Many prominent Nigerians have called for the removal of Nigeria from the list of countries with links to terrorist organisations. They have argued that Nigeria has no business being on that notorious list. Personally I beg to disagree with them. The US should not be in a hurry to de-list Nigeria due to the following reasons.
First of all Nigeria was placed on the terror watch list following a failed attempt by a Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bomb a US airliner in December. Even though the case has been charged to court, investigations are still going on to determine how this young Nigerian suddenly transformed to a suicide bomber. Because of how terrorist groups operate, time is needed to dig out and piece together all the bits of information before establishing that Nigeria has absolutely no links with terrorist groups.
Some people have argued that Nigerians by their nature are not terrorists. That Farouk got radicalized, and embraced his suicide mission outside Nigeria. Well it depends on their understanding of the term ‘terrorism’. Many of the incidents that are taing place in the country like the attacks and killings in the Niger Delta, Jos, Kano and Kaduna can rightly be described as terrorist. People are not born terrorists. People become terrorists. Osama bin Laden was not born a terrorist. Farouk was not born a terrorist. So, terrorists are made.
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That's an actual quote taken from one of the intercepted pager message logs WikiLeaks has been publishing since 3am Wednesday 25th.

It seems odd for anybody to be writing on Thanksgiving about September 11 but the release of these logs are a historic event, and far more important given how today marks 372 of the white-washing of the Pequot Tribe Massacre of 1637. Today we continue the tradition of LYING to our children and altering historical records to turn imperialist occupiers into heroes. Today we join in a lie by refusing to teach them about the atrocities committed to the Pequot. A tribe that, coincidentally, was wiped out in a single unsuspecting attack.

Well, I've promised myself to destroy that tradition as far as my family is concerned. And what better way than to do so with what will probably be one of the most important historical documents concerning the September 11 events. First, because they are allegedly unfiltered, uncensored and untouched by the GW Bush administration's propaganda machine. And second, because it is a record of, unfortunately, the innocents who died as a consequence of the United States' policy of attacks and occupations in its plutocracy's pursuit of imperial corporate globalization.

WikiLeaks is a nonprofit organization dedicated to uncovering unethical and criminal behaviour in governments and institutions. The organization has a well protected server farm that allows them to publish secret documents of all kinds; which in turn protects journalists and whistle blowers:

Their stated goal is to ensure that whistle-blowers and journalists are not thrown into jail for emailing sensitive or classified documents, such as what happened to Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail in 2005 after publicising an email from Chinese officials about the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.^[11]

Some of their more notorious accomplishments include shaming Scientology, publishing the Guatanamo Bay procedures and even airing the British Nationalist Party's member list. Their track record of verification and authenticity has been remarkable. This is why these pager logs are so important.

They are 573,000 intercepted communications. As in illegally acquired private information. As in by either a foreign government or corporate surveillance entity. Heck, it could well have been the CIA or FBI --we'll obviously know in the coming weeks.

Yet think about it. Someone was spying on people with pagers in New York City and these are the logs of those intercepted communications. And what WikiLeaks has is a slice of pre-SMS communications that was gathered by spies in a 24 hour period, from 3am in the morning of September 11 until 3am of September 12th.

How is this possible? From Declan McCullagh over at CBNews:

The pager logs seem to represent messages transmitted on September 11, 2001 through the networks of Arch Wireless, Metrocall, Skytel, and Weblink Wireless.

It's not clear how they were obtained in the first place. One possibility is that they were illegally compiled from the records of archived messages maintained by pager companies, and then eventually forwarded to WikiLeaks.

The second possibility is more likely: Over-the-air interception. Each digital pager is assigned a unique Channel Access Protocol code, or capcode, that tells it to pay attention to what immediately follows. In what amounts to a gentlemen's agreement, no encryption is used, and properly-designed pagers politely ignore what's not addressed to them.

But an electronic snoop lacking that same sense of etiquette might hook up a sufficiently sophisticated scanner to a Windows computer with lots of disk space -- and record, without much effort, gobs and gobs of over-the-air conversations

Wired makes the point there's even video tutorial on how to rig your own pager traffic tracking and surveillance system. And yet, if you're willing to crack open a box of tin foil, we could speculate these logs have been retrieved from some government or foreign surveillance entity that was spying on US citizens for ... maybe China, Russia or even the US government itself?

Tin foil speculation aside, the logs are an amazing thing to look at. The first airplane hit at 8:45am. The corresponding logs for that would be the 8:47am entries --and even then one can see there's a lag in the reporting of the events. Until we get to the first message that seems to refer to the attack :

2001-09-11 08:47:46 Arch [0901509] B ALPHA
Someone just told me there was an explosion at

It's not until 9:03am and only after the second airplane attacks that we can see the confusion and desperation in the calls or even more bluntly, the rampant malfunctioning of software and half finished messages as the cell & telephone antennas that were on the towers knocked out a big chunk of the communications network. 

Yet I focused on the twilight zone between 8:45 and 9:03am exactly just to look at how life went on for many people who, even in the area of the attacks, where unaware at how big the damage was. There's one instance where someone refers to the attack as a "a small airplane" that had crashed into one of the buildings.

