Decomposition of Bride Price

This was amusing

The list itself contains all manner of things including drinks, watches, cloths for her mum and dad, clothes for her, a separate bride price (50,000 N – the tradition used to be 30n, but getting married is a dangerously expensive business these days), food, alcohol, a goat, a 3 day party for her parents village (somewhere in the middle of nowhere) so all the usual stuff you would expect, apart from 1 item which stood out above all the rest, 5,000N which will apparently guarantee that the bride will not flirt with any other men!

You know that the dowry system is pretty heavy in India. I wonder if people who have accepted dowry can relate to this?

Support for Suicide Terrorism

So what is the relationship between the support for terrorism in public opinion and the relationship with terrorist attacks? Guess what these researchers found?

We find that justification in public opinion for suicide terrorism increases terror attacks on people in countries that are unfavorably regarded. There is a robust positive relationship between the share of the population in a country that at the same time justifies suicide bombings and has an unfavorable opinion of another country, and terrorism originating from the former country.

In other words, there is statistically significant evidence that public opinion does encourage terrorism. In a way, this is a d’oh statement. Terrorism thrives on the oxygen of publicity and then there are various assorted morons and idiots who will support terror as a way to punish other countries. What they do not understand (well, not surprising because its usually religious nutters and other ideologically screwed up people who do this) is that terrorism usually devours them.

So what do people from s Bangladesh, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kuwait, Malaysia, Morocco, Senegal, Tanzania, Mali, Jordan, Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan, Palestine and Nigeria respond to the PEW survey question?

Some people think that suicide bombing and other forms of violence against civilian targets
are justified in order to defend Islam from its enemies. Other people believe that, no matter
what the reason, this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that this kind
of violence is often justified to defend Islam, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never
justified?

On average 23% justified suicide terrorism, with a minimum of 8% support and an astonishingly high 70% maximum support. Highest was in Palestine, Nigeria and Mali, Lowest up was in Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia. Surprising eh? Palestine I can understand, but Nigeria, Mali, Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia? The last 3 countries are like factories for terrorists. Some other facets, Nigerian Women were showing more support for suicide bombing compared to men. Here’s the graph

There was another question which was asked, about which countries are most unfavourable to the respondents. Some of the results for the most unfavourable and least unfavourable are amazing and bewildering.

So Bangladesh actually has the lowest unfavourable opinion towards India! and highest towards USA. And what on earth is happening in Ethiopia with least Japan and high Iran? USA seems to be the most hated country across these muslim nations. Extraordinary but what is worrying is the extraordinarily high level of support for suicide bombing and terrorism in all these countries. The next time somebody says that terrorist support in Muslim countries relate only to a very small minority, do ask about the definition of a very small minority because a minority which ranges from 8-70% with an average of 23% aint such a small minority by any stretch of imagination.

Majorities Reject Banning Defamation of Religion: 20 Nation Poll

Good!. I quote:

As the UN General Assembly prepares to debate a proposal calling for nations to take action against the defamation of religion, majorities in 13 of 20 nations polled around the world support the right to criticize a religion.
On average, across all countries polled, 57% of respondents agree that "people should be allowed to publicly criticize a religion because people should have freedom of speech." However, an average of 34% of respondents agree that governments "should have the right to fine or imprison people who publicly criticize a religion because such criticism could defame the religion."
The issue of whether freedom of speech should extend to discussions of religion has stirred considerable controversy in recent months. The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a group of 56 Muslim nations, is championing a proposed U.N. resolution that calls on all nations of the world "to effectively combat defamation of all religions and incitement to religious hatred in general and against Islam and Muslims in particular."

And who were the dissenters? The typical idiot lot.

Of the seven nations where most people agree with that criticism of religion should be prohibited five have overwhelmingly Muslim populations -- Egypt (71%), Pakistan (62%), Iraq (57%), Indonesia (49%), and the Palestinian territories (51%). Another two -- India (59%) and Nigeria (54%)-- have historically been plagued by sectarian violence.

The United Nations passed one of the finest documents in human history, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That was its finest hour. If the United Nations now passes this defamation of religion crap, then it will show that idiots are now running the asylum. Freedom of speech is paramount. I can understand India and Nigeria objecting, they have a bunch of howling rage boys and most of the idiots who riot are basically barbarians who haven't evolved from pond life. But they still have hope. But religiously mandated defamation of religion? Good Lord (pun intended), get a grip you idiots.

