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Mr. Lai Mohammed | credits: File copy

The All Progressives Congress says the act of terrorism being perpetuated by Boko Haram is being used as a political tool by the President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government.

The National Publicity Secretary of the party, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, told our correspondent during an interview in Lagos on Monday that Jonathan had been using the abduction of over 200 schoolgirls in Chibok to gain advantage ahead of the 2015 elections.

He said, You will recall that the period when President Jonathan was going to declare his intention to re-contest, he knew that Nigerians would protest because acts of terrorism escalated during his administration.

So, the Presidency began to tell Nigerians that they would rescue the Chibok girls within the next five days and even lied to us all that they had reached a ceasefire with Boko Haram and negotiations were ongoing. Only for Boko Haram to deny it and continue with attacks. He created a hoax only to give himself a clear opportunity to declare.

Mohammed said Jonathan was more concerned with winning the 2015 elections than fighting insecurity.

He said the fracas at the National Assembly wherein lawmakers had to scale the gate in order to gain access to their chambers, showed that Jonathan is not taking insecurity seriously.

He said, The House of Representatives was meant to reconvene on December 3 but because of the Presidents request for an extension of the emergency rule in the North-East, the lawmakers reconvened only to discover that it was a ploy to impeach the Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal.

It is obvious that all that Jonathan is thinking about is to gain advantage ahead of the elections.

Mohammed said happenings in the North-East showed that the military had been compromised by the PDP-led Federal Government.

Continued here:
FG turning insurgency into political tool, says APC

The All Progressives Congress has said faulty intelligence which has so far stifled the fight against Boko Haram, was the same which led to the raid of the partys data centre in Lagos.

APC also challenged the Department of State Services to tell the Nigerian public what it found after invading the partys data centre in Lagos.

This was contained in a statement signed by its national publicity secretary, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in Abuja, on Monday.

According to the party, Nigerians deserve to know the outcome of the investigations into the cooked-up allegation of PVC cloning that forced the DSS to unlawfully invade the partys offices in Lagos over a week ago.

The party said, It is this type of faulty intelligence that has been stifling the efforts to deconstruct Boko Haram and facilitate the battle to end the insurgency that is daily killing and maiming innocent Nigerians.

It also said the DSS should apologize to Nigerians for acting on the basis of faulty intelligence.

The party cautioned that any further delay in telling Nigerians the outcome of the investigations after almost 10 days could mean that the DSS is trying to manufacture evidence to support its faulty intelligence.

APC said, Without carrying out any investigation and with no shred of evidence, the DSS gleefully announced to the world that they stormed our data centre because they got information that Permanent Voter Cards were being cloned there.

On the basis of this uncorroborated announcement, the PDP categorically accused the APC of cloning PVCs. It is now over a week since the DSS carted away materials and computer servers after ransacking our offices for over two hours. The agencys experts must have analyzed the information in the materials and on the servers.

The party demanded that the security agency should immediately announce its findings to the world.

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Faulty intelligence stifling fight against Boko Haram-APC

So: One Toronto? That was a cute idea. Sounds nice in speeches. Makes a comforting tagline to get the rubes feeling all soft n fuzzy.

But when it comes to important stuff like appointing city councils executive and the chairs of the committees and agencies that will handle the citys business, new mayor John Tory wasted no time in deciding on a different governing theme. More of a LetsGetReadyToRumbleToronto kind of thing.

Its a weird choice for a guy who made moving on from the divisiveness of the Ford years the key plank in his election campaign, but here we are. Its hard to read Torys slate of proposed appointments, unveiled yesterday on the eve of councils first meeting, as anything other than a declaration of war against the downtown progressives who formed the opposition against Rob Ford.

Exhibit A: Tory suggests reappointing Frances Nunziata as council speaker, after a term in which she served as the constant symbol of the incompetent, truculent incivility of the Ford administration. As the moderator of council meetings, she never missed a chance to openly insult or shout down those she disagreed with, displaying little ready understanding of the procedural rules she was charged with enforcing, and little inclination to enforce them evenly when she did.

Further exhibits: Nine of the 13 members of Torys executive committee, which sets councils agenda, will be people who served in that capacity under Ford. Torys budget chief is Gary Crawford, a man whose dronelike fealty to Ford was so complete that his single newsworthy accomplishment last term was painting a portrait to hang on Mama Diane Fords wall.

Not a single councillor from the old city of Toronto will head up a standing committee (though two mushy middle councillors Ana Bailao and Mary Margaret McMahon will serve at-large on the executive). Not a single member of the NDP has been given any position of influence at all.

The one token gesture to progressives is the naming of Pam McConnell from Toronto-Centre Rosedale as one of three ceremonial deputy mayors. (The others are the mostly silent Ford stooge Vincent Crisanti and Slinky-like ward-heeler Glenn De Baeremaeker.) These extraneous deputy mayors have no statutory or procedural significance. They are human props to be trotted out for events that require ribbon cutting and civic-unity platitude uttering.

Now, the statutory deputy mayor that is, the actual deputy mayor is a different matter. Denzil Minnan-Wong will occupy that role, and seems set to be the second most powerful member of the government, after Tory himself. Minnan-Wong is going to sit on the boards, in Torys place, of both Invest Toronto and Build Toronto, as some kind of apparent development czar. Hes going to sit in Torys place on the board of Waterfront Toronto, an agency against which hes pursued a bizarre and spiteful vendetta for years. Hell head up the civic appointments committee, which will choose the people who run everything from libraries to community centres to the parking authority. Hell head up the striking committee that selects members of council committees, and head up the labour relations committee that negotiates with the citys unions.

