I am an internet fraudsters and a terrorist (suicide bomber)???
Holy Smokes! The head of the FBI writing to me! Accusing me of internet fraud and terrorism (suicide bomber)! All I have to do is wire my service fee to Cletus in Nigeria and all will be well and my record will be cleared. Only $98.00, such a small, reasonable fee to prevent all this mayhem. (LOOOLLL!)
Scammers: Grammar! Usage! Craftsmanship! You can do so much better than this!
Anti-Terrorist and Monetary Crimes Division
Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
J. Edgar Hoover Building,
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 20535-0001
Attention: Beneficiary
This is the final warning you will receive from me. This notice has been sent to
you several times but you ignored it.
I have warned you so many times and you decided to ignore my e-mails because you
believe we have not been instructed to get you arrested, if you fail comply this
time around, then we will first of all send a letter to the MAYOR of the city
where you reside and also instruct the bank to close your account until you
comply with our directives. Note that all your properties will be confiscated by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We would also send a letter to the
company/organization where you work and instruct them to issue you a “SACK
LETTER” because a suspect is not supposed to be working for the government or
any private organization.
From our investigations, we discovered that you were the person that forwarded
your identification to internet fraudsters in Nigeria and other countries when
they had a deal with you in regards to the transfer of some illegal funds into
your bank account which is valued at the sum of $10,500,000.00 only. Your ID
which we have in our database has been sent to all the crimes agencies in
America for them to upload you in their website as an internet fraudsters and a
terrorist (suicide bomber). I will also warn people to stop having any dealing
or friendly communication with you anymore. This would have been solved all this
while if you have gotten the NECESSARY TRANSFER DOCUMENT ENDORSED AND SEALED
legally.
I, ROBERT S. MUELLER III, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
wish to inform you that there is no more time left to waste because you have
been given enough grace, therefore you have been mandated to comply immediately
you read this e-mail if you don’t want to be arrested. As stated earlier, to
have the document endorsed and sealed without any delay, you must adhere to this
directives to avoid you from blaming yourself at last when we must have arrested
and sentenced you to life imprisonment. Note that all your properties will be
seized and bank account will be confiscated too.
However, I have decided to see how I can be of help to you because I will not be
happy to see you end up in jail and all your properties got confiscated because
your information was used to carry out fraudulent transactions. I called the
EFCC NIGERIA and they directed me to a qualified attorney who can help you get
the process done and when I called the atorney he told me that he will go to the
bank and sign the documents on your behalf and put his “SEAL” on those documents
at the sum of $98 service fee and I believe this process is cheaper for you. Be
informed that I pleaded on your behalf to the board of directors of this agency
to give you till 08/20/2013 to make the payment. Bear it in mind that this is
the only way that I can be able to help you at this juncture. But if you fail to
comply, you will find yourself in a severe field of dilemma.
You need to try as much as you can to send the money today because I have been
informed by the ARREST WARRANT ISSUANCE DEPARTMENT that the warrant of arrest
has been prepared against you and once is being signed by me as the FBI
DIRECTOR, then the arrest will be carried out if you fail to send the money
within the given deadline and we shall apply for litigation against you
immediately. Thereafter, you will appear before the ADMINISTRATIVE DISTRICT
COURT OF WASHINGTON D.C for terrorism, money laundering and drug trafficking
charges. I believe you know that it will be a shameful thing to you and your
entire family. Also it will be announced and published in all the local channels
and newspapers that you are wanted by the FBI. Therefore, you are advised to
make the payment for the signing of the documents immediately you read this
e-mail. Be warned, we are monitoring you from our satellite.
You will have to make the payment through western union money transfer with the
below information then Send the payment details to me as stated below.
NAME: UZOUKWU CLETUS
ADDRESS: LAGOS, NIGERIA
TEXT QUESTION: BETTER
ANSWER: BEST
AMOUNT: $98
SENDER’S FULL NAME:
SENDER’S FULL ADDRESS:
DIRECT PHONE NUMBER:
MTCN:
Do not hesitate to make the payment today with the above outlined information so
that the attorney will go to the paying bank and have all the necessary transfer
documents endorsed on your behalf as soon as you send the money. After all this
process is being carried out, then the transfer of your funds valued at
$10,500,000.00 only which should have been transferred to your bank account
before legally will now take place legitimately and hitchlessly.
Note: As you can see below, all the crimes agencies have been contacted on this
regard and we shall trace and arrest you if you disregard or ignore this
instructions. You have been given a grace till 08/20/2013 to make the payment
for the attorney to endorse the necessary transfer documents on your behalf and
put his “SEAL” on it.
