#BringBackOurBalls (cont.) :: SteynOnline
by Mark Steyn • May 12, 2014
At the risk of damning Mrs Obama with faint praise, I have to acknowledge that the First Lady's is not quite the lamest Hashtag of Western Impotence pose. That honor belongs to the gentleman at right - the Rt Hon David Cameron, PC, MP. Michelle Obama is merely the wife of the head of government; Mr Cameron is an actual head of government. So who exactly is he calling on to do all this "bringing back" he's so in favor of? Activist celebrities pull these stunts to put pressure on government. Who are all these government celebrities meant to be pressurizing?
One can also make the case that to Mr Cameron these are "our girls" in a way they're not, not really, to the First Lady. Nigerians are Commonwealth citizens and, as a point of British immigration law, not "foreign". Thus, the Prime Minister is, in his feeble passivity, reminding us that if anyone ought to go get 'em it ought to be the SAS. Whatever one feels about his predecessor as Downing Street Glamour Boy, when faced with his own West African kidnapping - the seizure of members of the Royal Irish Regiment by Sierra Leone rebels - Tony Blair acted decisively and flew in the SAS, who freed the hostages and killed the men holding them.
The Nigerian Bulletin has already reported that the girls have been "ferried abroad to Chad and Cameroon", so if Cameron's going to pull a Blair he needs to do it soon. Otherwise, his hashtag is useless, and but feeble confirmation that for the modern leader attitude is more important than action. Of course, the will of the civilized world often wobbles around. But, when Neville Chamberlain dismissed Czechoslovakia as "a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing", he was at least honest in his indifference. Better that than standing around with a piece of cardboard saying "#BringBackOurCzechs".
~The Guardian's Nafeez Ahmed helpfully explains the root cause of the schoolgirls' kidnapping:
The kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian school girls, and the massacre of as many as 300 civilians in the town of Gamboru Ngala, by the militant al-Qaeda affiliated group, Boko Haram, has shocked the world.Dr Ahmed is a highly respected 9/11 truther, so it must be true. Has Michael E Mann done his pouty-faced hashtag selfie yet?
But while condemnations have rightly been forthcoming from a whole range of senior figures from celebrities to government officials, less attention has been paid to the roots of the crisis.Instability in Nigeria, however, has been growing steadily over the last decade - and one reason is climate change.
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