Africabound

Known Knowns

2012-01-05T12:28:00.001+01:00

There is no unknown
We know only as much as we can prove.

TB Joshua Opinion Survey

2011-08-04T16:35:00.000+01:00

I wish to know what you think about TB Joshua ... vote on the right PLEASE.

Hunger and Stupidity

2011-07-25T21:38:00.001+01:00

I am against any form of aid for Africa because any continent that receives aid for 50+ years and does not change can do without aid. Even humanitarian aid is of no use. Yet troubling images from East Africa and Somalia are bound to haunt us. These images weigh on the mind of those who are emotionally inclined to think that Africa may survive only through financial aid. These images serve as justifications for mass emotion. No good ever came from mass emotion. A crowd does not think – individuals do.

The African relief fad serves to distract attention from real issues which are accountable government and democracy. There is famine in parts Chad, Darfur and Kordofan (Sudan), Somalia, parts of Uganda and D.R. Congo, Central African Republic etc. These countries are not victims of fate. These countries are victims of centralized autocratic regimes, idiotic agricultural policies and politically engineered civil strife. The dying child in Darfur or the fly-infested mouth in Somalia is man-made by Africans. Starvation is not a problem; it’s a symptom of bad governance.

Since western donors are inclined to give aid to an extremely poor population by procedure (say 0.2% of GDP); when a potentate in Cameroon, Burkina-Faso, Congo, Mauritania, Uganda DRC, Burundi etc. designs an economy based on foreign financial input, the extremely poor population becomes an asset. If he alleviates poverty, he disqualifies himself from western financial dregs. Overnight, the extremely poor become a tool for survival. Crusading against misery is not a priority in dictatorships. Glaring example; while citizens die of cholera in Bafut (NW Region - Cameroon), CPDM party militants of the same region donate 400 million FCFA for the re-election campaign of a president who is in power since 1983 and may not even be a candidate for the upcoming elections. Read my lips.

Image bias is accompanied by ignorant logic of pop stars (Bono, USA for Africa, Live AID) who’ll say “if we take one day off nuclear spending and put it on food, it will make a huge difference”. I’ll prefer the nuclear spending to go on while we forget not to put a juvenile nuke under Sassou, Bongo, Biya, Compaore, Deby, or Bozize. One bang will be more efficient than a whole US Defense budget worth of canned fish.

There is of course a shortage of food among Africans as there is among Indians, Chinese and Bangladeshi. But that does not mean there is a shortage of food in Africa. Even if you make food available for Somalia, there remains the insurmountable problem of distribution logistics. Such logistics are borne of delivered electoral promises, accountability and representative government. There is no African state which respects the above and faces famine, starvation or both. Vices go together: Cholera in Cameroon, Meningitis in Chad, Famine in Somalia and the endless list goes on while Ghana, South Africa, and Botswana have a groove on.

Drought may be a calamity but consequent death from starvation is the result of bad governance.

Incompetence of State

2011-05-31T21:13:00.000+01:00

Of the potential candidates for

Cameroon

’s 2011 Presidential elections, one is illegal. Amending Article 6(2) of 1996 Constitution in April 2008 could have put Paul Biya’s presidential hopes in constitutional limbo. The issue was first hinted at by Alain Didier Olinga(1) in April. We have pondered on the issue and talked to constitutional experts with the condition of anonymity and these are their arguments.

1 – Paul Biya was sworn in as president of

Cameroon

in 1997 under the 18 January 1996 constitution that limited presidential mandates to two. Article 6(2) of 1996 Constitutional amendment expressly states that limitation of presidential mandates is not retroactive. As such, when Paul Biya promulgated the reform into law in January 1996, the provision did not apply to him as he was active president. It could only apply to a president who is sworn into office with this limitation in force. Therefore, as of 1997 when Biya was sworn in again his presidential mandates were limited to two.

Eleven years later in 2008, a move initiated by CPDM dominated parliament culminated in a constitutional amendment that removed limitation of consecutive presidential mandates. Unlike in 1996, the new wording omitted retroactivity. If the new provision is not retroactive, then it cannot be applicable to Paul Biya who is active president since 1997.

2 – CPDM militants claim April 14^th 2008 constitutional amendments did not aim at giving Paul Biya limitless presidential mandates. Constitutionally, they got it right. The wording of the new provision on consecutive presidential mandates does not say the law is retroactive.

3 – According to Article 2 of Cameroon Civil code, the law is not retroactive except in situations where the law itself invokes retroactivity.

Biya’s Options.

With the parliamentary obesity that CPDM enjoys in National Assembly, the majority party may yet do another modification aimed at completing April 2008 reform by making the provision of limitless presidential mandates retroactive. The National Assemble may yet present an interpretative law, to clarify its intention when the law was revised in April 2008.

Now “the People’s Call” becomes very interesting. Is it a call for a popular revolt? We throw the question to your appreciation; can president Biya alter the nature of his second presidential mandate while it is still running?

(1) Alain Didier Olinga was dismissed from the post of Deputy Director of IRIC in 2008 for non-conformist opinions on constitutional reform.

WHAT IF?

2011-05-21T22:00:00.001+01:00

What if Biya were not president of Cameroon in 2012? Not by losing elections but because he chooses not to run for office in 2011. For the first time since 1992 President Biya, although the statutory presidential candidate for CPDM (since he is party leader) is yet to announce his candidacy for October 2011 elections. At first this may look normal till you realize that the usual suspects on the opposition bench are also delaying presidential campaign kick-off. Could they be privy to “hidden” information? Or maybe they want to identify whom they are running against in the CPDM.

What if by modifying constitutional limitation of presidential mandates in 2008, Biya actually pulled the limelight on himself so that he could foist a power transition with a candidate of his choice under the radar?

What if recent political options adopted by Biya are geared at protecting his candidate. Take the case for “Operation Epervier”. The move to fight against corruption by intimidation and public disgrace, overflows with political strategy. The question has never been whether the accused and arrested are guilty or not, but whether they have political ambition. When corruption is erected as a form of control, all those who flirt with the system leave open a flank through which they can be brought down. The kind of corruption that grips Cameroon is not moral but systemic. There exists no means of working in a corrupt regime yet claim not to be corrupt. If we agree, that Mebara, Abah Abah, Siyam Siewe, Etondo Ekotto, Fornjindam, Nguini Effa, Michel Fotso etc may be corrupt to an extent, yet do have vested political ambitions, then we need to examine whether their ambitions threaten Biya. Obviously, Biya is not threatened by them in any way. Even popularity ceased to be a threat for Biya in 1992. The ease with which president Biya rounds these men off to jail is proof. If they don’t threaten Biya, then they threaten someone else. In which case, the political victims of “Operation Epervier” threaten whomever Biya wants to choose as replacement? Biya may be clearing hurdles for his candidate.

What if Biya’s renewd acquaintance with Fru Ndi is not coincidental? Although they have met six times in as many months, Biya has politically neutralized Fru Ndi. Worse still he makes the SDF Chairman look like a village chief who rules, but has no power. What is the political opportunity of meeting Fru Ndi regularly? Fru Ndi may yet be a thorn to the side of Biya’s candidate. In which case, befriending Fru Ndi also follows the same logic of facilitating the path for someone else.

What if Biya voiced this intention not to be president beyond 2011 to at least one person. If this information leaks (it’s often so in Cameroon) then there is a clear justification for the circus-like “The People’s Call”. For the first time, choosing a CPDM presidential candidate seems to need popular adherence rather internal party regulation. Biya’s problem is “being president”, at all cost. Even with 39% of 4 million registered voters in 1992. Biya has not changed. He will settle for 15% percent of the vote on condition that rival parties have 14% and less. Where does the idea that citizens within and out of the CPDM want Biya to be candidate? “The People’s Call” is evocative of orphaned children looking for a lost parent in a war zone.

What if Biya’s choice is Rene Sadi, Marafa, Laurent Esso, Ahmadou Ali, Cavaye, Ayang Luc, Mebe Ngo etc.? They all meet the criterion that makes me think Mebara, Abah Abah, Siyam Siewe, Etondo Ekotto, Fornjindam, Nguini Effa, Michel Fotso, Ondo Ndong and the rest are potential rivals. Biya could even choose a non-CPDM stalwart, reinforcing the idea why he needs to silence all opposition from within his party.

What if this election were postponed in 2011? With the present state of affairs, it is plausible.

March 15th

2011-03-15T11:00:00.001+01:00

Title: Biya Shed's Liability

A soldier without political education is a potential criminal - Thomas Sankara 1985

In a presidential decree reorganizing Cameroon’s Armed Forces, Commander-in-Chief, Paul Biya retired four generals and promoted ten others to varying posts of responsibility. This is the culmination of military reforms announced by President Biya in 2001. The four slated for retirement are Generals Pierre Semengue 76yrs, Oumaroudjam Yaya 73yrs, Nganso Sunji 75yrs and Tataw James 78yrs.

Keen observers of Cameroon’s military may not be surprised that Biya retires James Tataw (legally blind) and Pierre Semengue (suffering from a partial stroke). Actually, these presidential decrees attempt to mask a huge malaise within Cameroon’s Armed Forces.

Cameroon’s army is beset by one main shortcoming, tribalism. Outright tribalism dates to aborted coup attempt in 1984 when President Biya reverted to surround himself and appoint to strategic security posts only military staff from his region of origin or others whose destinies were accidentally or fatally linked to his own in 1984 like Brigadier General Desancio Yenwo Ivo. In recent police appointments, the present police boss Martin Mbarga Nguele was Police boss in April 1984.

