Our president, John Atta Mills, is really a very polite guy. Even as he tried to give a reply to the imbecilic statement credited to the current leader of that blood-letting and blood-thirsty Isle of Iniquities that still calls itself the United (?) Kingdom, our president couched his statements in diplomatic-speak.
The shameless leader of a country that built its wretched wealth on the blood of innocent Africans, can today wake up and tell us that the so-called aid his country supposedly give to us, will be cut off unless we grant some so-called human rights to those that do not know what to do with their sexual organs.
Ah!
It might be our president’s great strength that he does not want to give unnecessary offense, but methinks offense should hastily, and without reservation, be given to those that started it.
Respect should be accorded only to those that know its value and give it back in return. I am never going to respect one that disrespect me and treat me with contempt and disdain. European leaders and scholars are not deserving of any respect from us.
It is quite simple, really.
Europeans, since the dawn of time, has never treated Africa with respect, and even with their world collapsing around them, we see no evidence that they have jettison their age-old prejudiced mentality, and shed the stupidity of their ancestors who believe that skin color confers some intelligence.
Today, even as the Portuguese prime minister is in the African nation of Angola begging for financial assistance, we still see Portuguese football fans still stupidly shouting racial abuses at Black players.
Was it not some few years ago that one advisor to Tony ‘Liar’ Blair canvassed for the re-colonisation of Africa because, according to him, we have made mess of our affairs?
I wonder where the idiot is today to tell us what he thinks we should do with Europe, that has magnificently bankrupted itself with its greediness, selfishness, mindless racism and insane militarism.
It is not in my nature to extend respect to anyone that takes it upon himself to give me unsolicited order on how to live my life.
How true that everyone has its own style!
Papa Mugabe lambasted the insolent demand by David Cameron by calling him a Satan.
"It becomes worse and satanic when you get a prime minister like Cameron saying countries that want British aid should accept homosexuality," Papa Mugabe thundered in a speech. "To come with that diabolic suggestion to our people is a stupid offer," he added for good measure.
"Do not get tempted into that (homosexuality). You are young people. If you go that direction, we will punish you severely. It is condemned by nature. It is condemned by insects and that is why I have said they are worse than pigs and dogs." Papa Mugabe added.
Papa Mugabe does not suffer fools gladly as the former CNN reporter, Amanpour, discovered to her chagrin.
So badly bruised was Christiane Amanpour in her encounter with Papa Mugabe that she will not be in any hurry for another encounter.
It is always a delight for me when I see confident African put insolent Westerners in their places the way Minister Louis Farrakhan robustly put ill-informed Mike Wallace in his place, and the ANC Youth Leader put one idiotic BBC Correspondent to shame.
Both Papa Mugabe and Louis Farrakhan, whatever their frailties as humans, are on top of their issues, so people cross them only at great perils.
Both men do not suffer from any inferiority complex that would make them cringe at the sight of bloody assassins like Cameron.
Were I in President Mills place, I know that I certainly would have handled Cameron differently.
My reply to him would have been so comprehensively robust that all the Camerons of this world would think twice before opening their dental-challenged, wretched mouths to make any demand of my country.
Methinks that the problem is that we Africans, most especially our leaders, have always been too polite to want to give offence.
It might have to do with our cultured upbringing that admonishes us not to give unduly offense to other people and to treat every human person with respect and dignity.
But as Professor Henrik Clarke warned: “The mistake our parents made and which we continue to make is that we credit Westerners with the spirituality and the humanity which they (westerners) neither claimed nor deserved.”
This exactly is what gives those blasted long-nosed, busy-bodies from Euro-America to keep thinking that the world still revolves around their collapsing world, or that they are still relevant in the global scheme of things.
Europe’s world is collapsing around it, with many European nations groaning under massive private and public debt, yet idiots like Cameron still have the audacity to give lectures, like some important potentate.
Another of our big problem is that we allow Westerners, with their very bloody history in our continent, the leeway to take high moral grounds.
This should not be so.
It beholds us to keep on reminding any Westerner that want to make it her duty to give sanctimonious lectures to us the vast crimes her ancestors committed (continue to commit) in Africa.
The latest of which is the callous murder of Muammar Qathafi.
Let us begin with some basics. The laws extant in Africa today against the sodomites, who want to call themselves some fanciful names, were put in place by the forebears of Cameron during their colonial mis-adventure in our blessed continent.
The UK boasted that it gives US35 million dollars in ‘aid’ to Ghana and tries to make a song and dance about it.
Should we not ask some pertinent questions here?
How do we quantify the vast resources British colonialists stole from Ghana during their century rapacious rape of the land?
Shall we not ask how much aid was paid to for the millions of slaves British merchants stole from Africa?
Ought we not question how cities like Liverpool, London and Bristol going to pay back the vast money they made from slavery?
Shall we not ask when the bloody Britons will send back to us the vast art works stolen from us and still today make money for the British exchequer?
Shall we not ask who is supposed to pay for all the rapine wars the slavers foisted on our societies, the consequences of which we continue to suffer today?
And should we not ask how much of looted African wealth has been deposited in British in recent years?
So a bloody irritant like Cameron can come out and insult and threaten us because his country gives a tiny percentage of funds looted from us to us as aid and we are supposed to say: “Yes, Master?”
So we have a Cameron from a country whose bloody history will shame a nation of savages giving himself the audacity to talk about human rights.
Should we not ask when in all her wretched history the UK has respected the rights of other people?
Sadly for mindless Euro-Jingoists like Cameron, and happily for the rest of us, Europe no longer rules the waves, if it is ruling anything at all! And it never will again. It was the perceptive Satre who once said that “Europe once made history; today history is being made of it!”