Expecting your anticipated co-operation. You can also contact me here.
rssmusa@aol.com
Yours in service,
Robert S. Mueller III
FBI Director
CC: Canadian Police Association
CC: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
CC: GENERAL INTELLIGENCE DEPARTMENT (GID)
CC: Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG)
CC: Egmont Group
CC: FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI USA)
CC: European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)
CC: Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
CC: International Monetary Fund (IMF)
CC: International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO)
CC: International Banking Security Association (IBSA)
CC: International Air Transport Association (IATA)
CC: Institute de Formation Interbancaire (INSIG)
CC: World Customs Organization (WCO)
CC: Inter-American Development Bank (IADB)
CC: Offshore Group of Banking Supervisors (OGBS)
CC: WORLD CENTRAL BANK (WCB)
CC: NIGERIA POLICE FORCE (NPF)
CC: NORTH YORKSHIRE POLICE (UK)
CC: ECONOMIC FINANCIAL CRIME COMMISSION (EFCC)
Uwem Akpan and Say You’re One of Them
This is a very troubling book, and, for me, a difficult book to read. It has taken me weeks, and I will admit I have often interrupted the reading of it to read other, easier books. This book makes me very uncomfortable. The stories and images trouble my sleep.
Uwem Akpan is of the tribe of Annang, from Nigeria, and has committed to an even larger tribe, the Catholic Church, of which he is a priest, and this gives him a unique perspective. The stories in this book often focus on tribal differences, including religious differences, and although they are set in different African states, have parallels in lives lived elsewhere. Those tribal differences are between Moslem and Christian, but also between Pentecostal and Catholic, Tutsi and Hutu, and, most significantly, the differences between to tribe of the very poor and the very rich.
Each story is told through the eyes of a child living in a different African state – Kenya, Benin, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda.
In one of my favorite segments of the book, strife has broken out in Nigeria, strife between the Moslems and the Christians, but also throw in the Pentecostals and the Pagans and really mix it up. A bus is waiting in the bus station to take people back to the southern part of Nigeria, and on this bus is a young man, half Moslem, half Christian. The bus stands idle for hours, while the bus driver seeks fuel to make the trip. During this time on the bus, many conversations take place, and what I loved was how alliances shifted with each conversation. The people on the bus were from different traditions, but came together as a community. No community is without arguments and dissensions, however, and consensus builds, diminishes, shifts – it is a microcosm of the tensions and stressors pulling apart the Nigerian nation state.
Uwem Akpan treats the children in each story lovingly, treasuring their innocent perspective and the sweetness of their hearts and vision. The adults don’t come off so well, passing their days in drug-induced stupors, drunk, selling children into slavery and prostitution, chopping off their limbs with machetes, and closing themselves off into groups which protect themselves and exploit others.
It would be an easier book to read if it were about aliens, or if these stories were confined to Africa, but the stories of these abused, neglected and exploited children echo in every continent, country and city in the world.
Uwem Akpan writes prose that is poetry; the surroundings are described with such detail that you feel in the moment, you see through the eyes of each child, and you see things that are beautiful as well as scenes you did not want to see. As you can see, I have a lot of ambiguous feelings about this book. At the same time I can admire the writing, the stories have left images in my mind that cannot be erased. Dark images. There is hope in the persistence and resilience of many of the children, but concern about their long term survival. It leaves a heavy weight on my heart.
Name that Country: A Most Difficult Challenge
This morning, as I was praying for Panama – there is always a diocese listed in the daily lectionary to be prayed for somewhere in the world – I was thinking how I know where Panama is. When we are praying for Nigeria, there are names I haven’t heard of. I now Lagos, and Port Harcourt, but where is Abuja? Owerri? I go to GoogleEarth and look them up.
I struggle with how little the average American knows about geographical location. It’s just embarrassing. Through all the years I lived abroad, most of the time, unless it was Germany, people couldn’t quite place where I was living. Many had heard of Tunisia; we had troops there in World War II, and Saudi Arabia, because they had seen it often enough on the news, but the rest of the Arab Gulf, Jordan, Syria, North Africa – beyond them.
Then, on the first night of one of my grad classes, the professor handed us this map and gave us ten minutes to put in the appropriate country names. He did not, thanks be to God, ask us to put in capitals. Not a single one of us got them all, and this was a class full of nation-oriented people.
It was also on the final exam, three months later, and most of us got them all right – thanks to some fervent cramming and study groups.