In the same vein, advancements are either guaranteed by tribal origin or familiarity to those with the “right” origins. This system seemed to attain its objectives till 1990. Beyond that year, President Biya, realizing his political survival depends on repression rather than electoral promise, decided to swell the ranks of Cameroon’s army and police as a rampart to potential street protests. Crash courses turned former gang leaders and a few honest Cameroonians into scantily trained and inadequately equipped military and policemen. Meanwhile within army ranks, many respected and well trained officers (Captain Galabe, Colonel Fomundam etc.) were either put to retirement or never got advancement because their origins predisposed them to be sympathetic to certain political opinions.

The direct consequence of poor training and barbaric nepotism is the high casualty rate in Bakassi, (and all other theatres of armed conflict involving Cameroon’s army) indiscipline and a generalized drop in the quality of services and professions offered by Cameroon’s Armed Forces and Police. Gone are the days when “Genie Militaire” performed road construction (Melen to Mvog-Betsi, Carrefour Vogt to Ecole des Postes, MINEDUC roundabout, or the road from Council to Mile 8 Mankon in Bamenda). Instead, welcome to street thuggery in Limbe, Bamenda, Douala and Yaoundé courtesy of BIR (Battallion d’Intervention Rapide).

The underlying confusion in genre and casting is revealed in president Biya’s March 11 decrees. The new naval Chief of Staff is General Jean Mendoua a sharp-shooter from the Presidential Guard. The Army Chief of Staff is General Ngoua Ngally a marine officer from the Navy. General Mahamat Ahmed, a paratrooper from Koutaba was made General and appointed head of Fire Brigade. The reasons are evident; in the absence of quality training, no particular specialty is required for the different corps of Cameroon’s Defence Forces.

Missed Opportunities

2011-03-01T12:25:00.003+01:00

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason…” Cicero 58BC

32 years ago the Iranian revolution scored a massive success. The Shah was exiled, the military was decimated and Islamist fundamentalism occupied the ensuing void. Few may agree, but in many ways, the Iranian revolution was the first successful people revolution of the 20^th Century. Contemporary analysis of the Iranian Revolution is clouded by what or who replaced the Shah, but true to form and substance, there is a straight line running from Iran, through Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. What made these revolutions work?

Ingredients

On the political level, is an unpopular oligarchy run by an elite who believe or make-believe that power change will cause a civil war. The only form of power change they envisage is by death of the potentate or monarchic handover. Such regimes are propped up by western democracies as a means to stabilize the price of energy resources or to curb the never-proven rise of Islamic extremism. Contrary to common opinion these regimes have very weak and divided armies. The reason being the massive dependence on elite forces at the expense of the national army. In Libya the army defects to the streets because they play second fiddle to Kaddafi’s elite unit. That same situation plays out between BIR and Army in Cameroon. Demographically, these states have massive youthful disenfranchised populations (up to 70% between the ages of 18 and 40). Add generalized unemployment to this mix and it represents up 49million in Egypt, 7million in Tunisia, 4million in Libya and 14million in Cameroon. The ingredients are right, the cooks are ready but the fire must go under the pot for the meal to be served.

Cart before the Horse

The most difficult thing to find is a pretext. The difficulty does not rise from lack of opportunity but from the ability to recognize a spontaneous pretext and reaction time between that recognition and the mass motion needed to kick start a revolt. In Iran it was the death by fire of 400 people at a theatre in Abadan as it was with the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunisia.

Last week, some strike attempts were witnessed in Cameroon. While they proved mettle of Kah Wallah and a handful against a mechanized repressive police, it did little to tickle the appreciation of the most optimistic closet revolutionary. Laudable efforts don’t always guarantee satisfactory results. The political agenda overshadowed revulsion for Biya et al.

This week, a ready-made pretext shows up. True to form, it is spontaneous. Nobody, except the Minister of Finance, could predict or warn against the looming bankruptcy of the fastest growing micro-finance institution in Cameroon; Cofinest (Compagnie Financiere de l’Estuaire). The social extent of this development can be gauged from the 850,000 savings accounts run by Cofinest. On the street level, this translates to 85, ooo people per region in Cameroon. Beyond the numbers, Cofinest touches the soul of Cameroon - football. Originally, Cofinest was a common initiative group created by supporters of Union Douala. From 1996 it became a micro-finance institution with 508 shareholders and up to 850,000 accounts by December 2010.

There is a huge difference between political analysis, agendas and street survival. When a political agenda precedes a revolt, it is called a coup d’etat. For a revolution to take root, political agendas may only recuperate rather than lead a people’s power revolution.

A Tale Of Two Cities

2011-02-13T00:41:00.003+01:00

How may we not be impressed by news from Cairo? Why should we not share the joy of millions of Egyptians of all social classes and of all faiths who with bare hands and just eighteen days deposed a dictator who seemed immovable, invincible and so sure of himself he was preparing a dynastic succession? This second revolution-in-a-month, evicts authoritarian and corrupt regimes in power for three decades, under the pampered protection of Western powers for their role as a bulwark against the radical Islam?

Tunisia took everyone by surprise, but experts warned against Domino Theory, stressing that Tunisia is a geopolitical lightweight, and that Egypt is another level. Same causes have produced the same effects, and the largest Arab country, one that has always set the tone has fallen even faster than Tunisia.

These revolutions are unlike any other. There is no charismatic leader, no secret organization, no secret army or political organization; but groups on Facebook, Tweeter, videos on YouTube, and the idealism of youth who aspire to live differently. Social networks did not "make" the revolution, they simply permitted a generation to invent a virtual space of freedom that has never stopped wanting to get into the real world. The spirit existed, the heroes were available, until Mohamed Bouazizi, a young vegetable seller gave the pretext that triggered an involuntary movement of historic proportions.

Two questions arise after such sudden regime collapse. What happens once the tyrant leaves? What will happen in other similar countries? No autocratic regime in Africa is immune to the shock events of Tunis and Cairo.

Transition
In Tunisia and Egypt, a difficult transition is launched. In one case as in the other, the protesters do not want the survival of the dictator’s cronies or the dictator's regime without the dictator. They do not want to see "their" revolution confiscated by the army or the Islamists. But the first real burning question is: who's next? This question is in the mind of all autocrats. Facebook chatter says: Algeria on Saturday, Bahrain on the 14th, Morocco on the 20th February ... And beyond the Arab world, Iran, Pakistan, Cameroon, Libya?

Each event will not cause a revolution: Bahrain is not Egypt, Morocco is not Syria and Cameroon is not Libya. But these countries are not immune to the cocktail that caused the revolutions of Tunisia and Egypt: long-serving autocrats, failed economies, impoverishment, a thirst for freedom, a rejection of nepotism, corruption, censorship and generalized stupidity.

A universal message
There remains the huge geopolitical impact of these events. It takes the West by surprise, and paralyses Israel who has everything to gain by maintaining the status quo. These events shook all dictatorships, all authoritarian regimes, regardless of their latitude and culture, beyond the Arab world and Islam. The West may just realize that, rather than propping these regimes as a bulwark to radical Islam, such regimes are actually breed for radicalization.

Perception soothes … Reality is Rotten.

2010-11-01T09:44:00.002+01:00

“…where corruption abounds, laws must be very numerous”. (Tacitus – Rome AD56-AD117)

The latest report from Transparency International (TI) breezed through Cameroon with the obvious criminal silence that is characteristic of the guilty. Highly ranked at 9.3 on 10, are Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore. Cameroon ranks 146 on 178 alongside Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Nepal, Paraguay and Yemen with a score of 2.2 on 10. As a rule-of-thumb in Cameroon, such reports are spun by apparatchiks to demonstrate external conspiracies to destabilize Cameroon. They prove a point unintentionally! Institutionally unreliable and structurally weak states do get easily manipulated by external reports. What is TI’s methodology and which countries rank alongside Cameroon?

Scope: The World Bank describes corruption as the single greatest obstacle to economic and social development. As such attracting foreign investment requires perceptions of a healthy business environment, and information on levels of corruption influences the willingness of donors to assist or relate overtly with developing countries. First published in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) has gained prominence over the years as a leading indicator on institutional corruption. Through these years, Cameroon’s consistency is apparent at the bottom ranks. This grim picture contrasts recent spectacular arrests of potentially corrupt public sector officials in Cameroon. Evidently these arrests have a reverse effect on Cameroon’s CPI rating. Rather than pulling Cameroon up the rankings, they stay low because these selective arrests prove that corruption in Cameroon affects even the means to fight corruption. Perception finally caught up with reality.

Limitations: The CPI is a cumulative indicator that ranks countries on the degree to which corruption is perceived among public officials and politicians. TI defines corruption as “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain” and relies on thirteen resident and non-resident surveys from ten independent organizations. A minimum of three sources must be available for a country to be included in the CPI. Variations in the number of sources used for each country certainly occur. For example, while Singapore’s 2010 CPI rating was based on nine sources, only three were available for Iraq. The final source averages, score each country. Calling the report a perception index, betrays the difficulty in quantifying corruption absolutely. The major difficulty may stem from a non-universally agreed definition for corruption. Where is the line drawn between lobbying and bribery?

TI defines corruption as “abuse of entrusted power for private gain”. Is this definition reasonable for a kleptocratic bureaucracy whose elite confiscate power by fraud, intimidation and tailor-made constitutions? “Abuse of entrusted power” does not therefore exist where power was never entrusted! Does this mean authoritarian regimes are not corrupt? Rather, it would be plausible to suggest that all the activities of ruling elites are corrupt, since their primary motivation is to hold on to power for private gain at all cost. Regardless, there exist striking similarities between Cameroon and the countries scoring 2.2 on CPI 2010:

Heavy reliance on external financial aid,

General disregard for human rights,

A diplomacy that neither has determinants nor objectives,

Constantly changing constitutions,

A youthful but largely unemployed population,

And an increasingly ageing and isolated ruling elite.

