award it to. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation, set up by the billionaire businessman and philanthropist, said its prize committee considered some credible candidates, but could not select a winner. "The prize committee is independent of the board," Ibrahim said. "It is the prize committee's decision not to award a prize this year and we entirely respect it. We made clear at the launch of the foundation that there...

We already knew that Barack Obama's brother Malik was a Luo activist and a militant Muslim who argued that the black man must "liberate himself from the poisoning influences of European culture." Malik Obama, older brother to Barack Obama, holds an undated picture of Barak, left, and himself, middle, and an unidentified friend in his shop in eastern Kenya. (Karel Prinsloo, AP) Now there's this:Audio found (Here) of speaker in Kenya on the election of Kenyan (Obama) being elected in the US as President. Starting around the 2:00 minute marker, the speaker discusses ethnicity problems towards the Luo tribe in...

Following my article last week on whether Barack Obama deserved to get the Nobel Peace Prize, my inbox was inundated with emails from American readers seeking to know whether I have proof that Obama was really born in Kenya. If he was born in Kenya, they theorise, he is therefore not entitled to claim American citizenship and the presidency of the United States. I could not help laughing at those emails, most displaying a naivete' and lack of understanding of this sentence from last week’s article: "It seems Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States of America (via a...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Sell the Vatican to help the poor? U.S. comedian Sarah Silverman might think it's a great idea, but a Nigerian archbishop called the suggestion offensive and "stupid." Africans from poor countries admire the Vatican, and have no desire to dismantle it, Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja told reporters at a briefing on the Synod of Bishops for Africa Oct. 16. "The few poor people who come here have never said, 'Oh, why don't you sell this and give us money for food.' They always say, 'What a beautiful place.' They admire it ... maybe because...

(IsraelNN.com) African immigrants are a strategic problem of the first degree, according to Professor Arnon Sofer, an expert on demographics and the head of the the IDF's National Security College. The campaign for taking in the African immigrants was mounted by extreme leftists, Sofer told Arutz Sheva's Hebrew service Friday. “They want us to absorb 1,200 sweet children, but where is the red line? 250,000 children of foreign workers? Two million?” The extreme leftists, said Sofer, want to destroy the Zionist state. “They do not want a Jewish state but a state 'of human beings.' They do not understand that...

IDF units responsible for guarding Israel's expansive western border with Egypt said Thursday that there are one million would-be infiltrators from Africa waiting to cross the mostly barrier-less border and enter Israel illegally...

An ongoing poll by AOL News currently shows that 58% of Americans have doubts about Obama’s citizenship. The poll was started on July 28 and continues — you can go here to vote. And lest you think that this survey is being conducted in a very anti-Obama venue, the title of the article is Birthers, Beer and Stuck on ‘Stupidly’ — it is an environment contemptuous of skeptics. So we can conclude that the results of their poll are not what they were hoping for.A scant five years ago, Barack Obama was a little known Illinois state politician, aspiring to move...

LONDON– A campaign warning girls not to stash or carry guns for their boyfriends was launched by London police Wednesday. The hard-hitting adverts, which are aimed at 15 to 19-year-olds of African and African Caribbean heritage, are designed to combat a worrying growth in the number of young women being arrested and convicted of possessing weapons. "This year's campaign has been designed to tackle an emerging and concerning trend," "Sadly, young women have always been involved in carrying and storing firearms," said Claudia Webbe, chairman of Trident's Independent Advisory Group. "We are deeply concerned, however, that this involvement seems to...

As the African Synod opens its second week, by now the Aula's heard a word on seemingly everything thanks to the five-minute interventions from its 250-some bishop-members and non-bishop auditors, which comprise the first part of each global assembly. But even as the delegates have heard no shortage of strong comments calling for everything from debt forgiveness and inculturation to combatting corruption and advancing a greater role for women in the church, perhaps the most emotional and profound of the bunch came Friday, when the testimony of a Rwandan religious, Sister Genevieve Uwamariya, provided the monthlong gathering's most personal reflection...

The problem with African coup d’etats is not just the fact that they flout constitutionalism — they also have an unfortunate tendency to propel virtual clowns to power whose only distinction is force of arms. Moussa Dadis Camara in Guinea is a perfect example. A small-time army captain whom nobody had heard of before, stormed to power in December last year promising a clean sweep. The regime of Lansana Conte, who had just died, had presided since 1984 over a basketcase of a country, dirt-poor despite having perhaps the leading deposits of bauxite in the world, plus a fair amount...

A British farmer who stood up to Robert Mugabe and was beaten, abducted and finally had his house burnt down has travelled to Washington to ask the Obama administration to put pressure on the Zimbabwe government before it seizes the last remaining white farms. Ben Freeth and his wife Laura with their children Anna, Phillip and Josh. Ben Freeth, who moved to Zimbabwe from Kent, joined his father-in-law Mike Campbell in taking Mugabe to an international court to stop the farm seizures. Their secret footage of the campaign of intimidation launched against them will form part of a film to...

