DR KHENINE's BLOG

President Jonathan’s Greatest Speech By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo

2014-06-07T07:20:00.003-07:00

Fellow country men and women,

Over four years ago, I was sworn in as the President of our beloved country. I was charged with various responsibilities, amongst which was the protection of lives and properties of our citizens. It was the highest of all my responsibilities.

I regret to say that I have failed you all in that regard.

In the last few years, we have been confronting a big and vicious band of terrorists who are determined to bring our country to its knees. We have approached the challenges through various means available to us. We have tried dialogue, to no avail. We have tried to secure our borders and upgrade our security systems but our efforts have fallen short. We have also taken the fight to them but we have not vanquished them. I personally accept responsibility for these failures.

In all our efforts, what we have not done is treat them as irredeemable enemies. In everything we have done, we have considered them as one of us who have only gone astray.

That approach ends today.

I’m declaring full war against all the enemies of this country who are working to bring Nigeria down. I’m committing the fortune of this country to their total annihilation. I will not be the last president of Nigeria. Also, I do not want to hand over to my successor a country that is in worse shape than it was when I took over.

Every day that our daughters are held by those monstrous terrorists is another day that demands from us all a deeper commitment to the ideals of crafting a just and sane society for our children. We must sacrifice personal ambition for our nation’s revival. We must shake ourselves off the ambivalence chair, if our nation must stretch to touch the sky. We must discard the lure of cynicism for a drive into the horizon on the hill. We must sacrifice the comfort of today for the nation to reap the rewards of tomorrow.

To that end, I have decided to impose full martial law across the three North Eastern states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa. I’m suspending all the democratic institutions of the states for the next six months. I have ordered our military to move into these states and take control of law and order, and preserve lives and properties. Military administrators will be appointed tomorrow to head the three states for that time period. Northern Nigeria must be restored to order in my own time.

Along the same line, I have decided to commit the rest of my days as president to the fight to bring back peace and tranquility across the North East and beyond. There is no folly as grave as watching the soul of our nation wither away while we engross ourselves in the fight to gain and preserve power. Consequently, I will not seek and will not accept the nomination of my party for the presidency of Nigeria in 2015.

This is not a time to play politics. My job from now until May 29, 2015 is to restore the dignity of Nigeria. I will get the North back into the fold of regions of this nation where every citizen is free to live, work, and prosper. Come 2015, I will conduct a credible election that will give Nigerians an excellent opportunity to elect their next generation of leaders.

Working with the National Assembly and the delegates at the National Conference, I intend to bequeath Nigerians a constitution that makes sense. State governors must assume full responsibility of securing the citizens of their states. To achieve that, they need the necessary tools. I will ensure that the next set of governors resuming on May 29, 2015 will have state police to help them achieve that.

I reject the argument that we are not ready for state police. The existence of state police will not mean the elimination of federal police. The federal police will still supersede the state police and will ensure that potential excesses and abuses are prevented. Those we give responsibilities must have the resources to accomplish the task we ask of them. And with that responsibility and resources they owe us results. And when they fail, we have every right to hold them accountable.

Similarly, I’ll work with the National Assembly and the delegates to the National Conference to ensure that from May 29, 2015, a clear and equitable system that rotates the presidency of this country is enshrined in the constitution of Nigeria. The premium for power at the center is the chief cause of our strife. Until we get to the point when it does not matter who is the president, the rotation of the presidency across the geopolitical zones will reduce tension and give every nook and cranny of this country a sense of belonging.

In issues large and small, I have renewed my commitment to strengthening our foundation and to bringing about a more equitable society for us all. We cannot have peace without addressing lingering injustices of the past and the present. To create a nation that will last for thousands of years to come, we must move our politics. That is my new calling and for the next 300 and so days, I am dedicating my whole energy to remedying such.

I reject the idea that our fate is that of Afghanistan or Somalia. Not this land of our fathers. I reject the conclusion that we are on the path of Pakistan. I proclaim an alternative path. I believe we can march to Malaysia by way of the boulevard to Brazil following the signs of Singapore. The first step to such pursuit is a disengagement from politics. My days of playing politics with the future of this country are over. That’s the debt that I own our girls who have been suffering in the forest of Sambasi for over forty days and forty nights.

We cannot wish away our challenges. We must confront them with seriousness. I recognize that corruption is at the heart of the wastes that have stunted our growth. In this 21st century world, we must get the works of the government of this country out of dark rooms. Transparency and accountability must not just be catch phrases, we must live in them and them in us.

I hereby declare a total war against corruption.

Tomorrow, I will publicly release my assets declaration forms that I submitted to the ICPC. And I will direct all my ministers to do the same. State governors and local government chairmen must all make public their assets. I am directing the secretary to the government to publish the salaries and allowances of all civil servants in the country beginning tomorrow. Nigerians have the right to know how much they pay the people who work for them.

I’m ready to work with all those willing to clean up our country. We must heal the wounded spirit of this nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be crazy because some crazy men are after us. We have serious challenges in this country and we need serious minded platoon to come and join me in tackling them. Come today for today is still timely. Let us go and bring back our girls. And in the process, bring back our country.

I’m your platoon leader. I’m reporting for duty.

God bless you and may God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

Billionaires offered immortality via brain transplant into robot bodies

2013-03-23T05:30:00.001-07:00

A Russian entrepreneur, who heads a hi-tech research project called 'Avatar', has contacted the world's richest to offer them immortality.

Itskov claims that he will personally oversee their immortality process in exchange for an undisclosed fee.

Itskov, a media entrepreneur, claims to have hired 30 scientists to reach this goal and aims to transplant a human brain into a robot body within 10 years.

"You have the ability to finance the extension of your own life up to immortality. Our civilization has come very close to the creation of such technologies: it's not a science fiction fantasy. It is in your power to make sure that this goal will be achieved in your lifetime," the Daily Mail quoted Itskov as writing in a letter delivered to billionaires listed in Forbes magazine.

He has contacted a list of billionaires with a proposal for funding his quest for immortality - which Itskov refers to as 'cybernetic immortality' and the 'artificial body'.

The initiative is opening its San Francisco office this summer, and will be launching a social media project connecting scientists around the world.

"The 2045 team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one's individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality," Itskov's official site said.

"Such research has the potential to free you, as well as the majority of all people on our planet, from disease, old age and even death.

"For anyone interested, but skeptical, I am ready to prove the viability of the concept of cybernetic immortality by arranging an expert discussion with a team of the world's leading scientist working in this field.

"I will also be willing to coordinate your personal immortality project entirely free of charge for the sake of speeding up the development of these technologies," it said.

Itskov also commented on hi 'immortality' project.

"This project is leading down the road to immortality," Itskov said.

"A person with a perfect Avatar will be able to remain part of society. People don't want to die.

"I understand these are some very big challenges for scientists.

"But I believe in something you call 'The American Dream.' If you put all your energy and time into something, you can make it a reality," he added.

Itskov envisages surgically 'transplanting' human consciousness into a robot body within 10 years.

He hopes to then 'upload' minds without surgery, leaving human bodies as empty husks as their owners 'live on' inside robots.

The project is called Avatar after the James Cameron movie, set far in the future, where human soldiers use mind control to inhabit the bodies of human alien hybrids as they carry out a war against the inhabitants of a distant world. (ANI).

IF YOU DARE CALL ME BLACK! by TOPE FASUA

2012-11-22T04:42:00.001-08:00

Most of us Nigerians don’t understand the problem that we face. Do we know that we are really, on balance, the most hated and distrusted among a hated and distrusted ‘race’ or people? Perhaps if we knew what exactly our chief problem was we would act differently, think differently, spend differently, behave differently, plan differently.

As a frequent flyer to Dubai for about three years now, I have realized certainly, that gradually, and pointedly, the discrimination against ‘black’ people is increasing. Taxis often shun you like never before. Given an Indian, Bangladeshi and Chinese standing with you in a row, the taxis (mostly driven by Pakistanis), would find a way or another to avoid you and collect any of the others. At other instances, free taxi cabs would pointedly speed past you, while standing forlorn seeking for a reprieve. One cannot help but feel bad about such things when one bears the brunt of a renewed racism. Well, such actions are more poignantly carried out by illiterate and poor peasants too anyway. But it is a pointer to greater grief ahead. And of course, since Martin Luther King Jr, no one is articulating any views for Africans, or ‘blacks’ as they like to call us. Blacks? More on this later…

A Bangladeshi taxi driver was ‘unlucky’ to collect me at a taxi rank the other day. He showed much surprise that I wasn’t heading to Sabkha, the favourite haunt of most Africans, and much dreaded by taxis because of the ever-present traffic snarl around that area. He beamed at me, grinning from ear to ear and in his semi-illiterate parlance, told me, absolutely without guile “Black, I don’t like black!”. He didn’t mean it with malice, as I was already seated in the taxi, but he explained further; “Allah said anybody black will not enter heaven, so me I not like Black”. Now I am not exaggerating and would never lie on this page. But we may as well come to terms with the fact that religious books are often misinterpreted by different people from different backgrounds, and the under-educated often fall victim. The beliefs in the Christian religion that I am very used to, varies almost according to each church, so you better believe it, in Bangladesh, they believe that the darker you are, the less your chances of ever making heaven, and they believe the Almighty God himself has sanctioned this!

What I also know is that in India, there is such a big do about skin colour, with mothers rejecting/disliking their children for being dark (such instances are all over Bollywood), and a thriving trade in bleaching creams. This was once an issue in race-sensitive UK a few years ago, where one of the creams being marketed to Indians there had racial connotations. Perhaps in India, a very class-sensitive society, the darker your skin colour the lower your echelon in society. The Bangladeshi taxi driver actually told me that there were some black people in his country and he was sure they could never make it to heaven no matter how hard they tried. “I love white” he exclaimed in his uninformed delirium. Can anyone blame him? Truth be told, because of the 18th century incursion of the British into India, with many Brits ‘going native’ ie never returning to Britain, a certain section of India – and neighbouring countries – have a burgeoning population of ‘white’ natives, products of inter-racial trysts and unions in those days.

Maybe the world should be thankful that Mitt Romney did not become the president of the United States. One of the main beliefs of Mormonism – his brand of Christianity – is that darkness of skin is a specific curse from God, and that if one prays hard enough, God may well forgive one and lighten your skin colour, and of course reduce the load of sins you carry. Maybe that was why Michael Jackson decided to abandon the rest of us. In the Bible itself, many references were made to the holiness of ‘white’ and the evil of ‘black’. The other day, I saw a church pamphlet given to my children in which the archangel Michael was very white with blonde hair, and was standing over a fallen devil, whose skin was dark brown – like any Nigerian – with two horns on his head.

Brigham Young, successor to the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith is quoted to have said:
"You see some classes of the human family that are black are uncouth, uncomely, disagreeable and low in their habits, and seemingly without the blessing of the intelligence that is generally bestowed upon mankind.. Cain slew his brother.. And the Lord put a mark on him, which is a flat nose and a black skin…. "Shall I tell you the law of the God in regard to the African race? If the white who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God is death on the spot. This will always be so."
Does all this matter? Can we generally breeze through life ignoring how we are perceived by others? Or can we seek to recreate who we are and therefore set a new agenda for generations unborn? Are we today making the mistakes, the very mistakes our ancestors made that resulted today in us as a people occupying the very lowest rung of the pecking order of humanity? What were those mistakes? They never thought far enough. They never fully understood the implications of anything. They probably were so naïve they didn’t know what really mattered and why. They never really planned for generations ahead. In recent times, we have had people who steal money for their own children and great grandchildren unborn, but that is not the kind of planning I am talking about. In the first place, such provision for generations unborn is self-centred (it’s all about separating your children and grandchildren from the pack, while the vast majority becomes even poorer by your actions). On the other hand, I am not talking of making provisions of money for generations unborn. I am talking of knowledge, history, philosophy, innovations. These have been totally neglected.

If they were not, I would not meet that black man recently – probably a civil servant from some African country – who came to a high-profile shop to buy shoes worth $4,000 (N700,000) for his straggly, bow legged, son, who was prancing about and behaving badly one could be sure that his parents had destroyed his life! If we knew what to concentrate on, Nigerian big men would not be building vast mansions all over the place and gallivanting around the world displaying how much they can spend and how quickly. Our leaders – yes finally I believe that we have a leadership problem – have absolutely no clue what they should be concentrating on. We have no thinkers in our society who can help set the tone and direction that the country should move towards. I am not one to merely complain. I believe I am trying my level best in my own way. Many have asked me to stop talking and stop writing, and to act! Act where, how? I believe that we need to define the agenda properly before jumping into the fray. I believe we need in Africa, people who can help articulate our history, define what we should be doing in the present, and explain exactly what the consequences of our past and present actions and inactions, will be, in a bid to jar us all awake! And those people MUST NEVER tire in their advocacy, until the awareness reaches a critical mass!

With the way we are going, the future will see more discrimination against ‘black’ people from even more quarters. And those children of ours who are attending private schools and shopping at designer shops today, will get the most grief certainly! If their fathers had shown some concern for lifting up our poor vast majority, things could have panned out better. But they don’t care. Our leaders show disdain to the poor, and so they, and the rest of us, will be disdained by the world. QED. It used to be that a black man could hardly get a cab on the streets of Manhattan, New York. Now we can include Dubai among such countries where we are treated as trash. But more is coming, since we treat each other like trash, we damage our own reputation ourselves through criminal conduct, and of course NO ONE is advocating positively on our behalf as a people. I will try if I have the opportunity, but for now, I see none, except on this page where I express myself. And all I am trying to tell the world is, ‘we didn’t ask to be born where we were born, but we are ready to make the most of our circumstances and contribute positively to humanity’.

So the issue about ‘black’, defined in the English Dictionary as DIRTY, DODGY, EVIL, SINISTER, CROOKED, GUILTY, DAMNED, UNLUCKY, UNFORTUNATE, as against being ‘white’, which means to be HOLY, NICE, GOOD, STRAIGHT-DEALING, INNOCENT, LUCKY, and of course FORTUNATE! Your guess is as good as mine whether every ‘black’ person you know, including yourself, should be described by the above adjectives, and whether every white man qualifies for all those accolades and best wishes. I believe the greatest injustice ever is that which splits the world into BLACK and WHITE, when we all know that the world is indeed a mixture of several shares of grey, cream, and brown. I actually prefer being called colored – now that is colourful – than being described with such negative connotations that even has bearings for one’s future…

I see my work as one of a philosopher. Yes, Karl Marx did say, “Philosophers interpret the world, BUT the point is to change it…” One of our biggest problems in Africa is that we did not even interpret our world ourselves until others came and did it for us. And till now, we are not attempting to. Who was our Plato, our Socrates, our Hobbes, our Marx, our Engels, our Maslow and so on? Perhaps we had a few in the very ancient days, philosopher kings who had a vision of what they expect society to be. But did anyone document their works? And how extensive were those works? Yet, since colonization, we lost the plot. Can we say we have not had a breathing space, away from the daily hustle for bread and butter, to actually articulate our future and tell ourselves the home truths that will save our children from destruction. Or perhaps we are spending way too much time chasing way too much money, and most of us are way too absorbed in ourselves that we cannot see the dangers ahead, for ourselves, for our children unborn.

