Up to 2000 dead in recent Boko Haram attack?

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/09/boko-haram-deadliest-massacre-baga-nigeria

Nigeria: 2,000 feared killed in Boko Haram's 'deadliest massacre'

Amnesty International calls the killings ‘a disturbing and bloody escalation’ and a local defence group says its fighters have given up trying to count the bodies.

Hundreds of bodies – too many to count – remain strewn in the bush in Nigeria from an Islamic extremist attack that Amnesty International described as the “deadliest massacre” in the history of Boko Haram.

Fighting continued on Friday around Baga, a town on the border with Chad where insurgents seized a key military base on 3 January and attacked again on Wednesday.
I assume many of the girls have been kidnapped to be sold or worse, as per tradition.

Interpret this news as you want. It's what it is. Maybe it will sort itself out. It probably will given enough time.
 
You can't fight mass murder with Twitter.
 
I'm not following you.



J


A comment on previous reactions to Boko Haram. When they kidnapped all those schoolgirls, people around the world replied by tweeting things like "Free Our Girls." Boko Haram chose not to. The tweeters soon forgot about the whole thing. Such slacktivism doesn't work.
 
We should all twitter them now. Right now! That will tell them!

On my count: 1 - 2 - erh, hold on...I don't use twitter, can someone twit for me?
 
I doubt ISIS headquarters have internet, or Twitter for that matter. And if we're following what Al Qaeda uses it's internet for, i.e increasing their porn collection, I believe they're too busy to tweet us.

Which is a shame. Doesn't everyone want to know what a bunch of bigots with rocket launchers want to say in 140 characters?
 
This is much more concerning than the attack on Charlie Hebdo in terms of loss of lives alone.

You can't fight mass murder with Twitter.

But you might with some cartoons.
 
Didn't the dead include "followers of Islam"? So "followers of Islam" should not live with "followers of Islam"?

Or is the solution you have in mind more like taking away the "living" bit?
 
I've been reading that Nigeria's president and government are saying very little about these types of attacks. Seems hard to believe but is this true? If so what's the dynamic there?

Edit: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/10/7525199/nigeria-boko-haram-attack

This sheds some light. Huge degree of military indifference to protecting lives in the north, to the extent that this extact town was target of a military reprisal for a previous Boko Haram attack.

Didn't the dead include "followers of Islam"? So "followers of Islam" should not live with "followers of Islam"? Or is the solution you have in mind more like taking away the "living" bit?

Every Muslim individual to live at a 200 foot radius from any other. In plastic bubbles if possible.
 
Yeah, there's a very strong divide in Nigeria: Muslims live in the north, and Christians live in the south. The south also contains all the oil, and keeps most of the oil revenue (of course, the corrupt elite keeps most of it still).

Add to it an ill equipped, minimally trained army with lousy discipline and a reputation for brutalizing the civilians they're supposed to protect, a sparsely populated area which is ideal for guerrilla warfare, and the aforementioned economic and religious divide, and you have a really bad situation on your hands. :(

The most efficient news I've heard from the Nigerian army was that they were pretty quick to courtmartial and punish a group of soldiers which deserted when they weren't given usable equipment...
 
I recall somebody posting statistics a while ago that showed Boko Haram has nearly nonexistent support among Nigerians, including Muslims.
How is it that some nutjobs with no popular support can not only persist, but regularly kidnap/execute hundreds or even thousands of people?
Something seems really out of place here...
 
I recall somebody posting statistics a while ago that showed Boko Haram has nearly nonexistent support among Nigerians, including Muslims.
How is it that some nutjobs with no popular support can not only persist, but regularly kidnap/execute hundreds or even thousands of people?
Something seems really out of place here...
The problem is that popular support as well as democracy does not work in Africa as experience shows. To bring law & order into this region the only viable solutions either right dictatorship, kingdomship or, the best one, colonialism by culturally superior nation.
 
The problem is that popular support as well as democracy does not work in Africa as experience shows. To bring law & order into this region the only viable solutions either right dictatorship, kingdomship or, the best one, colonialism by culturally superior nation.

I'm unsure if this quote belongs to Brought to you by CFC or to the Dumbest Quotes thread.
 
I'm unsure if this quote belongs to Brought to you by CFC or to the Dumbest Quotes thread.
I did two quite obvious statement. The first one is that democracy does not work in Africa. Do you really think what we have now since de-colonization in Africa can be called a social order that works? In my opinion, it is a social disorder.

Now, how to turn social disorder to social order? Twitter attacks, as the poster earlier have mentioned, does not really work. We also have mighty USA which are able to invade countries but does it bring anything like order? No, they usually bring more disorder. They able to rule themselves but they lack any desire and capability to rule over others.

The best time for African countries was the time of colonialism when European countries with superior culture were ruling over them and doing this job marvellously. Economy was running, standards of living were rising, local people had access to European-style education.

But these days we may not have this solution ready as former colonizers became colonizees and lost a lot of their colonizing ability. Next best answer is to install monarchy which works better than democracy especially in Africa's like conditions. Just make sure monarch is European-educated and kept in checked by some other respected European monarch.

We also have a more straight but also plausible solution: right dictatorship. Left dictatorship do not really work well as they are quasi-religious and full of silly progressivist dogmas incompatible with reality (like equality and such). Right dictators tend to follow laws of nature, so they more apt in governing. Install right dictator and allow him to do what should be done with Boko haramists and same people.
 
Q: What's common between Africa and Russia?
A: According to modern Russian philosophers, democracy works in neither.
 
Fortunately, both places will start working at 100% efficiency with some Western colonists!
 
Q: What's common between Africa and Russia?
A: According to modern Russian philosophers, democracy works in neither.
That's absolutely true. Democracy can work (meaning co-existing with functional social order) only in those places where there are already safeguards exists. If you try it install it onto African tribe or in place where such safeguards were already eroded by another version of demotic government (f.e. socialism), it will result only in troubles. Now it is not according to "modern Russian philosophers", but according to reality. Just check how post-colonial Africa is running things. Maybe democracy is doing fine there, people are not doing this well. Boko harams over all the place.
 
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