A Frenchman, Pierre Camatte, has been kidnapped in Mali by Al-Qaeda’s north African branch, a Malian security official said. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is the group which killed a Briton in May, the first time the Islamists had executed a Western hostage. The kidnapping prompted France to urge its citizens to “immediately leave the area due to a new escalation in the terrorist threat.” French people in Kidal, Gao and Tombouctou regions should “head back without delay to the capital,” the French foreign ministry said in a statement. They also urged its citizens to avoid northern Niger, which borders Mali. Camatte was snatched from his hotel in Menaka in the Sahel region of northern Mali, more than 1,500 kms from the capital Bamako and about 100 kms from the border with Niger, the region is plagued by Tuareg rebels, Al-Qaeda militants and traffickers. Mr Camatte is a regular visitor to Mali, where he is cultivating a plant known for its anti-malarial properties, he also manages a hotel.

I purchased Favorite, by Karen McQuestion, because I enjoyed her previous book, Lies I Told My Children.

Angel Favorite’s mother disappeared five years ago. Today, Angel is the victim of a brutal attack. Are the two events linked?

4 Stars

Plot/Storyline: 3 Stars
Firmly entrenched in the Young Adult genre, this book does not deviate from that style, catering mainly to the very young teen. However, it is an interesting story that held my attention throughout, if for no other reason than to learn the outcome.

As an adult, I found the plot to be simplistic without much meat to it. We are given some background, but the information is sparse and delivered without much emotion.

There is also not enough background or justification for the villains’ actions. There is perhaps a thin thread signifying insanity, but to me, just implying someone is crazy is not good enough in fiction.

I found it extremely odd that everyone made such a big deal about leaving a sixteen and seventeen year old home alone for a few days. Sure, Angel had been attacked, but the culprit was behind bars. For the most part, though, that wasn’t even brought up. The general concern was simply that two ‘minors’ were left home alone.

The initial attack on Angel was very well presented. The suspense was excellent, and the details were just right, not overwhelming or confusing.

The entire ‘feel-good’ ending left me pretty much cold. There wasn’t enough emotional investment in the story to really enjoy it.

Character Development: 3 Stars

Angel Favorite much too often appears younger than her sixteen years. Her initial animosity toward her attacker’s mother was somewhat understandable; however, it continued far too long with no real provocation, giving Angel an even more immature attitude. Oddly, no adult ever had a conversation with her to explain that it was not necessarily the mother’s fault.

Angel’s brother does come across with a maturity commisserate with his age. The father seemed oblivious to everything but himself and his music which made me wonder what Angel’s mother was like and how she managed to stay with such a self-centered person.

Writing Style: 5 Stars

The writing style was pretty good for a Young Adult novel. I assumed the author was aiming at the thirteen to sixteen year old crowd, and, if so, the sentence structure and vocabulary used were right on target. The descriptions were pretty sparse, but they did get the job done. Excellent voices were heard in the dialogue.

Editing/Formatting: 5 Stars

Both were of professional quality.

Rating: PG-13 due to Violence.

————————————–

I have to admit that while I enjoy some Young Adult novels, I do have to review them from an adult perspective, which may cause some ‘downgrading’ when it comes to rating. However, I also feel that a teenaged discerning reader might feel the same way about these issues that I do. Teenagers are simply more mature in this day and age. Books have to compete with movies and television. I’m not saying that books need to be more violent or graphic, simply that it could take a little more maturity in the storyline these days to hold a teen’s attention.

———————————–

Here are some comments from the author, Karen McQuestion:

I’m a freelance writer who lives in Hartland, Wisconsin. I’ve been writing since grade school but didn’t start writing novels until the youngest of my three children was in preschool. Favorite was an early project that was completely rewritten and revised countless times. The title changed along with the manuscript from Angel Favorite to Finding Angie and Saving Angie. In the original version, the main character, Angie Favorite, was an adult woman and single mother to Jason. At that time, I had an agent who submitted it on my behalf, but although it made it through a few publishing hoops, no one offered to publish it. Even after I broke ties with that agent (he left the business) I still couldn’t get this story out of my head.

Periodically I’d work on it, making myself crazy by taking things out and adding things in. Eventually I had a eureka moment—the flaw in the story was the main character’s age. Once I changed the plot so that Angie was a teenager, the whole thing came together. Of course, that required a complete rewrite. Her son became her brother, her ex-husband became her father etc. Angie’s missing parent was now her mother, not her father, and the ending changed as well. The new version seemed just right to me and the title, Favorite, obvious for its double meaning both as a last name and also for the definition of the word.

When I learned authors could self-publish on Kindle that seemed the surest avenue to getting a book out in the world. Favorite is actually my fourth title to be released on Kindle. I’d been gratified by the sales and feedback I’ve gotten for my previous three books. I hope readers enjoy Favorite.