Since Martin Luther King Jr and a few others like Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey etc, no one has bothered again. It is as if Africans stopped thinking. Maybe we are all chasing the ‘American Dream’ so blindly, and we are daily misinterpreting the concept of Capitalism, in such a wanton manner, that our society has gone to the dogs. Ordinarily, I refrain from criticizing leaders, but it is more than obvious that for a long time, one thing most of our so-called leaders have lacked consistently, is vision. And we are not only speaking about Nigeria. Say, in the issue of black vs white (which is a great fraud), how come someone as cream-coloured as Barack Obama is considered ‘black’? Anyone who sees someone like Obama and says ‘this man is black’, must either have a serious problem with his vision or brain, or must return to kindergarten to learn his basic colours. But the world conspired against us and labeled us with such an awful tag and no one is complaining. Employment forms and other such are filled in Europe and the USA, where one is expected to tick such a box which ‘boxes one in’, literally into some sordid race or the other!

I dream of one day addressing the United Nations on this and other issues, even though I know that body is part of the grand agenda. I don’t know how it will happen but yet I dream of it. Someone has to help our people, someone has to intercede, someone has to cry out so that we will be heard, pitied, or helped. Whatever works.

For the best our leaders understand about the issue on hand, is perhaps a need to build infrastructure, without building or improving the people. I have said elsewhere, that there is a need to build the people else they will destroy the infrastructure – if we are lucky to even get that one right. Nations where leaders are visionary are already giving back dignity to their vast majority. In the UAE, where the first part of this article refered to, the poorest of the poor ride their public buses and use the bus stops. But because of the seasonal heat, all the bus stops are installed with air conditioning. The leaders there have not treated their people with disdain. Even menial labourers from India/Bangladesh/Pakistan/Myanmar, have provisions of hostels that they live – even if many in a room. But in Nigeria, it takes a report to the Public Complaint Commission for the Minister of FCT to go borrowing from the World Bank in order to build pedestrian bridges even while speeding cars kill dozens each month while they try to cross the roads, and of course, the man admitted that some houses were supposed to be built for the poor people but even he does not know when (or whether), they will ever be completed.

‘Black’ people have done badly over time, and we are still doing badly. We destroy our own environment and majority of us do not understand decorum and disciplined living. Our people down in the poor suburbs still lynch human beings with glee and happiness. The other day it was four students in Port Harcourt Nigeria, a few days later, a video surfaced from East Africa, of the lynching of four old people, perhaps for witchcraft! The world is totally integrated today, and will not see such things as mere exceptions. There should be a zero-tolerance to such events, but do our governments care? Of course our leaders are selected from among us, and so we may be wrong to expect them to do the right thing and behave properly, since they cannot be different from the rest of us. Still they should have learnt. They should know, in their lucid intervals, when they get one or two minutes of sanity, that the problem we face is collective, that their children cannot hope to escape the disdain shown by the rest of the world, that they are great, we are great, ONLY if we give dignity to the lowliest among us. We will be forever judged by the way that the most vulnerable among us fares.

Talk about how we think! The other day a thieving minister in Zambia ran back to his village when he was being sought by the police. They later caught him hiding in a tree, naked, because he believed that with some incantations, if he was naked he would be invisible. Those are the same kind of ‘leaders’ who have concentrated on feathering their own nests in Africa, buying shoes worth $4,000 for their stupid 10 year old children, even as Africa regressed into even more poverty and illiteracy. Nigeria is chief among such visionless countries. Today, terrorism has mixed up with mass illiteracy and caught up with us. To make matters far worse, are religious houses who continue to perpetuate the belief in voodoo and magic, and daily increase laziness among their adherents, while fueling greed and a warped sense of entitlement. Pastors acquiring $50million private jets in a country where most cannot even feed twice a day! All Good!

African leaders must return DIGNITY to the people. Yes the leaders may lack dignity themselves, but they travel abroad and see how leaders of other countries treat their own people. Nigeria comes to mind again. Our glistening FCT, with the most exotic houses the world over, is a massive toilet. You cannot drive five minutes without seeing people peeing and pooing on the streets! It’s about a lack of DIGNITY. The Kenyans are slightly ahead, but they too needed the one of Bill Gates’ NGOs to help finance public toilets/bathrooms in many parts of Nairobi. The NGO went ahead STRICTLY BECAUSE IT WAS ABOUT HUMAN DIGNITY. So there you have it. It takes Bill Gates to build us toilets and bathrooms in Africa. And it takes a World Bank loan for Nigeria to finance pedestrian bridges so that cars stop spilling human brains on the tarmacs! What does that say about us as ‘black’ people? When will our leaders realize that they need to slow down on luxury and deal with the basics?

Those who are into tribalism and other useless ventures, should know that theirs is a hopeless quest. Some people have spent lifetimes pursuing phantom segregation, trying to show that their tribe is better than others. The taxi drivers/immigration official/policeman in New York or Dubai will not ask whether you are Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa or Efik. They see you, you look dark, and something activates in their mind. They interpret ‘black’ in their native languages, and all the meanings pop up ‘fraud’, ‘stealing’, ‘evil’, and then they enter the racist mode – even if many of them are good at heart! They will not care how much money you have stashed in the bank, and how many rooms are present in the mansion in which you slept the night before. They don’t even care if you are a big government official in your country, all they know is that some of us behave badly, are loud, lousy, fraudulent, dirty, arrogant, quarrelsome and even downright nasty and they have taken their decisions based on that. Just when we should be properly integrating into the world, what we are seeing for our people, is more discrimination ahead. I am sad indeed!

If Africans were wise, what we should do us to assist each other with the virtues we have. Those who know the value of enterprise should quickly and actively assist those who are laid back, those who know the value of humility should actively assist those who are riding their high horses going to nowhere. Those who understand the value of structured societies should infuse their knowledge far and wide. THIS IS THE TIME, AND WE MUST SHARE ALL WE HAVE. AFRICANS MUST REALISE THAT LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING IF IT IS ONLY FOR ONESELF. LIFE IS ONLY WORTH LIVING WHEN LIVED FOR OTHERS. Whatever we desire the most, we must be ready to give it away, in order to get more of such, and to enjoy what we have. We must not hesitate to share the intangibles; knowledge, love, values, systems, for oftentimes, sharing such takes absolutely NOTHING from us, but adds a whole lot back. Just what are we afraid of as a people?

Think about this. A hundred years from now what will be said about Africans? Would we, can we, continue like this? Or would some global cataclysm have come and wiped us out of our ignorant existence? Those are questions for the ages. But for now, do yourself a favour – share your knowledge, and try and see that you are nothing except you cause an African renaissance…h

THE MOST GULLIBLE PEOPLE IN THE WORLD BY COSMAS ODOEMENA

2012-11-15T23:52:00.001-08:00

A Harvard study said the most gullible people in the world are the Filipinos. The study said, “The causes of this gullibility include the inability to question information and an over-reliance on interpersonal sources.” The study also said, “For Fillipinos, a tsunami warning from the government does less than a mother’s directive to avoid the sea because of syokoys (mermen).” According to the Mosquito Press that reported it, “The study involved content analyses of over 500,000 historical documents from 300 societies. The documents were then evaluated according to a quantitative metric called the Gump Index.” The study went on, “What’s curious about the Filipino condition is despite a respectable literacy rate, many of its people still believe that condoms cause cancer – or that Appolo Quiboloy, CEO of kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above Every Name, Inc. is the son of God.”

The Harvard Institute of Socio-political Progression may have gone through a rigorous effort in arriving at the Filipinos, but the same can be said of Nigerians. Recently, a 62-year-old male patient was brought to us by his son who was not satisfied with the treatment he was getting in a ‘home’ in Cotonou in Benin Republic where the children had taken him for treatment because the man was “behaving abnormally.” What amazed us was that we were the ones who pointed to the injuries which we discovered on the man’s body. Apparently, the old man had been traumatised to ‘remove’ whatever was ailing him. And it took our pointing these out for the man’s relatives to realise this. The face, the body and even the genitals were all assaulted, for the dementia we found he has.

All too often, Nigerians fall easily to swindlers, especially money doublers. Usually, the customer brings a small amount of money say N10, which they hide under a scrap of cloth. The trick is for a few customers to win small amounts to convince those with big money to play. Those who win the small sums are smart when they take their winning and walk away. But the greedy will stay and stake a bigger sum. The customer is given the cloth with the money and warned not to open it for a given period of time. When the customer opens it, he finds no money but scraps of paper. And when he returns to complain, they lay the blame on him, he must have opened it before the given time. Even now, Nigerians will go for ‘wonder banks’ that promise unreasonable returns.

Aristotle said, “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.” In Nigeria, the youths are lured easily by politicians for their own selfish purposes. And when the politicians have no need of them they discard them. Looking for work to do, and finding none, the youths become a menace to the society.

At no place than the church is the gullibility of Nigerians most manifest. Nigerians, believing that whatever the pastors tell them is divinely inspired, accept everything in ‘faith’. People have been flagellated to exorcise their purported demons. Men have allowed their pastors sleep with their wives believing that it would be the solution to the couple’s infertility. Nigerians, seeking for any means to get wealthy, go to witchdoctors who are poor themselves. Idolaters carve images and call them their god.

Nigerians have an unrivalled herd mentality. Suicide bombers have continued to bomb their own fellow Nigerians in the dubious belief that they are carrying out a divine injunction. And because of gullibility, there is no shortage of recruits. Without asking questions, without examining facts, Nigerians gang up to mob and burn fellow Nigerians alive; petty thieves, anybody whose voice cannot be heard allowed, with the Aluu Four the latest victims. It has happened many times where Nigerian men, women, children, or even a whole family follows the leader who has gone to vandalise oil pipelines or gone to scoop oil when it has burst, as if they are all in a trance, and getting roasted in the event.

Tribalism is not left out of the consequences of gullibility. Nigerian children grow up hating other tribes because their parents told them that those other tribes are their enemy. When the children grow up, they pass it on to their children and the cycle goes on. It is this deep-seated prejudice that has made Prof. Chinua Achebe’s new Civil War memoir, “There was a country”, an issue of truculence.

Perhaps, the most gullible among Nigerians is the government, particularly to organisations such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank and some other so-called international lenders. As of today, Nigeria’s debt profile is $44bn, and recently it signed a new deal to borrow $600m from China’s Export-Import Bank, supposedly to build a railway to service Abuja and its environs, a deal said to be in dispute. If our earnings from oil are judiciously used and leprous hands of corruption don’t touch them, we would not need to borrow money to finance any projects. Our creditors sold Structural Adjustment Programme to us, and we took it because anyone in debt is a slave to the one who lends.

Debt is a tool for manipulation by neoliberalists led by these institutions and other institutions known as the “Washington Consensus”. They sold to a gullible Nigerian government the idea of fuel subsidy withdrawal. They preach privatisation but are on hand to make sure local industries are not protected, and do not survive, so that they will have a leeway for their own exports. They are the ones who sold devaluation of currency and high interest rate to our government.

The line usually starts with “Fellow Nigerians…” and the yarn goes on. Only gullible people are taken in by “Shelter for all by the year 2000”; “Food for all by the year…”; “Health for all…” or that by 2020, Nigeria will rank among the 20 biggest economies in the world.

I am not done yet. Gullibility fosters corruption. That is why fuel subsidy thieves can manufacture any figures to get undue payments under the nose of gullible Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation and government officials and still get away with it.

In Nigeria, many still ascribe the cause of stroke to an attack from the ‘enemies’ or from the gods. Such is the way of Nigerians that the very sight of two goats fighting can attract a crowd and keep them standing there and even cause a traffic hold-up, or even an accident. It is in Nigeria where a juju man has more credibility than a professor of science. It is in Nigeria we vote politicians in because they had no shoes growing up.

If we must develop as a nation, government, institutions, individuals should be critical and refrain from swallowing everything hook, line and sinker. As G.K. Chesterton, journalist, novelist, and essayist said, “Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out”.

- Dr. Odoemena, a medical practitioner, wrote in from Lagos via cuzdetriumph@yahoo.co.uk

True Confession: How married man I met on BBM almost killed me with drugged drinks, sex

2012-09-05T01:23:00.003-07:00

The role of the social media in building relationships and businesses cannot be overemphasised. But the negative aspects seem to be growing with mixed reactions after the death of Cynthia Osokogu who was killed by friends she met on social media.

Since the case of Cynthia went viral, ladies who were before now ashamed to share their experiences in the hands of bad guys have started talking.

Below is the near-death experience a young lady had with a man who was her BBM friend:

I am a girl who has fears, beliefs, reservations and just your regular typical Nigerian girl. This past few weeks has been one hell of a game for me. I have really been unsettled and I thought I share this story with you.

When Cynthia (the lady killed in the hotel room in Festac, Lagos) surfaced on the internet and various news media, I was scared and it brought back a whole lot of memories to me and also served as and eye opener. Many people castigated and criticised Cynthia (may her gentle soul rest in peace), but my point is, it could have been anybody, anybody at all.

We have met people through various social media. Some have ended up well, some have not but with painful memories. To cut the long story short, let me kindly share with you my encounter with social media especially the very popular Blackberry Messenger (BBM).

I am a graduate and currently serving in Kaduna. I could have runced it, but I needed somewhere to clear my head and forget about my ugly encounter. Here is my story.

I happened to have a married man as a contact on my BBM. He had been asking me out for over six months and I refused to date him. As time went on, he invited me clubbing with him when his wife was outside the country, and I went with him all night. We spent most of the night at Swe bar, Lagos.

I also met his clique of friends, married as well with their various mistresses. We had ‘mad’ fun. After all the clubbing and drinking, he lodged me in a hotel somewhere in Obalende. I felt sort of safe with him. We did not have sex, but he made sweet love to me and touched me in places I had never ever imagined.

He kissed me passionately but guess what? He did not have sex with me. We did all sorts but there was no penetration. So, to an extent, I trusted he was a good person to be around with. I did not know that it was all part of the plan.

He gave me N10,000 and put me in a cab to go home the next morning. We kept talking and chatting and sending naked pictures to each other and he told me naughty things of how he wanted to whisper things in my ear, I blushed. We didn’t see for two weeks and that was because his wife just came back from Turkey.

One faithful evening, he pinged me that he was organising a beach party/boat cruise and that he would love for me to be his date and that he wanted to open a BBM chat, as a medium for his friends and my friends to interact. I was excited about it, I just wanted to have fun. I was able to get five of my very hot friends.