Religious Restrictions in the 25 Most Populous Countries

Bloody shameful, if you ask me. What on earth are these countries doing? Think about India, not only does it have high government restrictions but the people themselves are actively hostile to other religions. Disgusting.

For that matter, the UK correspondingly has room for improvement as well. It has to reduce the amount of government restrictions and also further educate its population on being more liberal to other religions. Not good.

Why doesnt education actually help Africans?

This paper made me sit up. If a country like Nigeria, which contains 1/5th of the population of the entire African continent, one of the best educated countries, with perhaps one of the best resourced landscapes shows a return for education of approximately 2-3% (the increase in personal  income for every additional year of schooling) compared to approximately 10% for the USA, then its not surprising that quite a lot of the educated middle class of Nigeria (and rest of Africa) is trying to emigrate out of Africa into the western nations.

The abstract of the paper is as follows:

In the last two decades, the social and economic benefits of formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa have been debated. Anecdotal evidence points to low returns to education in Africa. Unfortunately, there is limited econometric evidence to support these claims at the micro level. In this study, I focus on Nigeria, a country that holds 1/5 of Africa's population. I use instruments based on the exogenous timing of the implementation and withdrawal of free primary education across regions in this country to consistently estimate the returns to education in the late 1990s. The results show the average returns to education are particularly low in the 90s, in contrast to conventional wisdom for developing countries (2.8% for every extra year of schooling between 1997 and 1999). Surprisingly, I find no significant differences between OLS and IV estimates of returns to education when necessary controls are included in the wage equation. The low returns to education results shed new light on both the changes in demand for education in Nigeria and the increased emigration rates from African countries that characterized the 90s.

Are you going to blame bad governments? corruption? bad technology? health problems? Geo political issues? Or what have you? At end of the day, the policy prescription has always been to increase the spend in education. See this graph for the implementation of free education in Nigeria:

The author states that the African continent lost 60,000 professionals in just 5 years between 1985 and 1990. That is a huge migration and loss for the countries concerned, specially when you consider how difficult it would be to train a lawyer, doctor, university lecturers in countries with resource constraints. And if this happens constantly, then the continent will be going into reverse! If this is what happens when you are educated, then its obvious that the enrolment rates are going to fall and economic development will fall.

Cleaning up the corrupt stinking mess in Nigeria

I am a firm believer that Africa no longer needs aid. What it needs is the belief of the outsiders that they can do it themselves. Frankly, we keep on pumping in money and they keep on stealing it. If giving money indeed was the solution, then it would have sorted out the damn continent 4 times over. Think about Nigeria, one of the most valuable resource owning countries in that continent, but it is now a byword for corruption. But still, some small steps are being taken. I quote from here:

 

Nigeria's special fraud police say they are preparing to act against business tycoons who have failed to pay back billions owed to banks. The move comes with the expiry of a deadline for those owing money to return it to the troubled banks.

The government was forced to rescue five banks and sack their entire leadership teams last week to save the banks from collapse. Some senior bankers are in custody but two chief executives are on the run.

Yes, chuck them into jail and demand performance. And yes, i speak as a banker. Naming and shaming them is not going to work, its not as if they have any honour really. They are thieves, pure and simple. I further quote from here:

The central bank has published a list of dozens of prominent Nigerian businessmen as debtors to the ailing banks.

The list includes tycoon Aliko Dangote, rated by US Forbes magazine as one of the world’s richest Africans with a net worth of around 3.3 billion dollars, as debtors to these banks.

Dangote, 52, who is also the new president of the Nigeria Stock Exchange (NSE), has denied managing the oil and gas company listed as owing Intercontinental Bank more than eight billion naira.

Central bank governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi put the total loan portfolio of the five ailing banks - Afribank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Finbank - at 2.8 trillion naira (17.8 billion dollars).

Criminal.

Missionary Activity

This proselytising habit amongst several religions, primarily Christianity frequently gets people into trouble. And some of these chaps dont listen. The Vatican agreed not to proselytise in Israel. I quote:

After meeting the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein, and praying at the Western Wall on Tuesday, Pope Benedict XVI arrived for a historic meeting with the chief rabbis at Heichal Shlomo, next to the capital's Great Synagogue, and agreed that the Catholic Church will cease all missionary activity among Jews.