Favorite, by Karen McQuestion

Kilde: Bortført.no / Nyheter

Da Evas sønn ble bortført nektet politiet å motta anmeldelsen. Hun fikk ingen hjelp. Verdifull tid gikk tapt og hun bestemte seg for å leie inn eksperthjelp fra ABP World Group.

Gutten hadde blitt bortført til Mitrovica i Kosovo av barnefar og Eva ønsket hjelp med å lokalisere og bringe ham hjem.

Det ble sendt et 3 manns team ifra ABP til Kosovo. Byrået har kontaktnettverk i de fleste land i verden, og det gjelder også Balkan. De har og taktiske team som ved behov kan hente ut barnet fysisk fra bortførers oppholdssted.

Huset der barnet befant seg ble lokalisert, samt møter med lokale maktpersoner med beslutningsansvar ble avholdt, slik som politisjefer, ministre, Department of Justice i Pristina med flere.

Martin Waage fra ABP hadde via kontakter ordnet seg med en høyerestående polititjenestemann som guide og “døråpner”. Ambassadøren, Sverre Johan Kvaale, og hans medarbeidere forklarte om hva de kunne assistere med og hva som var deres begrensninger, men påpekte at de var mer enn velvillige til å gjøre hva som kunne gjøres fra deres side.

For å gjøre en lang historie kort: Evas sønn ble returnert to måneder etter at Waage hadde fått oppdraget. Saken løste seg med fredlige midler.

Hvert år blir om lag 50 norske barn bortført til utlandet. Myndighetene viser liten vilje og handlekraft til å få returnert norske barn. Norske myndigheter klarer ikke å få til samme resultat som Martin Waage fra ABP – ganske enkelt fordi de ikke prioriterer disse barna.

Vi ser gang på gang at myndighetene gir foreldre urealistiske forventninger om sjansene til å få tilbake barna med rettslige midler. Foreldre henvises til lange, kostbare, og som oftest, håpløse rettsprosser i utlandet. Vi ønsker å gjøre noe aktivt slik at flere bortførte barn returneres til Norge og at det blir mindre attraktivt å bortføre norske barn.

Bortført-fondet skal gjøre foreldre i stand til å kjøpe inn tjenester fra spesialister i sikkerhetsoppdrag, som skal lokalisere og tilbakeføre bortførte barn til Norge.

Vil du hjelpe? Besøk Bortført.no

After spending 15 months in captivity, journalists Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan have been released after their families paid their Somalian captors an estimated ransom of one million dollars.

The pair had been abducted in August 2008 near Somalia’s capital city Mogadishu after only being the country for a few days. They were covering a story together on the Somalia people fleeing the fierce militia clashes taking place in the capital.

Both freelance and with no media organisations to aid them, Lindhout and Brennen had to rely on their families to fit the enormous random demand, which included remortgaged houses and hiring a private security company to ensure the pair would be delivered safely.

Their days in captivity were “extremely oppressive”, with Lindhout kept in a room with no windows and a single light during the majority of her 15 month imprisonment. Brennen had been kept in chains since February.

Both journalists speak of being tortured and pressured to beg for money over the phone to their families. Several Somalian websites claimed that Amanda Lindhout had become pregnant during her kidnapping.

This release comes within a month of journalist murders in the Philippines. Very few journalists enter Somalia due to the country being riddled with militia rule and criminal organisations. Earlier in the year Sunday Telegraph foreign correspondent Colin Freeman was freed after being kidnapped for 40 days along with a Spanish associate in Somalia’s fishing port Bossaso.

The before and after pictures of their pairs kidnapping is striking, and shows more than what any amount of words could.

Brennan before kidnapping

Lindhout before kidnapping

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/26/kidnapped-journalists-freed-somalia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/06/sunday-telegraph-colin-freeman-describes-somalia-kidnap

Triangle Charity has stated two of their French aid workers have been kidnapped in the Central African Republic, by gunmen in the town of Birao, on the border with Chad and Sudan. The abductions are the latest to hit aid agencies working in the region, with French workers taken in Chad this month and Sudan last month. A local elder told AFP news the armed kidnappers, numbering about 20, fled to Sudan with their hostages, as well as three cars and a motorbike. The International Red Cross temporarily suspended operations in Chad after a French employee was abducted by armed men in eastern Chad on 9 November. The employee, Laurent Maurice, remains missing.

As many of you already know, I’ve taken a keen interest in following the story of Amanda Lindhout, a Canadian journalist that was captured by Somalian kidnappers and held for ransom.

Whatever prayers people have been whispering across the nation and world have finally been answered and she has been released after 15 months in captivity!

You can read about her ordeal here.

It’s hard to explain why this story means so much to me, but I think it has a lot to do with how it could be any of us.  She is a courageous and dedicated journalist that just went out to do her job and found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It’s a lesson that every reporter should take heed to and hold at the back of their minds as they continue traveling to the most lawless and desolate corners of the Earth to tell the stories that should really matter to the public.  She’s paid a great price, but luckily, it wasn’t the ultimate one.