Which bring us to the question what exactly Europeans still really think of themselves.
A Yoruba proverb says:: “Eni ti a nwo ni awo sokun, ti o nwo ara e lawo rerin,” it means “Someone that we look upon with utter contempt, who continues to look at himself with admiration.”
Of course, Europeans, like the perpetual little children they are will continue to sing and dance to their make-up lullabies. They were there dreaming that the Asians were waiting for a Caucasians Messiah until the Asians met, overtook and passed them by. Today, not even all the vast wealth they looted from the colonies is enough to keep them afloat.
Europe no longer holds any appeal to anyone. And, as one of our prophets, Frantz Fanon, warned: “Come, then, comrades, the European game has finally ended; we must find something different. We today can do everything, so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. Europe now lives as such a mad, reckless pace that she has shaken off all guidance and all reason, and she is running headlong into the abyss; we would do well to avoid it with all possible speed.
Yet it is very true that we need a model, and that we want blueprints and examples. For many among us the European model is the most inspiring. We have therefore seen in the preceding pages to what mortifying setbacks such an imitation has led us. European achievements, European techniques, and the European style ought no longer to tempt us and to throw us off our balance. When I search for the Man in the technique and the style of Europe, I see only a succession of negations of man, and the avalanche of murders.”
And should we not ask what exactly is wrong with the European high-culture that made Europeans incapable of thinking of relationships with other cultures except in terms of violence, conquest and domination?
Why can’t they learn to keep their wretched ideas confined to their blasted continent?
Mr. Cameron should tell us why sodomy is a human rights issue and polygamy is not.
I sincerely hope that come next time, our President will have the mind to tell Cameron or any other long-nosed busy-body from the West to mind his bloody business. What our president should tell Mr. Cameron next time is to go and hug the Gibraltar or drown in the Thame.
As for the threat of cut-off of aid, there should be the counter-threat of sanctioning British firms here.
Nigeria has proved that Europeans can issue only empty threats to those they think are afraid of them. The British were crawling all over Lagos when Sanni Abach sanctioned British airways. And just this week, we see the British flooding in to beg the Nigerians following a disagreement over airport slots.
We have seen those that enslaved and colonized bankrupted themselves with their egocentric ways and the insane wars they continue to fight around the world. Europe, as Fanon said, ought not to hold any appeal for us.
The news juts this morning was: “Angola Offers To Help Portugal In Tackling Financial Crisis
(RTTNews) - Oil-rich Angola had offered to help the African nation's former colonial master Portugal to cope with its ongoing financial crisis that has forced Lisbon to seek foreign bailout loans, according to Angola's state news agency Angop.”
It is time we in Africa realize that the table has turned. The time British and Europe rule the world is finally and truly over. It is time we learn to use our new strength to bolster our interests.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Till selfishness do us apart
I often wonder why analysts fail to put personal selfishness on top of their list of the woes besetting us in Africa.
Recently, I was in the Bijlmer, one of the biggest suburbs of the Dutch city of Amsterdam.
Bijlmer is one of the massive housing projects built in the 1970s to provide accommodation to the growing and increasingly affluent Dutch citizens.
Bijlmer’s high-rise and low priced apartments attracted most of the immigrants that trooped to the Netherlands as migrant-workers when the Dutch economy was booming. Bijlmer is home to most of the Africans that live in the Netherland.
Few Africans will sojourn in the Netherlands without ever having a thing or two to do in the Bijlmer. It is a mini-Africa that attracts those that yearns for anything that remotely resembles the homeland they left.
Like most estates peopled with low-income earners, the Bijlmer soon developed into a vast, over-crowded ghetto with reputation for every vice known to sociologists.
One of the interesting things about the Dutch is their sense of social fairness to their less privileged fellow citizens.
Although ostensibly a capitalist nation, the Netherlands did not practice the same Jurassic economic and social policies that have blighted that class-ridden Isle of Iniquities that still call itself Great (?) Britain.
Aware that a society that fails to cater for its most vulnerable asks for serious problems, the Dutch evolved a social-democratic system whereby there is a safety net for society’s underprivileged.
They also set a minimum standard of living below which no Dutch citizen is expected to fall. A guaranteed, free and quality education ensured that every Dutch citizen got, at least, basic education for free – courtesy of the Dutch state.
Sadly, times are changing and the Netherlands is changing at such reckless pace that it seems heeded in the direction of the UK. Unsurprising, the Dutch society today suffers from some of the social afflictions that has devastated the USA and the UK.
Massive cuts in social programmes are impoverishing large segments of the Dutch society with attendant social consequences. It is possible today to see pockets of poverty in the Netherlands.
Of course, we are not yet talking about the poor standards we have in Africa for which we dance ourselves silly in praise of God!
Few years ago the Dutch embarked on transforming the Bijlmer. The high-rise, crime-ridden apartments were pulled down. In their places were built new, detached and pricey houses.
The down-turn is that the new apartments, unlike the previous buildings which low-income earners love so much to hire, are strictly for sale.
The Bijlmer has been totally transformed that people who, like me, visit after some years of absence, have difficulty recognizing the New Bijlmer.
Apart from the new shiny apartments, I also saw in the Bijlmer, several sport facilities scattered all over the place.
Apart from the football fields, there are gyms and facilities for weight-lifting, lawn and table tennis, gymnastic, volley and basket ball and host of other sports.
All were built in open space in the several parks that dotted the Bijlmer. They were built by the government for citizens to enjoy free of charge.
As I sat, watched and admired many of the facilities, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of sadness and anger. The sight brought the stark truth home to me that we in Africa have lots of catch up to do.
Why is it that the whole of Ghana cannot boast of a single public swimming?