In his welcoming address, Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Yona Metzger thanked the pope for his announcement, calling it an "historic agreement and, "for us, an immensely important message."

Now, why on earth dont they listen in the other parts of the world? If they can stop doing this silly sod thing in Israel, perhaps they should listen in a variety of places ranging from Afghanistan, India and Yemen. See what happened in Yemen with these German missionaries.

Officials from the Foreign Ministry in Berlin believe that the Germans kidnapped in Yemen were abducted because of their missionary activities. Local Muslims had threatened one of the group and told him to stop proselytizing -- a warning the German ignored. The German Christians kidnapped recently in Yemen were probably the victims of an act of revenge, SPIEGEL has learned. According to information obtained from the German Foreign Ministry's crisis task force responsible for the case, a dispute took place in Saada a few months ago related to missionary activities by one of the Germans. German investigators also found missionary tracts in the belongings of the two German nurses believed to have been shot by their kidnappers, Rita S. and Anita G. from Lemgo in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Here’s the previous case with South Korean Missionaries in Afghanistan:

The Taliban's abduction of 23 South Korean Christian missionaries in Afghanistan last week has put South Korea's evangelical fervor under a microscope. Despite its long-standing shamanist, Buddhist and Confucian roots, South Korea has about 12,000 missionaries in 173 countries, second only to the United States. Today, almost half of South Korea's population is Christian. The hostages, members of Saemmul Church from Bundang, near Seoul, appear to have been somewhat naive. They were traveling from Kabul to Kandahar on one of the most dangerous routes in Afghanistan. Photos of some of the missionaries, mostly women in their 20s and 30s, have surfaced on the Internet; they are seen giddily posing in front of the government sign at Seoul's Incheon International Airport warning about the dangers of travel to Afghanistan.

This is not the first time South Korean missionaries have endangered themselves by entering war zones to gain converts. In April 2004, seven missionaries were kidnapped in Iraq (they were released within hours). In June that year, Kim Sun-il, a 33-year-old translator who had hoped to do missionary work in Iraq, was taken hostage and beheaded. Last summer, more than 1,000 Korean Christians, including many children, entered Kabul for a peace rally, only to be deported. Proselytizing is illegal in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has threatened to kill missionaries; yet South Korean Christians can't seem to take no for an answer.

Its not just the Muslims who are upset with this, its the Hindu’s who are up in arms as well in India. There are several websites concentrating on this. Here’s one. Here’s a recent story around a rather convoluted set of circumstances around conversions.

Suspected Maoists killed a senior Hindu leader and four others in a remote eastern Indian village, an attack that police said may be linked to a controversy over religious conversions in the area.

Armed men raided a Hindu school in Orissa's rural Kandhamal district on Saturday and killed five people, including an octogenarian leader linked to India's main opposition Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The remote, forested region is a hotbed of religious tensions between hardline Hindus who accuse Christian priests of bribing poor tribespeople and low-caste Hindus to change their faith. Christian groups say lower-caste Hindus who convert do so willingly to escape the highly stratified and oppressive Hindu caste system.

Tensions came to a head on Christmas Eve last year when fights broke out in which one person was killed and churches and temples were damaged. Police say by attacking Hindus the Maoists were trying to garner support among the region's poor tribes, most of which had converted to Christianity.

"There are instances where the rebels have threatened Hindu temples here," said Satish Gajbhiye, a senior police official. The murdered Hindu leader was leading a local campaign to reconvert Hindus and tribal people from Christianity. Saturday's killings have sparked tension in the area with hundreds of Hindus blocking roads and stopping trains. Thousands of policemen were deployed to maintain peace. Reports said one church was burned down by Hindu crowds.

Now, I ask you, this is a bit of an issue. With the geopolitical situation as is, do you really want to do conversions and poke people? If the Pope can stop conversions in Israel, how about (at least for the Catholic Church) stop doing so for rest of the world? An interesting research paper (First Conversion and Second Conversion in Nigeria Author: Gilliland, Dean S., Source: Mission Studies, Volume 7, Number 1, 1990 , pp. 131-150(20)) came to my attention about Nigeria and I quote from the conclusions:

1. In the past twenty years conversions to Christianity have been greatly accelerated in Northern Nigeria among the heterogeneous com- munities. These are primary conversions from traditional religion and from societies that have been erroneously classified as Muslim by virtue of their political history.