The BBM group opened and we got chatting. I also realise that majority of them were married and working in reputable firms. It was fun and we didn’t mind if they were married, we just wanted to have fun, as well as some other girls apart from my friends in the group.

We chatted exclusively, sent pictures to the BBM group to introduce ourselves, and we had opened group conversations pending the beach party. And as excited as we were, we went shopping for nice sexy beach wears.

The D-day finally came, we all assembled at the Lagos Island Boat Club. I was wowed because it was a high class party. We were cruising in a boat loaded with goodies drinks and hot babes, and as well ‘MARRIED MEN’. I did not care, I just said in my mind that I would not roll with married men anymore after this, that for now, all I wanted to do was to catch some fun. After all, I wasn’t paying bills.

We got there, it was a private beach resort. Most of the beach facilities I got to see there were owned by multinational companies. We got out of the boat, and went to where we were partying. It was a duplex made with wood. It was a very nice setting.

I felt comfortable because it even had a fence around it separating it from other beach houses around. So, there was privacy and of course bouncers (heavy looking guys) guarding the place. I said to myself, this must be heaven, I must be dreaming.

Anyways, we felt free with each other because we had been chatting. It was 5:30pm and the party just started. We had drinks flowing from the private bar tender which happens to be owned by one of the men in the group. Reality struck when I realised that I was feeling dizzy and feeling really funny and light headed. Not only me, but other girls around me too noticed there was something strange about it.

I was also feeling HORNY as hell! I had been drugged. They monitored us and when they knew the drug had really gone deep into our system, they moved us up into the main beach house. I could still see faces, but was too weak and horny to react.

Mr B, the man who took me clubbing, carried me in his hands like a sacrifice and put me down on the floor just as other men also did with their girls. We were eight in numbers; 8 girls, 8 guys, and they all stripped us down and had sex with us.

I enjoyed it a bit because I was horny. It was a mixed feeling because I cried, I moaned, but I did not know how many times he came into me. He pounded me hard. I was dizzy, but he grabbed me with force. All I could notice was the wedding ring on his finger. I thought of how wicked and miserable some married can be. How inhuman and heartless they could be.

All of them took turns in switching partners and slept with all of us. I passed out. That was the last thing I could remember. I felt water poured on me. I noticed all the other girls around me too were half naked and some stark naked.

We spent the night at the beach, but the men were no where to be found. I looked round me and all I could see was packs of used condoms. I ran to pick my cloths and possibly raise an alarm. I got dressed, found my phone with an envelope. It contained N16,000 and a note asking us to take N2000 each for transport. Tears of anger and rage filled my eyes and the girls around me as well.

“We were drugged and used like tissue paper. I grabbed my phone and noticed a ping came in. I checked my phone and I noticed the BBM group had been deleted, and a message via BBM from MR B came in. He threatened me that if I say a word to anyone, I would regret it.

I told him he was a bastard, and he said try it. A picture came in, several pictures. In fact, they were pictures of us being naked on the floor. Pictures of the humiliating us but they blurred the faces of the men. In total, I got 20 pictures. I was not myself for a month.

I went back to school, I had no one to talk to. The rest of the semester was hell for me. My CGPA dropped drastically. It was the worst out of the worst result I ever had.

Till today, my friends and I have not discussed this with anyone, but all I could do when I heard of Cynthia’s story was to narrate my own ordeal anonymously and spread the news, the word, and pray they (ladies who do runs) see it and changed their ways.

I am now born again. I have given my life to Christ. I fear men so much that I cannot even move close to them. I still have nightmares, but with time, God will strengthen me and I will move on. My advice to single ladies out there is, do not be desperate for fun. Pray to God to open your eyes of understanding, and pray hard. He who kneels before God will stand before kings and queens.

To all married women, pray hard to God to intervene in your marriages and turn your husbands from bad habits and bad friends. As for me, I do not think I ever want to get married or date a man again. That chapter has been closed for good in my life.

Please, do not ignore my mail. Please post it. There are a lot of things we ladies need to learn. Please post it on your blog and save a soul. It could be your friend, sister, cousin, neighbour.

God bless you as you pass it on. To all readers, I do not care if you insult me or rain abuses at me. My job is to share this encounter with you and save you from any mishap. God bless you all. Amen.

Female Orgasm (adult content)

2012-09-02T00:24:00.002-07:00

First I’d have to start by defining “Love Making” in my own language. “Love making is an art, the lady is the canvas and the man the painter. If painted properly and with care, you end up with a master piece that can last as long as the Mona Lisa”. I’m so tired of hearing inexperienced guys come in the bar or wherever, and brag about how they made her want more only to eavesdrop on the conversation and I just feel sorry for the Lady. Guys I’m not saying you are not giving your woman what she needs or how she wants it, I’m just going to say the truth and if you feel it’s directed to you then just learn from what I’d explain here. It is said that 85 percent of African women go through their life time without having an orgasm just because most African men would skip foreplay, oral sex to just sex.

Now I got the guys thinking and some cocky guys saying hell no I get her to cum all the time. Okay I have heard so many guys brag and say I did it so fast, she was moaning and came, she told me she came too, and I saw so much wet stuff there. Huh? Is that your definition? Then I’m really really sorry she doesn’t want to hurt your ego. When a woman gets to have an Orgasm you will know if you are experienced, it is the dumbest thing to ask your woman “baby did you cum”? As her man you have to know when she did and how to get her there. Just because your woman is really wet doesn’t mean she just came, it means she is aroused and wants you to perform your duty as her man. Guys come on! don’t think that you stick a finger or two for 15 seconds pinch her nipples for 9 seconds suck on her breast 6 seconds and the penetrate her will make her have an orgasm. That’s just being plain selfish and uncaring.

A woman’s orgasm is different from we guys who could afford to burst a nut just by watching porn, a woman’s orgasm has to be built up to the point she can’t take it no more and explodes with pleasure. For the nerds a lady’s orgasm is like charging a dead phone to the point it’s full and the light indicators start going off with an alarm. Now I know some guys reading will say what the hell are you feeling like?

Okay guys, if your girl just had an orgasm she would not have the strength to stand up and dress up 15 seconds after you think she just came and say “I’m going home”. When a woman reaches her orgasm, her heart rate, blood pressure and breathing increase. Tension builds within her pelvis, muscles contract throughout her body especially in the vagina which is accompanied with series of contractions. Contractions also occur in the uterus, rectum and pelvic floor. Occasional speaking in tongues you never heard, Grabbing of your sheets, Toe curling up like she about to have mad cramps or mild stroke, Scratches on your back, Love marks from her biting your arm because she doesn’t want to scream out loud. She ends up having a good sleep afterwards. Yeah trust me a lot goes on.

Now the good guys who care about their woman are ready to ask me, hey how do we achieve all these in bed? It’s simple son. Good communication in the bedroom with your woman will help you a lot; don’t assume that screwing your finger in her or finger banging her here and there like you are searching for coins in vagina is fun to her. Ask her how she wants her body touched, ask her how hard she wants her nipples bitten, sucked, licked or pinched because it’s different strokes for different folks after all, ask her how to play with her clitoris and how she wants it licked, nibbled, eaten etc. when you go down on her. Don’t just assume. A woman’s body differs from the long shaft in our boxers.

For all those guys that just skip foreplay and head to sex, I’m really sorry for you because when she comes in contact to the real deal, you would be an ex soon. 75 percent of women say they achieve orgasm via oral sex almost every time it is done well. Dudes don’t be selfish and expect her to give you a blow job when you not ready to down and eat the hell out of her pum pum and even when you do, you just go down and give it 5 licks and you are up. 5 licks!!!??? Come on son, spend some quality time down there and give her the best oral sex she ever had, occasionally look up and watch her flap her legs around like butterflies and see the gyration of her waste from so much pleasure, then when she gets an orgasm you can have a personal experience of what a vagina does when she has an orgasm because I am not going to tell you that.

Also put a little swag in your sex life. Make it so nice she wants to be by your place tomorrow. Guys always have a romantic atmosphere, a good flow of natural lubrication so that the delicate female parts don’t get sore, never forget to stimulate her clitoris no matter what you doing. Please bear in mind and forget whatever you guys think or how big you think you packing. Sexual intercourse by itself is not likely to produce an orgasm. This is because intercourse alone is not very good at stimulating the woman’s clitoris and nearly all females need additional stimulation of the clitoris by fingers or mouth.

So even if you are having sexual intercourse with your woman, reach out and stimulate her clitoris and your other hand should get busy on her breast or grabbing some of those her lovely curves. Don’t just ignore her body; work with every part that is exposed and don’t bore the crap out of her.

Remember these:

Don’t be in a rush because it’s a turn on for women if they see you know what you are doing

Don’t be too demanding – Love making is not an Olympic event

Always ask her what she wants but please don’t bore her out with questions. Just shut up and drive

Give her lots of kisses and cuddles before you make an approach to her sexual area

Take things gently and see what she wants

Use her own natural lubrication to moisten her clitoris and learn how she masturbates because women have a specific way they stroke their clits just like every guy here knows how you jerk off his Johnny boy better. You learn from the owner just like we want to teach them how to hold yours.

Always remember that stimulation of the clitoris is the key to female orgasm weather by mouth or stroking it with your finger. So guys pop in some Marvin Gaye set the mode right and stop starving your woman an Orgasm. Please practice safe sex or stick to one sexual partner AIDS is real.

Culled from https://africanboythatwrites.wordpress.com

"And in 35 to 40 years, we basically will be immortal"

2012-08-16T04:35:00.000-07:00

In 30 or 40 years, we'll have microscopic machines traveling through our bodies, repairing damaged cells and organs, effectively wiping out diseases. The nanotechnology will also be used to back up our memories and personalities.

In an interview with Computerworld, futurist Ray Kurzweil said that anyone alive come 2040 or 2050 could be close to immortal. The quickening advance of nanotechnology means that the human condition will shift into more of a collaboration of man and machine, as nanobots flow through human blood streams and eventually even replace biological blood, he added.

That may sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but Kurzweil, says that research well underway today is leading to a time when a combination of nanotechnology and biotechnology will wipe out cancer, Alzheimer's disease, obesity and diabetes.

It'll also be a time when humans will augment their natural cognitive powers and add years to their lives, Kurzweil said.

"It's radical life extension," Kurzweil said. "The full realization of nanobots will basically eliminate biological disease and aging. I think we'll see widespread use in 20 years of [nanotech] devices that perform certain functions for us. In 30 or 40 years, we will overcome disease and aging. The nanobots will scout out organs and cells that need repairs and simply fix them. It will lead to profound extensions of our health and longevity."

Of course, people will still be struck by lightning or hit by a bus, but much more trauma will be repairable. If nanobots swim in, or even replace, biological blood, then wounds could be healed almost instantly. Limbs could be regrown. Backed up memories and personalities could be accessed after a head trauma.

Today, researchers at MIT already are using nanoparticles to deliver killer genes that battle late-stage cancer. The university reported just last month the nano-based treatment killed ovarian cancer, which is considered to be one of the most deadly cancers, in mice.

And earlier this year, scientists at the University of London reported using nanotechnology to blast cancer cells in mice with "tumor busting" genes, giving new hope to patients with inoperable tumors. So far, tests have shown that the new technique leaves healthy cells undamaged.

With this kind of work going on now, Kurzweil says that by 2024 we'll be adding a year to our life expectancy with every year that passes. "The sense of time will be running in and not running out," he added. "Within 15 years, we will reverse this loss of remaining life expectancy. We will be adding more time than is going by."

And in 35 to 40 years, we basically will be immortal, according to the man who wrote The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.

Kurzweil also maintains that adding microscopic machines to our bodies won't make us any less human than we are today or were 500 years ago.

"The definition of human is that we are the species that goes beyond our limitations and changes who we are," he said. "If that wasn't the case, you and I wouldn't be around because at one point life expectancy was 23. We've extended ourselves in many ways. This is an extension of who we are. Ever since we picked up a stick to reach a higher branch, we've extended who we are through tools. It's the nature of human beings to change who we are."

But that doesn't mean there aren't parts of this future that don't worry him. With nanotechnology so advanced that it can travel through our bodies and affect great change on them, come dangers as well as benefits.

The nanobots, he explained, will be self-replicating and engineers will have to harness and contain that replication.

"You could have some self-replicating nanobot that could create copies of itself... and ultimately, within 90 replications, it could devour the body it's in or all humans if it becomes a non-biological plague," said Kurzweil. "Technology is not a utopia. It's a double-edged sword and always has been since we first had fire.''

Asari Dokubo’s Rantings By Frank O. ijege

2012-08-13T01:27:00.001-07:00

Recently, Chief Edwin Clark, the self-acclaimed leader of the Ijaw nation and ex militant Chief, Asari Dokubo, was in the news. These men, who are leaders in their own right, made comments unworthy of the positions they occupy in the society. To say that I am disappointed is to obviously state the least. To start with, Chief Edwin Clark is a man who has acquired a reputation for himself in the country, having served as a Federal Commissioner for Information and considering his age of over 80 years, earns him the status of an Elder Statesman. This accounts for one’s consternation about views about the events in the Nigerian polity. One is sometimes inclined to believe that ageing induced his recent comments.
Chief Clark recently pointed accusing fingers at General Ibrahim Babangida and some northern leaders as those sponsoring the dreaded Boko Haram sect. How he came by that conclusion remains a mystery. The current situation in the country is one that all hands to be on deck. So, if Chief Edwin Clark does not have anything to say, let him just look the other way and allow men with genuinely love Nigeria, to seek way solve the problem we currently face as a nation. Chief Clark should be reminded that such statements are capable of ruining the reputation he has earned for himself. Need I remind the revered Elder Statesman that while the Niger Delta was on fire, when he and other leaders in the region were visibly handicapped and incapable of bringing a lasting solution, it was a Northerner who brought the peace they currently enjoy?
Asari Dokubo in his own statement threatened fire and brimstone against the north. One wonders how Asari thinks. The question to ask him is; is it the entire north that is Boko Haram, or is it every northerner that is supports of the sect? Anyway such statements are not unexpected from people who have allowed ethnicity and politics to becloud their judgment and sense of reasoning. When he and other militants were kidnapping and killing innocent citizens in the Niger Delta, who threatened war against the people of the Niger Delta? If Nigeria were a nation where things work, men like Asari Dokubo would have been behind bars from crimes he committed against innocent people. Unfortunately we are not, that is why men like him still move about freely and even have the effrontery to threaten war against a particular section of the country.
The general feeling and belief among some members of the Niger Delta region is that certain people from the north are against the Presidency of President Goodluck Jonathan. Therefore they are creating confusion in the polity to label him a weakling and a failed leader. Whenever I hear such argument, I am always quick to remind people that BoKo Haram did not start from the time of Goodluck Jonathan. The insurgency started during the time of Late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. President Goodluk Jonathan merely inherited it and just like his predecessor, found it tasking to solve. So, that argument is not tenable.
Besides, such an argument can only come from people who have a parochial mindset, and hardly mean well for Nigeria.
The so called leaders of the north have not fared any better. They seem to have all gone to sleep while their house is on fire. Maybe their view is, as long as I am not personally affected then everything is okay.
However they cannot pretend that everything is okay in the north, when things are anything but okay. Recently, the governor of a northern State paid a visit to victims of an attack in a hospital putting on a bullet proof vest. This shows that they are not unaware of the daunting security challenges present in the region.
As leaders, the general wellbeing of the people should be their primary concern. If these northern leaders had acted promptly when the situation was a bit controllable, it wouldn’t have enjoyed this sporadic spread and men like Asari Dokubo would not have had the opportunity to descend to the level of insult and finger pointing.

