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As Jonathan's witch-hunt continues, outspoken critic Femi Fani-Kayode ordered to be re-arraigned for money laundering
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| Femi Fani-Kayode |
LAGOS, NIGERIA - A Federal High Court on Monday, ordered the re-arraignment of former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, facing charges of money laundering.
Justice Rita Ofili-Ajumogobia, who was recently mired in controversy surrounding her physical assault on a clerical officer attached to her office, gave the order while ruling on an application of objection filed by defense counsel for the accused, Femi Fani-Kayode.
The prosecutor, Mr Festus Keyamo, on Jan. 27, filed an amended 40-count charge bothering on money laundering against Fani-Kayode and urged the court to order him take his plea.
Fani-Kayode was first arraigned December 2008, on a 47-count charge of money laundering and he had pleaded not guilty to the charge.
He was then granted bail, at the time.
The prosecutor told the court that the offence contravened the provisions of sections 15(1) (a) (b) (c) (d) and 15 (2) (a) (b) of the Money Laundering (prohibition) Act, 2004.
But Adedipe objected to the amended charge preferred against his client.
He argued that the amended charge was invalid as it did not disclose the identity of the source from whom the accused allegedly obtained the money.
He further submitted that his client was therefore not in a position to take his plea in the matter and described the charge as “ incompetent”.
Ruling on the application on Monday, Ofili-Ajumogobia ordered the accused to take his plea.
She held that it was an abject misconception on the part of the defense counsel to have raised the objection in the first place.
"The charge against the accused is valid and hereby sustained. The objection raised by the defense counsel lacks merit and should not have been raised in the first place. The accused is hereby directed to plead to the charge.”
The judge also agreed with the Prosecution’s submission that the non disclosure of the identity of the giver or receiver of the money was immaterial and could not affect the validity of the charge.
She, therefore, adjourned the case to March 5 to enable the prosecutor re-arraign the accused on the charge of money laundering.
Thus, as it has now become common place with the Jonathan administration, the current Aviation Minister, Stella Oduah, continues in that same role despite allegations and evidence of high level corruption (including egregious Code of Conduct violations) while the president continues his ill-advised witch-hunt of political opponents.
Holder’s same-sex marriage move stirs up separation of powers debate
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| Attorney General Eric Holder |
Attorney General Eric Holder is making sweeping changes about how the federal government extends rights to legally married same-sex couples, in areas where the Justice Department has jurisdiction. The move should add more fuel to the debate over the roles of the executive, Congress and the states in deciding social issues.
The official policy statement will come from Holder on Monday, but news of it leaked out on Saturday before Holder made a public speech in Manhattan on Saturday night.
Holder, in the latest series of steps promised by the Obama administration, will issue a Justice Department policy memo. The directive will say that same-sex couples, who are legally married under the laws of a state that recognizes such unions, should receive equal benefits and treatment in areas like federal lawsuits and the U.S. court system, as well as in federal prisons.
“This means that, in every courthouse, in every proceeding and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stands on behalf of the United States — they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections, and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Holder said at the Human Rights Campaign’s Greater New York Gala at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.
The move comes almost three years after the Justice Department said it wouldn’t defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court and about seven months after the Supreme Court said a key part of DOMAwas unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment, in the United States v. Windsor case.
Two groups opposed the move, issuing statements questioning the Justice Department’s policy directive as infringing on states’ rights or overstepping the Executive’s constitutional authority.
“This is just the latest in a series of moves by the Obama administration, and in particular the Department of Justice, to undermine the authority and sovereignty of the states to make their own determinations regulating the institution of marriage,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said in the statement. “The American public needs to realize how egregious and how dangerous these usurpations are and how far-reaching the implications can be. The changes being proposed here . . . serve as a potent reminder of why it is simply a lie to say that redefining marriage doesn’t affect everyone in society.”
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said the Justice Department’s move was a stretch into territory not yet settled by the Supreme Court.
“While the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Windsor case last summer required the federal government to recognize such unions in states which also recognize them, the Court was conspicuously silent on the status of such couples when they reside in a state which considers them unmarried,” Perkins said. He wants the issue settled in Congress and pointed to proposed legislation that would force the federal government to defer to the states when it comes to treating same-sex couples married in another state.
Holder cast the decision as the latest step in the nation’s evolving struggle with Civil Rights.
“The Justice Department’s role in confronting discrimination must be as aggressive today as it was in Robert Kennedy’s time,” Holder said on Saturday. “As Attorney General, I will not let this department be simply a bystander during this important moment in history.”
Currently, same-sex marriages are legal in 17 states and the District of Columbia, while 33 states don’t recognize same-sex marriages through various legal or statutory means.