2. The conversions in the South, which we call second conversion, have resulted in great numbers of people giving active allegiance to a variety of churches and movements, most of which have no mission history. The greatest number of conversions take place in pentecostal type churches which demonstrate an openness to African culture, and in the various branches of the Aladura churches.

3. Because of the cultural and geographical situation in Nigeria, combined with policies of the colonial administration, the division between the North and the South has always been pronounced. One result was that the Northern minority groups who have been converting in large numbers to Christianity had only superficial recognition by Christians in the South. The Southern people who resided in the North transplanted their own ethnic churches, thus hardening the division. An analysis of these two separate phenomena shows a clear differentiation in cause and structure.

4. The two conversion streams have been brought together (though just in the beginning stages) by the realization that by their combined forces they could alter the political course of the nation. The South needs the North for a coalition that could bring in a non-Muslim government in 1992. The North has discovered that ethnic interests are divisive and that together they can take charge of their own destiny. '

5. In the short range, the stimulus which this combined force of new Christianity is providing will generate even more conversions both in the North and South. As the government assesses the meaning of the recent middle belt local elections, which showed a consensus for Chris- tianity, care will be taken to balance the interests of Muslims and Christians in current affairs. This also means that Christians will have an active and aggressive role in all deliberations relating to the new government.

6. At the deeper level, theological questions of conversion have to be faced. If this paper has given the impression that the spiritual aspect of conversion is not important or can be overlooked, such was not the intention. If the incentives for conversion in this highly charged context are not carefully thought through, revitalization of the old religion and discovery of a new religion can become secularized and materialistic. The consequences of this, in the long run, would be counterproductive. For example, ethnocentrism has long plagued the nation. There is now the potential for this revitalized Christianity to bring reconciliation andwork for a spiritual unity between the ethnic groups. If this is not being done, along with the recent moves for political unity, once the political goals are realized and Christians are in power, they would face again the same divisiveness and ethnic self-interest which traditionally kept them apart. This would destroy any gains made up to this point.

7. The Christian Association of Nigeria at present has a highly religious nature, but the impelling force behind it is the unification of Christians to compete with Muslim structures. The objective is to pro- vide a means for Christians of all persuasions, worldviews or theologies to speak with one voice in shaping government policies vis-a-vis Islam. There are signs that C.A.N. is becoming a purely political movement. A number of candidates in the recent local elections used C.A.N. as their political platform. C.A.N. could become the Christian counterpart to Jama'atu Nasril Islam, an organization which seeks for cooperation between all Muslims, regardless of the different tarikas, for the advance- ment of Islam on all fronts. Should C.A.N. follow this model its useful- ness as a positive agency for the continued trend in Christian conversion would be diminished.

Take a look at the journal and look at the articles. Here’s something about Cameroon. I quote the  abstract:

This article seeks to shed light on a much-debated question in the history
of mission and anthropology: What is the nature of religious conversion?
The rough archive studies of the literature produced by the Norwegian missionaries
in northern Cameroon from 1943 to 1960 the author shows how the
missionaries interpreted religious conversion. The missionary discourse on
conversion was biased in a specific theological and cultural environment, yet
it was open for negotiations with the encountered population. The missionaries
used biblical images to describe conversion to Christianity that were
coherent with the cultural practices of both the missionaries and the groups
that accepted the message of the missionaries in order to describe conversion
to Christianity. Biblical images that corresponded with the cultural practice of
groups that did not accept the missionaries are, however, absent from the
material. A Western Protestant discourse presented spiritual and social oppression,
ignorance, sickness, and lack of moral behaviour as obstacles the Africans
had to be liberated from in order to be converted to Christianity. The missionaries,
lacking knowledge about the social and religious organisation of
traditional society, interpreted the “spiritual oppression” as “heathendom,”
and interpreted it according to their own theological paradigm. The reactions
of the local population to this civilising mission made the missionaries modify
their approach in order for their project to fit the agency of the new Christians
in northern Cameroon.

Take a look at this free article. “The Wrong Kind of Missionary, Author: Peterlin, Davorin, : Mission Studies, Volume 12, Number 1, 1995 , pp. 164-174(11)”. Warning, this isn't very complimentary towards the Missionaries.