Yemen for example is convulsing with Islamic extremism; Haiti completely depends on emergency aid relief and witchcraft; Cote d’Ivoire is yet to recover from an identity crisis that sparked a civil war. Iran is trapped between technological blackmail and religious bigotry, while Libya is yet to differentiate between the state and the Gaddaffi clan. Nepal just emerged from regicidal carnage to parliamentary democracy won by Maoists in 2008 although Mao or Maoism never tolerates more than one party. Among these country’s rulers, President Ali Abdullah Saleh is president of North Yemen since 1978 and unified Yemen since 1990. Muammar Gaddaffi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution, presides Libya since 1969 while Paul Biya remote controls Cameroon since 1982. The resulting picture is a group of institutionally weak states who maintain these same low ratings on HDI (Human Development Index) and MDG (Millennium Development Goals).

Reality: Paul Biya’s increasingly long absences from Cameroon prove that he neither has the intention nor is he capable of fighting corruption effectively, because it is a tool he uses to control a cohort of c0-opted accomplices. This explains why “Operation Epervier” is carried out “with direct instructions from the Head of State”! The judiciary and the police end up playing stage-managed roles in a tragedy that will go down with a loud bang.

“…clearing the mess should never be entrusted to the one who created the mess…” (Anonymous – Indian Traditional)

Battle Lines

2010-10-15T12:32:00.003+01:00

Power alternation in Cameroon among presidential hopefuls ignores a crucial observation. Incumbency should be applicable to the opposition as it is to the party in power because since 1997, the actors and consequent results are the same. If absolute power corrupts absolutely, then absolute powerlessness surely renders imbecile.

All political parties are good enough! There is no difference between UPC, UNDP, CDU, CPDM or SDF, but there is a huge difference between the people whose ideas and objectives dominate these parties. No ethical criterion exists to qualify the CPDM or the SDF as good or bad. Morality is not a political exercise. Parties are made of men, who promote dreams and nightmares. These men may be extremely bad and are found everywhere. Backtrack to Nuremberg Trials (1945): the Nazi Party was never put on trial. Individuals, albeit all Nazi, where tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Their similarity was not Nazi allegiance, but crimes carried out in the exercise of the functions in a Nazi state. Individual responsibility does not dissolve in the aggregate. The individual has moral and ethical obligations that the party may not have. The individual must be defined! Legally, you can neither protect nor confront what you cannot define.

In Cameroon there is no distinction between the party and the individual. Basically, the individual is not defined. Failure to define the individual in a potentially frenzied environment gives room for all forms of abuse and misconceptions about power. Beyond goat-herding slogans like “Great Ambitions” and “Power to the people”, what do political parties in Cameroon stand for? What does John Fru Ndi offer? Non-voter registration? A boycott? John Fru Ndi definitely wants to be the next president of Cameroon, but he has never planned to be one. Absence to recognize what an individual stands for explains why the SDF develops epileptic seizures because Kah Walla has a firm opinion about issues, especially voter registration. Voting is the ultimate political activity and eventually “those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber” (Plato, Athens 427 BC - 347 BC)

Paul Biya won the last presidential election by just over 2million votes. This means state machinery, sovereign institutions, a faulty electoral system and pre-determined malfunctions were put into contribution for an output of just over 20% of the electorate or 10% of the total population. The CPDM is not a formidable beast after all! Paul Biya counts on silence. That choice may be explained by the incapacity to misquote silence. His cohorts and opponents invest huge amounts of mental energy trying to second-guess him at the expense of building an effective electorate.

If you bellowed “SDF!” in 1991, the response was “power to the people”. By the turn of the century, the response was “power”. Presently there is no response since there is no rally call. From “power to the people” to “power”: was that a simple contraction, or a psychological overhaul from the quest of a group, to an individual’s quest?

Power is essentially speculative. We think we are powerful because we compare ourselves to adversaries, potential and actual. Confrontation on the other hand is empirical and absolute. Only through confrontation can power be realized. Cameroon is on a collision-course to a generational confrontation whose victims are obvious. Challenging with novel ideas, plausible goals, verifiable solutions and an average age of 45years are Dr. Matthias Eric Owona Nguini, Kah Walla, Joshua Osih, Prof. Pius Ottou, Charles Ateba Eyene, Dr. Fomunyoh and Hilaire Kamgang. On the incumbent bench are Paul Biya and Augustin Koddock (born at beginning of WW2 - 1933), John Fru Ndi and Adamou Ndam Njoya (born in 1941 and 1942 respectively), Bello Bouba (born in 1947) and cronies with an average age of 70years. These are the battle lines for 2011. A whole generation may not be sacrified for the personal comforts of a gerontocracy.

As in chess game, a threat is more formidable than its realization. The messages from the younger generation herald the first shot in this epic battle. Where do you stand?

John Fru Dilema

2010-09-30T16:20:00.003+01:00

Charisma is a temporal political asset serving a strategy which in itself is temporal. Riding on the crest of political gains acquired between 1992 and 1997, the Social Democratic Front (S.D.F.) and its Chairman have clearly never evaluated the scope of gains made in the mid 90’s nor really identified how the S.D.F. achieved those gains. If not, why does the S.D.F. not encourage Cameroonians to participate in voter registration when the party’s clout depends on massive voter registration in the mid 90’s ? I identify two reasons which reveal the mindset of John Fru Ndi.

Firstly, incompetence. Fru Ndi is yet to adopt nor is capable of understanding the internal dynamics of a democratic party. Failure in politics is a sign of ageing. Absolute failure is a clarion for change. Politically, we do not fail because we have aged; but we age and become irredeemably “old” because we fail. This translates as the politicians’ inability to propose novel ideas and solutions, or when he becomes the raison d'être for reform. President Abdoulaye Wade, though aged 81 is “younger” than Thabo Mbeki (16yrs younger) because the latter could not propose solutions to South Africa’s problems. In Cameroon, disagreeing with Paul Biya is no longer enough! You need to propose actionable solutions. Fru Ndi is Chairman and Presidential candidate of the S.D.F. since 1990. He has never won an election in which he is a candidate. Statistically, it is the highest failure rate: 100%. Therefore, along with the Cameroon People's Democratic Movement(C.P.D.M.) and an incompetent Supreme Court, Fru Ndi shares the responsibility for Cameroon being subjected to the Biya regime till date.

Secondly, Fru Ndi has no notion that equal opportunity is the underlying principle in democracy. Dictators are made of same stuff. A dictator often thinks his god-given mandate excludes all other contemporaries from decision-making. “Me or nobody” is the familiar statement. Fru Ndi and cronies think only he may be presidential candidate. As such they create ideal conditions for the exclusion of S.D.F. sympathizers from the voting process. If Fru Ndi genuinely believes there can be another candidate (apart from himself), he will have no problem encouraging S.D.F. sympathizers to register and vote. A bad strategy is better than no strategy at all. Fru Ndi must take a stand about voter registration. Nonetheless, Fru Ndi will maintain ambiguity between not calling a boycott and not calling for voter registration till it is too late to choose any. Thereafter, he’ll fake “democratic re-awakening” by losing to another candidate at S.D.F. primaries. But the candidate will campaign in vain, since there may be no S.D.F. sympathizers registered to vote.

Like Yasser Arafat in his last days, Fru Ndi clings to a potential charisma which serves only his personal political survival. Arafat never attempted to stop Hamas firing rockets into Israel from Palestinian controlled territories for two reasons: had he done so, and Hamas refused to oblige it would have proven he lacks complete control over Gaza. On the other hand, if he did, and Hamas complied, then Arafat assumes responsibility for Kassam rockets targeting Israeli frontline settlements. The political survivor confuses his destiny with that of the people he leads. Fru Ndi realizing that he lacks the mettle to dislodge Biya regime, has resorted to ultimate survival tactics. If S.D.F. sympathizers register and vote, he’ll still lose, so he prefers blaming the score on non-voter registration.

This situation raises a question that plagues African multiparty politics in general. What is the profile of a potential head of state? A bigot? An egotist? An illiterate incompetent? A monolingual demagogue? An Industrialist? An enlightened despot? No rule applies across-the-board. But there is a huge difference between putting oneself at the service of politics, and putting politics at the service of oneself. Fru Ndi fails both ways. He cannot win and his time is up!

Hammas and Sickles

2009-02-02T16:15:00.004+01:00

There is always a threshold of tolerance to pain before a people with a common cause (despite differing means) decide to put temporal survival before pre-conceived ideals. The Palestinian people are reaching that point.

The Russians reached that point in 1991, when they decided to follow through with Boris Yeltsin and topple Communism despite his complete lack of tact and democratic tradition. Some Germans reached this point in 1944 when followed Claus Von Stauffenberg in his attempt to eliminate Hitler. South Africans, post 1991 forgot the past and embraced Mandela's peace-offer despite the fresh and bleeding wounds of Apartheid.

For four decades, the Palestinians accepted that their future be dependent on, and thus confused with the personal destiny of Yasser Arafat. Arafat's death produced nothing more than rivalry between his lieutenants and PLO factions. I'll never stop repeating that Palestinians do not realise the land they vowed to get in 1948 is getting smaller. And Hammas...?

Hammas was elected for sure! But Hammas' refusal to declare a ceasefire with Israel, or at least stop rockets from falling in Israel is a manifestation of one fundamental problem in Palestinian politics. There are two kinds of politicians in Palestinian territories. Those who have the prestige and those who have the streets. We know where Hammas stands. Hammas' inability to declare a ceasfire stems from the fact that she does not control those who send rockets into Israel. As such, declaring a ceasefire and still see rockets flying to Israel will expose Hammas as a "not so crucial" factor in the Palestinian equation. In fact, Hammas prefers not to declare that ceasefire so she may still virtually control that perception of mass-violence over Israel. The question is how much longer this will last? How much pain can Palestinians endure in the name of an ideal that makes them start from scratch every other time the Israeli tanks roll in. Or do we really want to accept that a new page in human psychology is being written in Gaza and the West Bank? A whole society has become suicidal? Not true. Mahmoud Abbas is part of that society ... and he doesn't throw bombs at his enemy. Like to say, a Hammers without Sickles are just carpenter's tools.