A strange disease only affecting the joints of women and making them fail to stand on their own has been found in Zambia's Luapula Province, the Times of Zambia reported on Thursday. The strange disease dubbed Dwarf has broken out in the Chembe area of the province and is only affecting women and girls, making them fail to stand on their own, Times said. Teleshi Lwando, an employee at the local Lwela Health Center, told the visiting lawmaker from the area, Mwansa Mbulakulima, that the disease was not "very serious" and that patients were healing after three days. He said...

* Between 70 and 80 people were burned alive when a fuel tanker truck exploded in Nigeria, reportedly after a policeman fired a shot to keep passers-by away from a road accident, newspapers said on Saturday. The truck hit a pothole and overturned on Friday on the road between Onitsha and Enugu in the south of the country, spilling its cargo of petrol, witnesses and police told the papers. Several witnesses said that the truck exploded when a policeman who wanted to distance inquisitive onlookers fired his gun in the air. One witness said that people had been trying to...

William Kamkwamba dreamed of powering his village with the only resource that was freely available to him. His native Malawi had gone through one of its worst droughts seven years ago, killing thousands. His family and others were surviving on one meal a day. The red soil in his Masitala hometown was parched, leaving his father, a farmer, without any income. But amid all the shortages, one thing was still abundant. Wind. "I wanted to do something to help and change things," he said. "Then I said to myself, 'If they can make electricity out of wind, I can try,...

Archbishop Joseph Tlhagale of Johannesburg, South Africa Vatican City, Oct 8, 2009 / 11:41 am (CNA).- Archbishop Joseph Tlhagale of Johannesburg, South Africa said this morning at the Synod for Africa that the continent faces a "second wave of colonization" from "liberalism, secularism and from lobbyists who squat at the United Nations."The South African archbishop began his five-minute intervention by noting that moral values are "embedded in the diverse African cultures," and that, "alongside the Gospel values, are threatened by the new global ethic." This ethic, he said, "aggressively seeks to persuade African governments and communities to accept new...

Oct 2, 2009 — A new fossil human ancestor has taken center stage. Those who love Lucy, the australopithecine made famous by Donald Johanson (and numerous TV specials), are in for a surprise. Lucy is a has been. Her replacement is not Desi Arnaz, but is designated Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus – the new leading lady in the family tree. Actually, she has been around for years since her discovery in Ethiopia in 1992. It has taken Tim White and crew 15 years to piece together the bones that were in extremely bad condition. But now, Ardi has made...

Your Taxi Driver Might Be A Terrorist!!! Somali Americans Become National Security Problem!!! By Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. thelastcrusade.org A group affiliated with al Qaeda could strike the United States in the near future. That’s grim assessment of FBI Director Robert Mueller, who spoke this week at a meeting of the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Mueller’s remarks represent the first time a senior law enforcement or intelligence official has stated on the record that the al-Shabaab, a Muslim terrorist group with ties to al Qaeda, is no longer content to strike within the East African nation of Somalia. During...

I had just 24 hours to prepare for my trip to Africa. We had been reporting on the killing of Tanzanians with albinism, a genetic condition characterized by a lack of pigment in people's eyes, skin and hair, as part of an ABC News hour special. In Tanzania, there has been a grotesque rash of albino killings: 54 people have been murdered since 2007, though observers say more incidences go unreported. Renegade witch doctors have convinced locals that there are magical properties in the blood, bones and skin of people with albinism, which has created a sickening black market where...

1. Meet “Ardi”Evolutionists aren’t yet sure if they should call it a human ancestor, but one thing they do know is that “Ardi” does away with the idea of a “missing link.”Although first discovered in the early 1990s, the bones of Ardipithecus ramidus are only now being nominated for evolutionists’ fossil hall of fame—via a slew of papers in a special issue of the journal Science. In it, Ardi’s researchers describe the bones and make the case that Ardi is even more important in the history of human evolution than Lucy. Despite claims of its evolutionary significance, one of the...

Bones of “Ardi,” New Human Evolution Fossil, “Crushed Nearly to Smithereens” Another new alleged missing link has been found, if you consider something discovered in the early 1990’s new. This fossil seems to have spent almost as much time under the microscope at Berkeley as it did in the ground in Ethiopia, when it was first buried about 4.4 million years ago. Why did it take over 15 years for the reports on this fossil to finally be published, besides the fact that it allowed more time for planning the now-customary PR campaign? A 2002 article in Science explains exactly...