Newly powerful Minnan-Wong is a smart conservative who has delighted in playing the moustache-twirling villain to downtown councillors for years, tying bike lanes to the railroad tracks and tossing lit-fused cherry bombs at pedestrian initiatives. He was the bad cop to Karen Stintzs good cop in opposition to David Miller, and has been the bad cop to the Ford brothers Keystone Cops since then. It was under his chairmanship of the public works committee that it produced vindictive surprise motions to kill the Jarvis bike lanes and the Fort York bridge.

When it came to firing up divisions in the city, the Ford brothers and Giorgio Mammoliti provided more explosive public flare-ups, but Minnan-Wong often more skillfully poured policy gas on the blaze. Effective? Often. But hes the opposite of a unifying figure.

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John Tory appointments put an end to the idea of unity: Keenan

San Francisco progressives dont win elections and its our own damn fault. Our vision could be relevant to a majority, so we should act accordingly. Our big yurt includes unions and other organizations accountable to an imperfect membership, nonprofits accountable both to constituents and New York foundations, and freewheeling activists accountable only to the tiny Audre Lorde in their heart. Theres no reason bicycle separatists and hotel workers should be allies, but they are. At best, we end up yelling in the same direction. Everywhere else, San Francisco equals radical, kinky, idealistic freakshows. Who will inspire wide-eyed rebels in backwaters like San Jose to introduce a farkakte policy that will be common sense eventually if we cant pass laws from the future here? We should win electionsbut dont because were stupid and annoying and no one likes us. But, you object, people do like us. Yes they do, if you only hang out at the Sad Documentary Film Festival. Were stupid because we never learn. Every time we lose, its the same debrief: we cant win only with white progressives; we have to win more votes and increase turnout among communities of color; absentee voters; massively outspent; lower turnout in off years; maybe we should be cool to women. We believe our own hype. Bill OReillys caricatures of us also suit us. For a long time, San Francisco boasted a high enough density of us that we could flimflam to victory. The activism where we only ever talk to other activists about activism in an infinite feedback loop Mobius strip of self-referential activism has fostered awful ideas about Power. Our sweep of supervisorial races in the aughts let us procrastinate reckoning with long-term problems. We call a protest and 50 other activists might turn up who happened to bike by, and we think we did something, even if we never talk to a regular person. Its as if we dont really want to win, while the other side is quietly privatizing everything. Did I say, privatizing? I meant, sharing. San Francisco progressivism can degenerate into a left-wing cronyism thats about whom we drink with, not the work we do. Thats why people dont like us. Were like an exclusive clique no one wants to join. We bum people out. We want everyone to know how miserable things are, and how superior we are for knowing it. We pretend the Fingerpainting Pansexual TIC-Owners of Eastern Hayes Valley Democratic Club is a credible coalition partner. We burn bridges over obscure beefs. We include people whose only activism is calling people whores on Facebook. Some of us need a hug, not to be anointed the voice of the community. San Francisco is not now and never has been majority progressive. Although our patron saint is Harvey Milk, Dan White was from here. Which means that since David Campos is the intellectual descendent of Harvey Milk, then tech mogul Ron Conway is the intellectual descendent of Dan White. Because having a billion dollars makes you more likely to be a sociopath, because both Conway and White embody backlash politics against uppity minorities, and because bullets and evictions both effectively dispose of us riffraff. Winning elections requires finally learning the lessons we dont learn every year. For starters, we may have to wake up before 10 a.m. Well need to do something truly subversive, like schlep to Visitacion Valley to ask people what they think. We may need to shoehorn engaging those voters for whom Harvey Milk is just a Humphry Slocombe flavor into our busy schedule of Burning Man decompression parties, Yelping and building puppets. Surely by now my comrades are poised to denounce me. Heres an out-of-the-box notion, though it may go against our mission: how about we try winning for once instead? We could achieve the leftist Holy Grail: high-rise affordable housing on Billionaires Row. Its on my bucket list. Whos in? Nato Green is a standup comedian, San Francisco native, and union activist. He perform standup every Friday with The Business at Hemlock Tavern and hosts a podcast called The Nato Sessions.

Read more from the original source:
A recipe for a SF progressive comeback at the polls

MANILA Dressed as a Katipunero, actor Robin Padilla attended the November 30 Bonifacio Day rites led by Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in Liwasang Bonifacio.

Before the main program started where he read the 14 code of conduct of the Katipunero written by Emilio Jacinto, he dropped by at the campout of the 300-plus Manilakbayan ng Mindanao.

Padilla expressed support to the campaign of Manilakbayan and vowed that he will join the struggle of the indigenous peoples of Mindanao since he had been struggling for the welfare of indigenous peoples anyway. Padilla told the lumad leaders he would also approach his fellow celebrities supportive of cultural minorities, for example Dingdong Dantes, Piolo Pascual, Venus Raj.

Datu Jomorito Guaynon, spokesman of Manilakbayan ng Mindanao, told Bulatlat.com that what Robin Padilla promised is significant to them. As Padilla quipped, many people may play deaf and blind to the indigenous peoples struggle and calls, but if actors and actresses also speak out, these people may unite and throw support. Padilla said he can lend support that way.

Padilla addressed the protesters at Liwasang Bonifacio as fellow revolutionaries.

Text and photos by MARYA SALAMAT

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Robin Padilla joins progressives commemoration of Andres Bonifacio