Mantis Thoughts From a Hot Rock – (http://pearl-island.blogspot.com/2006/07/world-united.html) writing for Reunion Island comments on the passing of the World Cup and the reportage from the local media on the French team. Amidst all the fanfare, Marine Le Pen (the daughter of French National Front leader Jean Marie Le Pen) arrived on the Island.

..”Marine Le Pen - she who be the daughter of the father, arrived amidst the blue football fever to encourage the faithful and probably have a bit of a holiday. What is odd, and strikingly so, is that to an outsider "La Réunion" is the melting pot of seventies pop songs and lacks the racism (so I am informed) of other French departments such as Martinique and Guadeloupe. If so, how does one explain the 8.1% of the vote to the FN in 2002? I dunno! Yet Marine was given an hour of air time on Radio Freedom when she found time to escape the Creolia Hotel and avoid the thirty or so demonstrators who had decided that there are more important things in life than the footie!”

An interesting question, who were the 8.1% of the Island that voted for Le Pen? Were they the same group that supported the French football team? Or as in the case of many people of African decent, the support was not for the French team but rather the 17 African players who were part of France’s 22 man squad?

Alb Sayed - Alb Sayed (http://albsayed.org/2006/07/06/yacoubian-parliament) reports on yet more censorship in Egypt. This time it is an MP, Mustafa Bakry who is asking that some of the scenes in the film “The Yacoubian Building” be cut. Interesting though is that one of the scenes he is wanting removed shows a woman being sodomised by officers in a police station. Alb Sayed reminds us:

….”which is nearly identical to what happened to activist Mohamed elSharqawi. And in this case, I do believe that the whole of Egypt needs to see what our beloved Security Forces and police are doing to people in the police stations. Furthermore we need to realize that while these characters are fictional, the acts are very real”.

The government is therefore calling for censorship of the very acts that it’s own security forces are committing on Egyptians citizens today. Freedom of Expression is being curtailed once again and at the same time Freedom to Abuse by the security forces is continuing unabated and unabashed.

AfroMusing - You Missed This (http://kumekucha.blogspot.com/2006/07/kingsway-house-building-in-nairobi...) has a post on the secrets of “Kingsway House” in Nairobi – which used to house the Special Branch and was thought to be the place where the plot to assassinate Tom Mboya took place.

“One set of secrets that many Kenyans would have liked Kingsway House to reveal, if buildings would talk, was the planning of details that led to the assassination Of Tom Mboya.......There is plenty of evidence to suggest that whoever planned and executed the murder of Mboya had access to impeccable intelligence information. The day before Mboya was assassinated, he arrived at the then main Embakassi International airport from a conference he had been attending in Addis Ababa Ethiopia. The Standard newspaper on the morning of his assassination carried a photograph of Mboya arriving and waving to somebody who must have been at the waving bay in the airport. However, to have planned and executed this assassination, the person or persons who plotted must have had the information about Mboya's arrival back into the country, the day before.”

Nigeria’s Whats New - Nigeria, Whats New (http://nigeriawhatisnew.blogspot.com/2006/07/another-fail-africa-summit-...) comments on the forthcoming “Sullivan Summit scheduled for Abuja from July 17 to 20.” Amongst the participants will be former US President Bill Clinton and Bush hawk now World Bank President, Paul Dr Paul Wolfowitz. What’s New writes:

The same usual suspects are back to milk the Nigerian cow! Have these summits benefited Nigeria or Africa? Poverty, despair and disease is mentioned but not seen. A little bit of effort in stopping and reversing the rot without moving from your opulent mansions is all that is required. Oil, Diamonds, Gold, and many more are plentiful in Africa but in partnership with a rotten few. Africa is still poor and the few are holding a huge number of people prisoner".

The cow is dry – this will end up as another useless, ineffective talking shop that will in no way change Nigeria or Africa in anyway whatsoever.

Trials and Tribulations of a Freshly Arrived Denizen of Ghana - Trials and Tribulations (http://ekbensahinghana.blogspot.com/2006/07/as-week-draws-to-close-in.html) comments on the possibility of an ECOWAS regional police organisation that would be responsible for drug dealing in the region.

“At the sub-regional level, I maintain that there should be an ECOWAS Convention on Combating Drugs in the same manner there is one on small arms to the degree that the Kimberely Process on Blood Diamonds has eventuated from it”

While it is an excellent idea, if such a force is to be created then it should also take on responsibility for combating other cross regional crimes such as trafficking of women and children and sex tourism.

Black Looks - Black Looks (http://www.blacklooks.org/2006/07/953.html) comments on immigration in Europe and the new forms of “migration management” that are emerging such as the creation of a school in Senegal to train young men and women in the hope that they will stay in their country rather than want to go to Europe. Other management methods are the setting up of camps:

“The EU is planning and funding a series of transit camps across the continent and North Africa (from Ukraine to Libya) as part of a holistic “system of control” along with the Schengen agreement, the closing of the two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, Ceuta and Melilla, that will effectively “barbed wire” Europe. The contradiction is that many European countries such as Britain and Spain are in desperate need of increased migration due to falling birth rates and emigration of their own indigenous citizens”

It is also important to note that many of the “migrant management” policies being implemented are racist. Furthermore you cannot stop people from coming by setting up skills acquisition centres in home countries whilst at the same time refusing to cancel the country's debt; providing subsidies to EU farmers at the expense of African farmers; fixing the price of raw materials so low as to further impoverish local people; using child labour; destroying the local environment and of course where do the jobs come from once the skills are acquired?