In years gone by, we are noted for our sense of community and for our culture of sharing. Travellers like Ibn Batuta waxed poetic about our forebears’ honesty, sense of justice and fair-play. They talked about how secure and safe our societies were.
They spoke about how our kings abhor theft and any form of larceny. Ancient chroniclers like the Dutchman, Dapper, wrote about the beauty and cleanliness of our villages, town sand cities.
Today, travelers to our shore will only marvel at our capacity for dishonesty and our penchant for primitive acquisition. They will shake their heads at the filth in which we live. The planlessness of our towns and cities will baffle them. The noise pollution in our towns will drive them insane. The crime rate, both petty and major, will make them cringe with fear. Our inability to keep time will make their heads spin. Our vast hypocrisy (pretending to be what we are not) will confound them. The absolute disorder in our society will confuse them. The sheer indiscipline in our society will stagger any visitor to our shore. They will be bewildered by our inability to get the most basic of things right. Our penchant to take one step forward and take twenty steps backward will stun them. Only a visitor with the thickest of skins will not be staggered by our absolute lack of any sense of direction.
Am I the only one who sits and wonder what exactly is wrong with us as a people?
When and how did we manage to get it so spectacularly wrong? When and how did we manage to develop such minimalist mindsets that we take pride in the mundane and the petty that will give other people offense?
As I sat and admired what the Dutch have built for their citizens, I cannot but contrast it with what we have in our countries in Africa.
There is not a single park in the fast-growing city of Kasoa where I live. There is no recreation facility of any description. There is not even a single space that has not been sold or rented out!
Apart from Accra, Kumasi and Tema, I don’t know of any other city or town in Ghana that can boast of a public park.
In August of this year (2011), I visited the Polish capital of Warsaw. I was utterly amazed by the transformation the Polish people have been able to bring about in the twenty years since they liberated their country from the grip of Soviet communism.
So totally transformed is Poland today that it has become a full-fledged member of the European Union (EU).
Since I travelled from an EU-member country, I was not checked or controlled at the Warsaw Airport. I was accorded the privileged of an EU resident.
I saw in Warsaw a modern, clean and thriving modern city that boast all the modern amenities a major European city provide.
Warsaw, the city of two million people has well-designed, well-maintained transport system. Everything was orderly, discipline and clean. Even in the old part of town, I did not see pollution of any kind. No one blast music at high decibel to disturb neighbours and pose public nuisance.
Warsaw is a city of well-kept parks. I learnt that fully forty percent of the city was set aside for parks. The profusion of greenery makes it hard to notice that this is a city of two million inhabitants.
Warsaw boasts of forty universities and school of higher education. And we do not talk of the type of one-room mushroom ‘universities’ we boast about around here.
It is always difficult to come back home and see the low level we remain in despite all the pronouncements of our officials.
We have been independent for fifty four years, yet metal contraption (trotros) is the best we could provide our people as means of transport. Our trotro will not meet the requirements to transport cattle in the EU. We have not added a single meter to the rail system the British left behind. We have run our national airline aground through corruption and sheer ineptitude.
It galls to see how we have come to accept the poor environment in which we live as our lot. It is like we have thrown our hands up and surrender to fate.
Most of our people live in conditions that will not deem acceptable for pets in the EU.
In this time and age, many people in our dear land still build houses without toilet and bathing facilities; families still troop to the beaches and bushes to answer the call of nature.
It is in this degrading environment that we eat, sleep, play, work, love our women, give birth to our children and raise them. They grow up thinking that it is the natural order of thing.
Until they grow up, that is. Then they watch foreign TV stations. They surf the internet and interact with their mates from other lands.
They cannot help but wonder why their parents (us) sentence our brains to exile whilst other people were using theirs to build habitable environment for their children. They can see and contrast the abysmal, unplanned gigantic ghettoes we have with well-planned cities other people have built.
And, hypocritically, we pretend not to know why our children have nothing but utter contempt for us.
All over our country, spaces ear-marked for sport and recreational facilities have been sold off by visionless chiefs in cahoots with corrupt officials.
Do we expect our children whom we deprive of good lives to start to celebrate us? Do we expect to see admiration in their eyes when they discover that we have sold off their patrimony and wasted the proceeds on drink and frivolities? Do we expect them to treat us with anything but utter disdain when we bequeath absolutely nothing worthy to them?
It remains a mystery to me why there is no probe at the Lands Registry department to ascertain how officials gave approval for the sale of lands allocated for social amenities.
But then I might be asking for the moon since governments (past and present) joined in selling off public land to their cronies.
What crossed my mind as I admire the sport facilities in the Bijlmer is that were it to be in Africa, a corrupt official will ‘mis-appropriate’ (read: steal) the money.
He will then use the money to put up a massive structure in which he will install all the modern facilities money (especially stolen ones) can build. He will not forget to wall and fence off his mansion into which only the few he initiated will be invited. The visitors will hypocritically praise his acumen.
Rather than be cursed and stoned, the corrupt official who stole public money to build private edifice will become the toast of town. He will become top pal with religious and political leaders. He will get the top table at churches, functions and occasions. Envelop-chasing journalists will invent fictitious story to make him look good. Musicians will sing songs in his praise. He will be awarded bogus chieftaincy and academic titles. A National Honor will even be bestowed on him.
This is our biggest tragedy in Africa.
Tchaah!
Recently, I was in the Bijlmer, one of the biggest suburbs of the Dutch city of Amsterdam.
Bijlmer is one of the massive housing projects built in the 1970s to provide accommodation to the growing and increasingly affluent Dutch citizens.