All my blessings to Amanda and her family.  I know this Christmas will be one happy holiday this year for you and yours.

-Rove Reporter

“When you finally go back to your old hometown, you find it wasn’t the old home you missed but your childhood” Sam Ewing

I realized when thinking about the subject matter of this blog that it would have been much easier had I chosen the opposite title, “what I miss least about Lebanon”. That would have been quite concise as an article. Where to begin listing what one likes about one’s home. How do you quantify nostalgia for a place you spent your adult life running away from? How do you verbalize intense longing for streets where you ran as bullets ricocheted on your way to and from a shelter. Is it possible to have an intense feeling of loss when not living in a place where one saw death at a young age, senseless death of friends, in a war one understood nothing of, and lived through like a spectator forced to experience the whole drama. But that is not the part that springs to my mind when Lebanon is mentioned. I drift to thoughts of friendships, too strong to be waned by distance and time.

I think of the music, going out to dance, and then seriously and wholeheartedly dance till dawn, going for an after party breakfast before heading home, laughing and recounting the events of the night with a friend, and waking up a few hours later to go to work or university or whatever people do when they are not partying. Living life to the full was a fact we all accepted as the antidote to the horrors that were happening around us. You had to live it up, even if you died trying. A few of our friends did, die trying. I got kidnapped trying. With a group of friends, now scattered all over the world. They are forever my partners in that adventure, we cemented our friendship when we said goodbye to each other in that dark night in Beirut, battles raging around us, at a moment we were certain we were going to get shot. I appreciated that night what sheep must have felt when led to the slaughter. Not unlike us that night, they adopt a resigned attitude, they accept the eventuality of it all. I don’t miss that part of life in Beirut.

I miss the humanity that unites friends being kidnapped together and saying goodbye to each other, accepting the destiny that was to unite them. In a moment of survival instinct that night, I blew it. I went to one of our kidnappers, and asked him if he would let us three girls go free and take our two male friends instead. I didn’t think of what I was asking, I just wanted not to be raped by the horribly smelly men with beards who were threatening to kill us. My two friends who I offered as a hostage in our place remind me of what I said until now. One of them is still my best friend, and I love him dearly, but I could have lost him if the heavens did not intervene to keep the five of us together with the gruff men, who turned out to be after our money and jewelry at the end of the day.

with my cool bro, who takes me out to the best clubs in Lebanon

I loved my life in Beirut at all times, the good and the bad, the sense of recklessness that defined everything we did, defying death many times, and having a warped sense of who we were, and how oblivious we were to our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. How expandable we were back then, the very definition of collateral damage. I still miss Lebanon despite everything. There is more to reminisce about in future entries, but this experience came to mind tonight and had to be recounted. Maybe because I spoke to one of my kidnap adventure friends when I was recently in New York, and how happy I was to hear his voice. You rock, Arian Doc. Thanks for teasing me about my brainlessness that night, my humanity is strengthened each time we talk about it.

Angel Miguel Perez

Charleston, SC- If you are a mother or about to be a mother, I really hope you read this article. If you are a mother then you know how tempting it is to think “I’m just going to run in and do this, it will only take a second” and leave your baby resting in his carseat. It makes things so much more convenient for us and the baby won’t be interrupted from his blissful slumber. But while we are thinking these thoughts, somehow we fail to think about in those seconds the many things that can go wrong.

In the case of Angel Miguel Perez, something did go horribly wrong. Is started out pretty normal for Angel’s mother on Monday. She did all the normal stuff all us mothers do, such as doctors appointments, shopping, etc. She had one more stop to make before she would be finished. She needed to run in the post office to buy some stamps. She decided to leave little Angel in the car and left the car running all the doors were locked except the driver’s door. When she came out of the post office, little Angel was missing.

A witness reported seeing a heavyset black woman, believed to be in her mid 20’s “that was sort of running across the parking lot of the post office to a nearby church parking lot with a child in hand”. The witness described the suspects car as a silver or grey four door compact car with a rear spoiler. The suspect is being described as 5′1″ tall and about 175 pounds, wearing a blue and white striped shirt.

Source

On Sunday afternoon in  a Fayetteville, North Carolina church, Manna Church, the world,family and friends said goodbye to Shaniya Davis. Shaniya had captured the heart of the world, after it was discovered that her own mother had sold her into bondage as a sex slave,to Mario McNeill, who brutally raped and murdered the little child.

More than 2000 people were inside the church to support Bradley Lockhart, Shaniyas dad, and the man who made the decision to send Shaniya back to her mother,after having raised the child for the full 5 years of her life,which directly led to her death.

“Don’t let God’s words and don’t let his actions get you down,” Lockhart told the packed congregation. “He did this for a reason.”