EU/ African Union Summit

2007-12-07T21:52:00.000+01:00

The AU's presence in Lisbon is summarized to a Mugabe debate. Although worse dictators abound in Africa, i support every action against any dictatorship. One dictator less is always better.

What is the AU's mission in Portugal? Is it a level playing-field summit? Are African Leaders summoned to Lisbon? Is the African Union capable of inviting the EU to Africa. Do you imagine Sarkozy, Merkel, Brown, Prodi etc. converging on Lesotho.?

Over 40 years after most African countries where transformed from colonies to decolonised territories in the guise of political independence, Africa is yet to disengage from the choke-hold of a hitherto colonised elite, who's basic education created the "Colonial Auxiliary".

The EU will be present in Lisbon as political and economic block with a constitution, a continental parliament, a strong currency and supra-national rights and responsibilities. Europeans participate in referandii to decide on Euro-wide legislation.

The African Union on the other hand is a loose syndicate of Heads of state, most of whom prefer to be in power for life. Imagine a cocktail of homicidal theorists like Kabila, Compaore and Obiang Nguema. Sprinkle a handful of political dinosaurs like Mugabe, Moubarak... Stir with colonial auxilliaries like Biya, Bongo, Bouteflika, Ben Ali, Sassou and Museveni(altogether they have been in power for 200 years) The resultant fecal outcome, thanks to Kadaffi's erratic impetus, is a more sorry sight than what a Picasso painting appears to a purist. In this bleakness Mbeki, Sirleaf, Toumani Toure, Kouffor et al. are an endangered minority. Africa is represented at the EU/AU Summit by corrupt despots.

Feed The World

2007-11-02T13:42:00.002+01:00

We begin this morning, I’m afraid, with an alarming revelation. Never mind the war, the rugby or gun crime. It has come to my attention that in the whole of the British Isles there isn’t a single eco-nutritionist.

The government’s Food Standards Agency employs about a million and a half working groups who tour the nation in cheap suits making sure that Bernard Matthews is not filling his turkeys with asbestos and that Sainsbury’s isn’t using polonium to make its bananas more bent.

But not one of them is thinking: “Wait a minute. If we build the 3m new houses Gordon Brown has promised by 2020, where will we grow all the stuff needed to feed the people who live in them?”

And worse. Nobody is wondering where we might get the water. Not for our lawns and our lavatories but for the crops, the cows and the piggy-wigs. Like I said, this is an alarming problem.

Already the Atlantic has fewer cod in it than Elton John’s bath, so we are having to import fish fingers from China. And you may think this is fine. Your underpants come from the Far East, and your mobile phone, so why should we not import our watercress and beef from those industrious little yellow fellows on the banks of the Yangtze?

I’ll tell you why. Because China’s population is growing, too, and soon they won’t be able to send us their fish fingers because they will have been scoffed before they get to the docks.

It is a fact that the world can just about feed 6.5 billion people. But it will not be able to feed 7 billion or 8 billion. And certainly not if, as the lunatic Al Gore suggests, Canada stops growing food and turns over its prairies to the production of biodiesel.

Maybe man is causing the world to warm, but we’ll never know because, frankly, we will all have starved to death long before anyone gets the chance to find out.

Obviously, one solution is to burn the entire Amazon rainforest and turn this rich and fertile place into the world’s pantry. But unfortunately this is not possible because Sting will turn up on a chat show with some pygmy who’s sewn a saucer into his bottom lip, arguing that the world’s “indigenous tribes” are suffering because of the West’s greed.

And never mind that the pygmy is wearing a Manchester United football shirt.

Another solution is that we all become, with immediate effect, vegetarians. It takes 1,790 litres of water to grow 1kg of wheat. But 9,680 litres to produce 1kg of cow. Sadly, however, this doesn’t work for people like me who only really enjoy eating something if it once had a face.

I fear, too, that if we all became vegetablists, the world would smell of halitosis and we’d all start to vote Liberal Democrat. Furthermore, all the veg-heads I know are sickly and grey and unable to climb a flight of stairs without fainting.

It all looks bleak. But don’t worry, because I have a suggestion that I worked out this morning.

At the moment, we eat only a very small number of things. Cows. Pigs. Potatoes. Lettuce. And that’s about it. So what I propose is that we spice up our lives with a bit of variety.

David Attenborough is forever finding unusual creatures in the deepest parts of the ocean. He tells us how they can see down there in the murky depths and how they mate. He tells us where they live, how they raise their young and how they use their tentacles to find prey. But he never tells us the most important thing: what they taste like.

It’s the same story with Monty Don. Each week, he crops up on Gardeners’ World and explains how lupins form the perfect backdrop to any rockery. Yes. Fine. But can you put them on toast?

I’m looking at my garden now and wondering. I know I can’t eat the yew hedge because it will bounce off my diaphragm and come right back out again. But what about the lawn? Would that be delicious and nutritious? And, gulp, what about Kristin Scott Donkey, who died recently?

Should I have given her poor body to the hunt, or should I have garnished it with some lupins and a sea horse and had her for supper?

Why not? Over the years, I have eaten dog, snake, crocodile, guillemot, whale, puffin and a scorpion. They all tasted like chicken, so it’s a fair bet donkeys would, too. Or what about camels, which, as we all know, need very little water?

This brings me on to the final solution. There are many people who are greatly concerned for the plight of endangered species such as the tiger, the panda and the blue whale. They work very hard doing charity marathons in zany T-shirts to help keep these poor creatures teetering on the right side of extinction.

So how’s this for a plan? We start eating them. I believe that if enough people demanded blue whale for supper, garnished with the ears of a panda and the left wing of a juicy great bustard, it wouldn’t take very long for big business to move in.

When there’s a quid to be made, pandas will be having babies with the regularity of hens and you won’t be able to go to the shops for all the leopards you’ll meet on the way.

It’s either this or, I’m afraid, we are going to have to start eating each other. If that happens, bagsy I get John Prescott.

Robert Mugabe

2007-04-03T18:58:00.000+01:00

Eighty three year strong

Criminal responsibility for political acts is the absent ingredient in African politics. That Robert Mugabe should be held responsible for torture, or accused thereof, may change the way he sees his shortening future. Mugabe is aware of how long he may cling to power. The opposition does not.

At eighty three years and over, it is illogical that Mugabe be held responsible for simultaneous political repression in Harare, Chipinge, Matoto and Binga. Mugabe may be administratively responsible, but 83yrs olds don't wake up at 5am to issue arrest warrants.

Someone is doing Mugabe's job better than he imagined. And that "someone" knows that Mugabe's time is out in every sense. Like elsewhere in Africa, Morgan Tsvangirai is putting up a fight against an individual and forgetting that he should be waging war against a regime. Subverting the nomenklatura is most efficient. Listen to the Chief of Police in Zimbabwe or the Vice-President. They don't fear that Mugabe is in political overtime. As if when Mugabe goes, what they do is forgotten. So far as politics resemble chess, I'll say this to Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders in Africa: "a threat is more effective than its execution". Threaten those who work with Mugabe and the deal is done.

Death Becomes Adam

2007-01-06T20:47:00.000+01:00

While being taken to his death, was there a slight hesitation in Saddam’s steps, a small stagger or fear in his eyes? I did not see any. Advancing towards the gallows, he resembled a soldier from a defeated army making inspection.

With an astounding calm, he wanted the black band prepared for closing his eyes to be wrapped around, and with the same calm he allowed the oily rope to be placed around his neck. Saddam’s way of meeting his own death can be seen as heroic to some. As a matter of fact, his family called the toppled leader’s attitude at the moment of execution “brave and heroic.” There are probably those who share this view among his former and new supporters. He did not appear that way to me. The attitude reflected on the screen resembled that of a man who did not believe in death and who was not familiar with what death meant for man. We cannot know; perhaps the psychology of the attitude that appeared to some as heroism and bravery was what is called the numbing of emotions.

Even if it was like that, it would not be incorrect to say that Saddam Hussein’s feelings had become numb long before he was caught, tried and led to his death. For the execution scene we saw was the final curtain of the spiritual state that made Saddam a dictator. We all saw in this last act that this spirit, which did not believe in man, life or even death, had other priorities.

Pride and the desire to dominate in every situation were his priorities. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Saddam Hussein saw himself as a semi-god above everything and that at least he imagined himself to be a Nebuchadnezzar. Signs of man like fear, doubt, regret, and the shadow of pain never crossed Saddam’s face even at the moment of death. Actually, the relation he established with death explains his actions during the period he was in power.

His calm attitude in the face of death

If a Saddam portrait is going to be made, I think that before any thing else it should be made from this lack of emotion in the face of death. Poisoning thousands of people at Halabca without blinking an eye is a result of this same numbness and determination. Not limiting settling accounts with his eternal enemy, the Iranians, to the ethnic cleansing he made against Shiite Arabs in his own country, his beginning a war with his neighbor Iran that would last for years and one of his last statements before his death being “Don’t trust an Iranian coalition” show the limits of his ambition and anger. Saddam probably took as his historical mission an Arab-Iranian or Sunni-Shiite conflict. Just as he saw himself as a Salahaddin fighting against the Crusaders when he opposed the West after his relations with his former supporter America broke down. We know that his notorious oppression and mercilessness shown to the Shiites and Kurds was too rough and devastating to be explained by sectarian fidelity. Saddam was not only extremely merciless to Shiites, but to Sunni Kurds as well. Who knows, perhaps this cruelty was nurtured in his mind by pre-Islamic archaic figures and archaic rage, for he lived in Babel, the heaven of the ancient world. Was it without reason that he called one unit of his army “Nebuchadnezzar” and another “Hammurabi”? Various things have been said about Saddam’s religious beliefs. However, we know by his pronouncing the Islamic testament just before he died that he had faith, but we do not know how religious he was. The half-finished second testament made his death even more tragic.