Bijlmer’s high-rise and low priced apartments attracted most of the immigrants that trooped to the Netherlands as migrant-workers when the Dutch economy was booming. Bijlmer is home to most of the Africans that live in the Netherland.
Few Africans will sojourn in the Netherlands without ever having a thing or two to do in the Bijlmer. It is a mini-Africa that attracts those that yearns for anything that remotely resembles the homeland they left.
Like most estates peopled with low-income earners, the Bijlmer soon developed into a vast, over-crowded ghetto with reputation for every vice known to sociologists.
One of the interesting things about the Dutch is their sense of social fairness to their less privileged fellow citizens.
Although ostensibly a capitalist nation, the Netherlands did not practice the same Jurassic economic and social policies that have blighted that class-ridden Isle of Iniquities that still call itself Great (?) Britain.
Aware that a society that fails to cater for its most vulnerable asks for serious problems, the Dutch evolved a social-democratic system whereby there is a safety net for society’s underprivileged.
They also set a minimum standard of living below which no Dutch citizen is expected to fall. A guaranteed, free and quality education ensured that every Dutch citizen got, at least, basic education for free – courtesy of the Dutch state.
Sadly, times are changing and the Netherlands is changing at such reckless pace that it seems heeded in the direction of the UK. Unsurprising, the Dutch society today suffers from some of the social afflictions that has devastated the USA and the UK.
Massive cuts in social programmes are impoverishing large segments of the Dutch society with attendant social consequences. It is possible today to see pockets of poverty in the Netherlands.
Of course, we are not yet talking about the poor standards we have in Africa for which we dance ourselves silly in praise of God!
Few years ago the Dutch embarked on transforming the Bijlmer. The high-rise, crime-ridden apartments were pulled down. In their places were built new, detached and pricey houses.
The down-turn is that the new apartments, unlike the previous buildings which low-income earners love so much to hire, are strictly for sale.
The Bijlmer has been totally transformed that people who, like me, visit after some years of absence, have difficulty recognizing the New Bijlmer.
Apart from the new shiny apartments, I also saw in the Bijlmer, several sport facilities scattered all over the place.
Apart from the football fields, there are gyms and facilities for weight-lifting, lawn and table tennis, gymnastic, volley and basket ball and host of other sports.
All were built in open space in the several parks that dotted the Bijlmer. They were built by the government for citizens to enjoy free of charge.
As I sat, watched and admired many of the facilities, I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of sadness and anger. The sight brought the stark truth home to me that we in Africa have lots of catch up to do.
Why is it that the whole of Ghana cannot boast of a single public swimming?
In years gone by, we are noted for our sense of community and for our culture of sharing. Travellers like Ibn Batuta waxed poetic about our forebears’ honesty, sense of justice and fair-play. They talked about how secure and safe our societies were.
They spoke about how our kings abhor theft and any form of larceny. Ancient chroniclers like the Dutchman, Dapper, wrote about the beauty and cleanliness of our villages, town sand cities.
Today, travelers to our shore will only marvel at our capacity for dishonesty and our penchant for primitive acquisition. They will shake their heads at the filth in which we live. The planlessness of our towns and cities will baffle them. The noise pollution in our towns will drive them insane. The crime rate, both petty and major, will make them cringe with fear. Our inability to keep time will make their heads spin. Our vast hypocrisy (pretending to be what we are not) will confound them. The absolute disorder in our society will confuse them. The sheer indiscipline in our society will stagger any visitor to our shore. They will be bewildered by our inability to get the most basic of things right. Our penchant to take one step forward and take twenty steps backward will stun them. Only a visitor with the thickest of skins will not be staggered by our absolute lack of any sense of direction.
Am I the only one who sits and wonder what exactly is wrong with us as a people?
When and how did we manage to get it so spectacularly wrong? When and how did we manage to develop such minimalist mindsets that we take pride in the mundane and the petty that will give other people offense?
As I sat and admired what the Dutch have built for their citizens, I cannot but contrast it with what we have in our countries in Africa.
There is not a single park in the fast-growing city of Kasoa where I live. There is no recreation facility of any description. There is not even a single space that has not been sold or rented out!
Apart from Accra, Kumasi and Tema, I don’t know of any other city or town in Ghana that can boast of a public park.
In August of this year (2011), I visited the Polish capital of Warsaw. I was utterly amazed by the transformation the Polish people have been able to bring about in the twenty years since they liberated their country from the grip of Soviet communism.
So totally transformed is Poland today that it has become a full-fledged member of the European Union (EU).
Since I travelled from an EU-member country, I was not checked or controlled at the Warsaw Airport. I was accorded the privileged of an EU resident.
I saw in Warsaw a modern, clean and thriving modern city that boast all the modern amenities a major European city provide.
Warsaw, the city of two million people has well-designed, well-maintained transport system. Everything was orderly, discipline and clean. Even in the old part of town, I did not see pollution of any kind. No one blast music at high decibel to disturb neighbours and pose public nuisance.
Warsaw is a city of well-kept parks. I learnt that fully forty percent of the city was set aside for parks. The profusion of greenery makes it hard to notice that this is a city of two million inhabitants.
Warsaw boasts of forty universities and school of higher education. And we do not talk of the type of one-room mushroom ‘universities’ we boast about around here.
It is always difficult to come back home and see the low level we remain in despite all the pronouncements of our officials.
We have been independent for fifty four years, yet metal contraption (trotros) is the best we could provide our people as means of transport. Our trotro will not meet the requirements to transport cattle in the EU. We have not added a single meter to the rail system the British left behind. We have run our national airline aground through corruption and sheer ineptitude.
It galls to see how we have come to accept the poor environment in which we live as our lot. It is like we have thrown our hands up and surrender to fate.