Shaniya Davis funeral was open to the public and was standing room only.Lockhart urged the 1,500 crowded into Manna Church and another 500 watching the service from an adjacent building to help the community’s needy, according to press reports.

As mourners filled the church, a photo display of Shaniya Davis was streamed on the overhead projector. Never before released photos of Shaniya were displayed. These photos showed Shaniya with her father, Bradley Lockhart and her siblings.

Lockhart said, “Shaniya, Daddy love you honey. And I know you’re gonna’ be waiting for me … I’ll see you when I get there.”

White doves were released at her graveside as the little child Shaniya was laid to her eternal resting place.

Click on the link below to view a comprehensive sideshow of pictures covering the Shaniya Davis funeral…

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/10/01/crimesider/entry5356401.shtml

I went to the Museum of Brands in Notting Hill yesterday. It was surprisingly traumatic. I took some photos:

It’s actually the second time I’ve gone there. The first time was in the summer when I had some time off work. I’d gone on a Monday and hadn’t checked their website. They’re closed on Mondays. Disappointed, I went to the nearby Walmer Castle to have an overpriced pint. It was a very hot day and there were two men sitting at the table outside. I bought a pint and sat on a leather sofa in the back. After a while, one of the men outside came in and asked the barman if he had any sun cream. The barman, understandably, didn’t know why the hell this man was asking him for sun cream. He’s a barman in a pub, he doesn’t work in Superdrug.

A couple came in with a baby in a pushchair. They parked the pushchair at the bottom of the stairs near where I was sitting and went upstairs. The baby was asleep. One of the men from outside – not the one who had asked for the sun cream, he was too ashamed – brought in the glasses and they left. Downing the last of a pint as you stride over to the bar and put your glass down is one of my favourite things in the world and I could tell this guy enjoyed it too. There’s something so reassuring about it. In that moment I know exactly who I am. Here I stand, a man. And here you stand, landlord of this fine establishment. We are men. We know our roles in society. I place my glass here and flick my eyebrows. You silently nod. No need for further dialogue. Everything we need to say is communicated by my eyebrow flick and your silent nod. We are playing our parts in this drama and we play them well. This could be any moment in history but it is today. Sometimes, when I’m feeling lonely, I’ll go into a pub and buy a pint specifically to enjoy this split second of intimacy; this passing bond.

The two men left. After a couple of minutes, the mother of the baby came downstairs and checked on him. He was still asleep. She went back up stairs. Every five minutes or so, she would come downstairs to check on him. I realised there was a Thai restaurant upstairs. They were having lunch. They’d left their baby downstairs in a pub so they could have lunch. The barman went out a door at the back of the pub and a barmaid came in. She looked at me, and the baby in the pushchair and smiled. It occurred to me that she probably thought the baby was with me. It also occurred to me that the two people who had seen me go into the pub had left. Finally, it occurred to me that if I waited until the woman upstairs came down one more time, I’d then have a window of about five or ten minutes where I could steal the baby and be out of sight before anyone even knew anything was wrong.

I wasn’t really sure what I would do with the baby. If I could get a taxi, I’d be well out of the area before the police were called, but then what would I do? I couldn’t take the baby home. How could I explain the fact that all of a sudden, I had a baby boy in a pushchair? In fact, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. I didn’t even want the baby. And yet, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I’d just finish my drink and walk out with the baby. A courteous nod to the barmaid. Everything is fine. I’m leaving now with my baby. A dialogue started in my head. Part of me planning how I would steal the baby; the other part, increasingly nervous, was asking if I was serious. “Just finish your drink and walk out with the baby” said one voice. “OK, but you are only kidding, right? You know you’re not actually going to steal the baby, don’t you? You know this is just some idle daydream” said the other. “She thinks he’s your baby anyway, she won’t think there’s anything wrong”.

It’s safe to say that if I did steal the baby, my life would be changed forever. There would be no going back. I would be arrested, charged and convicted. At the trial, I would be unable to offer any defence or explanation for my actions. All I would be able to say is “I saw an opportunity”. I would go to prison. I would probably become a tabloid hate figure. My family would possibly disown me, my sister would definitely never ask me to babysit. I’d struggle to get a job. Nothing would be the same ever again.

Sometimes I wish I’d taken that baby.