Here are a couple more maps, in case you are feeling cocky. See if you can accurately fill in the name of each country:
Bonne chance!
Americanah and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Rushing from one meeting to another yesterday, I had just an hour – but during that hour, Terry Gross was interviewing one of my favorite authors, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does GREAT interviews. She is funny, and educated and insightful; she can talk about painful topics and make you laugh and cry with her. That interview was a blessing on my day.
I started reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie when I was in Kuwait. A good friend approached me and asked me to form a book club. LOL. This is a friend I can’t say no to. Every introverted bone in my body was screaming “NO! NO!” and I smiled at her and said “Yes.”
God is good. He laughed when I said “yes” and through the book club, introduced me to authors I might never otherwise read. The club was made up of many nationalities, and we read books from everywhere, unforgettable books. We read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie “Half of a Yellow Sun.” Once you read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, there is no going back. I wonder if I will be able to hold out on Americanah until it comes out in paperback?
This is from the National Public Radio website, so you can actually listen to the interview yourself, should you want to get to know this delightful author a little better.
‘Americanah’ Author Explains ‘Learning’ To Be Black In The U.S.
When the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was growing up in Nigeria she was not used to being identified by the color of her skin. That changed when she arrived in the United States for college. As a black African in America, Adichie was suddenly confronted with what it meant to be a person of color in the United States. Race as an idea became something that she had to navigate and learn.
The learning process took some time and was episodic. Adichie recalls, for example, an undergraduate class in which the subject of watermelon came up. A student had said something about watermelon to an African-American classmate, who was offended by the comment.
“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘But what’s so bad about watermelons? Because I quite like watermelons,’ ” Adichie tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross.
She felt that her African-American classmate was annoyed with her because Adichie didn’t share her anger — but she didn’t have the context to understand why. The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was not taught to students in Nigeria. Adichie had yet to learn fully about the history of slavery — and its continuing reverberations — in the U.S.
“Race is such a strange construct,” says Adichie, “because you have to learn what it means to be black in America. So you have to learn that watermelon is supposed to be offensive.”
Adichie is a MacArthur Fellowship winner and author of the novels Purple Hibiscusand Half of A Yellow Sun. Her new novel, Americanah, explores this question of what it means to be black in the U.S., and tells the story of a young Nigerian couple, one of whom leaves for England and the other of whom leaves for America.
The title, she says, is a Nigerian word for those who have been to the U.S. and return with American affectations.
“It’s often used,” she says, “in the context of a kind of gentle mockery.”
Where is Lokoja, Nigeria?
Today the church prays for the diocese of Lokoja, Nigeria. Don’t you just love technology? You can go right to Google Maps and within seconds, you know where Lokoja is, right on the banks of the Niger river, bisecting Nigeria.
The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin
I don’t know what it is about summer reading, but now and then I go on a theme-fest; a couple years ago it was Nigerian literature, and, once hooked . . . when my friend who is now living in Lagos recommended The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives, I ordered it right away, thinking from the title it would be maybe light and sweet and humorous.
From the start, that assumption was blown. This is a direct and edgy Nigeria, darker, rougher and full of family secrets, domestic details and messy relationships.
It is a very Nigerian book – this is a good thing. There are cultural things that are not explained, but it all ends up making sense in the end. There are foods I have never heard of – ekuro with shrimp sauce, asun. There is a rudeness in the way they speak to one another, (“Is this a parking lot?” “Do I look like a parking attendant?”), a crudeness in the constant need to carry small bills for bribes, even on public streets. People speak their minds, with little or no mitigation, depending on the status of the person and their own personal goals and agendas.
At the weekly meeting of wives, the senior wife, Iya Segi, doles out rations of household supplies to the other wives, including chocolate powder and hair conditioner . . . and as the senior wives complain about the new wife thrown in their midst, she says:
“You will trip over in your hate if you are not careful, woman. Your mouth discharges words like diarrhea. Let Bolanle draw on every skill she learned in her university! Let her employ every sparkle of youth! Let her use her fist-full breasts. Listen to me, this is not a world she knows. When she doesn’t find what she came looking for, she will go back to wherever she came from.”
There is a whole other world in that one paragraph – a whole other way of seeing life and expressing thoughts. The culture may be alien, but I thoroughly enjoyed being a tiny mouse in the corner at that meeting – and others – and inside the minds of the wives, of Baba Segi, of the driver – so many good stories, so many points of view, and I learned things from behind those high compound walls and closed and locked doors that I might never otherwise have learned. Alien as it was, for me, this was a very good book, new ways of looking at things, and a great recommendation from my friend in Lagos.