The current security situation is a national one and not just a northern problem. Therefore all well-meaning Nigerians must all arise to the task, so as to find a lasting solution to the current problem our dear country is faced with. Finger pointing and inflammatory remarks like those of Chief Edwin Clark and Asari Dokubo will only aggravate the situation. Let me state unequivocally that the unity of Nigeria is a settled and foregone issue and the blood of those who fought to keep this country together shall not be in vain. Anybody who seeks the breakup of Nigeria does not mean well for her and we must collectively resist such move. Our strength shall be our unity; we cannot conquer this security challenge with a divided house. God bless Nigeria.

What happens when body is exposed directly to space?

2012-08-06T11:25:00.005-07:00

There are some myths about what happens when body is exposed directly to space. The official scientific theory is that a lot of things will hurt the body after 90 seconds.

First, the gases expand in the lungs and form airbubbles that could kill a man immediately. The water in body will convert to vapor, the moisture in mouth and eyes will boil and the moisture in muscles and soft tissues will evaporate, causing swelling.

Loss of vision, freezing nose, blue skin and sunburns follow. Interestingly, the heart and the brain will continue their work for another 90 seconds.

Theoretically, treating pressurized oxygen before these 90 seconds could lead to complete recovery with only minor injuries.

In scores of science fiction stories, hapless adventurers find themselves unwittingly introduced to the vacuum of space without proper protection. There is often an alarming cacophony of screams and gasps as the increasingly bloated humans writhe and spasm. Their exposed veins and eyeballs soon bulge in what is clearly a disagreeable manner. The ill-fated adventurers rapidly swell like over-inflated balloons, ultimately bursting in a gruesome spray of blood.

As is true with many subjects, this representation in popular culture does not reflect the reality of exposure to outer space. Ever since humanity first began to probe outside of our protective atmosphere, a number of live organisms have been exposed to vacuum, both deliberately and otherwise. By combining these experiences with our knowledge of outer space, scientists have a pretty clear idea of what would happen if an unprotected human slipped into the cold, airless void.

When the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, a number of injuries begin to occur immediately. Though they are relatively minor at first, they accumulate rapidly into a life-threatening combination. The first effect is the expansion of gases within the lungs and digestive tract due to the reduction of external pressure. A victim of explosive decompression greatly increases their chances of survival simply by exhaling within the first few seconds, otherwise death is likely to occur once the lungs rupture and spill bubbles of air into the circulatory system. Such a life-saving exhalation might be due to a shout of surprise, though it would naturally go unheard where there is no air to carry it.

In the absence of atmospheric pressure water will spontaneously convert into vapor, which would cause the moisture in a victim’s mouth and eyes to quickly boil away. The same effect would cause water in the muscles and soft tissues of the body to evaporate, prompting some parts of the body to swell to twice their usual size after a few moments. This bloating may result in some superficial bruising due to broken capillaries, but it would not be sufficient to break the skin.

Within seconds the reduced pressure would cause the nitrogen which is dissolved in the blood to form gaseous bubbles, a painful condition known to divers as “the bends.” Direct exposure to the sun’s ultraviolet radiation would also cause a severe sunburn to any unprotected skin. Heat does not transfer out of the body very rapidly in the absence of a medium such as air or water, so freezing to death is not an immediate risk in outer space despite the extreme cold.
For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of “useful consciousness” would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgement, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim’s mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.

At this point the victim would be floating in a blue, bloated, unresponsive stupor, but their brain would remain undamaged and their heart would continue to beat. If pressurized oxygen is administered within about one and a half minutes, a person in such a state is likely make a complete recovery with only minor injuries, though the hypoxia-induced blindness may not pass for some time. Without intervention in those first ninety seconds, the blood pressure would fall sufficiently that the blood itself would begin to boil, and the heart would stop beating. There are no recorded instances of successful resuscitation beyond that threshold.

Though an unprotected human would not long survive in the clutches of outer space, it is remarkable that survival times can be measured in minutes rather than seconds, and that one could endure such an inhospitable environment for almost two minutes without suffering any irreversible damage. The human body is indeed a resilient machine.

NIGERIA/GHANA TWEET FIGHT - THE TRAILER

2012-08-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

The Twitter fight broke out when some Ghanainans openly dissed Nigerians for losing woefully to Team USA at lastnight's Olympic basketball game. As omo 9ja you wouldn’t see anyone dissing your country and keep quiet na. Enough of the talk, check out the tweets below…..
" @Desola_123: Planet Of apes is actually Located In GHANA"

"@donteezy1: Ghanians are so dark dat in the azonto video they had to use a white mask!!!"

"@Toby_osagie: If you close your eyes you'll see many ghanians staring at you. Try it."

" @IamLooCas: we spend *just-a-few-dolls* in Russian clubs, Ghanaian boys said we are spoilin market for them! #growsomefuckinballs"

"@Kelsonline7: The Dark Knight cldnt rise in ghana.. He had 2 blend in .."

" @nitrojide: So sad and dumb. That's why Nigeria is still backward. RT @iambabadivision: Black people dissing black people for being black"

"@iPUKEwordz: Ghanain cars do not have tinted windows. The owners are already tinted"

"@DelzDapper: India- Bollywood, America- Hollywood, Nigeria- Nollywood, Ghana- Burnt Firewood."

"@Cutekhid: Baba Suwe Went to Ghana... With his Full Drama Costume..yet he Was Mistaken for an Albino!"

"@loveiswicked: I'm not sure we Nigerians hate Ghanians. I guess we are just having our normal fun and Ghana is the scape goat :)"

"@marvyn_freeman: Ghanaians are saying their economy is doing better than ours,DANGOTE will wake up,buy the whole ghana and turn it to coal production plant!"

"@Phemmie_Killz: Blackberry curve 2 and 3 will never sell in ghana....no flash! "
"@djpizaro: But a Ghana man will never call a child Friday.....Thank God we're not a Nigerians"

"@_iGhasFine_: Ah! Past 12 already, it'll soon be Ghana now!!! Night, sorry."

"@funnyguynikszo: WANDE Coal went to Ghana, the people were shouting 'oyinbo"

"@Temi_kun: HAAA! I knew there'd be consequences to this diss... I just knew it. Ghana buns is now N50 *crying*"

"@TeamGhana88: Even if these Nigerians get an olympic medal they'll just sell it at the airport."

"@BLACK0_0RABBiT: My nights so black call that shit Ghana Skin..."

"@uncensoredIII: If A Nigerian Artiste Does Not Perform Live At Any Of The Shows In Ghana,Then,That Show Can Never Make Sense..."

"@BJsmallz: Ghana Has Annoyed Nigeria Again (GHANA)"

"@doraayobami: Remember when they tot they found crude oil in Ghana,, nah.. It was only a group of Ghanians swimming in a pond"

"@Naijablogger: God bless Nigeria,God bless Ghana.........We r Africans!!!"

" @_ex_boyfriend: Its not even Nigeria vs ghana. Its a small part of lagos vs ghana"

See what #TeamUsa have caused. The fight is still going on via twitter and its trending. omo, my 9ja people no dey carry last.

THE ILLUMINATI CONSPIRACY

2012-08-03T01:54:00.000-07:00

The Illuminati conspiracy is a conspiracy theory which holds that there is a "global elite" society that is either in control of the world or is seeking to take control of the world. As with most conspiracy theories, beliefs regarding the Illuminati conspiracy vary widely. As a result, it is virtually impossible to give a synopsis of the Illuminati conspiracy. Popularized in recent books and movies, the Illuminati conspiracy has definitely reached "cult fiction" status.

If one were to attempt to summarize the Illuminati conspiracy, it would go something like this: The Illuminati began as a secret society under the direction of Jesuit priests. Later, a council of five men, one for each of the points on the pentagram, formed what was called “The Ancient and Illuminated Seers of Bavaria.” They were high order Luciferian Freemasons, thoroughly immersed in mysticism and Eastern mental disciplines, seeking to develop the super powers of the mind. Their alleged plan and purpose is world domination for their lord (who precisely this lord is varies widely). The Illuminati are alleged to be the primary motivational forces encouraging global governance, a one-world religious ethic, and centralized control of the world’s economic systems. Organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the International Criminal Court are seen as tentacles of the Illuminati. According to the Illuminati conspiracy, the Illuminati are the driving force behind efforts to brainwash the gullible masses through thought control and manipulation of beliefs, through the press, the educational curriculum, and the political leadership of the nations.

The Illuminati supposedly have a private board of elite, interlocking delegates who control the world’s major banks. They create inflations, recessions, and depressions and manipulate the world markets, supporting certain leaders and coups and undermining others to achieve their overall goals. The supposed goal behind the Illuminati conspiracy is to create and then manage crises that will eventually convince the masses that globalism, with its centralized economic control and one-world religious ethic, is the necessary solution to the world’s woes. This structure, usually known as the “New World Order,” will, of course, be ruled by the Illuminati.

Does the Illuminati conspiracy have any basis from a Christian/biblical perspective? Perhaps. There are many end-times prophecies in the Bible that are interpreted by most to point to an end times one-world government, a one-world monetary system, and a one-world religion. Many Bible prophecy interpreters see this New World Order as being controlled by the Antichrist, the end-times false messiah. If the Illuminati conspiracy and the New World Order has any validity and is indeed occurring, for the Christian, there is one fact that must be remembered: God has sovereignly allowed all these developments, and they are not outside of His overall plan. God is in control, not the Illuminati. No plan or scheme the Illuminati develop could in any way prevent, or even hinder, God's sovereign plan for the world.

If there is indeed some truth to the Illuminati conspiracy, the Illuminati are nothing but pawns in the hands of Satan, tools to be manipulated in his conflict with God. The fate of the Illuminati will be the same as the fate of their lord, Satan/Lucifer, who will be cast into the lake of fire, to be tormented day and night, forever and ever. In John 16:33 Jesus declared, "In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world." For Christians, all we need to understand about the Illuminati conspiracy is summarized in the words of 1 John 4:4, "You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

BERMUDA TRIANGLE - THE MYSTERIES

2012-08-03T01:26:00.001-07:00

The Bermuda Triangle, also known as the Devil's Triangle, is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels are said to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Popular culture has attributed these disappearances to the paranormal or activity by extraterrestrial beings.More than 1000 ships and planes have disappeared in the triangle area over the past five centuries and continue to do so.

You won't find it on any official map and you won't know when you cross the line, but according to some people, the Bermuda Triangle is a very real place where dozen of ships, planes and people have disappeared with no good explanation. Since a magazine first coined the phrase "Bermuda Triangle" in 1964, the mystery has continued to attract attention.

And all these happen when apparently there is no human errors, equipment failures or even natural disasters. Strangely, the ships and aircraft just vanish when everything seems to be okay.

Many believe that Devil is at play here and therefore call the area also as Devil's Triangle.The facts however are quite far from what is generally known or believed to be true. There are many stories and myths created through sheer imagination of writers who have used them rampantly to draw publicity to their books. In many cases, the facts got blurred.
Lost Planes & Ships in Bermuda Triangle

Here are some of the most amazing stories of planes and ships that disappeared while crossing the triangle area.

Flight 19

The disappearance of this entire squadron of 5 US Navy Avengers was considered so extraordinary that it became the impetus for investigating the Bermuda Triangle. In 1962 Allan W. Ekert wrote a sensational piece in the American Legion Magazine. In it he introduced captivating dialogue between the “flight leader” and the “tower.” Legend, truth, myth and error sprang from that article, and to this day many people have a very confused or skewed view of Flight 19, the actual flight, men, the myth and, most importantly, the facts.

U.S. Battleship Goes Missing With 306 on Board

After fueling British ships in the south Atlantic in Brazilian waters, the ship embarked from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Feb. 16, 1918, came into Barbados in early March and then promptly disappeared completely.The 306 crew and passengers were never heard from again and, while there are many theories, according to the Naval Historical Center, it "is one of the sea's unsolved mysteries."

DC-3 Commercial Flight Vanishes

Capt. Robert Lindquist took off from San Juan with two crew members and 29 passengers heading for Miami.When the plane was 50 miles away from Miami, Lindquist reportedly radioed the Miami airport for landing instructions. The airport's reply was met with silence. The plane was never seen again.According to an investigation by the Civil Aeronautics Board, the plane had electrical difficulties and low battery power. Those findings have not stopped many from blaming supernatural forces on the disappearance.

Panamanian Ship Trades Cargo for Mystery

The Panamanian ship Sylvia L. Ossa was a cargo ship that was a regular near the mysterious waters of the Bermuda Triangle.
But in 1976, the Sylvia L. Ossa fell victim to the mysteries of the triangle when she and her 37-person crew disappeared without a trace.The Coast Guard is reportedly still looking for clues to what happened to the 590-foot ship.

Popular theories solving the mystery

So what caused the ships and aircraft to disappear mysteriously? There have been many research and explorations done to uncover the mystery. There is no single theory that can explain all the incidents. The ships and aircraft have been victims of different circumstances and situations. Things happened very quickly and unexpectedly. While many theories have come out, there are few that come close to solving the Bermuda Triangle Mystery.

Methane Gas --trapped under the sea floor can erupt, as a result can lower the water density and cause ships to sink. Even planes flying over it, can catch fire and get completely destroyed during such gas blowout. Any ships caught within the methane mega-bubble immediately lose all buoyancy and sink to the bottom of the ocean. If the bubbles are big enough and possess a high enough density they can also knock aircraft out of the sky with little or no warning. Aircraft falling victim to these methane bubbles will lose their engines-perhaps igniting the methane surrounding them-and immediately lose their lift as well, ending their flights by diving into the ocean and swiftly plummeting.

Sargasso Sea --is a strange area that has no shores and bounded only by water currents on all sides. The ships passing through it have been stranded and made motionless.

Electronic Fog--a strange thick cloud appears from nowhere and engulfs a ship or a plane. Instruments begin to malfunction, and finally the ship or the aircraft vanishes without a trace. The fog then keeps moving along with the ship or the plane. And soon, all the electronic systems and the instruments start going haywire. Nothing works correctly any longer. And finally the ship or the aircraft disappears without a trace.