The last few weeks three faces dominated the local news broadcast. The first  was that of 5 year old Shaniya Davis, curly haired and caramel complected, smiling in a white dress and sunday shoes. The second was that of Mario McNeil, the man accused of kidnapping her from Sleepy Hollow Mobile Home Park 5 minutes down the road from where I now live. The third was Antoinette Davis, Shaniyah’s mother. If you’re up on current events, which you should be due to the influx of information present on television and computer screens, you already know what became of the little girl with the bright smile. She was sexually assaulted, asphyxiated, and dumped in a wooded area on the outskirts of town. This is my city. Fayetteville, NC.  I’m not a behavioral scientist or psychologist so I can’t pretend to know what it was that made Ms. Davis give her daughter over with the knowledge she would be held in “sexual servitude” or what drives a grown man to assault and strangle a young girl, but I do know that Shaniyah was a divine light, an angel, and her death was not without purpose. Every time a tragedy like this takes place it’s like the check engine light on a car. There’s something that needs to be fixed, there’s an underlying issue that needs to be addressed. Like that squeak when you press on the breaks. It’s telling you something. Now you can keep riding like you don’t hear it but wait until the day when your breaks lock up, what are going to do then?. I read a quote by  Anne Graham Lotz , daughter of Evangelist Billy Graham, dealing with the end of days and the signs before hand as Jesus explained them in the Bible. When I read it, it struck a chord with me and certain events I see on the news remind me of it often…..

“Like a woman in childbirth whose labor pains increase in frequency and intensity before the baby is delivered the world will experience natural disasters, wars, epidemics,  religious delusion and deception, persecution of Christians, an increase in moral wickedness and many other signs.”

Now while I can’t say that I completely believe in the ’second coming’ or apocalypse from a religious perspective,  I definitely feel Ms. Lotz on this one, these are the words of Jesus, uttered thousands of years ago and one can’t help but recognize the truth in them. Take shooting rampages for example, the first one to really devastate on a national level was Columbine, now it’s been Virginia Tech, the Holocaust Museum, LA Fitness,  Ft Hood…..frequency and intensity. The youngest of us are being slaughtered and brutalized. Every time you turn on the news it’s another sweet face and another shocking story to tell.  It’s just sad, on so many levels. I want to have children one day, but I often wonder exactly wat type of world would I be bringing a child into?  Is what we’re confronted with now just the nature of human beings or have we allowed our nature to become corrupted? How much have we allowed our humanity and overall respect for life to be eroded with the sands of time?  The saddest thing to me is, this isn’t the first post I’ve dedicated to  a child thrust into the national spotlight for all the wrong reasons and I know it won’t be the last. I just wonder how many more innocent lives will be lost stolen before we as a society deal with the crap we have swept under our rug?  Shaniya was laid to rest today at 3pm and from what I heard the community came out in droves to pay their respects. She was a divine light, an angel, who in her passing became a beacon regarded by many near and far.  May she eternally and blissfully rest in peace.

Junebug Obama hits it on the head……

Song of the moment: Holiday Dizzee Rascal

So much to write about… so little ambition to do so. Oh well, here goes:

Thursday was opening night of Arsenic and Old Lace. And it went quite well. It’s proof that, despite how fucked up everything seems during tech, Players always manages to scrape shit together and put on a good production. We had a decent-sized, responsive audience, so that was great for the cast.

After the show, it was cast party time (round one). This was the big one at Sean’s, with the full-cast (mostly) champagne toast and all our friends. It was insane. I developed a wonderfully antagonistic relationship with Matt McGee (I approve of where this is heading- toward an angry friendship) and then got super trashed. I don’t remember the end of my night… Ah, blackouts.

Friday was busy. Classes and meetings (with me still a bit hungover), then meeting up with the girls to go into Lansing for a Christmas festival/lighting of the tree by the capitol building. We got on this little bus that was all decorated festively and played crappy 90s Christmas music. When we got there, we wandered toward the crowd to watch the parade.

For the record, that was the strangest parade I’ve ever seen. No one seemed to stick with a holiday theme… except the Auschwitz train. They were so festive.

Then , we had to practically run through a sea of people to catch half of the fireworks show… and missed the lighting of the tree completely. When that was over, we were confused- the event was supposed to last till 9, but it was only 8. So we started wandering down Michigan Ave… where we discovered the coolest, semi-themed bars. There was a medieval one (my personal fav), a cute pub, a harem-inspired one, and a tiki lounge. We’re going to have to bar hop there soon.

The buses were packed, so we couldn’t even get one to stop for us. Because it was chilly, we decided to just start walking toward home, hoping we’d eventually snag a bus along the way. I had an interesting conversation with Chrissy and Emily about my overpowering desire to break into the field of medicine and how I’m disappointed I didn’t go pre-med in college.

And just when we were getting disgruntled, unable to find a bus… we stumble across a fish and chips joint. So, I started blaring some Dizzee Rascal, ordered up some fish and chips (vinegar and all), and proceeded to feel extremely British. It was fantastic.

We end up calling Libby to give us a ride home in her giant van. The middle seat has been removed, so I lay across the floor and pretended to be a kidnap victim the entire time. I don’t think she appreciated it, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

Back to Chrissy’s for cast party number two. It was a lot of freshmen we didn’t know, and I spent most of the party trying to avoid the party (namely by being outside). Floyd and I determined we were soulmates, which was funny. I really do need to hang out with him more, though. After it wound down, I helped Chrissy kick the stragglers out so we could go to Stauff’s and play L4D2.