Most of our people live in conditions that will not deem acceptable for pets in the EU.
In this time and age, many people in our dear land still build houses without toilet and bathing facilities; families still troop to the beaches and bushes to answer the call of nature.
It is in this degrading environment that we eat, sleep, play, work, love our women, give birth to our children and raise them. They grow up thinking that it is the natural order of thing.
Until they grow up, that is. Then they watch foreign TV stations. They surf the internet and interact with their mates from other lands.
They cannot help but wonder why their parents (us) sentence our brains to exile whilst other people were using theirs to build habitable environment for their children. They can see and contrast the abysmal, unplanned gigantic ghettoes we have with well-planned cities other people have built.
And, hypocritically, we pretend not to know why our children have nothing but utter contempt for us.
All over our country, spaces ear-marked for sport and recreational facilities have been sold off by visionless chiefs in cahoots with corrupt officials.
Do we expect our children whom we deprive of good lives to start to celebrate us? Do we expect to see admiration in their eyes when they discover that we have sold off their patrimony and wasted the proceeds on drink and frivolities? Do we expect them to treat us with anything but utter disdain when we bequeath absolutely nothing worthy to them?
It remains a mystery to me why there is no probe at the Lands Registry department to ascertain how officials gave approval for the sale of lands allocated for social amenities.
But then I might be asking for the moon since governments (past and present) joined in selling off public land to their cronies.
What crossed my mind as I admire the sport facilities in the Bijlmer is that were it to be in Africa, a corrupt official will ‘mis-appropriate’ (read: steal) the money.
He will then use the money to put up a massive structure in which he will install all the modern facilities money (especially stolen ones) can build. He will not forget to wall and fence off his mansion into which only the few he initiated will be invited. The visitors will hypocritically praise his acumen.
Rather than be cursed and stoned, the corrupt official who stole public money to build private edifice will become the toast of town. He will become top pal with religious and political leaders. He will get the top table at churches, functions and occasions. Envelop-chasing journalists will invent fictitious story to make him look good. Musicians will sing songs in his praise. He will be awarded bogus chieftaincy and academic titles. A National Honor will even be bestowed on him.
This is our biggest tragedy in Africa.
Tchaah!
Monday, November 7, 2011
Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others
Africa is a writer's delight. Nowhere else in our wide world does life imitate art so splendidly like in our dear and beautiful continent. Everywhere one looks in this paradoxical continent, one is confronted with images that set the writing adrenaline running wide. That life is so tragic-comic must be among the reasons Africans go through life with all those wide smiles.
Africans have a penchant for borrowing ideas from other people and bastardizing them so badly that the inventors will have problems recognizing their inventions.
Take politics as an example: Africans are busy beating their chests proudly and loudly proclaiming how the seeds of a Western-styled political system have been nurtured in Africa, so much so that the whole continent glistens with democratic governments.
No one bothers to ask if the lot of the ordinary people have seen any qualitative improvement. No one cares that Africans continue to die needlessly in order to ensure that self-seeking politicians continue their game of fooling the people.
Recent elections in Zambia saw the people of that country waging tribal war to see that a faction of the ruling oligarchy win power. Never mind that all that the leaders in Zambia were able to achieve was to sign agreements to receive a paltry 0.6% for Zambian mineral resources.
Leaders in Nigeria continue to pantomime the same odious nonsense they have been telling the people for over half a century. The otiose elite of the country that used to call itself the "giant of Africa" saw no shame in scurrying behind a presidential palace as terrorists made it impossible to celebrate their nation's independence day at their national square.
In Liberia, Madam "World Bank" Sirleaf shamelessly broke a vow to serve for one term -- she is busy offering illogical arguments to convince Liberians why she has problems keeping a simple promise.
In Senegal, octogenarian President Wade spent long years in opposition before he won power, only to scheme to change the constitution and foist a dynasty on the people.
In opposition, Mr. Wade brandished solid pan-African credentials; in power he soon finds it necessary to join the imperialists.
In Guinea, last year's opposition leader is now the head of government and has just ordered his troops to kill people protesting against the same things that brought him to the streets just a year ago.
In Cameroun, professional President Biya has long jettisoned the constitution; he is now a president for life in all but name.
The president that spent more years in Paris than his capital, Yaoundé, is so contemptuous of his people that he does not even deign to personally campaign for votes; it is left for his minions. Sadly, the opposition in Cameroun is too fragmented to do a darn thing.
In La Côte d'Ivoire, the vicious and rapacious French are quietly enjoying their latest colonial conquest while pontificating to the world.
readmore.
Africans have a penchant for borrowing ideas from other people and bastardizing them so badly that the inventors will have problems recognizing their inventions.
Take politics as an example: Africans are busy beating their chests proudly and loudly proclaiming how the seeds of a Western-styled political system have been nurtured in Africa, so much so that the whole continent glistens with democratic governments.
No one bothers to ask if the lot of the ordinary people have seen any qualitative improvement. No one cares that Africans continue to die needlessly in order to ensure that self-seeking politicians continue their game of fooling the people.
Recent elections in Zambia saw the people of that country waging tribal war to see that a faction of the ruling oligarchy win power. Never mind that all that the leaders in Zambia were able to achieve was to sign agreements to receive a paltry 0.6% for Zambian mineral resources.
Leaders in Nigeria continue to pantomime the same odious nonsense they have been telling the people for over half a century. The otiose elite of the country that used to call itself the "giant of Africa" saw no shame in scurrying behind a presidential palace as terrorists made it impossible to celebrate their nation's independence day at their national square.
In Liberia, Madam "World Bank" Sirleaf shamelessly broke a vow to serve for one term -- she is busy offering illogical arguments to convince Liberians why she has problems keeping a simple promise.