So far, all such incidents of electronic fog had been described as supernatural phenomena, or as mere sensational stories from writers wanting to sell their own books on Bermuda Triangle. And there are also theories that took recourse to some supernatural events to explain the disappearances

New Link to Birth Defects: Dad’s Job

2012-07-18T17:17:00.000-07:00

Certain jobs held by men in the months before they conceive a child may increase the risk of birth defects, a new study suggests.

Researchers analyzed information from more than 14,000 fathers whose jobs fit into at least one of 63 categories.

The study found certain jobs were linked with an increased risk of multiple types of birth defects in children. These jobs included: mathematicians, physicists, computer scientists; artists; photographers and photo processors; food service workers; landscapers and groundskeepers; hairdressers and makeup artists; office and administration support workers; sawmill operatives; those working with oil and gas; those working in chemical industries; printers; those operating cranes and diggers; and drivers.
The study is published (July 17) in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.

THE WORLD'S FIRST HEARTLESS MAN

2012-07-14T07:37:00.000-07:00

Doctors from the Texas Heart Institute have successfully replaced a patient’s heart with a devicethat keeps the blood flowing, thereby allowing him to live without a detectable heartbeat or even a pulse. Here’s how it works:
The turbine-like device, that are simple whirling rotors, developed by the doctors does not beat like a heart, rather provides a ‘continuous flow’ like a garden hose.
Craig Lewis was a 55-year-old, dying from amyloidosis, which causes a build-up of abnormal proteins. The proteins clog the organs so much that they stop working, according to NPR.
But after the operation, with the ‘machine’ as his heart’s replacement, Lewis’ blood continued to spin and move through his body.
However, when doctors put a stethoscope to his chest, no heartbeat or pulse can beheard (only a ‘humming’ sound)—which “by all criteria that we conventionally use to analyze patients”, Doctor Cohn said, he is dead.
This is proof that “human physiology can be supportedwithout a pulse”.

With all the talk of replacing human organs with those of an animal and electronic hearts, it’s surprising that medical researchers overlooked taking a trip to the plumbing section of the hardware store for replacement parts!

In Defence of Kim Kardashian by Johnny Babybrain

2012-07-06T16:06:00.000-07:00

Remarks credited to a British school headmistress, Dr Helen Wright while addressing an educational conference some days back that American celebrity, fashion icon and TV reality star, Kim Kardashian is a threat to Western civilization; well I read and I shrugged.

I wouldn't know if to call such an address a reality-distance speech or one borne out of pure forgetfulness of the characteristics and typical nature of the society she (Helen Wright) emerges from, i.e. the already decayed Western society.

In her words she said "The pupils in our schools really are soaking up a diet of empty celebrity and superficiality. They are under a huge amount of pressure, buffeted by these images and messages."

"It's not about a person. That single photograph brought together two aspects of our society – fame for fame's sake, the distorted view of reality that that brings, and our over-sexualised culture – that encapsulate the vast pressures on young people. I'm not just talking about girls but boys, too, suffer from the focus on appearance that we are in danger of allowing to become mainstream." she added.

First, let us be clear on something; it is not Kim Kardashian's fault that 90% of the world's population made themselves gullible and dumb (yeah right, you'll hear that from me time to time) and have allowed themselves to be instruments of another man's glory while theirs drown. But how then do you address the problem when everyone thinks they know it all or are on the right path and yet in their own folly are nothing but constant source of manipulations - both from their own doings and those of their ever ready manipulators.

I see this world as such typical to a game of chess, whereas certain people decide to be the pieces, while others decide to be the player; how the chess Pieces are being moved against each other is instrumental to how the players win the games. Believe me, this is well illustrated in EVERYTHING that represents our today's world, from politics, society, religion, culture and lifestyle.

Moving ahead, long before Kim Kardashian or any other celebrity of her status today, the urge for sex symbols had been implanted in western culture (and shamefully a global phenomenon today). The emergence of people such as Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Elvis Presley, Sean Connery, Madonna, Michael Jackson and even the political ex-American President, John F. Kennedy indicates that our today’s generation was brewed into an already existing trend. The practice of including an alluring ‘face’ in everything has long been in existence.

Personally, I’ve always seen illogicality, preposterousness and hypocrisy in the argument between beauty & physical attractiveness on one side and talent, creativity or 'inner beauty' as they say on the other side. Both are must-pursued and must-have features of anyone willing to break the barrier of any hurdle life brings along wherever and whenever. There should be no comparison, evaluation or built scale of preference on both characteristics
People, specifically the younger generations must learn to understand that life will throw us with rigid and daunting challenges we have to throw everything at our disposal to survive and scale through its hurdles. Be it beauty, be it brain, be it personality, physical attractiveness, charisma, goodwill, moral behaviour or social acceptability; whatever it is you’ve got to flaunt, use it! and if and when you don’t have it? Seek it!

Although, I perfectly see the grounds of reasoning approached by Mrs Wright and others who feel “Inner beauty” should come ahead physical beauty, but where my disagreement comes in is simple; Let no one deprive those who have worked hard or were born naturally so, the privilege and prerogative to enjoy the advantages of an already established hypocrisy that has come to stay as part of our culture and society.

I am quick to remind girls who go around yelling “I don’t care about what people think about me” or “It’s my life” that there are grievous consequences for the actions you take today. It’s a girl’s choice to get inspired by the business entrepreneurship of Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey or lazy her life all-around missing no episode of all reality shows on TV. It’s a choice to get inspired by the amount of time, energy, commitment and hard work these fabulous looking people put into work to become who they are or to decide if getting lazy, fat, obese and stupidly ridiculous by not missing out on anything that pops up on TV or cinema is the right choice to make.

Don’t go on Twitter, Facebook or any public utility screaming how important “Inner Beauty” is over physical beauty, that in my humble opinion is the first and foremost feature of inferiority complex. I mean no disrespect or insensitivity to the innocent disabled ones among us in society, but bitter truth remains, no one on earth wish to live a life of pity; be it from self or from society. So to those who rather than work on becoming fabulous thinks it’s less important and yet yell on its unimportance; my advice is simple! The world waits to pity no one and only appreciates anything beautiful EVEN WHEN IT HURTS!

Beauty pageant organisers and its entire industry community are a perfect illustration. They can preach all they want on how they aim at exposing talents and inner beauty, but we aren’t going to see a fat, obsessed or physically unattractive person winning any of such contests anytime soon; NO MATTER HOW ASTOUNDING SUCH PERSON’s TALENT IS.

From Travels to hotels, tourism, aviation, customer service, marketing, banking & finance, entertainment, sports, name it! The global corporate world wants visitors, guests and clients welcomed into their terrain by stunning, attractive and eye-catching personalities with tailored accents and highly charismatic personalities as well. Talk about the importance of physique in occupations and competitive world, who do we blame for being a threat to civilization that a 130kg and 6 feet personality is the average requirement of security outfits or an average requirement of certain sportsmen? No one! It’s a trend, a culture, an existing challenge we have to accept.

The highest paid and world’s most appreciated celebrities in global entertainment of today are also the ‘sexiest’ ones anyone can identify with. The debate doesn’t fall on if they are the most creative or necessarily the best at what they do; but checkout the most followed ones on social networks and let’s take it from there. It takes more than 1-in-10000 chances to battle your way top or pull the stunts British singers, Susan Boyle and Adele are pulling.

Ironically, I do not intend to defend Kim Kardashian or any of her illicit fame-hunting stunts, but one quick moral of this is simple – Who Am I at this point in time to question a lady who’s got an enviable 15 million followers on Twitter (one of the largest so to say). I only see her as an opportunist of a dysfunction world where human priorities are totally misplaced and the culprits should not be those at the earning but those at the losing end.

It’s such a dysfunction world that the way and manner people gain fame is far beyond mere condemnation and disapproval and are often at the height of immorality and crime. In the new age, reports of sex scandals and sex tapes are becoming a fast commodity, drugs and violence are well voiced in commercial music and songs, marital woes and relationship break-ups between celebrities gather massive hits than the socio-political decisions that directly affects the lives of today’s people; arrogance & pride of wealth, fame and fortune is loudly fledge what ‘celebrities’ engage in, but also preach out to their fans.

Very disheartening and demoralising to one’s sense of thoughts is a fact that these ‘threats to civilization’, theatrics and fame-hunting stunts pulled by these so-called celebrities are not forced so-to-say on anyone and where as I repeated earlier people decide to get exposed to a life of negativity is inexplicable. And considering the fact that the personalities (porn stars specifically) who pull such games up are oftentimes ready for the consequences of their actions, a moral of the story, again I insist should be people’s readiness to accept the consequences of their actions, including watching the happenings in other people’s lives while ignoring theirs.

Personally, I see life as a celebration and the happenings in our lives are enough to shape our orientations, teach and inspire us well enough on future decisions and issues that affect us. Paying huge & enormous focus to the happenings in other people’s lives is itself a threat. Celebrities and public figures are human beings and bound to either make mistakes or stupid/crazy/abominable decisions. Be it intentional or not, be it for commercial or for propaganda reasons aren’t meant to be the business of the general public and as much as a 72-day-old marriage is condemnable & unimaginable, why in the first place is a centre of attention directed on her (Kim Kardashian) personal life in the first place?

Society is not helping either and to a more laughable extent is when parents criticise celebrities and public personalities as endangering their children moments such celebrities are found wanting in usual acts; Whatever happened to “Charity begins at home”? Immoral discharge of characters on any young person allegedly copied or mentored upon by a public personality must be blamed on the parents and guardian of such person and not on such ‘public’ figure.

Here is a world where people will burden their kids with names of invisible people whose method and means in the rise to fame and fortune they know nothing about nor the route to accomplishment. Easy is it to dismiss the fact that there are often unseen and mysterious happenings behind the facade of smiles and eccentric appearances such figures display as well.

Parents sit around day in day out to watch late night TV shows with children without regards for the impact it has on kids and the younger generation. Parents disregard the contents of musical lyrics booming into the ears of their children and equally watch their kids admire passionately some people they see on TV screens without proper guidance and advises; hence, the real job of parenting which involves guidance, counselling, advices and inspirations automatically transferred to an invisible parent in form of a ‘celebrity’.

The traditional and new (social) media community paying a wholesome amount of time and attention to people who use illicit means to gain fame and fortune should are also joint-culprits. Too much attention is being paid to mischievous happenings in our world while we ignore things that need urgent and serious attention. Who cares to know why on earth hundreds die daily from violence and bombings in Iraq or why the children in Somalia are dying from famine? Who’s ever going to read this article either without ‘Kim Kardashian’s name on the header?; I’m laughing and shrugging.

How Kim Kardashian or any other celebrity of her status and style is to be blamed for bad influence on civilization when the massive majority of us ignore ‘more’ (please note quotations) interesting, loving, passionate, educative and inspiring people in society confuses me. Could the entire society of followers (including but not limited to their fans, media and corporate world) of such people be wrong or are ‘we’ just the only sane ones out there? Maybe yes, maybe no but sometimes, Johnny Babybrain is probably of the opinion that It is legal to be illegal in an illegally programmed society.

LOVE IS MORE POWERFUL THAN SEX

2012-07-06T01:17:00.001-07:00

Sex and romance may seem inextricably linked, but the human brain clearly distinguishes between the two, according to a new study. The upshot: Love is the more powerful emotion.
The results of brain scans speak to longstanding questions of whether the pursuit of love and sex are different emotional endeavors or whether romance is just warmed over sexual arousal.

“Our findings show that the brain areas activated when someone looks at a photo of their beloved only partially overlap with the brain regions associated with sexual arousal,” said Arthur Aron of the State University of New York-Stony Brook. “Sex and romantic love involve quite different brain systems.”

The study, announced today, will be detailed in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Left side, right side

The study was small, however, involving 17 young men and women, all of whom had recently fallen madly in love. They filled out questionnaires while their brains were hooked up to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) system.

Romance seems to steep in parts of the brain that are rich in dopamine, a chemical known to affect emotions. These brain regions are also linked by other studies to the motivation for rewards.

“To our surprise, the activation regions associated with intense romantic love were mostly on the right side of the brain, while the activation regions associated with facial attractiveness were mostly on the left,” said Lucy Brown of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

The study also revealed that as a romance matures, so does the mind.

“We found several brain areas where the strength of neural activity changed with the length of the romance,” Brown said. “Everyone knows that relationships are dynamic over time, but we are beginning to track what happens in the brain as a love relationship matures.”

Love wins

The processing of romantic feelings involves a “constellation of neural systems.” The researchers — neuroscientists, anthropologists and social psychologists — declare love the clear winner versus sex in terms of its power over the human mind.

“Romantic love is one of the most powerful of all human experiences,” said study member Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. “It is definitely more powerful than the sex drive.”

Fisher said the study might suggest some of the physiology of stalking behavior. Other studies suggest that up to 40 percent of people who are rejected in love slip into clinical depression, she said.

“Rejected men and women in societies around the world sometimes kill themselves or someone else,” Fisher said.

Animals, too

There are hints in the study that romance is not a uniquely human trait.

Some of the changes seen with mature romances were in regions of the brain also associated with pair-bonding in prairie voles. Other studies have found that expressions of attraction in a female prairie vole are linked to a 50 percent hike in dopamine activity in the brain region that corresponds to the location where human romance is processed.

“These and other data indicate that all mammals may feel attraction to specific partners, and that some of the same brain systems are involved,” Fisher said.

THE MUMMY'S BOY : MARIO BALOTELLI

2012-06-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

The image of the night in Warsaw on Thursday wasn’t Mario Balotelli ripping off his shirt and, despite his best efforts, failing to keep an ice-cool straight face after he scored the goal of the tournament to take Italy into the final of Euro 2012.

It was following the referee’s final whistle. And it involved Balotelli again — of course — as he buried himself deep into the hug of his adoptive mother, Silvia, her face creased in emotion as he whispered that the two goals to defeat Germany were dedicated to her.

Even then, there was a touch of the surreal about it as fans tried to get in on the act, inevitably wearing vivid wigs and hats with Balotelli-style Mohican haircuts.

Back in Rome, along the Piazza del Popolo a driver changed the destination on the front of his bus to simply read “Super Mario”. It’s certainly some ride. Peter Pan – Balotelli himself has mused whether he’s the boy who refused to grow up – was making a nation believe it can fly.

“Tonight was the most beautiful of my life,” Balotelli said afterwards, which is a big statement given the life he has led up to this point, the point when he now leads the line for Italy, still aged just 21, in the Euro 2012 final against the world and European champions Spain here on Sunday night.

There are so many stories, so many plot-lines, so much drama — human tragedy and surreal comedy — surrounding this most precious, and precocious, of young men. But there’s also Silvia, and Franco, his adoptive father who will now fly into Kiev, from his home outside Brescia, to attend the final.

