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Story here. From The Telegraph (UK)

Must be Nigeria's support of Israel. Or the history of Nigerian colonial expansion in the Middle East. Or the Nigerian backing for the Crusades.

The group is made up of former students who want hardline Islamic sharia to be the dominant legal system across all of Nigeria. Africa's most populous nation is made up of roughly equal numbers of Christians and Muslims.

A member of the gang who was wounded during the initial attack on the police station told Reuters the group wanted to "clean the (Nigerian) system which is polluted by Western education and uphold sharia all over the country."


Militant Islam is not simply reactive to Western actions: Militant Islam has its own agenda derived from its core beliefs.
I have wondered what might take priority over F-22s in the latest military budget. The article linked by Instapundit makes a good case for more and newer communications-jamming aircraft.

But there’s ample evidence that electronic-warfare planes really are more useful in today’s wars. In the early days of the Afghanistan conflict, the U.S. Air Force, Navy and Marines cobbled together a makeshift armada of jamming planes — Air Force EC-130H Compass Calls and Navy and Marine EA-6B Prowlers — capable of zeroing out the Taliban’s communications. That armada subsequently shifted to Iraq, then back to Afghanistan as the Iraq war winds down. Last week, the small Compass Call detachment at Bagram airbase, in Afghanistan, marked its 2,000th Afghanistan mission. “There are only 14 of these aircraft in the Air Force,” Maj. James Bands said. “So it’s taken four years of constant flying at about 2,000-3,000 hours on one aircraft a year, in order to accomplish this.”
This afternoon my wife and I bought a small shelving unit at a business supply big box store. Is is solid wood.

On the way home I meditated on the fact it was "Made in Thailand."

What are the odds the shelving unit is a product of sustainable logging?

Earlier this year my wife and I shopped for a bedroom set, our first, as a 30th wedding anniversary present to ourselves.

Most of what we saw were made in China. Given China's environmental record, I strongly suspect that buying Made in China furniture is environmentally irresponsible. Perhaps that is why manufacturers are pushing dark-colored pieces--the finish hides tropical mystery wood.

We bought a Made in the USA set that is mostly constructed wood, though if our budget had been larger, we would have gone for Made in America solid hardwood.

Free trade is trade without a conscience. Free trade gives advantage to foreign goods produced without the environmental and safety regulations that protect American workers, and our environment. Fair trade would be better.