France24.com
by Leela Jacinto
February 6, 2013

With their faces obscured behind prodigious indigo turbans and their uncanny navigational skills in a primordial landscape, the Tuareg are perfect Orientalist fantasy material and the French have been working that narrative for over a century.

From the line-etched logo of the famously difficult Dakar Rally, to tourist brochures offering encounters with les mysterieux hommes bleus du Sahara, the mysterious “blue men” are portrayed as “aristocrats of the desert, proud as princes” with a fierce fighting record in a fierce terrain.

“It started with the colonial imagination of looking at a group of people and deciding that one group is more ‘interesting’ compared to the other,” said Mamadou Diouf, director of the Institute for African Studies at Columbia University, New York.

(excerpted)
http://www.france24.com/en/20130205-mali...amist-war-peace

The first time I heard the name Mali in connection to terrorism was when Paul Ryan mentioned it during his debate with Jo(k)e Biden.

You noticed.

If only we could get the rest of America to notice and care about our nation's activities in Africa. I fear that our entanglements there will come back to haunt us.

Quote: Palinista wrote in post #3

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You noticed.

If only we could get the rest of America to notice and care about our nation's activities in Africa. I fear that our entanglements there will come back to haunt us.

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I posted an article the other day about the Tuareg capturing a couple of fleeing al Qaeda leaders and turning them over to the French. That's encouraging.

Quote: FP123 wrote in post #4

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Quote: Palinista wrote in post #3

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You noticed.

If only we could get the rest of America to notice and care about our nation's activities in Africa. I fear that our entanglements there will come back to haunt us.

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Yup, we're all over Africa on the QT, been that way for the last couple of years. Can't figure out what they're up to with all that, but I'm certain it is NG.
(It may "haunt" us as "normal" American citizens, but none of it is accidental happenstance.)

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Quote: Palinista wrote in post #6

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I remember when I learned about the pressure that we use in Uganda. That was the moment when I realized that our nation is not always "the good actor" on the world stage. Elections do have consequences. With Obama as president he can inflict damage on America by how he intervenes in any nation.

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Thanks for posting this. It is a shame that we have to utilize foreign news sources to get real news but thankfully it is much easier to find. Our media is too busy distracting the public with bread and circus crap. I have found a very good news site with an app that links stories to various sources. It includes many foreign news sources so it's easy to see how our MSM is complicit in hiding the truth from us.

http://news360.com/web/#category/1

Quote: steph wrote in post #8

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Thanks for posting this. It is a shame that we have to utilize foreign news sources to get real news but thankfully it is much easier to find. Our media is too busy distracting the public with bread and circus crap. I have found a very good news site with an app that links stories to various sources. It includes many foreign news sources so it's easy to see how our MSM is complicit in hiding the truth from us.

http://news360.com/web/#category/1

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