Of course, while images of the execution scene which caused me to have these thoughts were not yet available, just as everyone else opposed to capital punishment, I thought I would not be able to bear watching the moment of death. The only reason I thought like that was not the moral mistake of ending a life. Even if the one to die is a dictator and oppressor, I still think that no one should have the right to end another’s life, especially with others watching it.

In order not to be unfair to Saddam…

However, I was hopeful on behalf of Iraq that if, on the one hand, the execution should take place, Saddam’s death would have just an opposite effect. In a period when the whole world was full of hatred for things in Iraq, the smallest human reflex Saddam could give at the moment of death might create an effect of mercy and conscience on everyone who liked him and did not like him. And these reactions might make a positive contribution to the determination of the future of Iraq, which is on the border of inexplicable madness. But that did not happen. Just like the execution decision, execution scenes hurriedly appeared on our TV screens. While looking out of the corner of my eye wondering whether or not to turn off the television, I discovered in a strange way that it could be watched. So that it can be understood correctly, I am saying these without ever forgetting that Saddam was a soldier. In which of their faces does death not appear as a shadow that upsets and jolts those who are watching? That human shadow is felt even in photographs documenting the moment of death. Hesitation -- that is the essential hesitation. Forget about politicians and social leaders, a common murderer cannot even bear the moment of death. But there was something different in Saddam’s death. What made Saddam’s death viewable was his disbelief in death.

Maybe he did not have the meaning of death that we have. The secret of the many murders he committed is hidden in the relation he established with death. If he had believed a little in death, perhaps the number of his murders would have been smaller. While the photograph of his greatest massacre at Halabca is still fresh in our minds, the last picture Saddam gave becomes even more meaningful. Strangely enough, there is a similarity between the two photographs. I am talking about the picture of Saddam after he was taken down from the gallows and, with bruised blood spots on his neck and cheek, he was wrapped up in a white cloth and laid face-down. In this last photograph there was a human being, not an emotionally frozen dictator. Maybe it was because the consciousness and pride that had made him an oppressor had dispersed and the innocence of sleep overcame his existence. I do not know, but maybe what made me think of all this is the resemblance between the face-down sleeping state of Saddam wrapped in a white cloth and the state of the dying man trying to protect his baby at Halabca. Unfortunately, Saddam had to die in order to reflect a human appearance. That photograph where he seems to be sleeping, wrapped in a white cloth with a spot of blood on his mouth is going to remain in my mind.

Weights and Measures

2006-08-03T12:27:00.000+01:00

"Israel must be held accountable for any violations of human rights and humanitarian law, Muslim nations said in a draft Organisation of the Islamic Conference statement"

Did heads of government and the cream of world Muslims need to travel half way around the world to say this? What is their own responsibility? War is not a breakdown of negotiations, but an extension of it. If Chiite terrorists think hatred-engineered Islam is a strategy, then they should accept to confront Isreali firepower.

The declaration above seems to read "We can only be held accountable for what we do" False! Muslim nations, meeting in Malaysia seem to forget there is a concept like "crime by ommision". Hezbollah is represented in the Lebanese Parliament, which means the state of Lebanon cautions Hezbollah's activity. How does Lebanon expect Israel to react, when the President of Lebanon thanks Hezbollah for its "sacrifices"? No Muslim, Arabic or Mid-Eastern country has condemned Hezbollah attacks on Israel, although the Chiite Militia fires an average of 75RPG's per day into Israel.

What accountability are we talking about? War is the only generally accepted form of violence. It is the only form of violence codified by laws - "Geneva Conventions". Its is but normal, that a reaction to terrorist activity be disproportionate. A propos ... "disproportionate" as opposed to what? Peace?

It's almost 60yrs since the state of Israel was established as a democracy. Arabs do not seem to realise that, the land they are fighting for is getting smaller by the day. Arabs need to understand that hatred is not a good enough motivation factor to fight Israelis. Hatred is a primitive instinct that will never produce a rational result.

Lebanon-Sense

2006-07-20T16:15:00.001+01:00

The Lebanese are not genetically programmed to be victims of war.

Far from that, the most war-torn country of the Middle-East is the playground for intrigues that stretch far beyond its national identity.

The Israeli onslaught on Lebanon, which will definitely get to the gates of Beirut is not the first. But what explains that a country is literally being invaded for the second time in 2 decades and even the UN seems to be giving a head-nod? Of what interest is it to Israel to destroy Lebanon, when they could have dislodged Hezbollah without strafe-bombing vast areas of Lebanon? Is it not in Israel's interest to have a democratically elected leadership next door? Definitely yes!

In attacking Lebanon, Israel is playing two extreme cards. Firstly, even unprovoked, the Israelis always have to prove the military deterrent, in case someone forgets. This time they were provoked, and in the Israeli mind it is justified. Consider this statement by Ben Gurion to Ariel Sharon after the widely condemned Qibya Operation in the fall of 1953, in which 69 Palestinian civilians, half of which were women and children, were killed by Sharon's troops in a reprisal attack on their West Bank village. In the documentary "Israel and the Arabs: 50 Year War" Ariel Sharon recalls what happened after the raid, which was heavily condemned by many countries in the West, including the U.S.

"I was summoned to see Ben-Gurion. It was the first time I met him, and right from the start Ben-Gurion said to me:

-"Let me first tell you one thing: it doesn't matter what the world says about Israel, it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive."

This is how the Israeli mind works. Israeli survival problems and security guarantees are threatened by extreme levels of poverty in surrounding Arabic/Islamic states. Democracy, in the Middle-East is an exception. So Israel is not only a religious and spiritual enemy, it is also a political and economic one too. This means that, the Israelis have every interest in having a budding democracy, Lebanon-style next door. But Lebanon is very slow in change.

It took the Rafik Hariri assassination to kick-start the Cedar Revolution which sent Syrians out of Lebanon. The Israelis are now gambling on getting Hezbollah out of South Lebanon (North of Israel) if the Lebanese realise that their peace has been jeopardised by a Irano-Syrian backed terror organisation. Whether Lebanese loathe Israel or not is another problem. Israeli attacks directly play in the favor of salient democratic forces in Lebanon.

But between the statements of PM Fouad Siniora and the man who has lost eight family members, the is a gaping abyss. Cedar Revolution (Take II) is coming soon. The Lebanese nomenklatura will be ejected, Hezbollah will run amock, and Lebanon will finally have its peace. Or the reverse the Israelis will fight the Syrians and Iranians until the last Lebanese is dead.

Sex-Obsessed Muslims?

2006-05-26T22:20:00.000+01:00

A new tool by Google reveals how Africans use the Internet. Not being a surprise, "sex" is one of the most searched words in the Internet, but it may come as an embarrassment to many Muslim countries that their citizens are the world's most frequent digital sex searchers; in particular North Africans. But also in sub-Saharan Africa, "sex" is among the most popular searches. The Google Trends tool also reveals Africa's most popular celebrities and potential markets for African products.

When it comes to using the Internet to look for sex, North Africans in particular seem to have found a new outlet for societal taboos. The sex search on Google is topped by Pakistan, but closely followed by Egypt. Moroccans even reach the top-ten list both in English (6th on "sex") and in French (2nd on "sexe"). Algerians top the search for "sexe", showing twice as much interest as the French and Tunisians. A quick look inside the booming cybercafés in North Africa confirms this obsession.

On a regional outlook, Mauritanians, Malians and Nigerians are the most sex-searching West Africans, followed by the Senegalese, while Ivorians and Gabonese already have found other uses for the Internet. In Southern Africa, Zambians and Malawians are searching twice as much for sex as Angolans and Mozambicans. Tanzanians however are even more interested in finding sex on the Internet, while Ethiopians and Somalis demonstrate a true obsession.

Even homosexuality, which is illegal in most Muslim and African countries, spurs much interest in Muslim Africa. While the search word "gay" is dominated by Latin Americans, it is mainly Filipinos and Saudi Arabians looking for "gay sex". The African "gay sex" list is topped by Kenyans, Tanzanians, Namibians, Zimbabweans and South Africans. In the francophone world, however, Algerians and Moroccans by far top the world's search for "la homosexualité". Algerians also by distance top the search for the "sexe gay", with the French and the Moroccans being somewhat more timid on the issue.

There is of course also an awareness of the risks of unprotected sex. South Africans by far are those most searching information about "AIDS", followed by Indians. Disappointingly, however, there is no other African nation on the AIDS search top-ten list. On the French, Spanish and Portuguese equivalent - SIDA - Moroccans are on second place in a list dominated by Latin American countries.

Also when it comes to meet the AIDS treat, South Africans are the most aware in Africa, Google searches indicate. There is a significant search for condoms in South Africa, but the interest for this AIDS preventing object is by far much bigger in India. South African however top the world's search list of anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs). The lack of other African countries on the ARV top-ten search list again indicates that the public awareness of these drugs is as low as their availability in other African states.

There are of course quite a few African celebrities attracting fans and followers. Football stars are among the most searched for. Ivorian star Didier Drogba is the most searched African football star, closely followed by Cameroon's Samuel Eto'o. Nigeria's Augustine 'Jay-Jay' Okocha has fallen well behind Eto'o since end-2004 on Google searches. No African football star can however beat French superstar Zinédine Zidane, of Algerian descent, who totally dominates searches.