In Senegal, octogenarian President Wade spent long years in opposition before he won power, only to scheme to change the constitution and foist a dynasty on the people.
In opposition, Mr. Wade brandished solid pan-African credentials; in power he soon finds it necessary to join the imperialists.
In Guinea, last year's opposition leader is now the head of government and has just ordered his troops to kill people protesting against the same things that brought him to the streets just a year ago.
In Cameroun, professional President Biya has long jettisoned the constitution; he is now a president for life in all but name.
The president that spent more years in Paris than his capital, Yaoundé, is so contemptuous of his people that he does not even deign to personally campaign for votes; it is left for his minions. Sadly, the opposition in Cameroun is too fragmented to do a darn thing.
In La Côte d'Ivoire, the vicious and rapacious French are quietly enjoying their latest colonial conquest while pontificating to the world.
readmore.
Friday, November 4, 2011
While we slumber and pray
When are we in Africa going to realize how far behind the other races we truly are?
When are we going to wake up, rub the slumber from our eyes, gird our loins and try to do some catch-up?
The title of an interesting story in the October 5, 2011 edition of the WIRED magazine written by Adam Mann reads: “The Plan to Bring an Asteroid to Earth.”
Here is the story in full: “Send a robot into space. Grab an asteroid. Bring it back to Earth orbit.
This may sound like a crazy plan, but it was discussed quite seriously last week by a group of scientists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology. The four-day workshop was dedicated to investigating the feasibility and requirements of capturing a near-Earth asteroid, bringing it closer to our planet and using it as a base for future manned spaceflight missions.
This is not something the scientists are imagining could be done some day off in the future. This is possible with the technology we have today and could be accomplished within a decade.
A robotic probe could anchor to an asteroid made mostly of nickel-iron with simple magnets or grab a rocky asteroid with a harpoon or specialized claws (see video below) and then push the asteroid using solar-electric propulsion. For asteroids too big for a robot to handle, a large spacecraft could fly near the object to act as a gravity tractor that deflects the asteroid’s trajectory, sending it toward Earth.
“Once you get over the initial reaction — ‘You want to do what?!’ — it actually starts to seem like a reasonable idea,” said engineer John Brophy from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped organize the workshop.
In fact, many of these ideas have been on the drawing board for years as part of NASA’s planetary defense program against large space-based objects that might threaten Earth. And there’s no shortage of potential targets. NASA estimates there are 19,500 asteroids at least 330 feet wide — large enough to detect with telescopes — within 28 million miles of Earth.
Though rearranging the heavens may seem an excessive undertaking, the mission has its merits. The Obama administration already plans to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid, a mission that would coop them up in a tiny capsule for three to six months, and involve all the risks of a long deep-space voyage. Instead, robots could shoulder some of that burden by bringing an asteroid close enough for astronauts to get there in just a month.
Parking an asteroid in a gravitationally neutral spot between the Earth and the sun, known as a Lagrange point, would provide a stationary base from which to launch missions further into space. There are several advantages to this. For one, launching materials from Earth requires a lot of power, fuel, and consequently money, to get out of our planet’s deep gravity well. Resources mined from an asteroid with very little gravitational pull could be easily shuttled around the solar system.
And many asteroids have a lot to offer. Some are full of metals such as iron, which can be used to build space-based habitats while others are up to one-quarter water, which would be either used for life-support or broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make fuel. As well, asteroid regolith placed around a spaceship hull would shield it against radiation from deep space, allowing safer travel to other planets.
An asteroid could be an alternative to setting up camp on the moon, or complement a moon base with more resources for heading further out in the solar system, said engineer Louis Friedman, cofounder of the Planetary Society and another co-organizer of the Caltech workshop.
There’s also the potential for mining asteroid materials to bring back to Earth. Even a small asteroid contains roughly 30 times the amount of metals mined over all of human history, with an estimated worth of $70 trillion. And astronomers would have the chance to get a close-up look at one of the solar system’s earliest relics, generating important scientific data.
Though technically feasible, budging such a hefty target — with a mass in excess of a million tons — would not be easy.
“You’re moving the largest mother lode imaginable,” said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, cofounder of the B612 Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes.
Most asteroids are irregular chunks of rock that spin chaotically along irregular axes. Engineers would need to be absolutely certain they could control such a potentially dangerous object. “It’s the opposite of planetary defense; if you do something wrong you have a Tunguska event,” said engineer Marco Tantardini from the Planetary Society, referring to the powerful 1908 explosion above a remote Russian region thought to have been caused by a meteoroid or comet. Of course, any asteroid brought back under the proposed plan would be too small to cause a repeat of such an event.
Still, these obstacles are like catnip to engineers, who love to go over every potential difficulty in order to solve it. Actually executing the asteroid retrieval plan would help demonstrate and greatly expand mankind’s space-based engineering capabilities, said Friedman. For instance, the mission would teach engineers how to capture an uncooperative target, which could be good practice for future planetary defense missions, he added.
And if the challenges for a large asteroid seem too daunting, researchers could always start with a smaller asteroid, perhaps six to 30 feet across. Gradually larger objects could be part of a campaign where engineers learn to deal with progressively greater complications.
Last year, Brophy helped conduct a study at JPL to look at the feasibility of bringing a 6.5-foot, 22,000-pound asteroid — of which there might conceivably be millions — to the International Space Station. This mission would help astronauts and engineers learn how to process asteroid materials and ores in space.
The JPL study suggested the asteroid could be captured robotically in something as simple as a large Kevlar bag and then flown to the space station or placed in a Lagrange point. Of course, such a small object might not have the same emotional impact as a larger destination. “NASA isn’t going to want to go to something that is smaller than our spaceships,” said engineer Dan Mazanek from NASA’s Langley Research Center.