Holder’s move has already agitated opponents who believe President Obama is legislating from the White House by using executive orders and Justice Department memos to make policy decisions that should fall to Congress, or the courts.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also is supporting a possible Obama executive order that would ban workplace discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender federal contractors. The Senate has passed a bill on the matter that has been stalled in the House.
Every president since George Washington has issued executive orders, with the assumed authority under Article II of the Constitution, based on the president’s role as the chief executive and commander in chief, and his powers to make sure laws are “faithfully executed.” (Holder’s directive, while not an executive order, will have a similar policy effect.)
This power is limited, however. In 1952, the Supreme Court overturned an order to nationalize steel mills during the Korean War. “The President’s power to see that laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker,” said Justice Hugo Black.
In the Windsor decision about DOMA, Justice Anthony Kennedy did confirm in the Court’s majority opinion that “by history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States.”
But Kennedy said since DOMA affected more than 1,000 federal statutes by limiting federal benefits eligibility to opposite-sex couples, it violated the rights same-sex couples already had in states where they were legally married, by forcing them to live as “unmarried” for federal purposes.
Since the June 2013 DOMA decision, the Obama administration moved to extend equal work benefits and tax considerations to same-sex couples who are federal employees.
Holder is also involved in a controversy in Utah over a U.S. district judge’s ruling in December that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court later stayed that decision pending appeal, and Holder said he would ensure that about 1,300 same-sex Utah couples married in a 17-day period between judicial rulings would receive federal benefits.
Scott Bomboy is the editor-in-chief of the National Constitution Center.
Wednesday
John Thompson is Microsoft's new Chairman
CC Insight
Former CEO of data security company Symantec Inc. and current CEO of Virtual Instruments John Thompson, is to replace Bill Gates as the new Chairman of the Redmond, Washington based software giant.
Here (below) is an insight into the search process he (Thompson) oversaw that ultimately led to the selection of the new CEO, Satya Nadella.
Former CEO of data security company Symantec Inc. and current CEO of Virtual Instruments John Thompson, is to replace Bill Gates as the new Chairman of the Redmond, Washington based software giant.
Here (below) is an insight into the search process he (Thompson) oversaw that ultimately led to the selection of the new CEO, Satya Nadella.
Niger Republic calls on U.S. and the West to "deal with what they created....."
Niger Republic on Wednesday called for Western intervention to eradicate a growing threat from Islamist fighters who have established bases in southern Libya since the 2011 overthrow of Moamer Kadhafi.
"The powers who intervened to overthrow Colonel Gaddaffi -- after which Libya became the main sanctuary for terrorists -- need to provide an after-sales service," Niger's Interior Minister Massoudou Hassoumi stressed to reporters.
"It would be totally legitimate for France and the United States to intervene to eradicate the terrorist threat in the south of Libya," Hassoumi added during a visit to Paris.
Niger, an impoverished but mineral-rich former French colony which adjoins southern Libya, has had to contend with numerous Islamist attacks and kidnappings on its own soil, some of which have threatened the security of its uranium production.
Hassoumi said US intelligence chief James Clapper had been right to highlight, in an annual report published in December, the extent to which sub-Saharan Africa had become a "hothouse" for extremists, thanks to the Western-led overthrow of Gaddaffi.
"More precisely, he should have said that the south of Libya is now an incubator for terrorist groups," Hassoumi added.
"I think awareness of the threat posed by southern Libya is quite strong and an intervention is within the bounds of the possible."
The US intelligence assessment presented by Clapper warned that a power vacuum in Libya, where the government is struggling to counter well-armed militias, was fuelling extremist groups across the region, posing an "acute" terror threat that neighbouring countries lack the capacity, and sometimes the will, to counter.
Gaddaffi, who had ruled Libya as a dictatorship from 1969, was toppled by a popular uprising that was backed up by Western military action.
Tuesday
Dark Nazi past in Brazil
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| Bricks stamped with swastika (Credits: BBC World Service) |
On a farm deep in the countryside 100 miles west from Sao Paulo, a football team has lined up for a commemorative photograph. What makes the image extraordinary is the symbol on the team's flag - a swastika.
The picture probably dates from some time in the 1930s, after the Nazi Party's rise to power in Germany - but this was on the other side of the world.
"Nothing explained the presence of a swastika here," says Jose Ricardo Rosa Maciel, former rancher at the remote Cruzeiro do Sul farm near Campina do Monte Alegre, who stumbled across the photograph one day.
But this was actually his second puzzling discovery. The first occurred in the pigsty.
"One day the pigs broke a wall and escaped into the field," he says. "I noticed the bricks that had fallen. I thought I was hallucinating."
The underside of each brick was stamped with the swastika.
It's well known that pre-war Brazil had strong links with Nazi Germany - the two were economic partners and Brazil had the biggest fascist party outside Europe, with more than 40,000 members.