As expected, football stars are most popular in their home countries. Eto'o is among the searches most done in Cameroon, but he also is very popular in Gabon, Mali and Côte d'Ivoire. Drogba is most searched in Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon and Mali. Okocha has a totally different fan basis, comprising of Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya. Zidane has an even wider audience, being most popular in Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Algeria, Morocco and finally France.

It may be hard to believe that any African politician could compete with the popularity of the continent's football stars, but the pan-African icon Nelson Mandela almost reaches the world-wide popularity as Zidane. In South Africa, Mandela knocks out any football star - even local hero Lucas Radebe by a facto of one to twenty. Only in a few francophone West African countries, Eto'o generates more searches as Mandela; in Nigeria the two are on level.

Moving further into South African politics, three ANC leaders are competing for attention. On a world-wide scale, scandal-ridden ANC deputy leader Jacob Zuma has drawn more Google searches than ex-President Mandela since early 2004. President Thabo Mbeki lags very far behind both of them. Only among South African Internet users, President Mbeki narrowly beats Mr Zuma, but doesn't even reach half the searches as Mr Mandela. Outside South Africa, President Mbeki draws almost no attention.

Comparing African leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe seem to take a clear lead among Internet users in 2006. Congo's Joseph Kabila is fighting with Nigeria's Olusegun Obasanjo and South Africa's Mbeki over the third place - which in April was temporarily conquered by Chad's embattled President Idriss Deby. Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had her heydays in January and has been falling on statistics since then.

Even when it comes to economics, Google Trends could prove a nice tool for African business analysts. If you want to offer safari holidays, Google reveals that the word "safari" is most searched by South Africans, followed by Singaporeans, Britons and Swiss - a good market indictor. The biggest non-African markets for "beads" may be found in the US, Australia and Singapore, it seems. Sweet mangos catch special interest in Lithuania, ostrich products in Iran, while there seems to be a market for "khat" in Viet Nam and Malaysia.

The Google Trends tool was only presented earlier this week - in a basic, unfinished version - but has already been praised on the technology market for opening up new possibilities within sociology analyses and market research. Search trends can be followed to a city level in most countries. Critics however warn that making search results public in an ever more detailed manner could collide with privacy rights.

Courtesy of Afrol News

Islamic Monologue

2005-10-26T17:06:00.000+01:00

Of all major religions, Islam is the least amenable to dialogue with other faiths. Among non-Muslims it seeks converts or obedient subjects, not partners in a dialogue. Nevertheless, among some misguided Western social conservatives there exists an a priori desire to forge an alliance of believers against the moral and spiritual decay of a sinful world an "ecumenical jihad," a war of all religions against unbelief:

"If we will work and fight and love in action side by side with our Protestant and Catholic and Orthodox and Jewish and Muslim neighbors, we will come to perceive something we did not understand before… If we did not balk at having Stalin’s followers as our allies against Hitler, we should not balk at having Muhammad’s followers as our allies against Stalin."

The historical analogy here overlooks one thing: Stalin’s anti-Nazism did not make him cease being a villain equal to Hitler. A political marriage of convenience to fight Marxism during the Cold War is one thing, but seeking common ground with Islam for an ecumenical jihad is one of the dumbest ideas in decades.

The same fantasy drives President Bush’s advisor on Islam. He speaks no Arabic. Nevertheless, his conviction that Islamic terrorists and Muslim aggressors are by definition heretics and not "real" Muslims has been fully internalized by George W. Bush whose speeches seem to remind me of Bobo; ERECT.

I deduce from Bobo's and Zamcho's last dialogue that believers, no matter their denomination, are better people than nonbelievers, and that a religious outlook — any religious outlook — is preferable to the nihilistic wastelands of postmodern secularism. Frankly, there is a certain rude logic to this, which just goes to show how dangerous this secularism is because it makes any alternative seem better than itself.

But such assertions cannot change reality. A problem does exist. Islam is not only a religious doctrine, it is also a self-contained world outlook, and a way of life that claims the primary allegiance of all those calling themselves "Muslim." There is "Christianity," and there used to be "Christendom," but in Islam such distinction is impossible. To whatever political entity a Muslim believer may belong – to the Arab world of North Africa and the Middle East, to the nation-states of Iran or Central Asia, to the hybrid entities of Pakistan and Indonesia, to the international protectorates of Bosnia and Kosovo, or to the post-modern, post-nationalist liberal democracies of the West – he is first and foremost the citizen of Islam, and belongs morally, spiritually, and intellectually, and in principle totally, to the World of Belief of which Muhammad is the Prophet, and Mecca is the capital. This is not, of course, true for every Muslim but it is true of every true Muslim: Islam is like Soviet Communism ... it will fail.

In reality, the only resistance possible is not by blurring the boundaries of old identities, but by the reaffirmation of those identities. Islam is a natural ally of globalization, as it desires world government and rejoices in the liquidation of the traditional nationhoods of the West. It can only cheer at the spectacle of a mighty post-human cultural Leviathan that is devouring the remnants of Christendom and paving the way for a faith as yet unrelativized, untouched by self-doubt, immune to critical pondering of its assumptions. Perhaps when Bill Gates arrives in Mecca on his first hajj, they will understand.

Al-Qaida is an idea

2005-08-26T12:35:00.000+01:00

Bin Laden may not be capable of organising terror attacks directly, but then he does not need to

Jason Burke
Friday August 5, 2005
The Guardian

So another blast and, a month or so later, another tape. This time it is Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Egyptian militant who has been the professional partner of Osama bin Laden for the best part of 15 years, who has surfaced on our screens.

The iconography is relatively easy to decode. The gun to his right is a more potent looking weapon than usual, with a grenade launcher fixed to its barrel, indicating a desire to reinforce the threat of violence. The black turban like that worn by the Taliban suggests a concern to show solidarity with the rump of the movement still fighting, just about, in Afghanistan.

The white robes are fairly standard but, combined with the long white beard and the military props, indicate a warrior-statesman or a fighting cleric, an archetype familiar to anyone with an interest in Islamic political history.

Al-Zawahiri is not saying much that is new. The London bombs are an opportunity to restate what is, with certain variations, the standard Islamist extremist argument: that the west is oppressing Muslims around the world, America and its allies are set on the humiliation, subordination and division of the lands of Islam and that this justifies self-defence by many different means, including suicide bombing.

The only real difference with what has gone before is the explicit focus on the UK. This does not indicate any direct link with the London bombs. Whenever there has been an attack there has been a knee-jerk search for overseas links or for some kind of overall mastermind. No investigations into the London bombs, or indeed into almost all of those attacks committed in recent years, have revealed any such connections.

Instead, we need to face up to the simple truth that Bin Laden, al-Zawahiri et al do not need to organise attacks directly. They merely need to wait for the message they have spread around the world to inspire others. Al-Qaida is now an idea, not an organisation.

The focus on the UK might also concentrate the minds of those in government who, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, deny a link between the attacks and Britain's role in Iraq.

The UK has rapidly ascended the list of preferred jihadi targets in the past two years. A threat against the UK existed before 2003, but our involvement in Iraq made it very much worse.

Propaganda (and we should remember the origins of the word in the faith campaigns of the counter-reformation Catholic church) has always been the mainstay of al-Zawahiri's, and thus al-Qaida's, strategy.

Al-Zawahiri is only a little older than Bin Laden but, when the two met in Pakistan in the late 1980s, he was a far more experienced militant. He had been imprisoned and tortured in his native Egypt and had thought deeply about the tactics that would bring a militant group success. He recognised that activists were a minority, and, in a way that would be familiar to many revolutionary leftists, blamed the "false consciousness" of the Egyptian masses for their failure to rise up.

Ten years later, al-Zawahiri's horizons had broadened and he, along with Bin Laden, was now interested in radicalising and mobilising a bigger community: the ummah, or global nation of Islam.

The terrorist attacks organised directly by al-Qaida, most of which took place between 1998 and 2002, had two aims. One was wounding the enemy, America and its allies, but another, equally important, was to use carefully choreographed acts to impress, amaze and inspire those in the Islamic world who had yet to heed the call to arms.

In a book published in 2002, al-Zawahiri laid out his aims. "We must mobilise the nation in the battle of Islam against unbelief ... We caution against the risk of Muslim vanguards being killed in silence."

The bombers of Madrid, Casablanca, Istanbul, Riyadh and now London have heeded that call. We now have a situation where autonomous cells carry out attacks on targets and at times of their own choosing, which are then applauded by al-Qaida leaders of global infamy but limited practical ability to execute or organise strikes. This is exactly as al-Zawahiri and Bin Laden had hoped. This is a virtual terrorist network, not a real one.

In 2001, Bin Laden said his "life or death did not matter" because "the awakening has started".

There may have been no mass uprising in the Islamic world, something that is due to the sense and humanity of the vast bulk of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims rather than any counter-terrorist strategy pursued by the west, but there are an increasing number of angry people who have answered the call.

Al-Zawahiri portrayed himself as a warrior and a statesman in the video broadcast yesterday. He did not need any props to demonstrate his extraordinary gift for media manipulation.

Biographies

2005-08-25T18:24:00.000+01:00

"One Sardine!"
"Two Shorcake!"
"Three Can shark!"...

Desperately screameth the Earl of Gamal, a 19th
Century Knight of St. Thomas, when subjected to the
surgical torture of PK, secretary vice assistant
regent of the Order of St. John's Hooligans.