The asynchronicity happening within seconds is just mesmerizing. Life went on for a lot of people, particularly the exasperated callers who kept paging technicians that were not there. You can find the automated messages of said dying servers, or the angry texts of business partners. Then there's the stock trade numbers, news from Latin America, "drink your medication" reminders and even the post-coital exchange of two shamelessly glowing lovers.

Check out the amazing discussions at Reddit and Metafilter to see more of the unintentionally comical moments of this tragedy. The following is a sampling of just one page of data. I've bolded the entries referring specifically to the attack.

WARNING! THIS MAY BE A TRIGGER FOR SOME OF YOU
I was devastated while reading this messages and had trouble falling asleep afterwards. As one of the many New Yorkers who saw the towers disappear under a cloud of dust on that fateful day, writing this post was an overwhelming experience.
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The decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and the other 9/11 conspirators in a public, civilian court within sight of Ground Zero is one of the strongest expressions of America's strength that I have heard in many years. There is no honor, no pride, no confidence in trying your enemies in secret. There is honor, pride and chutzpah for America to hold fast to our ideals, trust our democracy, and try our enemies in full public view.

The republicans are expressing an amazing amount of hysterical fear at the prospect of giving the terrorists a fair, public trial. I am proud as all hell that we FINALLY have the balls to do this. I have full confidence that our democratic system is strong enough to hold this trial and I thank the Obama administration for restoring our confidence in our own democracy. Bush dragged this out for 8 fucking years, making us all afraid, doubting America's strength. Obama is reminding us that we are strong, our democracy is strong and our court system is strong. The terrorists wanted to frighten us, to make us doubt America and its democracy. Bush fell right into their trap, spreading fear and doubt. Obama is sending a clear message to Americans, to the terrorists and to the world that America's democracy will NOT be frightened by terrorists anymore. We will put our faith in our own values and feel confident that we will prevail over the fears and doubts the terrorists and Republicans both seem to thrive on.

When the 1993 bombings of the WTC happened, we maintained our faith in our own American democracy and tried the perpetrators publicly in a civilian court. That showed balls. That is better than most countries in the world would do. We gave them a fair trial and they are serving their sentence.

I am proud to see those who planned the attack on our city are being brought right here to New York to stand trial. In many ways it makes me feel prouder than I have for a long time. It shows the world that YES America IS strong enough to trust in our core democratic values.

And Mike Hendrick's breaks it down on why they've aided and abetted the murder of Dr. George Tiller. From Hendricks: Tiller's killers were many :: KansasCity.com Prime Buzz:

They include every one who has ever called Tiller's late term abortion clinic a murder mill.

Who ever called Tiller "Tiller the Killer."

The groups who spent decades fomenting hate toward a man who simply believed that he was serving a purpose by being one of the few doctors in the country performing late-term abortions.

Hate. Not heated opposition. Not strong disagreement.

But blind hatred.

The kind of hate that would prompt some maniac to take a gun into a church and shoot a man to death in front of friends and family.

His accomplices know they have blood on their hands, which might explain why they were quick to issue statements today expressing disapproval of Tiller's murder.

Among them, the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue.

"Operation Rescue denounces the killing of abortionist Tiller," read the headline of a new release posted on that group's website.

Those words drip with hypocrisy.
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I am not aghast that Republicans have their panties in a bunch over the jokes Wanda Sykes said at the White House Correspondents Dinner. As the party of sore losers, they've turned everything that happens around Barack Obama into an opportunity for an offensive.

No, what I am aghast and appalled at is the fact that republicans are going batshit over the fact that Wanda dared to call out Rush Limbaugh for his offensive brand of alleged entertainment and comedy. They really, truly believe that there leader and saviour is an Oxycontin and Viagra-loving addict with a penchant for prostitutes from the Dominican Republic.

It's why I appreciate it when someone starts itemizing all the incredibly offensive things Limbaugh has said about Barack Obama. From TAPPED Archive :: The American Prospect:
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"Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails," Sykes said. "So you're saying, 'I hope America fails', you're, like, 'I don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq'. He just wants the country to fail. To me, that's treason He's not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying. You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight."

Sykes then said, "Rush Limbaugh, I hope the country fails, I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs."

Sore losing republitards that have nothing else to do than to attack the black man in chief have their panties in a bunch because Wanda Sykes called Rush Limbaugh a terrorist and wishes Olbermann waterboarded him.

The thing is, this isn't even the funniest thing she said in her piece. The part about Obama being a black President until he screwed was pure comedy gold.

“This is amazing, the First Black President – I know you’re biracial – but the First Black President! You’re proud to be able to say that – The First Black President. That’s unless you screw up. Then it’s going to be, ‘What’s up with the half-white guy, huh? Who voted for the mulatto, what the hell?’”

And I thought her part about Michelle touching the Queen of England and giving her an iPod was hysterical too --if only for Michelle passing the buck about the gift on Obama and Obama agreeing that giving the Pope a Bluetooth (earpiece) would be a good idea.

And then there's the incredibly funny bit about Joe Biden not shutting up if he fell in the hands of terrorists. Am sorry, I think that was even more insulting and yet it killed.

Just listen to the whole damn thing. Wanda killed at the roast because she did exactly what she needed to do : crack jokes that poked and maybe insulted "the important ones" in Washington.

Michelle Malkin, Instapundit, Drudge and their cohorts need to DIAF.

The whole skit under the cut.
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