Now despite me being a free speech nut, I have to admit that I am now very nervous around this issue of conversions. This almost always creates problems of law and order, arises accusations of colonisation and the like. We have seen conversions before in our human history and almost without exception, this wasn't all hunky dory as one makes out. And almost all religions have done it.

A very interesting twist on immigration

Ok, so this is the model. You are, say an insurgent group, like Al Queda or something committed to overthrow the Saudi Royal Family. Al Queda currently takes help from various places such as Pakistan, UAE, Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan etc. Say it did manage to overthrow the Al Saud's. Then Al Queda is now running Saudi Arabia.

But the Saudi's are upset that in the name of the Ummah, all these indigent and poor immigrants from Yemen, Sudan and Pakistan are taking away all the jobs and creating crime and mess and and and. So the Saudi's kick or try to kick all the immigrant population out.

But then Pakistan, UAE, Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan etc. remind Saudi Arabia and Al Queda about the help they provided in overthrowing the Al Saud's and say, why are you mistreating our citizens in this manner? Far fetched? no its, not because the identical thing happened in South Africa. Here's the story. I quote snippets:

a spate of violence against immigrants, including Nigerians, reflected historical amnesia. Mr Yar’Adua has faced strong popular pressure to deliver a tough message to the South African government.........Images of foreigners burnt alive and beaten by lynch mobs have been circulating on the internet, fuelling outrage in countries that once welcomed South African fugitives from racial persecution and lent support to the African National Congress (ANC) in its days as a liberation movement.

Racial and ethnic violence against immigrants has a long history which I have intermittently explored here. And in the fullness of time, all are exposed to it, Whites in Zimbabwe, Blacks in South Africa, Jews and Muslims in Europe, and so on so forth.

But again, notice that Nigeria did not talk about the elephant in the room. Why the richest country in Africa has so many emigrants? Why have people emigrated from Mozambique? What made people leave in their millions from Zimbabwe? THAT is the bigger issue, those corrupt, thieving, cheating, robbing leaders. Dragging history into it is just hiding the issue.

Technorati Tags: Africa,Corruption,Nigeria,Mozambique,South Africa,immigration

Nigerian thug in chief defends Zimbabwean thug in chief

Typically, these crooks hang together. Have you noticed that? All these African leaders, by and large, are basically thieves and crooks. This man, Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua, came to power in one of the most blatantly rigged elections recently. So a man who comes to power with fraud will obviously stick up to a man who rules by fraud, no?

So when this man says,

"We do not support violence. We ask for caution and restraint. Whatever crisis there is, there must be restraint to resolve it according to law," said Yar’Adua in his first public statement on the crisis.

"We cannot behave like the Western countries in respect to the Zimbabwean crisis... We cannot come out and start making judgments on the internal problems" of Zimbabwe, he said.

I was sneering cynically at him. What a hypocrite. This man is at the same level as that other man, Thabo Mbeki, who talk utter and total bullshit. What is clear is that these leaders have no idea about what the rule of law is and have no, absolutely no care about their citizens. Which is why whenever they say stuff like this, their image falls even further. Esphoks.

Technorati Tags: Nigeria,Zimbabwe,Elections,Corruption

One Laptop per child is less important than a good teacher

The OLPC seems to have died a horrible death. A good idea, but I am afraid the path to good intentions is paved by hellish technology. In other words, the idea that throwing technology at problems will immediately resolve it means that usually it ends up creating bigger problems than it solves.

I quote:

What is the sense of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?"

"We are more interested in laying a very solid foundation for quality education which will be efficient, effective, accessible and affordable."

I was reminded of this situation when I was watching Dr. Craig Barrett, Chairman, Intel Corporation, do his thing at the WCIT 2008. He was talking about Intel's offering, the Classmate PC.

It is, obviously a competitor to the OLPC and there is some bad blood between them. But what Dr. Barrett said was so right, he said, what is far more important to a student is a good teacher, a laptop comes with way too many tails dragging behind it to be really effective. I fully agree, a good teacher is worth 100 laptops if there is a binary choice. But given the fact that resources are so low in developing countries, I would much rather suggest that they take the money and use that to develop teachers.

Technorati Tags: Schooling,Education,Technology,Nigeria

The link between Female education and fertility

It is pretty much accepted that more educated a woman is, the lower is the fertility. Here's a paper which checks out this relationship for Nigeria.