The situation might not have degenerated such, had it
not been for the passage of Don Fisher. Don Fisher was
a Phoenician trader born of modern Futru lineage. He
was baptised in the shallow waters of St. Augustine
(Left bank of St. Andrews) by Mike Earl of Ngu. He
grew up in the deliberately hostile neighborhood of
"Jeutteh", the rightful owner of the "PURER" and
self-declared destructor of the comforts of Captain
Louis Echichi-B. Among many other talents, Don Fisher
was a commendable wrestler on the football pitch. We
need not stress that he once teamed with Sir Pius,
Thane of the House of St. Peter, while they trained
for the Olympics between goal posts. Thanks to the
reputed efficiency of "PURER", Don Fisher developped a
unique ability to postpone physical pain generated
with the help of machettes, clubs and various other
primitive intruments of toture - especially if the the
pain was afflicted to the bare posterior.

Don Fisher, although greatly loved by his kindred, had
this tendency of using his special abilities when they
were not needed. The Secretary Vice Assistant
Regent(SVAR) might have contented himself with a few
threats to his POW's of Light Armoured Division 2A and
2B. The Division did not delegate Don Fisher to offer
his talents or sevices, but in doing so, the Don set
standards that could not be met by the meagre libation
Earl of Gamal was trying to offer. As such, the
captured Division 2A and 2B were priviledged to
witness the most blattant attempt at incremental
corruption of the 19th Century.

"One Sardine!"
"Two Shorcake!"
"Three Can shark!"...

And so it came to pass that, El Gamal who grew up in
St. Andrews, East ... and was not prior to taste of
the goodness of the "PURER", lacked adequate training
when confronted by the wrath of the SVAR. For a few
seconds his survival depended on whether in his
earlier life he had been a subject of "Jeutteh" or
not.

As a grown up, the able Phoenician was a Windbreaker,
resident East of Soccer Pitch. Before that he tried
the Olympics but ended up in the hospital fighting
against God. When God tries to eliminate his
creations, the DON puts up a fight. Thanks
Doc......And he wins!!!!!!!!!
___________________
Copyright SHESA '84

God And The Political Plan

2005-01-18T15:53:00.000+01:00

I finally came to the "process" (not conclusion) yesterday, that religious belief is the sum total of human imagination. Therefore we are all partners in this quest. We are equal shareholders in our search for a GOD. It is a process and we have no rights to declare victory...yet! Except for purposes of political domination.

This makes me think that the quest for a GOD is the only act of faith I am capable of associating with. I find it hard to reconcile that a GOD may have already been "found". By WHOM? What justifies the fact that a GOD or his son, be found by some nomadic in 1st Century Palestine, or now, when the human species still has a long way to go. What will those to come be looking for? I will respect the limitations of Muslim thought processes or illogicisms of Christian Romance; Bhuddist pragmatism and Jewish stagnations are all just manifestions politic. It is convenient...

I got a mail from Rowan in Singapore who wanted to know why I write mostly on Christianity and Islam.

Answer: These to "conclusions" or faiths if you want, are so similar yet their adherents are so dissimilar that i find them collectively responsible for all contemporary mass violence. In fact no two "faiths" have confronted themselves so permanently for so long. But i accept that their means are different, but objectives the same - the death of reason.

Were the bombs Put...in

2004-09-06T10:43:00.000+01:00

Vladimir Putin, may have come to power through a smooth democratic process. But his re-election was a botched-up concealed confiscation of power. This former KGB stalwart prided himself to be personally linked to Chechen Problem by promising to adopt a no-compromise stand.

Putin thinks there is no war in Chechnya. Putin also thinks that whatever problem there is in Chechnya, is a local backyard issue to be solved by the bully of the neighborhood. Never has terrorism looked so legitimate. The means, Beslan Massacre, may be gruesome ... but what about Grozny? And all that because of a criss-cross of pipelines.

Were the Russians readdy? Not at all. Watch the the pride of Communist Russia's dying elite forces - Spetsnaz - are they still elite? Elite soldiers don't dress like that. Some were in trainers and others in over-sized boxer shorts. The best dressed - as seen on TV - did not have the boots to match. And they think they want to fight against a people who plan out of hatred and kill to intimidate rather than eliminate? The Vietcong had proven that there are times when military might cannot crush the socio-political will to survive. Afghans re-inforced that opinion and the Iraqi insurgence against all odds is proving to be a better headache than the "elite" Fedayeen.

Until Putin starts thinking that Chechens have the same right to self-determination as did Russia from former USSR, there shall be no relent in Chechen terror. The fight has narrowed down to an attempt to prove to Putin that he alone does not determine the course of Chechen history. The Chechens have a part in it. When I look back and see an Alexandr Lebed negotiating for peace in Chechnya, and Putin swearing to do the reverse, I start having doubts about how a seasoned paratrooper of the fibre of Lebed, died in a no-combat zone helicopter crash. If Putin is prepared to lock-up the Yukos Boss for personal political gain - despite potentially adverse effects on world market - I dont see what could have stopped him from eliminating Lebed.

Since Putin wants to take the Chechen issue as a personal affair, he should also take the blame as a personal failure ... and leave. How I wish Russia was a democracy?

Jewish Lobby Re-Visited

2004-08-11T17:15:00.000+01:00

For decades Israel has violated well established precepts of international law and defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings, and in its repeated acts of military aggression.

Most of the world regards Israel's policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as outrageous and criminal. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with overwhelming majorities. "The whole world," United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recently said, "is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don't think the whole world ... can be wrong." [note 1] Only in the United States do politicians and the media still fervently support Israel and its policies. For decades the US has provided Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid.

Why is the U.S. the only remaining bastion of support for Israel?
Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, has candidly identified the reason: "The Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic," he said. "People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful." [note 2] Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only about three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence -- vastly more than any other ethnic or religious group. As Jewish author and political science professor, Benjamin Ginsberg, has pointed out: [note 3] "Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations."

Today, though barely two percent of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation's largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times ... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked. Jews are only two percent of the nation's population yet comprise eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation's elite. However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of the top ranking civil servants.

Stephen Steinlight, former Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, similarly notes the "disproportionate political power" of Jews, which is "pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group in America." He goes on to explain that "Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry." [note 4] Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene: [note 5] "During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals ... 20 percent of professors at the leading universities ... 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington ... 59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top- grossing motion pictures from 1965 to 1982, and 58 percent of directors, writers, and producers in two or more primetime television series."

The influence of American Jewry in Washington, notes the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post, is "far disproportionate to the size of the community, Jewish leaders and U.S. official acknowledge. But so is the amount of money they contribute to [election] campaigns." One member of the influential Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations "estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the funds for [President Bill] Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign." [note 6] "It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture," acknowledges Michael Medved, a well-known Jewish author and film critic. "Any list of the most influential production executives at each of the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizably Jewish names."

One person who has carefully studied this subject is Jonathan J. Goldberg, now editor of the influential Jewish community weekly 'Forward.' In his 1996 book, Jewish Power, he wrote: "In a few key sectors of the media, notably among Hollywood studio executives, Jews are so numerically dominant that calling these businesses Jewish-controlled is little more than a statistical observation ... Hollywood at the end of the twentieth century is still an industry with a pronounced ethnic tinge. Virtually all the senior executives at the major studios are Jews. Writers, producers, and to a lesser degree directors are disproportionately Jewish -- one recent study showed the figure as high as 59 percent among top-grossing films."

The combined weight of so many Jews in one of America's most lucrative and important industries gives the Jews of Hollywood a great deal of political power. They are a major source of money for Democratic candidates. Reflecting their role in the American media, Jews are routinely portrayed as high- minded, altruistic, trustworthy, compassionate, and deserving of sympathy and support. While millions of Americans readily accept such stereotyped imagery, not everyone is impressed. "I am very angry with some of the Jews," complained actor Marlon Brando during a 1996 interview. "They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are ... Hollywood is run by Jews. It's owned by Jews, and they should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering."

A Well-Entrenched Factor The intimidating power of the "Jewish lobby" is not a new phenomenon, but has long been an important factor in American life. In 1941 Charles Lindbergh spoke about the danger of Jewish power in the media and government. The shy 39-year-old -- known around the world for his epic 1927 New York to Paris flight, the first solo trans-Atlantic crossing -- was addressing 7,000 people in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, about the dangers of US involvement in the war then raging in Europe. The three most important groups pressing America into war, he explained, were the British, the Jews, and the Roosevelt administration. Of the Jews, he said: "Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government." Lindbergh went on: "For reasons which are understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, [they] wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we must also look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction."

In 1978, Jewish American scholar Alfred M. Lilienthal wrote in his detailed study, The Zionist Connection: "How has the Zionist will been imposed on the American people?... It is the Jewish connection, the tribal solidarity among themselves and the amazing pull on non- Jews, that has molded this unprecedented power ... In the larger metropolitan areas, the Jewish-Zionist connection thoroughly pervades affluent financial, commercial, social, entertainment, and art circles." As a result of the Jewish grip on the media, wrote Lilienthal, news coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict in American television, newspapers and magazines is relentlessly sympathetic to Israel. This is manifest, for example, in the misleading portrayal of Palestinian "terrorism." As Lilienthal put it: "One-sided reportage on terrorism, in which cause is never related to effect, was assured because the most effective component of the Jewish connection is probably that of media control."

One-Sided 'Holocaust' History The Jewish hold on cultural and academic life has had a profound impact on how Americans look at the past. Nowhere is the well-entrenched Judeocentric view of history more obvious than in the "Holocaust" media campaign, which focuses on the fate of Jews in Europe during World War II. Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has remarked: "Whether presented authentically or inauthentically, in accordance with the historical facts or in contradiction to them, with empathy and understanding or as monumental kitsch, the Holocaust has become a ruling symbol of our culture ... Hardly a month goes by without a new TV production, a new film, a new drama, new books, prose or poetry, dealing with the subject, and the flood is increasing rather than abating."