I had to redeem myself, because I played while super drunk on Thursday… and apparently spent the time cussing out my poor partner and jumping out of windows. Playing sober, though, I was once again competent. And we stayed on normal the whole time (we’ve had to kick it down to easy on a few instances in the past… this game is fucking brutal).

So now I’m sitting in the theatre, watching the tail end of the second performance of Arsenic and Old Lace. Not going to lie, I dozed off through most of it.

Bonus link of the day: The It’s Always Sunny Christmas episode. It’s a thing of beauty.

 He slid in through the basement window and waited until everyone was asleep. He snuck upstairs to her mothers room, put his hand over her mouth and told her if she screamed he would snuff her out. He walked her to her daughters room where she lay sleeping very peacefully. He handcuffed the mother to the bed and told her she would help him rape and snuff her daughter. He took out a knife and ripped her panties off, he was so erect that his bulge was busting out of his pants.  He raped her for hours with her mother sitting helpless not able to help her daughter at all. She was his accomplice as he snuffed her out. Now you know we can’t get into the gory details here but if you want to fantasize with me call me!!!

Nikki

1-877-770-7021

www.accomplicenikki.com

Aim or Yahoo: AccompliceNikki

Child sodomizer and killer McNeill and Antoinette...Shaniyas' rapist and mom pimp...Lets hope they die soon.

This is a story that is truly disturbing for me to report, but it has to happen.

The animal that killed Shaniya Davis must be put to death, the sooner the better is my preferance.I have no mercy for this person, Mario McNeil,or her terrible mother,and the people who supported them to be able to live this long.

I hope they all burn in hell for what they did to little Shaniya.

The AP reports that the 5-year-old North Carolina girl was raped and killed the same day she was taken from her home, according to an arrest warrant released Friday. Shaniya Davis was sexually assaulted and asphyxiated Nov. 10, the day her mother reported her missing from the trailer park where she was staying, according to the warrant.

Mario McNeill is charged with first-degree murder and first-degree rape of a child in the warrant, which was issued after police said they collected hair and fibers, clothes, and a straw from his 1997 Mitsubishi Galant. He was initially charged only with kidnapping.

McNeill seemed nervous as he appeared in court Friday for a brief hearing on the latest charges. He nodded his head slightly to the judge’s questions but did not enter a plea. His lawyer, Allen Rogers, left the courtroom with his client and didn’t speak to reporters. He also didn’t return messages left at his office from The Associated Press.

The girl’s mother, Antoinette Davis, is charged with filing a false police report, trafficking her daughter and child abuse involving prostitution.

Her mother does not believe that her daughter harmed her child….so I say that they all should be thrown in jail with the general population.

She had to have known that her daughter is a pig, and was a danger to her defenseless little grand-daughter while she laid back and allowed it to happen.

She should be ashamed to support her vile and viscous daughter, and I suspect that she was a child abuser and molester, and she more than likely taught her daughter how to be one as well.

I hope they all die by the hands of the justice system.

Meanwhile, Shaniya’s father, Bradley Lockhart, appeared on Friday’s “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” where Winfrey asked him if he had anything to say to Davis. He told The Associated Press earlier that he had cared for Shaniya for several years but decided to give Davis a chance to raise her because she seemed to be getting her life together.

“Right now I just think it’s best that we let the justice system take its course,” Lockhart said on the show. “I try to keep my heart as pure as possible, and I’m sure one day I will be able to sit down and talk to her, try and understand what was going through her mind.”

All I can say is that I wish I could be a juror on that trial, because I would not hesitate to vote the death penalty for these cowards…

Write in and comment on my blog here, and let me know what type of punishment this child rapist Mario McNeill deserves, and what kind of death should her mother Antoinette Davis, that sold her for sex to settle a drug debt, should get, because she absolutely deserves the death penalty…in all 50 states.

The details of this case just make me sick, as it should all civilized human beings.

It is hard for me to look at this idiot, but here is a news report from You tube, courtesy of the AP…

Let me know how you would put him to death….let me know.

Innocent Shaniya patiently waiting to be raped and murdered by the animal Mario McNeill

Let’s pray for his swift and violent death…he has earned all of our hatred.

17th November 09 SANFORD, NC —

For a week, authorities feverishly searched for a 5-year-old girl across central North Carolina, only to find her body Monday off a rural road following accusations the girl’s mother offered her for sex.

The investigation into the disappearance of Shaniya Davis yielded the arrest of her mother and two other men, though one man was later released. Searchers found Shaniya dumped into the woods 30 miles from her hometown of Fayetteville. Hundreds of volunteers hoping to find her alive left the site of the search dejected, unable to bring Shaniya home to an emotional father, her 7-year-old brother and the dolls she loved to play with.

“I still feel kind of sick to my stomach,” said Angela Jackson, 27, from nearby Sanford, who has a two-month-old daughter but searched for consecutive days.