To make sense of Balotelli, his background has to be understood. Everyone knows the stories around him: the fireworks, the silly hat, the struggle to put on a bib, the parking tickets and prison and school visits, car crashes, red cards and training ground fights, throwing darts at youth-team players and the “Why Always Me?” T-shirt.

Yet there is also the huge degree of philanthropy, the campaigning against the use of child soldiers, the work he has done in Brazil to help destitute children and the women of the favelas and the strong interest he has in the World Wildlife Fund.

Despite this Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini stated last season — in jest but with a point — that he should move Balotelli into his home and lock him in the cellar to keep him out of trouble.

After that petulant red card against Arsenal Mancini suggested he had washed his hands of the striker while Italy coach Cesare Prandelli had grave misgivings about including the player in his Euros squad. If Giuseppe Rossi had been fit, Balotelli may not have been out here.

Maybe it is the presence of the diminutive Silvia that is making the difference. Balotelli has been followed around this tournament by his younger brother, Enoch, who has turned up at Italy’s training camp, sometimes causing disruption, but now the one person who is said to be able to keep him fully in check has arrived.

Watching the pair embrace in Poland’s National Stadium brought to mind a story told by Cristina, one of the Balotellis’ three natural children and another big influence on Mario’s life.

She is a journalist and recalled how he was once stopped from going to football training because of his bad behaviour at home. He ran away, making the journey on foot — only for the coach to tell him when he finally arrived that his mother had called and he had to be sent straight back home.

They even joke at City that things might be a little easier with Balotelli if Silvia could be persuaded to move to Manchester. It is obvious to see why she is such an influence.

Balotelli was born one of four children, two boys, two girls, into a Ghanaian immigrant family in Palermo in 1990. He suffered serious health problems with his intestines, and his father, Thomas, worked away from home, with the family eventually moving to Brescia.

Inevitably the Barwuahs came to the attention of the social services, pleading to be moved from a cramped studio flat to nurse Mario.

It was eventually suggested he should be fostered and the Balotellis — whose own three children, Corrado, Giovanni and Cristina were growing up – were persuaded to take care of the child, who was only two and-a-half but had undergone a series of operations. The striker’s biological parents later complained about being frozen out of his life while he argued they showed little interest for years.

Franco Balotelli had already retired from his job as a warehouse supervisor, and Silvia, a nurse by profession, and a regular foster mother throughout their married life, agreed. The court decree under which Mario was fostered was renewed every two years until he was 18 which did not help the sense of permanency which the Balotellis created for him.

He also grew up the only black kid in a white neighbourhood, encountering racism early in his life. Inevitably — and tellingly — because of the disruption Balotelli grew up craving attention. He never wanted to be left alone, always wanted company.

For years he could only go to sleep if Silvia held his hand. “He does things his own way,” Cristina said and although that is undeniably true it doesn’t mean there is a hard shell to his life. It does not need a psychologist to explain much of Balotelli’s extrovert behaviour.

His talent was quickly obvious and his sporting life has been a whirl of headlines, scrapes, fall-outs and a threat to be one of Europe’s best strikers while Jose Mourinho publicly washed his hands of him and Mancini has veered between indulgence — to the annoyance of many City players — and despair.

But he has already won titles with Inter Milan and then that big-money move to City and a Premier League triumph, although his involvement was limited at the sharp end of the campaign.

Out here at the Euros, the Italians have had to deal with the daily Balotelli — otherwise known as their press briefings — with Prandelli and a succession of players quizzed on their thoughts on and relationship with him.

Last Saturday he effectively gatecrashed Italy’s pre-match press conference before the quarter-final against England. It was the first time he had spoken publicly during this tournament although he did so again on Thursday after his goals in Warsaw.

His words were modest, he talked of "how amazing” it would be to score in the final, how happy he was and what a “special year” he has been through.

It could end even more spectacularly than those fireworks let off in his home — possibly by Enoch and not Mario, by the way — but as he spoke beneath his shirt he wore a gold medallion that Silvia gave to him a few years ago. It bears the inscription: “Professionalism, Endeavour, Humility”.

They are words he may not have always lived up to at times, despite his astonishing achievements, but it is not for the want of Silvia trying. She will be there on Sunday night too.

(Culled from www.telegraph.co.uk)

In North Korea, learning to hate US starts early

2012-06-25T00:51:00.001-07:00

A framed poster on the wall of a kindergarten classroom shows bright-eyed children brandishing rifles and bayonets as they attack a hapless American soldier, his face bandaged and blood spurting from his mouth.

"We love playing military games knocking down the American bastards," reads the slogan printed across the top. Another poster depicts an American with a noose around his neck. "Let's wipe out the U.S. imperialists," it instructs.

For North Koreans, the systematic indoctrination of anti-Americanism starts as early as kindergarten and is as much a part of the curriculum as learning to count.

Toy pistols, rifles and tanks sit lined up in neat rows on shelves. The school principal pulls out a dummy of an American soldier with a beaked nose and straw-colored hair and explains that the students beat him with batons or pelt him with stones - a favorite schoolyard game, she says.

For a moment, she is sheepish as she takes three journalists from The Associated Press, including an American, past the anti-U.S. posters. But Yun Song Sil is not shy about the message.

"Our children learn from an early age about the American bastards," she says, tossing off a phrase so common here that it is considered an acceptable way to refer to Americans.

North Korean students learn that their country has had two main enemies: the Japanese, who colonized Korea from 1910 to 1945, and the U.S., which fought against North Korea during the 1950-53 Korean War.

They are told that North Korea's defense against outside forces - particularly the U.S., which has more than 28,000 soldiers stationed in South Korea - remains the backbone of the country's foreign policy.

And they are bred to seek revenge, even as their government professes to want peace with the United States.

"They tell their people there can be no reconciliation with the United States," says American scholar Brian Myers, who dissected North Korean propaganda in his 2010 book "The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters." "They make it very clear to the masses that this hate will last forever."

In recent years, state propaganda has shifted away from the virulent anti-American slogans of the past and has instead emphasized building up the economy. On the streets of Pyongyang, anti-American posters have largely given way to images of soldiers in helmets and workers in factories.

But the posters and curricula at kindergartens across North Korea remain unchanged. One glimpse inside a school, and it's clear that despite U.S.-North Korean diplomacy behind closed doors, 4-year-olds are still being taught that the "Yankee imperialists" are North Korea's worst enemy.

At the Kaeson Kindergarten in central Pyongyang, one of several schools visited by the AP, U.S. soldiers are depicted as cruel, ghoulish barbarians with big noses and fiendish eyes. Teeth bared, they brand prisoners with hot irons, set wild dogs on women and wrench out a girl's teeth with pliers. One drawing shows an American soldier crushing a girl with his boot, blood pouring from her mouth, her eyes wild with fear and pain.

"The American imperialists and Japanese militarism are the sworn enemies of the North Korean people," reads a quote from late leader Kim Jong Il affixed to the top of one wall in a large room devoted to anti-U.S. education.

"The main theme of anti-American propaganda is not `We must be ready for an attack' but `We must be ready for revenge,'" Myers says. "People are being whipped up to hate the United States on the basis of past actions."

The Americans also are portrayed with nuclear symbols on their helmets and uniforms, a reference to the North Korean insistence that the U.S. poses an atomic threat to the region. An undated poster in French is dotted with places in South Korea where missiles and fighter jets purportedly were kept.

The U.S. denies having nuclear weapons in Korea.

The North cites the presence of U.S. soldiers in South Korea, as well as the alleged nuclear threat, as key reasons behind its drive to build atomic weapons in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions designed to hobble its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

As disarmament discussions continue in fits and starts, the message in classrooms across the country remains the same: North Korea needs its rockets, bombs and missiles and is proud of its atomic arsenal.

Kaeson Kindergarten is a model school. In the mornings, the children line up for calisthenics and to sing patriotic songs, and at lunchtime they are fed rice, fish and tofu, according to the principal. They learn to sing, dance and ride unicycles, and at 4 p.m. they get a snack and soy milk.

History lessons include tales about Kim Jong Il's childhood, life under Japanese occupation and the Korean War.

"First, we start by teaching that the American imperialists started the war," said soft-spoken schoolteacher Jon Chun Yong, citing the North Korean version of how the war began.

"From that time on, the tragedy emerged by which our nation was divided in two," said Jon, who has taught at the kindergarten for 15 years. "Since then, our people had to endure the pain of living divided for a long half-century."

Outside North Korea, history books tell a different story. Western textbooks say that two years after North and South Korea declared themselves separate republics, North Korean troops marched into South Korean capital, Seoul, on the morning of June 25, 1950. U.S.-led United Nations and South Korean forces fought communist North Korean troops backed by Chinese soldiers in a three-year battle for control of the peninsula. The U.S. and North Korea finally called a truce in 1953, and Korea remains divided to this day.

At the Kaeson Kindergarten, children sit hunched over sheets of drawing paper clutching pastel crayons. One girl has drawn a school of bright blue fish; the boy next to her has covered his paper with tanks.

Another boy depicts a whole battlefield: a North Korean plane dropping bombs on dead, bloodied American soldiers, as well as grenades and tanks. In a final flourish, he adds the name of the South Korean president to the tableau, muttering the name under his breath as he labors over the letters.

The North Korean hate campaign generally does not include South Koreans, who are portrayed as puppets of the U.S. However, in recent months, it has come to encompass South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whose tough policies toward the North have enraged its leaders as well as the South's conservative media.

The best of the children's work is pinned up on a board: One kindergartner used color pencils to draw a boy in a blue cap attacking a midget American soldier with a studded club. Another drawing depicts North Korean fighter jets dropping bombs on American soldiers trapped in flames. In a third, a man wearing a helmet marked "U.S." in English is on his knees begging for mercy as he is pummeled on the head with a stick.

The children run around beating up mock American soldiers and planes, Jon said. The worst schoolyard taunt is to call someone "miguk nom" - "American bastard."

The games culminate every year on International Children's Day on June 1. Across the nation, students convene en masse, dressed in military uniforms and armed with toy rifles and bayonets. At one such celebration in Pyongyang this month, students took turns charging dummies of U.S. soldiers with their weapons.

Still, like children everywhere, the littlest North Koreans show more fascination than fear when they encounter the rare American in Pyongyang, invariably waving and calling out "Hello!" in English.

And spotted among the mourners following Kim Jong Il's death in December was a boy who clearly had no problem with a Yankee of a different kind. Perched on his head was a blue knit cap with the New York Yankees logo from a distinctly American sport: baseball.

“The Poor Husband, The Rich Wife and Boko Haram” – Femi Fani-Kayode

2012-06-25T00:18:00.000-07:00

I have nothing against the Islamic faith. As a matter of fact some of my most loyal friends are practicing Muslims. There are many Muslims in my family and my maternal great grandmother was an illustrious Fulani woman from the Muslim core north. I do however believe that there is a world of difference between a true Muslim and an Islamist. The former is a humble worshiper of God who seeks to peacefully and piously live his life in accordance with the dictates of his faith and in true harmony with his neighbour. He is tolerant, reasonable, rational and God-fearing. The latter is the opposite. He is an Islamic fundamentalist and an extremist who seeks to impose his will and his own understanding and interpretation of Islam on others by compulsion, intimidation, violence and terror. The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Nigeria today fall into the former category but there is a small and growing minority that sadly fall into the latter. That group constitute those that we describe today as Boko Haram and they have been waging a relentless and brutal war of terror against the Nigerian state and people for the last few years. They are indeed the enemy within. The question is, what should our collective response be to these men of violence and blood? That, together with a cursory analysis of how we got into this mess and the way out of it is the topic of this essay.

Some are of the view that we ought to enter some form of dialogue with Boko Haram and that this would eventually solve the problem. My younger brother, Mujahid Asari Dokubo, enunciated that position rather well in an article titled ”How To Address The Boko Haram Problem In Nigeria” (25th June, 2011). He suggested that President Goodluck Jonathan should enter into negotiations with the islamist terrorist group as quickly as possible regardless of the fact that they themselves have made it clear that they are not interested in any form of dialogue with the government and that they have murdered thousands of innocent and defenceless Nigerian men, women and children in the last three years alone. I respectfully beg to differ with Dokubo on this issue and indeed with all those that share this view.

In my view the solution is simple to the Boko Haram problem is simple. They must be utterly crushed by the Nigerian state and certainly not negotiated with. This is because in any serious society there can never be dialogue, compromise or any form of negotiation with terrorists whilst they are still carrying arms and waging war against the state and the people. Worst still there can be no compromise with those that seek to forcefully establish a 17th century Islamic fundamentalist caliphate in our country and those that seek to impose their strange and outdated values on each and every one of us. Worst still there is no doubt in my mind that Boko Haram is part of the world-wide Al Qaeda-sponsored ”global jihad” and if we give them one inch they will definitely take a mile. We cannot afford to have peace with them on any terms or peace with them at the cost of our hard-earned civil liberties, liberal and cherished values, plural and multi-cultural society and modern way of life. There must come a time when we as a people can boldly say ”enough is enough” and when we draw the line in the sand. And if Boko Haram crosses that line they must be confronted by the full force of the Nigerian Armed Forces who must be ready, willing and able to unleash hell on them regardless of the collateral damage and immense infrastructural destruction that this will cause in various parts of our country. President Olusegun Obasanjo did this decisively and with ruthless efficiency in the town of Odi in the Niger Delta area a number of years ago with remarkable success. By the time the Nigerian Armed Forces finished shelling Odi from the land, the sea and the air there was not one building left standing there except for, interestingly, the local bank. The casualties in terms of human life were extremely high but the point was made and the objective achieved. From that point on the Niger Delta militants stopped killing policemen and soldiers right up until the time that Obasanjo left power. Why can the same solution not be applied to the Boko Haram problem by the Jonathan administration today? What is the fear? Why should the same treatment not be meted out to any city or community in our country that grants the foot soldiers of Boko Haram covert support, safe haven, sanctuary or shelter? This is all the more important because they are not true Muslims or believers in God. Rather they are a cancer that must be identified, isolated and cut out of our body politic before they spread their terrible disease of hate, extremism, violence and intolerance throughout the federation and the reprisals begin. That is what a strong, focused, resolute and purposeful government ought to do. Sadly we have not seen any such thing from our government. Instead what we have witnessed from them are a series of feeble and pathetic pleas for dialogue with the enemy and the shameful display of weakness, incompetence and insensitivity when faced with their terror. To make matters worse the National Chairman of the President’s own ruling PDP, Alhaji Bamangar Tukur, recently declared that Boko Haram was ”fighting for justice”. What a thing to say by an elder statesman who I not only have tremendous respect for but who I have always regarded as a father. I really do wonder what type of ”justice” he is referring to when churches are now being blown up virtually every Sunday morning all over the North and when thousands of defenceless Christians are being slaughtered on a daily basis. Is that what the Chairman calls ”fighting for justice’’? Are these the people that are denying Boko Haram their justice and that are denying them their rights? Are they the ones that killed their leader, Mohammed Yusuf, a few years ago? Boko Haram started by targeting government institutions and security agencies with extreme and deadly violence but now they have graduated to killing the followers of Christ and they have made known their intention to wipe out Christianity in northern Nigeria and to stop Christians from peacefully worshipping their God. Is that the ”just cause” that they are fighting for?