Non-Jewish suffering simply does not merit comparable attention. Overshadowed in the focus on Jewish victimization are, for example, the tens of millions of victims of America's World War II ally, Stalinist Russia, along with the tens of millions of victims of China's Maoist regime, as well as the 12 to 14 million Germans, victims of the flight and expulsion of 1944-1949, of whom some two million lost their lives. The well-financed Holocaust media and "educational" campaign is crucially important to the interests of Israel.

Paula Hyman, a professor of modern Jewish history at Yale University, has observed: "With regard to Israel, the Holocaust may be used to forestall political criticism and suppress debate; it reinforces the sense of Jews as an eternally beleaguered people who can rely for their defense only upon themselves. The invocation of the suffering endured by the Jews under the Nazis often takes the place of rational argument, and is expected to convince doubters of the legitimacy of current Israeli government policy."

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish scholar who has taught political science at City University of New York (Hunter College), says in his book, 'The Holocaust Industry,' that "invoking The Holocaust" is "a ploy to delegitimize all criticism of Jews." "By conferring total blamelessness on Jews, the Holocaust dogma immunizes Israel and American Jewry from legitimate censure. ... Organized Jewry has exploited the Nazi holocaust to deflect criticism of Israel's and its own morally indefensible policies." He writes of the brazen "shakedown" of Germany, Switzerland and other countries by Israel and organized Jewry "to extort billions of dollars." "The Holocaust," Finkelstein predicts, "may yet turn out to be the 'greatest robbery in the history of mankind'."

Jews in Israel feel free to act brutally against Arabs, writes Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, "believing with absolute certitude that now, with the White House, the Senate and much of the American media in our hands, the lives of others do not count as much as our own." Admiral Thomas Moorer, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, has spoken with blunt exasperation about the Jewish-Israeli hold on the United States: "I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them [the Israelis]. It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip those people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."

Today, the danger is greater than ever. Israel and Jewish organizations, in collaboration with this country's pro-Zionist Christian fundamentalist "amen corner," are prodding the United States -- the world's foremost military and economic power -- into new wars against Israel's enemies. As the French ambassador in London recently acknowledged, Israel -- which he called (a quote which shocked millions -ed) "that shitty little country" -- is a threat to world peace. "Why should the world be in danger of World War III because of those people?," he said.

In summation: Jews wield immense power and influence in the United States. The "Jewish lobby" is a decisive factor in US support for Israel. Jewish-Zionist interests are not identical to American interests. In fact, they often conflict. As long as the "very powerful" Jewish lobby remains entrenched, there will be no end to the systematic Jewish-Zionist distortion of current affairs and history, the Jewish-Zionist domination of the U.S. political system, Zionist oppression of Palestinians, the bloody conflict between Jews and non-Jews in the Middle East, and the Israeli threat to peace.

Weather Forecast

2004-06-25T13:46:00.000+01:00

If political climates were like geographic climates, the weather right now in the Middle East and particularly in Iraq, could be described as “Cloudy religious agendas with an 80% probability of execution.”

In the name of god throats have been slit, promises have been made to justify either the “fun” or the “mental” in “fundamentalism” depends on which deity you pray to, I guess. Its so interesting how far humans can go, when they act in the name of God. Such situations really make me doubt the inexistence of God. Maybe there is really a God?

I have always endeavoured to make a clear-cut distinction between religion - equitable to political inclination and all its possible extremes - and morality, defined as "conformity to ideals of rational human conduct". On this issue, I see no difference between George Bush and the Muslim fundamentalists, because Bush thinks fundamentalists are evil. Everything can be called evil except war which is the only legalised form of mass violence. Iraq is at war. George Bush declared it. Therefore there is nothing illegal in how many Iraqis are surgically bombed by the US Army or how many non-Iraqis are sheep-style-slaugtered by Zaqarwi and Co. To accentuate the similarity, all sides hide their identities ... on one side called helmets on the other side called hoods.

*********

Just In Case ...i'm Sorry

2004-06-21T14:32:00.000+01:00

Firstly, and it's not much of an excuse, this is because I am so busy at work (two jobs) that I can't get anything done there and I'm zonked by the time I get home, (usually it takes me more time to get home than to stay there).

Secondly, I've reached that weird crisis point that spells death for so many blogs: I can't think what to write, and I'm self-conscious about anything I *do* write.

The latter is the killer: I know that I know some of the people who pop in here, even when I haven't posted in ages and all I'm writing is tripe. That freaks me slightly. But there's more: I get the feeling that many of the others, who pop in here pointlessly but regularly, also know me, but I don't know who they are. There are exes and stalkers and rodents from Mars, for all I know.

Rules and Exceptions

2004-06-08T13:25:00.000+01:00

Death has never been a cause to celebrate. The exception is Abacha. Abacha was a President and a dictator. He lived in west Africa when he could. He stashed all monies he laid hands on in Swiss banks. His people hoped that he should die. He died in power. His death was not announced until a successor was found. He was the president of Nigeria. Nigeria is a neighbour to Cameroon ... or Cameroon is a to neighbour of Nigeria, it all depends on which side of Bakassi you stand. End of analogies. I've never felt so good taking about "ABACHA".

The Psychology of Rumour

Originality - People are not essentially stupid...Africans are even less so cos of the many pressing issues they deal with daily. That said, few days go by without millions of people falling for hoax warnings of a "dangerous new virus, for which there is no cure". This is despite the e-mails invariably being phrased in near identical terms.

Fear - Paul Marsden is an evolutionary psychologist whose consultancy - Brand Genetics - helps business create "contagious" products and ideas. He says our brains are overloaded with information we encounter in everyday life. "In evolutionary terms our minds are still more suited to the savannah than the supermarket." So in the modern world, anything which corresponds to the crucial things in life, such as sex appeal, status or survival, will "cut through the data fog and capture our attention". The bogus e-mail warnings of a link between anti-perspirant and breast cancer which circulated in 1999 appealed to a more potent fear. The warning claimed that anti-perspirant stopped toxins being purged through the armpits, and the build-up of them led to cancer. It might sound plausible but it is untrue. The American Cancer Society's website felt compelled to reassure people that there was no scientific evidence for the claim.

Status - Being the first person to warn all your friends of something really nasty, or funny, or salacious, or dangerous puts you in a stronger position than them. Paul Marsden says:
"Humans are inveterate copiers - we very rarely design an idea of our own. We are keen to be seen with an idea as we feel it increases our status." Originating something that has "wow" factor for your pals can be gratifying, as well as bolstering your sense of importance.

Contacts - Technology has changed the rumour business, says Mr Marsden.
"Mobile phones and the internet have totally restructured our communication networks. Rumours once built up slowly and steadily, now they can spread like an epidemic." He says rumours can spread particularly quickly through people who are "socially promiscuous" - ie those who know a lot of people.

Firstly, obviously, because they have better contacts books, and more e-mail addresses. And secondly because "these people also have a higher degree of perceived status". In other words, they tend to be opinion makers and are more likely to be believed. So perhaps the adage of the 21st century rumour mill should be: "It's not what you know, it's whom you hear it from."

NB - Despite this, dead men don't walk.

Courtesy of the BBC

Cowards Die Many Times .... Julius Caesar

2004-06-07T08:36:00.000+01:00

The "death" of President Paul Biya of Cameroon has been on the lips of Cameroonians at home and abroad for the past week. Rumour or fact?

The Presidency of Cameroon replied with a communiqué saying it was a "malicious rumour" originated by the "enemies of the state". Who are the enemies of the state? Those who pillage the country or those who want change. In any case there is no surprise about the death of a man who has been Prime Minister and then President for half of his life. At 71 years of age and running for a presidential reminds me of USSR-style politics post 1970.

What are the mechanics of rumour mongering ... or what is the danger of calling a fact "rumour"...or the reverse. As the issue was played over state TV on Sunday night it came to my realisation that all the journalists, institutions and public figures involved had staked their careers on the opposite side of a nation's hope. Like dancing, when you miss a beat, the music does not stop. I love maggots ... i even trust them.

Jean Bertrand Tour -Istide

2004-05-31T12:50:00.000+01:00

Dictatorships abound in Africa ... it even looks normal. Frankly, Shervanadze is far better than most African leaders, but he was overthrown. African political opposition, which is built from a rank of dissidents, has never really made their position clear.

When you see the fate reserved for Jean Bertrand Aristide, i am very sure that there are very few African leaders who will be ready to leave power. In fact, being in power is what they know how to do best. The political stakes now are such that, any African leader - Bongo of Gabon, Biya of Cameroon, Eyadema of Togo, Obiang of E. Gunea, Conte of G. Bissau, Mouseveni of Uganda etc - leaving power becomes a renegade, homeless undesirable overnight.

I do not expect Aristide to have a better treatment - he is lucky he isn't behind bars - but I am sure that most African leaders who don't want to relinquish power, will rethink their positions if they are guaranteed safety afterwards. Why not propose legislation that that gives them lifetime immunity. It wont be long, they can live long anyway! And then just like African Presidents do, we can always ammend the constitution after they have left power and prosecute them again.

Genocide with an "S"

2004-05-25T11:24:00.000+01:00

"Genocides" was coined by French diplomacy after their failure and involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. This was a vain attempt to grade genocide by scale of death. Anyway the most "glorious" part of French political history, The French Revolution, was an exercise in Genocide d'Etat. Since then, the French have successfully exported genocide to Algeria, Rwanda, Burundi. Cote d'Ivoire will be next.

As such all who deal with the French will be surprised that French diplomats can readily accept the situation in Sudan as a budding genocide, but downscale it par-rapport Ã Rwanda 10 years ago.

SURVEY

2004-05-25T10:57:00.000+01:00

Is Violence or the threat of violence an indispensible ingredient in politics?

Look FORWARD

2004-05-25T10:20:00.000+01:00

The absence of the threat of violence is the ingredient that makes Cameroon look peaceful. But this ingredient, like all others, cannot spice a meal forever.