Particularly disturbing were the accusations lodged against Shaniya’s mother, 25-year-old Antoinette Davis. Police charged Davis with human trafficking and felony child abuse, saying Shaniya was offered for prostitution.

Davis was calm and quiet during a court appearance. She provided one-word answers to the judge’s questions. She requested a court-appointed attorney and did not enter a plea.

Her sister, Brenda Davis, 20, said she does not believe the charges.

“I don’t believe she could hurt her children,” said Brenda Davis, who spoke with her sister at the jail Sunday. Davis’ aunt, Yvonne Mitchell, said the mother had two jobs and would never harm the child.

Authorities also charged Mario Andrette McNeill, 29, with kidnapping after they said surveillance footage from a Sanford hotel showed him carrying Shaniya. Authorities said McNeill admitted taking the girl, though his attorney said he will plead not guilty.

Fayetteville police spokeswoman Theresa Chance declined to talk about additional charges. She also wouldn’t comment on a cause of death or the condition of Shaniya’s body, except to say that state investigators found it about 100 feet off the road.

“Detectives have been running off adrenaline to find this little girl and to bring her home alive,” Chance said. “You have a lot of people in shock right now.”

Davis reported Shaniya missing from a mobile home park Tuesday. Authorities first arrested Clarence Coe, but charges against him were dropped a day later when investigators tracked down McNeill after receiving a tip from a hotel employee.

Additional information led investigators to a search site near Sanford on Sunday. They continued searching Monday, scouring miles of landscape, roads, ravines and fields on four-wheelers and with helicopters.

“We were hoping that someone could carry her home,” said Syd Severe, 42, who came from Raleigh to help with the search. “It’s just sick.”

A cluster of emergency vehicles and law enforcement gathered where Shaniya’s body was found. Authorities blocked access to the road, a rural area popular with hunters that is less than a mile from a lakeside community.

On Monday night, dozens of people attended a vigil at a Baptist church about two miles from where the body was found.

“We have kids and it just hit so close to home. It’s unbelievable how somebody can just do something that horrible to something so precious,” said organizer Crystal Godfrey, who lives a few miles from where the body was found.

Shaniya’s father, Bradley Lockhart, said he raised his daughter for several years but last month decided to let her stay with her mother. He had pleaded for her safe return.

Lockhart told The Associated Press on Saturday that he and Davis never argued about him raising Shaniya, and Cumberland County courts had no record of a custody dispute. He described his relationship with Davis as a “one-night stand” and said he did not know McNeill.

Davis struggled financially over the years, but she recently got a job and her own place, so Lockhart said he decided to give her a chance with their daughter.

“I should’ve never let her go over there,” he said Saturday night. A friend at Lockhart’s home Monday afternoon said Lockhart did not want to speak with reporters.

Brian Ross and Matthew Cole broke the story last night on the ABC News website. Their report on “Good Morning America” from Thursday morning (2:51):

Until March 2004, “the site was a riding academy and café owned by a local family” in Antavillai, Lithuania. Then, it was purchased by Elite L.L.C., a front corporation of the Central intelligence Agency, and used as a “secret ‘torture center’” in the Bush Administration’s “extraordinary rendition” kidnapping and torture program, Brian Ross and Matthew Cole report at ABC News from documents provided by Lithuanian officials and confirmed by one current official and a former U.S. intelligence official.

John Sifton, human rights lawyer and executive director of One World Research, investigates human rights abuses worldwide. He recently told Anastasia Churkina at Russia Today that C.I.A. agents kept detainees alive just to keep torturing them and found the C.I.A. “set up extensive detention programs around the world” that started in Thailand and expanded to Afghanistan, Jordan, Poland, Romania and another unknown. The third European site, he was told, bordered Poland and many C.I.A. flights went in and out of Lithuania.

After then-President George W. Bush pledged support for Lithuanian efforts to join the NATO alliance in 2002, Mr. Ross and Mr. Cole report, the government “agreed to allow the C.I.A. prison”. Coincidentally, Lithuania formally joined NATO in March 2004.

ABC News first reported that Lithuania was one of three eastern European countries, along with Poland and Romania, where the CIA secretly interrogated suspected high-value al-Qaeda terrorists, but until now the precise site had not been confirmed….

Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified secret prison program tell ABC News that as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year in the Vilnius prison. Flight logs viewed by ABC News confirm that CIA planes made repeated flights into Lithuania during that period. In November 2005, after public disclosures about the program, the prison was closed, as was another “black site” in Romania….

Former CIA officials told ABC News that the prison in Lithuania was one of eight facilities the CIA set-up after 9/11 to detain and interrogate top al-Qaeda operatives captured around the world. Thailand, Romania, Poland, Morocco, and Afghanistan have also been identified as countries that housed secret prisons for the CIA. President Barack Obama ordered all the sites closed shortly after taking office in January.

The Lithuanian prison was the last “black” site opened in Europe, after the CIA’s secret prison in Poland was closed down in late 2003 or early 2004.