The Festival of BERNARD MIZEKI
(Play the video of the Soweto Gospel Choir as you read this summary from today’s Lectionary Readings How I would love to be able to attend this festival!)
BERNARD MIZEKI
CATECHIST AND MARTYR IN AFRICA (18 JUNE 1896)
Bernard Mizeki was born in Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique) in about 1861. When he was twelve or a little older, he left his home and went to Capetown, South Africa, where for the next ten years he worked as a laborer, living in the slums of Capetown, but (perceiving the disastrous effects of drunkenness on many workers in the slums) firmly refusing to drink alcohol, and remaining largely uncorrupted by his surroundings. After his day’s work, he attended night classes at an Anglican school.
Under the influence of his teachers, from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE, an Anglican religious order for men, popularly called the Cowley Fathers), he became a Christian and was baptized on 9 March 1886. Besides the fundamentals of European schooling, he mastered English, French, high Dutch, and at least eight local African languages. In time he would be an invaluable assistant when the Anglican church began translating its sacred texts into African languages.
After graduating from the school, he accompanied Bishop Knight-Bruce to Mashonaland, a tribal area in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to work there as a lay catechist. In 1891 the bishop assigned him to Nhowe, the village of paramount-chief Mangwende, and there he built a mission-complex. He prayed the Anglican hours each day, tended his subsistence garden, studied the local language (which he mastered better than any other foreigner in his day), and cultivated friendships with the villagers. He eventually opened a school, and won the hearts of many of the Mashona through his love for their children.
He moved his mission complex up onto a nearby plateau, next to a grove of trees sacred to the ancestral spirits of the Mashona. Although he had the chief’s permission, he angered the local religious leaders when he cut some of the trees down and carved crosses into others. Although he opposed some local traditional religious customs, Bernard was very attentive to the nuances of the Shona Spirit religion. He developed an approach that built on people’s already monotheistic faith in one God, Mwari, and on their sensitivity to spirit life, while at the same time he forthrightly proclaimed the Christ. Over the next five years (1891-1896), the mission at Nhowe produced an abundance of converts.
Many black African nationalists regarded all missionaries as working for the European colonial governments. During an uprising in 1896, Bernard was warned to flee. He refused, since he did not regard himself as working for anyone but Christ, and he would not desert his converts or his post.
On 18 June 1896, he was fatally speared outside his hut. His wife and a helper went to get food and blankets for him. They later reported that, from a distance, they saw a blinding light on the hillside where he had been lying, and heard a rushing sound, as though of many wings. When they returned to the spot his body had disappeared. The place of his death has become a focus of great devotion for Anglicans and other Christians, and one of the greatest of all Christian festivals in Africa takes place there every year around the feast day that marks the anniversary of his martyrdom, June 18.
Bloggers Create Freedom Friday in Oppressed Eritrea
I heard whispers of this on National Public Radio, and found this write up on The International Business Times website. The message is simple – in a country where even a glance can be interpreted as treason, express your non-support of the government by STAYING AT HOME ON FRIDAY, the day Ethiopians usually go out and visit with friends, gather together and mingle. Ghandi would smile; this is civil expression at it’s most civil 🙂
Let the empty streets speak for you. LOL @ a tyrant making staying at home a crime against the government!
Eritrean bloggers outside of Ethiopia started it, smuggling an old Eritrean phone book out of the country and making calls to acquaintances – and strangers – in Eritrea. People didn’t even have to respond. they could just listen . . . then they developed a robo-call to help them enlarge the number they could reach.
Eritrea is considered one of the continent’s most opaque countries. National elections have not been held in the Horn of Africa country since it gained independence in 1993. Torture, arbitrary detention and severe restrictions on freedom of expression remain routine.
President Isaias Afwerki does not tolerate any independent media, the internet is strictly controlled and Reporters without Borders recently named it 179th out of 179 countries for freedom of expression.
It is illegal to criticise the government, prompting the Eritrean diaspora to set up a campaign to reverse the Arab-style call to take to the streets every Friday by emptying the streets in protest.
“We made phone calls from diaspora to Eritrea,” Meron Estefanos toldIBTimes UK. “We have a phone catalogue and called random numbers every Friday, telling them to stay at home and think about problems in our country.”
The phone calls “give them [Eritreans within the country] an opportunity to protest without risking too much”, according to Freedom Friday’s coordinator in the UK Selam Kidane.
