PrairiePundit

 Andrea Widburg: On Tuesday, Twitter left every sentient American wondering how a company so stupid could become so powerful.  Twitter spent last year silencing anything that would help Trump, including accurate facts about Biden pimping out his debauched son to foreign countries for big bucks.  It then inaugurated this year by booting the president of the United States off Twitter, followed by silencing all of his supporters.  But Twitter wasn't done.  Yesterday, in connection with the Uganda elections, Twitter issued a proud public policy statement about the absolute necessity of free speech on the internet, especially around elections. If you're thinking that what I just said is a joke from the inestimable  Babylon Bee , it's not.   This  is as real as can be: For a little context, this started because Twitter and Facebook were doing in Uganda what they did in America: using their immense power to put their jackboots on...

Guardian: Dozens of Ugandan soldiers are thought to have been killed when Islamist extremists attacked their base on Sunday in the latest of a series of bloody strikes against peacekeepers in Somalia. Local officials told the Guardian that as many as 46 Ugandan troops, part of the 22,000-strong regional force in Somalia, died in the attack by the al-Qaida affiliated al-Shabaab movement in the town of Bulamarer, 80 miles south-west of the capital, Mogadishu, at around 9am local time. Ugandan officials have said only four soldiers were killed in the attack, which was repulsed with heavy casualties among the extremists. Such attacks are designed to hasten the departure of Amisom, the military and policing coalition under the authority of the African Union, which has been fighting al-Shabaab for more than a decade. Al-Shabaab, which once controlled much of Somalia, wants to topple the western-backed government in Mogadishu. Militants detonated a suicide car bomb at the gate of ...

BBC: Cowboy boots, checked shirts and country music might conjure up images of the American south, but Dolly Parton and her fellow country singers have a dedicated following across the world - not least in Uganda. The Why Factor: Radio Requests tracked down fans in Kampala for the World Service season on identity. ... The most requested song on Kampala's Radio One station, from listeners of all ages, is Dolly Parton’s Coat of Many Colours. When the BBC told her, she said it's her favourite too and it touches on universal emotions. “We all have been made to feel less than who we are, whether it be about something we wear, our weight, a handicap, whatever it may be,” she says. “And that is not a good feeling. So I think it kinda eases that hurt in other people as it did in me.” "Heaven in my ears," is how Susie Nancy - or Nansereko Susan - describes the music. "I feel good, I feel comforted listening to country music. Country music is a gift to those who acce...

Fox News: Ugandan authorities on Saturday thwarted an attempted terror attack, just days after the terror group al Shabab vowed revenge for U.S. air strikes that killed its leader. Uganda police reportedly arrested several suspects and recovered explosives in the capitol of Kampala, according to The Wall Street Journal. However authorities did not say whether the suspects are members of al Shabab, an Al Qaeda affiliate. The announcement about the arrests was made just hours after the U.S. embassy in Uganda warned Americans in the country that an attack was “imminent” and to stay indoors. The embassy had warned in the aftermath of leader Ahmed Abdi Godane’s death earlier this month about the potential for a revenge attack. A Police spokesman told the newspaper Saturday that the investigation is ongoing and that authorities are “increasing vigilance of security at all public places, particular vulnerable places such as hotels, shopping places, bars and restaurants." The embassy sa...

Stars & Stripes: A platoon of U.S. Marines was moved from Djibouti to Uganda on Tuesday in the event the fighting in neighboring South Sudan deteriorates further. “This forward posturing provides the Combatant Commander additional options and the ability to more quickly respond, if required, to help protect U.S. personnel and facilities,” U.S. Africa Command said in a statement. AFRICOM said this contingent of some 40 Marines and a KC-130J aircraft are now in Entebbe, the capital of Uganda. The KC-130J transport plane has airborne assault capabilities, and is also used for medevac, search and rescue, and aerial refueling. “These movements were made with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Ugandan authorities,” AFRICOM said. A Special-Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force Crisis Response unit was moved Monday from Moron, Spain, to Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, after an incident in which four Navy SEALs were wounded during an aborted rescue operation in South Sudan. The SEALs were...

Telegraph: Somalia's fight to the death with al-Shabaab They are in a desperate flight from African Union forces from Uganda.  It looks like the al Qaeda backed  religious bigots will be defeated this time.

Telegraph: In a letter to Congress, Mr Obama said: "These forces will act as advisers to partner forces that have the goal of removing from the battlefield Joseph Kony and other senior leadership of the LRA." In an attempt to head off criticism from his war-weary country, Mr Obama stressed that the American troops would not act independently and would only fire on LRA forces "in self-defence". "Although the US forces are combat-equipped, they will only be providing information, advice, and assistance to partner nation forces," the president said. The Friday afternoon timing of the announcement seemed a deliberate attempt by the White House to avoid an extended public debate about sending US ground forces into Africa for the first time since the "Black Hawk Down" incident in Somalia in 1993, when 18 US military personnel died in a botched attempt to capture a warlord. But what promises to be a dangerous and sensitive mission im...

Ralph Peters: The Islamists have it wrong: Islam isn't the world's fastest-growing religion. By birth numbers and convert tallies, it's Christianity. And Africa's at the forefront -- a fact that's going to body-slam Muslim extremists sooner or later. The bombings that recently butchered World Cup fans in Uganda were just the latest in a long line of crazed attacks on African Christians by Islamist fanatics. In the central states of Nigeria -- Africa's most-populous country -- religious pogroms and counter-pogroms between Muslims and Christians have become routine. In Kenya, al Shabaab terrorists from neighboring Somalia stir up trouble and make grotesque threats. And we all know what bestial acts Sudan's Islamist government has perpetrated against black Christians over the decades. Throughout the region, patience is wearing thin. Africa's impassioned forms of charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity won't turn the other cheek fo...

Jake Tapper: In an interview earlier today with the South African Broadcasting Corporation to air in a few hours, President Obama disparaged al Qaeda and affiliated groups' willingness to kill Africans in a manner that White House aides say was an argument that the terrorist groups are racist. Speaking about the Uganda bombings, the president said, "What you've seen in some of the statements that have been made by these terrorist organizations is that they do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself. They see it as a potential place where you can carry out ideological battles that kill innocents without regard to long-term consequences for their short-term tactical gains." ... This is nonsense. The Somalis who perpetrated the attacks are black Africans. Al Qaeda and its affiliates attack in Uganda for the same reason they attack in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US. They are religious bigots and not racial bigots. They attack those who do not subm...

BBC: The Somali Islamist group al-Shabab has said it was behind twin blasts which hit the Ugandan capital Kampala on Sunday, killing 74 people. A spokesman for the group, Sheikh Ali Mohamud Rage, threatened more attacks in a statement in Mogadishu. Police said the bombings targeted football fans watching the World Cup final. A Ugandan official said a Somali's head was found at the scene of one blast, and he may have been a suicide bomber. Ugandan peacekeepers are in Somalia, and al-Shabab has previously threatened to take the fight to Kampala. "Al-Shabab was behind the two bomb blasts in Uganda," Ali Mohamud Rage said. "We thank the mujahideens that carried out the attack. We are sending a message to Uganda and Burundi, if they do not take out their Amisom [African Union Mission in Somalia] troops from Somalia, blasts will continue and it will happen in Bujumbura [the Burundi capital] too." ... The...