Uneasy Engagement China Spreads Aid in Africa, With a Catch By SHARON LaFRANIERE and JOHN GROBLER WINDHOEK, Namibia — It is not every day that global leaders set foot in this southern African nation of gravel roads, towering sand dunes and a mere two million people. So when President Hu Jintao of China touched down here in February 2007 with a 130-person delegation in tow, it clearly was not just a courtesy call. And in fact, China soon granted Namibia a big low-interest loan, which Namibia tapped to buy $55.3 million worth of Chinese-made cargo scanners to deter smugglers. It...

"Milton Mbhele turned up in a white limousine and gave each of his four brides rings and a kiss. South African law recognises traditional polygamous marriages. Even President Jacob Zuma has three wives."

widespread human rights violations, including mutilation, torture, rape, the abduction of civilians, the use of child soldiers, and a number of massacres. In recent months there has been an increase in violent incidents across provinces of southern Sudan, especially near the Ugandan border. "Everywhere, people are being killed" including at least one church leader, said Bishop Daniel Deng Bul Yak in remarks aired by Radio France International (RFI), monitored by BosNewsLife. "This is why we are appealing to the United Nations and governments in the world like the U.S. Germany and Norway. They should come in now, so that peace...

Somali pirates attempted to hijack a ship Thursday night in the Mogadishu port but were eventually scared away by a rescue effort. The Syrian captain on the Panama-flagged ship was killed in the incident. The African Union forces and Somali police responded after receiving a distress call from the ship. But Barigye Ba-hoku, the spokesman for African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia, known as AMISOM, says that by the time his forces got there, the pirates had already climbed aboard the vessel. "We reacted very quickly and tried to prevent these characters from boarding on to the ship, but unfortunately...

WHEN the youths saw Murray Pott's sister filming them as they hit the Zimbabwean farmer with sticks, they smashed the kitchen window to try to get to her too. Mr Pott, who is of Scottish descent, was left with broken ribs and head injuries after a mob attacked him on his farm in Chinhoyi, central Zimbabwe last week. The incident shows how terrifying life has become for the country's last white farmers seven months into the power-sharing agreement between president Robert Mugabe and former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai that was widely expected to end land invasions. "I was attacked in...

After getting complaints from Congress─and an inquiry from NEWSWEEK─the State Department backed away Thursday from awarding foreign-aid funds to two foundations headed by the children of Libyan dictator Muammar Kaddafi.

After threatening to kill every homosexual, the Gambia’s leader threatens rights groups Human Rights groups in Africa are demanding that the African Union human rights commission Headquarters be removed from Gambia following a fierce threat made by the Gambian president on opposition leaders and human right workers. "If you are affiliated with any human rights group, be rest assured that your security is not guaranteed... we are ready to kill saboteurs. I will kill anyone who wants to destabilize this country. If you think that you can collaborate with so-called human rights defenders, and get away with it, you...

Sept 24, 2009 — The evolutionary story of human origins is often told like a cultural myth that is intuitively obvious. Humans emerged in Africa after their ancestors came down from the trees and walked upright. They began to hunt with stone tools and used fire. They migrated north out of Africa and populated Europe, overtaking the Neanderthals who lacked the brain power and culture of their more evolved cousins. How much of this story is based on actual evidence? How much is interpolation of what “must” have happened based on an evolutionary view of natural history? As part of...

South Africa's murder rate — one of the world's highest — has dropped slightly, but the country faces a distressing rise in rapes, robberies and hijackings, South African police said Tuesday. The number of murders decreased 3.4 percent to 18,148 between April 2008 and March 2009. That still leaves 50 murders a day in the country of some 50 million people. Sexual offenses increased 10.1 percent, with a total of 71,500 reported offenses. Robberies at homes and businesses increased more dramatically, up 27.3 and 41.5 percent respectively. South Africa has one of the worst crime rates in the world, putting...

Colombian and Mexican drug cartels have jumped the Atlantic Ocean and expanded into West Africa, working closely with local criminal gangs to carve out a staging area for an assault on the lucrative European market. .... The calculus is simple: bigger profits in Europe than in the United States, less law enforcement in West Africa than in Europe. .... DEA Assistant Administrator Thomas Harrigan testified before the Senate in June that authorities in Sierra Leone seized a cocaine shipment last year from a twin-engine aircraft marked with a Red Cross insignia. The flight originated in Venezuela, he said. .... "Colombian...

Charles Lock is one of an estimated 400 farmers who have remained in the country despite President Robert Mugabe's policy of redistributing white-owned farms to landless blacks. "Why do they want to remove me when I've complied with everything they want? What more do they want other than for me to pack my bags and leave and if that's the case, then admit that that is the policy. Pass a law: no whites are allowed to farm. Then it makes it clear," Lock said. Since 2000, Mugabe's controversial land reform program has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their...