We must understand that Boko Haram, what they stand for and what they seek to establish is patently evil and that what they are doing represents the greatest threat to Nigerian unity since our civil war. They are not just a danger to Christians but to all true Muslims as well. Real Muslims like Dokubo, Tukur and all the others that believe that Boko Haram are fighting a ”just cause” would do better by trying to educate and enlighten their misguided Islamist brothers. They should advise them to stop the violence, to stop the slaughtering of Christians and true Muslims, to stop destabilising the Nigerian state, to stop trying to Islamise northern Nigeria, to stop trying to return our country to the dark ages of the 17th century and to stop trying to wage a global war of terror against the rest of humanity. We as a people must not allow ourselves to be intimidated by their evil agenda and we must vigorously and courageously resist them no matter what it takes. No responsible and strong government would compromise or enter into negotiations with such barbarous and evil men that have so much blood on their hands. To throw down the gauntlet and confront such evil is one of the major challenges of our time and it is a challenge that our government must not fail to rise up to in a fearless, vigorous and responsible manner.

A few home truths must now be told. We Christians take strong exception to the fact that literally hundreds of thousands of our fellow Christian brothers and sisters from all over the country have been brutally killed by Muslim fundamentalists in northern Nigeria over the last 50 years for no just cause.

The innocent blood of those people cries to God in heaven for vengeance and it gets louder and louder by the day. Boko Haram have said publicly that they want the adoption of full Sharia law and the establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist state in all the northern states of Nigeria before they stop killing and bombing innocent people and spreading terror. Yet the truth is that that will never happen as long as Nigeria remains as one nation and remains a secular state. And if Nigeria ever stops being a secular state then we will simply break it up and go our separate ways. It is as simple as that. No one wants a full blown religious war but neither will anyone run away from it if it is foisted on us. For how long can the people of the south and the Middle Belt sit by idly and watch silently as their own kith and kin that reside in the core north and their northern minority Christian brothers and sisters are subjected to nothing less than genocide and mass murder from the most ruthless and barbaric terrorist organisation that this country has ever known. I believe in restraint but is it humanly possible that we will be restrained forever?

Yet I believe that there is still hope and that a war can still be avoided. That hope lies in the speedy convocation of a Sovereign National Conference. That, in my view, is the only vehicle that can provide a lasting solution to the monumental challenges that we are facing in our country today, including the scourge of Boko Haram. I say this because whether we like to admit it or not, Nigeria is more divided today on ethnic and religious lines than it has ever been since our independence in 1960. We should iron out all these issues at such a conference once and for all. These religious clashes and killings feature in the northern part of Nigeria alone and hardly in the south. In the South-west where I come from the Christians, the Muslims and the traditional worshippers are one and we treat each other with love, respect, understanding and sensitivity. We do not kill ourselves on account of our religious differences. That is simply our way and clearly many from other parts of Nigeria and indeed the rest of the world have a lot to learn from us. My position is that if Nigeria cannot be built on a foundation of equality, equity and fairness for ALL her people, whether they be Christian, Muslim, northern, middle-belter or southern, then we should reject the concept of a united Nigeria and we should begin to renegotiate the terms of our union. I love this country and I would always be amongst those to defend and speak up for her unity but the truth is that there is absolutely nothing that is sacrosanct about the unity of the Nigerian state if we cannot live together in peace. As a matter of fact there has been a school of thought since 1914 when Nigeria was first created that it was an ”unworkable union” and a ”cruel joke”. Lord Frederick Lugard’s vision, and indeed his intention, when he recommended the amalgamation of the northern and southern protectorates of Nigeria in 1914 was ably described and enunciated by his own very words when he said that the northern protectorate of Nigeria could be described as the ”poor husband” whilst the southern protectorate could be described as the ”rich wife”. He then pronounced the ”permanency” of our forced union by saying- ”today we marry the two and our prayer is that this union lasts forever”. That is how the north and the south got ”married” and that is how the famous amalgamation of 1914 came about. The problem was that the two young spouses were never asked by their British masters whether they actually wanted to stay together, let alone get married. Worst still the ”poor husband” was never given the opportunity to court, woo or propose to the ”rich wife”. To make matters worse the two spouses came from different worlds, had different backgrounds, had a different religion, had a different history and had a different world-view. Today the ”rich wife” and the ”poor husband” have suffered immensely in each others ”loving” arms. The marriage has been strained and turbulent. We fought a brutal and avoidable 3 year civil war from 1967 in which we killed no less than 2 million of our own people. Since1960 the story has been more or less the same and the tales of tragedy and woe have just continued to pour in. If it is not genocide, mass killings or sectarian butchery by groups like Boko Haram then it is always something else. Yet today’s barbarism and mass killings are far more horrendous than ever and are far better planned, funded, orchestrated and executed by those that are behind them than ever before. The question is how much longer can the ”rich wife” and the ”poor husband” give and take this sort of thing from one another? For how long can the centre hold before the voices of reason and restraint are completely drowned by the irrational, compulsive outrage that is gradually building up and the uncontrollable outcry for reprisals and revenge? For how long can our hope and fervent prayers prevent the dogs of war from being unleashed?

May God save Nigeria.

Of Lawan’s tragicomedy and Obasanjo’s vindication – by Uche Igwe

2012-06-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

Obasanjo lambasted the National Assembly a few weeks ago, I was a bit worried. In fact, I wanted to respond to him and suggest that such a sweeping statement should be received as a hasty and inappropriate generalisation. At least, there are a few people who are currently in the federal legislature and whose pedigrees still remain impeccable. It is public knowledge that some current legislators actually made decent names and impressive fortunes before their foray into politics and one could make an exception for them in terms of integrity and commitment to service.
Views about the Obasanjo era remain very diverse and contentious. There are those who strongly see him as someone on whose shoulders history bestowed an important opportunity to change Nigeria but who squandered it due to an uncanny lust for power. Clearly, Obasanjo did implement a few laudable reforms in this country but along the line, analysts argue that he lost his vision and betrayed his mission. However, I must also say that the former president has three things that no one can wish away — age, courage and experience. Obasanjo is an old man. He is very courageous and has many years of experience at the highest levels of politics in Nigeria. When such a man makes a statement, the best approach is to watch events further with studied silence rather than take him on tactlessly as is often fashionable.
Today, we now know that Obasanjo might have known little more than many of us as he was allegedly privy to the shameful solicitation and collection of a bribe by someone who is ‘famous’ for anti- corruption posturing in the parliament. Even as we wait for the final pronouncements of investigating agencies, it is believed that the unfolding drama in the House of Representatives has exposed the selfish and unpatriotic character of the Nigeria political class and the decay in an institution constitutionally empowered to provide an anti-corruption check on democracy.
I have watched the fuel subsidy probe sessions repeatedly, followed up the reactionary ostrich games that trailed the leakage of the video footages to the media. I wish therefore to draw attention to four issues apparently dominating the arena of debate in order to situate a more nuanced conversation.
The first is that contrary to popular pretence, the evidence ostensibly gathered from the recordings purportedly painted Farouk Lawan as a politician many believe to be experienced in the business of extortion and bribery. Many of us who publicly expressed disappointment at his action were told clearly that the apparent evidence did not portray a man who has (or had) any leftover integrity. How could he have allegedly visited Otedola’s house at such an odd hour? How could he have allegedly packed part of the money, rather shamelessly, into his cap, if he was not a master of such games? Could such a stunt be pulled by an alleged first timer? There are already stories flying in the air. With hindsight, the question on the lips of every one is whether his leadership of the so-called Integrity Group might have been all about –to collect, share and clean mouth? But again if his supposedly putrid pedigree is known to the leadership of the House of Representatives, how come they still went ahead and gave him such a sensitive job to do? I will come back to this later.
My second point is in relation to the report itself. The decision to probe the subsidy payments was a very noble one. I have perused the report and I am prepared to argue that it contains mind-blowing revelations about the extent of corruption in the downstream sector and a glimpse at the perpetrators in government and their collaborators in the private sector. It remains a potent ammunition and background material for anyone who wants to lead knowledge-driven advocacy in the oil and gas industry. However, with the purported action of Lawan, my confidence in the report has been punctured as its credibility now appears severely tainted. We might have heard of Otedola and Zenon Oil, what of many other companies who we do not know and who might have made similar or even greater payments to get their names removed but were not smart enough (or may be not interested) to get him on tape? I agree that those who have been indicted should be made to face the law but how can anyone convince Nigerians that the list is a complete one? Do we ignore the blow that this scandal has landed on the report and go ahead to insist on the prosecution of the companies including (or excluding) Zenon Oil and Synopsis Enterprises Limited?
My third point is about the trend of the drama. Did Lawan act alone as being alleged? Or, better still, could he have possibly acted alone? We were told by those who watched the video that he (Lawan) boasted that he knew the right buttons to press to get the companies removed. What are those buttons? What was the role of the House Committee on Financial Crimes and Narcotics in a desperate attempt to save Lawan? Many observers who reviewed the debate on the day that the report was submitted on the floor of the House insist that the obvious body language of both the Deputy Speaker and other committee members spoke volumes. In fact, many commentators wonder why the presiding officer gave Lawan an unnecessary opportunity to repeat the possibly rehearsed motion of amendment while other committee members were in a visible haste to second the motion. Many have highlighted the fact that Emeka Ihedioha even sought further clarifications as to whether the amendment was the view of Lawan alone or that of the entire committee. Could all these be considered coincidental or can we envisage that a few more chapters of the drama may yet unfold in the near future?

My fourth and final point is on the growing legitimacy deficit of the House of Representatives as an institution. The parliament is (or ought to be) a very important institution in a democracy by providing the requisite oversight aimed at curtailing the excesses of the executive arm of government. At the core of this role is to lead the fight against corruption on behalf of the people they represent. With the scandals opening up in the last three months, there is a need to pause and rethink how the House has fared in discharging this essential role. Are they really fighting corruption or aiding, abetting and deepening it? Who will watch the watchdog? Now let me come back to the statement of Obasanjo in the context of all of these. Clearly as someone who superintended over civil rule in Nigeria for eight years, one cannot dismiss his comments with a wave of the hand. He might have had some first-hand experiences or at least seen a few more things from his vantage position as former President. If therefore the emerging verdict is that the House of Representatives is filled with thieving legislators and dull bribe takers as Lawan is being alleged, even with their fat salaries and allowances, what then is the hope of the common man in Nigeria? It is very sad to note that Obasanjo might have once again been vindicated.

NIGERIA WILL BREAK UP: GO TELL THAT TO THE MARINES

2012-06-24T12:38:00.000-07:00

- Written by Benjamin Obiajulu Aduba

Truth be told. The Hausa/Fulani would like Nigeria to break up. The Igbo would like Nigeria to break up. They had tried it before but failed. The Yoruba would like Nigeria to break up. They could be possibly the most vocal for now in seeking such an outcome. The Deltans would pay any price to see that happen. The Middlebeltans would want this outcome also. But Nigeria will not break up. It cannot happen, not in 2015 or before or after. In fact Nigeria would be fussing together stronger and stronger with each passing year. Each tension, each crisis event would make it clear that the knot that the Lugards’ tied cannot come undone.

My statements above seem contradictory.

How can a nation that each segment wants torn apart be said to be growing stronger?

The answer lies in the state creation and in the Nigerian Biafran war.

If the Western Region can be resurrected with Midwest as part of it; if the old Eastern Nigeria can be reconstituted; if the solid North can be made solid again; then Nigeria can be broken up. Each region is big enough to stand on its own. But if the Igbo were to break up, it is almost certain that they would be surrounded by hostile neighbors in south and north. If the SS were to severe from Nigeria, they too would be surrounded by hostile neighbors to the north and west. The same would be experience of West and North.

There is no way the Yoruba could convince the Midwest to join them in an act of rebellion. The Igbo would not have any better luck nor would the Hausa/Fulani. Without such collaboration any effort at separation would be moribund. Going without the neighbors would not be attractive. So each group is stuck with Nigeria.

As I have written before it cannot be done militarily either. Each zone has now strong enough military divisions to force back any zone that wants to break up the nation. There is enough tribal integration in the divisions to make conspiracy impossible. There is also enough distrust between divisions to make cooperation possible.

The existence of militias also makes the separation impossible. BH, MASSAOB, MEND, ODUA, AREWA militias are not likely to work towards the same goals in any foreseeable future. Once one militia enters the fight on one side two or more would enter the fight at the opposite side. Once more bringing a balance of power or terror – your choice of words.

As strong as these points made are, the greatest force preventing the break up is lack of leadership. Who would lead the combined 6 states that currently make up Yoruba? How would such a leader get Kwara to join? Or will the Yoruba leave without Kwara? Who would lead the Igbo states? SS states? NC states? NW and NE? Nobody.

It used to be said that Igbo “enwe eze” (the Igbo had no kings) but you can make the same assertion on behalf of the Yoruba, the SS, NW, NE, NC etc. The Awolowo of the Yoruba land is dead as his counterparts in all zones. The last Ojukwu in Nigeria is dead. Those who harbor the thought of a minimized Nigeria should jettison such pipe dreams.

As much as we hate what Nigeria has become we are stuck together. We must morn and suffer within it.

Or we can do something else try to reform and clean it up it so that the stench does not kill us.

We can do this by:

Standing up for injustice wherever it takes place even when the perpetrator is from my tribe Cooperating when good ideas are put on the table even when Sanusi or Okonjo-Iweala is the author

Condemning massacres or people who actively seek to do in the only country we have by acts of brigandage. By seeking to settle disputes through our justice system and in insisting that justice be delivered by laws as opposed by the power of naira.

By putting in a day’s labor for a day’s pay whether we work for the state or for private enterprises Electing men and women of integrity and insisting that those in office appoint men and women of honor also.

Being attentive as citizens to what our servants are doing. It is not enough to send somebody to Abuja. We must ensure that he is doing what we sent him there to do. Nigeria’s problem could more with followership than with leadership. If the people are asleep, it makes it possible for the leaders to be asleep also.

etc

If we fail to do our job, Nigeria will not break up as we would wish. But the burden of living in it would kill us as individuals. As we make our beds so must we sleep on it.

And even if it mysteriously breaks up we would carry the lessons we learned to Odua, to Biafra, to Arewa Republic, to Delta, to Niger Central.

Old habits die hard.