No matter the size of the asteroid, these plans would require hefty investments. Even capturing a small asteroid would consume at least a billion dollars and anything larger would be a multi-billion-dollar endeavor. Convincing taxpayers to foot such a bill could be tricky.
Considering the resources available in any asteroid, private industry might be interested in getting involved. One possible mission would be to simply execute the first part of the plan — pushing the asteroid to near-Earth orbit — and then convene a commercial competition inviting anyone who wants to develop the capabilities to reach and mine the object.
Though the undertaking might be scientifically exciting, this wouldn’t be the primary motivation. An asteroid would provide great insight into the solar system’s formation, it’s not enough to justify the expense of bringing one to Earth. Any interesting science can be done much cheaper with an unmanned robotic spacecraft, said chemist Joseph A Nuth from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center.
“Ultimately, we would be developing this target in order to help move out into the solar system,” Brophy said.
Though they did not reach a consensus on all the details, the group will reconvene in January to hammer out further specifications and potentially get the interest of NASA.
In the end, many agreed that bringing an asteroid back to Earth could create an interesting destination for repeated manned missions and that the undertaking would help build up experience for future jaunts into space.”
Hmmmmm!
I spent three unforgettable weeks in the United States of America in August of this year. There are many things wrong with that country but no one will visit that country from Africa and ever be the same again.
The technical, scientific, engineering and technological accomplishment of the country is all there for all to see, and they are truly humbling, especially for people from our part of the world where people still sleep their way through life believing that goblins of the skies are coming to take care of human affairs.
The gap between us and the Americans are just too wide that we can forget about bridging it anytime soon. Not unless we can find a way for them to stop and wait for us to catch up with them.
Since it would be foolish to think that they will do it, we can forget this proposition.
The sad thing is that our leaders – political, economic, academic and religious - travel regularly to the US, and they see firsthand what human beings have been able to accomplish with sheer human ingenuity. They see all the technological accomplishments of mere mortals. They see and use all the electronic marvels created by human brains.
Bafflingly, they come back and continue with the same attitude of sheer complacency. They continue to behave like we are not too far behind and we have no need to hurry to tag along (forget catching up).
They continue to tell us stupid and insane lies about a saviour Jesus who is coming to take care of things for us.
We have leaders telling us odious lies like ‘God is in charge,’ like a god has done a darn thing for any human society.
We have blasted charlatans, attired in their lying cassocks, telling us that we need only double or triple our prayer efforts and all shall be well. We witness daily the stupid charades of prayers and retreats.
These leaders will not tell us what single human problem can be solved with adjuration to gods. They do not tell us why they don’t rely on prayers to give them the same material comfort they buy with money extorted from their ignorant congregation.
These totally shameless imposters, who pretend to stand between us and some gods, will not tell us why they live their own paradise here on earth rather than wait for it in heaven. They don’t tell us why they are never in a hurry to meet their father in heaven where everything is supposedly blissful.
So, while we are busy with our prayer camps, Holy Ghost fire, impartation retreats, anointing oil, candles, incense, prophesying, speaking in tongues and other utterly stupid abracadabra, human beings are busy thinking about how to capture an asteroids and mine its minerals!
Enuf said!
When are we going to wake up, rub the slumber from our eyes, gird our loins and try to do some catch-up?
The title of an interesting story in the October 5, 2011 edition of the WIRED magazine written by Adam Mann reads: “The Plan to Bring an Asteroid to Earth.”
Here is the story in full: “Send a robot into space. Grab an asteroid. Bring it back to Earth orbit.
This may sound like a crazy plan, but it was discussed quite seriously last week by a group of scientists and engineers at the California Institute of Technology. The four-day workshop was dedicated to investigating the feasibility and requirements of capturing a near-Earth asteroid, bringing it closer to our planet and using it as a base for future manned spaceflight missions.
This is not something the scientists are imagining could be done some day off in the future. This is possible with the technology we have today and could be accomplished within a decade.
A robotic probe could anchor to an asteroid made mostly of nickel-iron with simple magnets or grab a rocky asteroid with a harpoon or specialized claws (see video below) and then push the asteroid using solar-electric propulsion. For asteroids too big for a robot to handle, a large spacecraft could fly near the object to act as a gravity tractor that deflects the asteroid’s trajectory, sending it toward Earth.
“Once you get over the initial reaction — ‘You want to do what?!’ — it actually starts to seem like a reasonable idea,” said engineer John Brophy from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who helped organize the workshop.
In fact, many of these ideas have been on the drawing board for years as part of NASA’s planetary defense program against large space-based objects that might threaten Earth. And there’s no shortage of potential targets. NASA estimates there are 19,500 asteroids at least 330 feet wide — large enough to detect with telescopes — within 28 million miles of Earth.
Though rearranging the heavens may seem an excessive undertaking, the mission has its merits. The Obama administration already plans to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid, a mission that would coop them up in a tiny capsule for three to six months, and involve all the risks of a long deep-space voyage. Instead, robots could shoulder some of that burden by bringing an asteroid close enough for astronauts to get there in just a month.
Parking an asteroid in a gravitationally neutral spot between the Earth and the sun, known as a Lagrange point, would provide a stationary base from which to launch missions further into space. There are several advantages to this. For one, launching materials from Earth requires a lot of power, fuel, and consequently money, to get out of our planet’s deep gravity well. Resources mined from an asteroid with very little gravitational pull could be easily shuttled around the solar system.