“It obviously took a lot of effort to keep [the prison] secret,” said John Sifton, whose firm One World Research investigates human rights abuses. “There’s a reason this stuff gets kept secret.”

“It’s an embarrassment, and a crime.”

Though, the C.I.A. detention program was smaller than that of the military, Mr. Sifton found it was “the one that saw the biggest abuses and most serious forms of torture” and was exponentially clandestine. The Agency’s secret prisons are commonly known as “black sites” which served as a “model” for the military’s.

He added that the Obama Administration has prevented the C.I.A. from detaining people and using “black sites”, but are still permitted to interrogate detainees.

“Domas Grigaliunas, a former counterintelligence officer with the Lithuanian military, said it was widely known among the Lithuanian secret services that U.S. intelligence partners had built the site, although its original purpose was kept highly classified,” Craig Whitlock reports at The Washington Post, adding:

Grigaliunas said he was asked in 2004 by the deputy director of Lithuanian military intelligence to develop plans to help a “foreign partner” that was interested in bringing individuals to Lithuania and concealing their whereabouts as part of a covert operation.…

Villagers who live in a crumbling apartment complex about 100 yards from the site recalled how English-speaking construction workers descended on a small, shuttered horse-riding academy there in 2004. They said the workers refused to answer questions about what they were doing but brought shipping containers filled with building materials. The workers also excavated large amounts of soil; with all the digging, residents said they assumed that part of the new facility was underground.

“If you got close, they would tell us, in English, to go away,” said a retired man who lives nearby and spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears of retribution. “We were really wondering what they were up to. We even wondered if it was a Mafia drug operation or something.“

Lithuanian officials, including President Dalia Grybauskaite, denied the initial report from ABC News with the Polish and Romanian governments. She would not comment to them on the most recent report, though she said she harbored “indirect suspicions” and was not in power while the “black site” was reportedly sold to the Lithuanian State in 2007. “‘There are more important things in Lithuania than spending two days denying the gossip of ABC journalists,’ Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas told the Baltic News Service,” David Edwards reports at The Raw Story.

The extremely redacted C.I.A. Inspector General report found detainees faced mock executions, threats to kill and rape family members, waterboarding, extensive pressure point restriction, forced stress positions, sleep and light deprivation in custody. Not redacted was a case where a detainee was beaten to death by a private contractor.

Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison by Lois Lenski

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Civil rights and equality have made a lot of headway against racism in the last century.

“Well, duh,” some might say.

“But there’s still so far to go!” others might protest.

I personally grew up without any particularly scarring incidents of racism. Sure, I got made fun of for my small eyes and flat face, but so did the white girl with the big nose and, personally, I think she took it a lot harder than I did.

It’s great that the social norm is no longer racism and that we’re seeing more diversity in media, arts, and culture. It no longer amazes me to see unbiased news reports about minorities or television shows featuring more ethnic characters.

What amazes me is when I find fair treatments of minorities from books written over fifty years ago, before the civil rights movement was in full swing.

Lois Lenski wrote and illustrated Indian Captive in 1941. The new cover makes it look all modern (and kinda creepy, actually), but the story is old.

It’s based on the true story of Mary “Molly” Jemison, who was captured and then adopted by Seneca Indians. Her family was killed in that very raid. Instead of fighting against her captors and hating them and escaping at the first opportunity (although she certainly did try), she learned to love them and appreciate their culture. After a while, she adopted the Seneca right back.

The real Mary Jemison lived with the Seneca for the rest of her life. She married twice, to Indian men both times. She finally gave an interview at the age of eighty to describe her capture and eventual assimilation into the Seneca tribe.

The book is a pretty faithful treatment of Seneca life. The Indians that adopted Molly were mostly kind, but there were certainly some exceptions. There were parts of their culture that Molly learned to love, but other parts with which she was unable to reconcile herself.

It’s a children’s book, so don’t expect to see any gory scalpings, and some might argue that the book is biased toward Native American culture. But considering when it was written, I’d say that it’s pretty remarkable that a book this kind to an Indian tribe that kidnapped a young white girl and killed her family was even published.

Is it the most compelling book ever? Probably not; it was a little plainly written, even for 1940s children’s lit. But it was interesting and educational and a darned entertaining read.

Mary Jemison would approve.

View all my reviews >>

Are you looking for a great phonesex experiance, with cheap rates?  Here it is, great quality cheap phonesex. Since the holidays are here I want to offer all of you guys an even better deal. So from now until Jan. 1 2010 it’s just 1.00 a min with a 15 min minimum. Now you MUST ASK FOR THE SPECIAL. I just want to offer a little relief to you from me .

As always no taboos ever, anything goes from sissies to pedophiles. I do it all.

Happy Holiday’s

Nikki

1-877-770-7021

www.accomplicenikki.com

Aim or Yahoo: accomplicenikki