But it was years before Maciel - thanks to detective work by history professor Sidney Aguilar Filho - learned the grim story of his farm's links to Brazil's fascists.
Filho established that the farm had once been owned by the Rocha Mirandas, a family of wealthy industrialists from Rio de Janeiro. Three of them - father Renato and two of his sons, Otavio and Osvaldo - were members of the Acao Integralista Brasileira, an extreme right-wing organisation, sympathetic to the Nazis.
The family sometimes held rallies on the farm, hosting thousands of the organisation's members. But it was also a brutal work-camp for abandoned - and non-white - children.
"I found a story of 50 boys aged around 10 years old who had been taken from an orphanage in Rio," says Filho. "They were taken in three waves. The first was a group of 10 in 1933."
Osvaldo Rocha Miranda applied to be a guardian of the orphans, according to documents discovered by Filho, and a legal decree was granted.
"He sent his driver, who put us in a corner," says 90-year-old Aloysio da Silva, one of the first orphans conscripted to work on the farm.
"Osvaldo was pointing with a cane - 'Put that one over there, this one here' - and from 20 boys, he took 10.
"He promised the world - that we would play football, go horse-riding. But there wasn't any of this. The 10 of us were given hoes to clear the weeds and clean up the farm. I was tricked."
The children were subject to regular beatings with a palmatoria, a wooden paddle with holes designed to reduce air resistance and increase pain. They were addressed not by their name, but by a number - Silva's was number 23. Guard dogs ensured they stayed in line.
"One was called Poison, the male, and the female was called Trust," says Silva, who still lives in the area. "I try to avoid talking about it."
Argemiro dos Santos is another survivor. As a boy, he had been found on the streets and taken to an orphanage. Then Rocha Miranda came for him.
"They didn't like black people at all," says Santos, now 89.
"There was punishment, from not giving us food to the palmatoria. It hurt a lot. Two hits sometimes. The most would be five because a person couldn't stand it.
"There were photographs of Hitler and you were compelled to salute. I didn't understand any of it."
Some of the surviving Rocha Miranda family say their forebears stopped supporting Nazism well before World War Two.
Maurice Rocha Miranda, great-nephew of Otavio and Osvaldo, also denies that the children on the farm were kept as "slaves".
He told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaperthat the orphans on the farm "had to be controlled, but were never punished or enslaved".
But Filho believes the survivors' stories. And despite it being a long time ago, both Silva and Santos - who have never met since - tell very similar, harrowing tales.
The orphans' only respite came in football matches against teams of local farm workers such as the one pictured in the photograph with the swastika flag. Football was key to the ideology of the integralistas. Military parades took place at the Vasco da Gama football ground and the game was regularly used for propaganda purposes under Brazil's dictator, Getulio Vargas.
"We'd have a kick around and it evolved," he says. "We had a championship - we were good at football. There was no problem."
But after several years, Santos had had enough.
"There was a gate and I left it ajar," he says. "Later that night, I was out of there. No-one saw."
Santos returned to Rio where, aged 14, he slept rough and worked as a newspaper seller. Then in 1942, after Brazil declared war on Germany, he joined the navy as a taifeiro, waiting on tables and washing up.
He had gone from working for Nazis, to fighting them.
"I was just fulfilling what Brazil needed to do," says Santos. "I couldn't have hate for Hitler - I didn't know the guy! I didn't know who he was."
Santos went on patrol in Europe and then spent much of World War Two working on ships hunting submarines off the Brazilian coast.
Today Santos is known locally by his nickname Marujo - "sailor" - and proudly shows off a certificate and medal that recognises his war service. But he is also famous for another reason - as one of Brazil's top footballers of the 1940s, becoming a midfielder for some of the biggest teams in Brazil.
"At that time professional players didn't exist, it was all amateur," says Santos. "I played for Fluminense, Botafogo, Vasco da Gama. The players were all newspaper sellers and shoeshine boys."
Nowadays Santos lives a quiet life in south-western Brazil with Guilhermina, his wife of 61 years.
"I like to play my trumpet, I like to sit on the veranda, I like to have a cold beer. I have a lot of friends and they pass by and chat," he says.
Memories of the farm, though, are impossible to escape.
"Anyone who says they have had a good life since they were born is lying," he says. "Everyone has something bad that has happened in their life."
Saturday
Protect R&D tax breaks to help stimulate the economy
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| Credits: RandDTax |
There is one thing that has always set the American economy apart; it is the spirit of innovation that drives the American entrepreneur across all verticals to dream big, think hard and take calculated risks, with one singular purpose in mind - change the way things have always been done!
It is however important to understand that the main reason why the innovative spirit has always been alive and well in the United States, is due to the environment that has fostered, encouraged and engendered that spirit.