And many asteroids have a lot to offer. Some are full of metals such as iron, which can be used to build space-based habitats while others are up to one-quarter water, which would be either used for life-support or broken down into hydrogen and oxygen to make fuel. As well, asteroid regolith placed around a spaceship hull would shield it against radiation from deep space, allowing safer travel to other planets.
An asteroid could be an alternative to setting up camp on the moon, or complement a moon base with more resources for heading further out in the solar system, said engineer Louis Friedman, cofounder of the Planetary Society and another co-organizer of the Caltech workshop.
There’s also the potential for mining asteroid materials to bring back to Earth. Even a small asteroid contains roughly 30 times the amount of metals mined over all of human history, with an estimated worth of $70 trillion. And astronomers would have the chance to get a close-up look at one of the solar system’s earliest relics, generating important scientific data.
Though technically feasible, budging such a hefty target — with a mass in excess of a million tons — would not be easy.
“You’re moving the largest mother lode imaginable,” said former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, cofounder of the B612 Foundation, an organization dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes.
Most asteroids are irregular chunks of rock that spin chaotically along irregular axes. Engineers would need to be absolutely certain they could control such a potentially dangerous object. “It’s the opposite of planetary defense; if you do something wrong you have a Tunguska event,” said engineer Marco Tantardini from the Planetary Society, referring to the powerful 1908 explosion above a remote Russian region thought to have been caused by a meteoroid or comet. Of course, any asteroid brought back under the proposed plan would be too small to cause a repeat of such an event.
Still, these obstacles are like catnip to engineers, who love to go over every potential difficulty in order to solve it. Actually executing the asteroid retrieval plan would help demonstrate and greatly expand mankind’s space-based engineering capabilities, said Friedman. For instance, the mission would teach engineers how to capture an uncooperative target, which could be good practice for future planetary defense missions, he added.
And if the challenges for a large asteroid seem too daunting, researchers could always start with a smaller asteroid, perhaps six to 30 feet across. Gradually larger objects could be part of a campaign where engineers learn to deal with progressively greater complications.
Last year, Brophy helped conduct a study at JPL to look at the feasibility of bringing a 6.5-foot, 22,000-pound asteroid — of which there might conceivably be millions — to the International Space Station. This mission would help astronauts and engineers learn how to process asteroid materials and ores in space.
The JPL study suggested the asteroid could be captured robotically in something as simple as a large Kevlar bag and then flown to the space station or placed in a Lagrange point. Of course, such a small object might not have the same emotional impact as a larger destination. “NASA isn’t going to want to go to something that is smaller than our spaceships,” said engineer Dan Mazanek from NASA’s Langley Research Center.
No matter the size of the asteroid, these plans would require hefty investments. Even capturing a small asteroid would consume at least a billion dollars and anything larger would be a multi-billion-dollar endeavor. Convincing taxpayers to foot such a bill could be tricky.
Considering the resources available in any asteroid, private industry might be interested in getting involved. One possible mission would be to simply execute the first part of the plan — pushing the asteroid to near-Earth orbit — and then convene a commercial competition inviting anyone who wants to develop the capabilities to reach and mine the object.
Though the undertaking might be scientifically exciting, this wouldn’t be the primary motivation. An asteroid would provide great insight into the solar system’s formation, it’s not enough to justify the expense of bringing one to Earth. Any interesting science can be done much cheaper with an unmanned robotic spacecraft, said chemist Joseph A Nuth from NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center.
“Ultimately, we would be developing this target in order to help move out into the solar system,” Brophy said.
Though they did not reach a consensus on all the details, the group will reconvene in January to hammer out further specifications and potentially get the interest of NASA.
In the end, many agreed that bringing an asteroid back to Earth could create an interesting destination for repeated manned missions and that the undertaking would help build up experience for future jaunts into space.”
Hmmmmm!
I spent three unforgettable weeks in the United States of America in August of this year. There are many things wrong with that country but no one will visit that country from Africa and ever be the same again.
The technical, scientific, engineering and technological accomplishment of the country is all there for all to see, and they are truly humbling, especially for people from our part of the world where people still sleep their way through life believing that goblins of the skies are coming to take care of human affairs.
The gap between us and the Americans are just too wide that we can forget about bridging it anytime soon. Not unless we can find a way for them to stop and wait for us to catch up with them.
Since it would be foolish to think that they will do it, we can forget this proposition.
The sad thing is that our leaders – political, economic, academic and religious - travel regularly to the US, and they see firsthand what human beings have been able to accomplish with sheer human ingenuity. They see all the technological accomplishments of mere mortals. They see and use all the electronic marvels created by human brains.
Bafflingly, they come back and continue with the same attitude of sheer complacency. They continue to behave like we are not too far behind and we have no need to hurry to tag along (forget catching up).
They continue to tell us stupid and insane lies about a saviour Jesus who is coming to take care of things for us.
We have leaders telling us odious lies like ‘God is in charge,’ like a god has done a darn thing for any human society.
We have blasted charlatans, attired in their lying cassocks, telling us that we need only double or triple our prayer efforts and all shall be well. We witness daily the stupid charades of prayers and retreats.
These leaders will not tell us what single human problem can be solved with adjuration to gods. They do not tell us why they don’t rely on prayers to give them the same material comfort they buy with money extorted from their ignorant congregation.
These totally shameless imposters, who pretend to stand between us and some gods, will not tell us why they live their own paradise here on earth rather than wait for it in heaven. They don’t tell us why they are never in a hurry to meet their father in heaven where everything is supposedly blissful.
So, while we are busy with our prayer camps, Holy Ghost fire, impartation retreats, anointing oil, candles, incense, prophesying, speaking in tongues and other utterly stupid abracadabra, human beings are busy thinking about how to capture an asteroids and mine its minerals!
Enuf said!
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