Osili, Una Okonkwo, Long, Bridget Terry, Does Female Schooling
Reduce Fertility? Evidence from Nigeria, Journal of Development Economics (2007),

The literature generally points to a negative relationship between female education and fertility. Citing this pattern, policymakers have advocated educating girls and young women as a means to reduce population growth and foster sustained economic and social welfare in developing countries. This paper tests whether the relationship between fertility and education is indeed causal by investigating the introduction of universal primary education in Nigeria. Exploiting differences in program exposure by region and age, the paper presents reduced form and instrumental variables estimates of the impact of female education on fertility. The analysis suggests that increasing female education by one year reduces early fertility by 0.26 births.

Another quote from the conclusion was very interesting:

Results from Nigeria suggest that the change in education policy had a significant impact on both female education and fertility decisions. At the mean, for each additional 100 naira per capita spent on primary school classroom construction in 1976, we estimate a 2-year increase in educational attainment...........Using a Solow growth framework, Knowles et. al. (2002) estimate that a 1- percent increase in female education would increase average GDP levels by 0.37 percent.

Technorati Tags: economy , education , Nigeria , Schooling , Women , Women's Rights

Nigerian 419 Fraud

Generally I junk the Nigerian 419 fraud emails (see the UK Metropolitian Police website above) straight away
but sometimes my eyes catch some very imaginative stories told by these scammers. Here's one which caught my eye today. Read this and see how imaginative and up to date these chaps are!, very amusing indeed! And dont think that people dont get caught up in these scams, they do. My aunt got caught up in this, and she had seriously booked flight tickets from India to Nigeria for herself and her husband!!!, it was lucky I heard about it and managed to convince her to stop, she was out of pocket for the airfares, but there you go, lucky escape indeed!

Some other good sites on this fraud type are here (this is the best one, the scammers get scammed in return, this is violently funny, strongly suggest you taking a look at it) and then there is the wiki site :)



-----Original Message-----
From: sgt dave godwin [mailto:davegodwin23@yahoo.it]
Sent: 30 July 2007 19:45
Subject: Sgt. Dave Godwin


From Sgt Dave Godwin

via email : sgtdave5550@yahoo.com.hk

Good Day,

I found your contact particulars in an E-mail address guide they provide us here, as I desperately needed an urgent help to do this deal. I am seeking your kind assistance to move the sum of $12m {Twelve Million
U.S Dollars only} to you in your country, as far as I can be assured that my share will be safe in your care until I complete my service here.

SOURCE OF FUND:

A lot of money in various currencies were discovered in barrels at a farmhouse near one of Saddams old palaces in Tikrit in Iraq during an operation Conquest in Fallujah north of Baghdad, and it was agreed by Staff Sgt. Kenneth Buff and I that some part of this money be shared among both of us before informing anybody about it since both of us saw the money first. This is quite an illegal thing to do, but well tell you what? no compensation can make up for the risk we have taken with our lives in this hell hole, of which my brother in-law was killed by a road side bomb last time.

The above figure was given to me as my share, and to conceal this kind of money became a problem for me, so with the help of a British Contact working here, at Southern Basra British fortified green zone, whose office enjoys some immunity, I was able to get the package out to a safe location entirely out of trouble spot. He does not know the real contents of the package, and believes that it belongs to a British/American medical doctor who died in a raid here in Baghdad, and before giving up, trusted me to hand over the package to his family in United States. I have now found a very secured way of getting the package out of Iraq to you, for you to pick it up, and I will discuss this with you when I am sure that you are willing to assist me, and I believe that my money will be well secured in your hand because you have fear of God.

I want you to tell me how much you will take from this money for the assistance you will give me. One passionate appeal I will make to you is not to discuss this matter with anybody, should you have reasons to reject this offer, please and please destroy this message as any leakage of this information will be too bad and catastrophic for soldiers here in Iraq. I do not know how long we will remain here, but I hope to have
a shift very soon for me to return back to the States. I have been shot and wounded twice and I have survived two terrible suicides bomb attacks just by special grace of God, this and other reasons I will mention later has prompted me to reach out for help, I will honestly want this matter be resolved immediately, Please contact me as soon as possible with my private email;address which is my only way of communication for now. sgtdave5550@yahoo.com.hk

I thank you so much for everything and anticipate that you will be trustworthy and handle this transaction to the best of your ability to benefit both of us.

God Bless you and your Family

Yours

Sgt. Dave Godwin