The activists turned to a computerised auto-dialer called robocall to spread hundreds of thousands of taped messages to Eritrean phones. “It is time to restore our liberty and dignity” messages were sent automatically.
In another message, the mother of renowned political prisoner Aster Yohannes recalls the fate of her daughter, who was arrested in 2003 and has disappeared.
After two years, the movement is finally gaining momentum inside the country.
“Now they trust us inside the country, we have our team in Eritrea that puts out posters and leaflets late at night,” Estefanos said.
“The plan now that we have their trust is asking them to go out and demonstrate.”
About 1,500 Eritreans leave their country every month, according to the United Nations, paying up to 30,000 euros ($39,500) each to seek a new life free of grinding poverty and repression.
Earlier this year, Amnesty International put the spotlight on Eritrean asylum-seekers who are kidnapped from Sudanese refugee camps by the local Rashaida tribe, sold to Bedouin criminals in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula and severely abused while they are held for ransom.
One thousand refugees are held captive in the Sinai, according to reports. About 7,000 people in total may have been tortured and 4,000 may have died as a result of the people-trafficking in humans from 2009 to October 2012, according to recent data. A total of 3,000 people disappeared from 2007-11.
First, just pay this Small Fee . . .
LOL, wouldn’t you think he would address this to me by name, instead of beneficiary? And I am willing to bet that his charge of $85.99 is just the beginning . . .
From: Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Finance Minister of The Federal Republic of Nigeria info@fmf.org
FEDERAL MINISTRY OF FINANCE
NATIONAL HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY COMPLEX
SENATE HOUSE – UPPER CHAMBERS WUSE DISTRICT,
ABUJA FCT- NIGERIA
Our Ref: FGN/FMF/STB
Your Ref……………
Dear Beneficiary,
I wish to inform you again that we are not playing over this. I know my reason
for the continuous sending of this notification to you. The fact is that you
can’t seem to trust anyone again over this payment for what you have been in
cantered in the past, but I want you to trust me because I cannot scam you for
$85.99 it is for bank processing of your payment. The fee of $85.99 is for your
service, I did not invent it to defraud you. It is an official bank payment
processing fee and the good part of this is that you will never be disturbed
again over any kind of payment. This is the final as there is no unforeseen fees
and the forms will become effective once we submit your payment application
processing fee and pay the form fee of $85.99 only. I don’t want you to lose
this fund this time because you may never get another such good opportunity
again. The federal government is keen and very determined to pay your overdue
debts, this is not a fluke. I would not want you to lose this fund out of ignorance. I wil
Receiver’s Name: Uzoukwu Cletus
Address: Lagos, Nigeria
Test Question: Fine
Answer: Finest
After sending the money, send all the details of the payment as stated below
direct to this email.
SENDER’S NAME:___________________
SENDER’S ADDRESS:________________
M.T.C.N NUMBER:__________________
Awaiting the payment details as soon as possible.
Yours in service,
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
Finance Minister of Nigeria
The Baboon Coughed
We’ve had three sets of houseguests in a very short time span, and today is our first day of ‘normal.’ We saw our friends off at 0430 (we used to call it oh-dark-hundred) and I couldn’t get back to sleep, so by the grace of God (and I mean that literally) I got up and walked.
I know I need to walk. I’ve always walked. I used to run, but I suffered for it – the knees – and decided I didn’t want to pay that price. But when my sister was here, we decided to take a walk and I said “don’t worry, I walk fast” and she said “I don’t, I am so slow now, my body has to warm up.” Confidently I started – and starting is uphill from my house. Very shortly, I discovered my fast was her slow, and I was HUFFING and puffing, and so embarrassed because I guess it’s been a while since I did this walk . . . but we did it. It felt good. And I was happy for a nice cool morning so I could do it again.
I ran into a neighbor, ignored that she was in her nightgown, we both pretended she was as fully dressed as I, had a brief conversation and she went inside with her newspaper and I carried on. About halfway through my walk, as I puffed along, I heard it.
The baboon coughed.
I could even smell a faint drift of wood burning fire. I could hear the doves. But it was only very briefly, very intangential, and I quickly realized it must have been a dog barking distantly; I could still hear him. For one brief moment I was back in Zambia, and while I love the magic of Zambia, I would not be out for a mile long hike early in the morning while the lions prowl for a last meal before they settle down for their day-long snooze.
We are off this morning to a grand plant sale across the bay in Milton. Symphony tonight. Back to “normal” for Pensacola.
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Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 