UNUSUAL CAUSES OF HIGH BLOOD GLUCOSE

2012-06-23T01:46:00.000-07:00

Many people assume that high blood glucose levels occur only in individuals with diabetes. However, there are other more unusual causes of high glucose levels in the blood (also called hyperglycemia).
Primary causes of hyperglycemia do include type I and type II diabetes mellitus. Type I diabetes results solely from lack of insulin secretion due to pancreatic B-cell destruction. Type II diabetes, in contrast, involves an element of insulin resistance. Secondary causes of hyperglycemia result from non-diabetic insulin resistance, toxins, pancreatic diseases and endocrine dysfunction.
Insulin resistance may occur due to obesity, lack of exercise, cirrhosis of the liver, and/or stress. Cirrhosis of the liver is often accompanied by jaundice (yellowing of the skin), ascites (fluid collection in the belly), splenomegaly (enlarged spleen), spider angiomata (small vessels become visible on chest and face), and other physical exam findings.
Toxins that can cause elevated blood sugar include alcohol, prescription medications and the metal cadmium. Cigarettes are a significant source of cadmium. Research shows that cigarette smokers have higher levels of cadmium. An individual smoker will consume varying levels of cadmium depending on cigarette brand and filtered vs non-filtered cigarettes.
Diseases of the exocrine pancreas that can cause high blood glucose include a hereditary condition called hemochromatosis as well as pancreatic cancer. Hemochromatosis causes iron excess in the body. This then causes hyperglycemia due to the toxicity of iron to insulin-producing pancreatic B-cells. Hemochromatosis is often asymptomatic when detected on routine exams. If the disease has progressed to the point of causing hyperglycemia other symptoms may be expected including fatigue, cirrhosis, skin pigmentation, cardiomyopathy, arthropathy (usually the hands) and/or hypogonadism.
Pancreatic tumors may cause hyperglycemia. Commonly presenting symptoms of pancreatic cancer include jaundice, mid-abdominal pain radiating to the back, steatorrhea (fatty diarrhea), and anorexia (loss of appetite) and weight loss.
Several forms of endocrine dysfunction may cause hyperglycemia, including acromegaly, hyperthyroidism, hypercortisolism and pheochromocytomas. Excess growth hormone can cause a condition called acromegaly. Excess levels of growth hormone causes high blood sugar, enlargement of peripheral body parts, arthralgias and even gout.
Hypercortisolism may be caused by corticosteroid medications or by endocrine gland tumors or dysfunction. Hypercortisolism often presents with a Cushingoid picture. A Cushingoid person may have purple striae (stretch marks on belly), moon-facies (round-shaped face) and/or buffalo’s hump (fatty hump between upper shoulders).
Pheochromocytoma, an adrenal gland tumor, would present with paroxysmal attacks of hypertension, headache, hyperhidrosis (excess sweating), heart palpitations and anxiety.
Hyperthyroidism would share many of these same symptoms: palpitations, sweating, anxiety and may additionally have signs such as enlarged thyroid, exophthalmos (bulging eyes) and, rarely, pretibial myxedema (waxy, non-pitting edema of the anterior lower legs).
Glucose toxicity is an interesting phenomenon which can contribute to high blood glucose in some individuals. Glucose toxicity is the condition in which initial hyperglycemia, resulting from any cause, may itself cause further high glucose levels by decreasing insulin sensitivity and increasing glucose production in the liver.

High blood glucose can be caused by many conditions other than Type 1 or 2 Diabetes mellitus. However, Type 2 diabetes is the most common cause of hyperglycemia in adults in the United States. The incidence of Type 2 diabetes in children is also, unfortunately, on the rise.

WHO IS WHO IN BOKO HARAM

2012-06-22T13:00:00.000-07:00

• Abubakar Shekau
He is the leader of Boko Haram.

He is said to be a fearless loner, a complex, paradoxical man - part intellectual, part gangster.

Fondly called imam or leader by his followers, Abubakar Muhammad Shekau was born in Shekau village in Yobe State.

Some say he is 34 or 35, others that he may be 43 - the uncertainty adds to the myths surrounding Nigeria's most wanted man.

Shekau was once thought to have been killed by security forces in 2009 - only for him to reappear in videos posted on the internet less than a year later as Boko Haram's new leader. He has not been seen in public since. Instead, still images and video clips of him are released from time to time, mostly online, by the group's faceless "public enlightenment department".

He is said to have met his predecessor in Maiduguri, capital of Borno State through a mutual friend, Mamman Nur, who is said to have masterminded the August 2011 bombing of the UN office complex in Abuja.

Under Shekau, Boko Haram has become more radical and carried out more killings. He is fluent in his native Kanuri, Hausa and Arabic languages - he does not speak English.

He is said to have married one of Mohammed Yusuf's four wives and adopted their children.

Shekau does not communicate directly with the group's foot soldiers - he is said to wield his power through a few select cell leaders, but even then, contact is minimal.

He is nicknamed "Darul Tawheed", which translates as a specialist in Tawheed. This is an orthodox doctrine of the uniqueness and oneness of Allah, which is the very cornerstone of Islam.

Kabiru Sokoto was arrested in February by the State Security Service (SSS). He was earlier arrested by the police, and 'allowed' to escape. His escape led to the dismissal of Deputy Commissioner of Police Zakari Biu. He was declared wanted, with a N5million ransom on his head before the SSS re-arrested him at Mutum in Gassol Local Government Area of Taraba State. He has been with the SSS. He is believed to be giving vital information which has been helping understand how the Boko Haram sect works.

His real name is Kabiru Abubakar Dikko. The 29-year-old was born to the family of Umaru Jabbi of Gagi village in Sokoto South Local Government Area on May 9, 1983.

After the death of his father, his uncle, Abubakar Dikko, adopted him and gave him his name. He completed his secondary education in 2003 and was admitted to the College of Nursing and Midwifery, Sokoto, where he was said to have been a truant with extremist tendencies.

• Abu Qaqa

The SSS is also holding a man it said was the spokesman of the sect, Abu Qaqa. But Boko Haram has insisted that the man in the SSS custody is Abu Darda, its head of public enlightenment. He was arrested in February and has been with the agency since then.

The sect said: "The person that was arrested was Abu Darda and not Abu-Qaqa. I am Abul Qaqa, the spokesman for the Jama'atu Ahlis Sunnati Lidda'awati Wal Jihad. Abu Darda is the head of the Lagina (Dept) of public enlightenment and not the spokesman.

"The arrest of Abu Darda is an outright deception and betrayal by the Nigerian government and security agents. They proclaimed dialogue and are doing the opposite. His arrest has proved to us that they were waiting for us to avail ourselves so that they can arrest us.

"We purposely sent Abu Darda to Kaduna to discuss with some key government functionaries on the issue of dialogue. Indeed, he had started talking to them but unknown to him, they (had) directed some security agents to trail him and arrest him.

"This is exactly what happened. He volunteered to present himself for the dialogue but was betrayed. Everybody knows our capability and tactics of operation. It is evidently clear that none of our members could be caught on a platter of gold and without confrontation."

In May, his father was reported killed by the sect in Maiduguri because of his alleged revelations on the group to the SSS.

• Suleiman Mohammed

He was arrested in May along with his wife and five children in the Farawa, Kano.

His arrest came hours after blasts and gunfire rocked Maiduguri, the Borno State capital.

Mohammed has been described as Boko Haram's head of operations in Kano under the group's suspected leader, Abubakar Shekau.

Three pistols, a rifle, 1,000 rounds of ammunition and 10 Improvised Explosive Devices (IDEs) were recovered from his house.

• Ayuba Usman

He was arrested in May at his shop in a market in Kano following information from suspected Boko Haram members arrested in raids.

High profile suspects allegedly said Usman was providing combustible chemicals used in the manufacture of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) for attacks on innocent people in the city.

Thirty-five drums of chemicals of 240 litres each and a dozen bags of combustible items were recovered during the raid on his shop in one of the markets in Dala Local Government Area of the state.

• Ibrahim Mohammed Ali

A prime suspect in the coordinated attacks on Christian worshippers at the old campus of Bayero University, Kano in which 20 persons, including 2 professor, were killed. He was arrested in May.

Ali, a diploma holder from Ramat Polytechnic, Maiduguri, Borno State, was nabbed by security operatives who had been on his trail.

The JTF arrested him after surrounding a house located at Bubugaje, Sharada Phase III Industrial Layout in Kumbotso Local Government Area, where he was hiding.

There was a three-hour shoot-out between the JTF and suspected members of the sect before he was arrested.

[via thenationonline.net]

IS IT WRONG TO PAY FOR SEX?

2012-06-22T07:45:00.000-07:00

The act of paying money in exchange for sex is a common practice in every civilized society. I always like to assess any issue from different perspective.

This question came to my mind after one particular incident. One of my friends who is also a doctor was in town recently and as his reputation precedes him,me and my close friend Dr pellz knew we were going to be elevated to a 'delirious' state that night. Let me call this my special friend Dr Baller (not his real name), yeah he balls and he's well known for that.

When he got to my place, we discussed about life, work, women(of course) and other issues. Later that fateful day, me and Dr pellz followed him to his hotel and from there to a popular spot in town called 'la vida'. We were joined by other friends and we drank,dine and gisted all through our stay in 'la vida'. Later that night Dr Baller told us he can't go back to his hotel room alone (or empty-handed) and so we have to look for a babe to keep his company till the next morning. And so we had to call Bella,one weirdo chic with big ambitions, to help us arrange a 'fine lady' that befits Dr Baller, within an hour, a lady came to meet us, she was tall,had straight legs, fair-skinned, spotless,very pretty and slim. She speaks well and I can say she could have been a perfect girlfriend.

To cut a long story short, Dr Baller paid her and he told us how she took him to cloud 7 with different styles. So that got me thinking, if Dr Baller feels like having sex with a gorgeous lady but goes through the rigours of toasting, pretends to be a gentleman, take her out, promised her heaven on heart and maybe, just maybe after some days or weeks or months (depending on how he knows the game) he got her laid, which method do you think would have been better? And come to think of it, paying for sex save guys the troubles of emotional attachment,commitment and all those headaches. Infact if you have a fiancee or a serious girlfriend, its better to pay for sex than dating other girls and adding to your troubles...lol

Please don't quote me, am not saying it is right to pay for sex, am just weighing the advantages therein, infact I ve never tried it before but I can't blame anybody that does it or what do you think?...

"Oil and IQ don't mix well" by Abimbola Adelakun

2012-06-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

I love this piece "Oil and IQ don't mix well" by Abimbola Adelakun and I think it would be nice to share it here.
she wrote:
There is a group of people out there who are optimistic about the future of Nigeria. They believe Nigeria will develop in spite of her present challenges. They even believe she will rise to be a world power. I am a shameless card carrying member of this association. We are termed the dreamers.

There is also another group that believes Nigeria is going nowhere. This second group is made up of those whose feet are firmly planted on the soil of reality. They know Nigeria is gravely burdened by her contradictions and until this is unbundled and addressed, we can pray till we are blue in the face; set up endless committees, the country is still going nowhere. Well, an embarrassing but true confession: I am, also, a card carrying member of this group.

I am in the fold of the latter group. One of the things that have triggered despair in me about the future of Nigeria is a recent report of a study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development that shows the correlation between educational performance of students in a country and total earnings the same country derives from natural resources.

The results, as indicated in a table in which 65 countries were surveyed, evidence a connect that the more money a country makes from natural resources, the less intelligent its students appear to be. The study was based on Mathematics scores of say, in Nigerian parlance, secondary school pupils.

It is an interesting study even though I have a few questions about it; the countries with nil or minimal resources ranked high in intelligence while those who have natural resources like Saudi Arabia led from behind. A few African countries made the list. Egypt was below average even though it doesn’t have much resources; Ghana was one country without much natural and intellectual resources. Thankfully, Nigeria was not sampled.

Unsurprisingly, China/Asia led the pack. Anybody who has studied the racial chart performance in the US will find that Asians are the ones who dominate in the sciences. Even Americans stand by and watch the back of their heads. The saying of the 1980s was “finish your food, Africans are starving”. The 90s heralded a new saying: “finish your assignments, the Chinese are coming”.

The study gives an insight into an extant issue: countries that are blessed with natural resources are jinxed with what has been termed, “The natural resource curse” or “Dutch Disease”. Countries caught in the lamentable vortex of burgeoning natural resources, almost, never go into manufacturing or innovative technology; the resource-laden countries in Africa live in poverty and, exist to serve as a paradox and an international spit bowl. The latest Forbes list shows that the entire Africa has only five billionaires and none of them is into innovative technology.

Nigeria is a classic case study of this natural resource jinx. Oil is Nigeria’s nanny, gifted by nature and since we discovered it, we stopped progressing. From an enviable height in the years preceding independence, our education has been in a blue funk for the longest time. Nothing works and Nigeria is left behind. Given the dismal results from secondary school pupils who take part in the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations in recent years, it is unlikely Nigeria would soon be contributing to the innovative skills the rest of the world is embracing right now.

In the past few weeks, there has been a robust debate in the media on Nigeria’s federal allocations. Ever since some northern governors made the noise about the insufficiency of their monthly allocations, they have been given some hard and well-deserved knocks.

It is embarrassing to hear them ask for more money; disgusting as the sight of full-grown adults whining to be breastfed. I am of the opinion that any Nigerian state that cannot survive would do well to merge with other states that can guarantee its existence. It’s really that simple.

The shame of their begging is that their human resources investment appears very low. The world is moving from a resource-based economy to intellectual-property economy and education is what works now. The past failures of Nigeria to invest in education and the present neglect of it, make for a rich recipe of doom.

There is no way that we will continue this way that Nigeria will move up from her ground minus-zero. It is no news that world corporations are funding research for alternatives to oil. Very soon Nigeria’s oil nanny will no longer be in demand. When that day comes, Nigeria will learn to see itself without the aid of a mirror.

Nigeria happily neglects her future; she ignores her educational sector because she gets oil patronage from countries such as China, Japan, the US and the UK which rank high on top of OECD chart. In the future we are about to enter, the currency the world would be spending will not be oil.

It is hard to read any interview in the papers these days without someone saying, “It is our oil”, as if they did a single thing to drop it in the ground; as if they were even aware of its existence before the white man came to drill it. We are the kind of people who hurry to drink the water in the coconut without asking how it got there in the first place. Resource or no resource, Nigeria is a poor country; it should be rightly said so.

When the never-ending debate about resource control for the Niger Delta starts all over again, I will root for each state to control its resources. I will be a registered-dues-paying member of this Resource Control Association too. I am sick of a situation where we will have to tolerate inept leaders because of ‘our son, our oil’ argument some people are peddling all over the place. It is blackmail and it holds down everybody from true progress.

The richest corporations in the world can buy Nigeria out a dozen times and they are not merely drilling the earth and polluting everywhere. Companies such as Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are products of the intersection of education and imagination. They make more money than Nigeria is currently dreaming to ever make and so who still thinks oil is not last century’s treasure?