Over the years, perhaps due to the culture of greed and unbecoming avarice that permeated Corporate America, governmental regulations have become necessary, with the objective of not only protecting the American consumer, but also potentially preserving the integrity of the capitalist system.
My motive for writing this piece is centered in the belief that the bad behavior of corporate executives over the years has projected the wrong image (of Corporate America) with most Americans blaming the recent culture of careless risk-taking and greed, for the economic collapse of 2008.
While there is the push by most state governments and perhaps the federal government to find a way to tax corporations more, as they (the former) seek to balance their budget(s), they are however losing sight of one thing - the path towards real economic recovery and increase in jobs (particularly in the private sector) is through formulation and passing of initiatives, that promote growth, through innovation.
One of the surest ways to promote growth through innovation is in the area of Research & Development (R&D) tax credits.
Created by the U.S. Congress in 1981, the R&D credit has always been supported by the largest group for businesses in the United States - the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as business and industry watchers.
Recently though, critics of the R&D credit have been campaigning against it (and losing, thankfully), calling the tax credit a costly corporate hand-out that has done little to encourage more hiring and investment.
What opponents of the R&D credit however fail to mention is that it remains one of the surest ways to not only help manufacturers achieve cost and efficiency savings, but also help stimulate the economy, through more hiring and increased investment.
At a time when unemployment in the technology sector remains rather low (at less than 3% compared to the general unemployment rate of 8%), removing an avenue for increased investment and improved efficiency would indeed be fool-hardy.
One can only hope that the pervading anti-corporate sentiment does not becloud sound judgment on the part of our elected officials.
Prophet predicts World Cup semi-final berth for Nigeria's Super Eagles.... among other prophecies for 2014
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| Super Eagles for semi-finals of World Cup? |
A new year is upon us and I for one wonder what the fuss is all about - why the fireworks, the endless parties, the resolutions, the yearning to know the future - when in reality the new year for each and everyone should be the day our mothers gave birth to us.
But let us run with the herd and pretend there is a new year to celebrate and that making it into 2014 is worthy of raising a glass and that being alive at the beginning of January is somehow worthier of notice than being dead in December.
And it is a time to look ahead and speculate about the immediate future of this, our continent.
Increasingly, this has become an impossible task - for who could have known that before December was over South Sudan and her precarious peace would have unravelled and the prospect of another war loom large over the long-suffering South Sudanese?
Or that more than 100 people would die in the Democratic Republic of Congo as followers of evangelical Christian pastor Joseph Mukungubila attacked state institutions with gunfire on the second last day of 2013?
Pastor Mukungubila is known as the "prophet of the eternal" and he issued a press statement on his Facebook and Twitter accounts from "the office of the prophet" saying his followers had spontaneously rebelled against soldiers who had attacked his home.
And perhaps it is to these so-called prophets, the seers said to be blessed by holy visions that we should turn in predicting what this year has in store for us all.
Not only do these men say they can predict our uncertain future, they are also credited with performing astounding miracles.
Prophets are everywhere you look in most African countries, ministering to the poor, the needy and the rich.
In Lagos, Nigeria, TB Joshua receives men and women of influence and presidents of different lands.
In Ghana, for these holy men are everywhere, Victor Kusi Boateng replenishes the spiritual needs of other prophets.
It would be foolish for anyone to cast aspersions on the acts of the divinely gifted, these miracle workers, these gardeners of the desert.
But seeing as so many of Africa's urban populations are filling the churches and the prayer halls in search of signs and miracles and salvation, I thought it wise to spend some time surfing the web in search of 2014 predictions for you from those in the know.
For the World Cup, no prophet goes out on a limb to hand the trophy to Africa, although one sees Nigeria's Super Eagles making it to the semi-finals.
Another man of vision informs us that African politicians who depend on corruption for their wealth will fall by the wayside in 2014.
It seems, though, that a principal talent a prophet needs is the ability to foretell a leader's death, or to warn of some kind of attack or natural disaster before it occurs - but without giving us the specifics.
So it is possible we may hear a prophecy that a long-serving African leader will leave us in this 14th year of the new century and we, believing our prophets, will cast our roving eyes around to Eritrea, Zimbabwe or Cameroon and wonder where the prophet really wanted us to look.
We will watch the explosions in Somalia and the kidnappings in Libya or the murders in northern Nigeria and Mali and understand that the prophets have been telling us for some time that terrorism in Africa has been strengthening its grip and our governments must remain alert.
And what of the fate of all Africans all over the world? Despite the Bible and a love of scriptures, the world at large will watch us die in leaking boats in the Mediterranean or killed while crossing deserts as we demonstrate for the right to stay in places like Israel and Saudi Arabia where we are not wanted.
One thing you can be sure of is that 2014 will come and go of its own accord regardless of the prophecies - and it may well be more of the same but not necessarily in that order.
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