Her wife and his husband in South Africa

Signed and sealed with a kiss – same-sex relationships are now legally recognized in South Africa, we can probably wait a century for that emancipation proclamation to travel north of those borders into other areas of Africa.

I wrote about the animosity same sex marriage was getting in Nigeria in April and someone commented and on it just 2 weeks ago.

His comment - So Mr. West (My new name) are you gay? It is the usual thing isn't it, it is acceptable in the West so it must be acceptable everywhere else, the rest of the world is ignorant, crude etc etc. Do you ask why it is now acceptable in the West only because of the break down of morality you may not like it but that is the truth.

He might have a point there, we think what is acceptable in the West must be accepted everywhere else.

However, the breakdown of morality thing does get to me, are non-Westerners adherents of better morals or prisoners of religious strictures that subscribe to the doctrine of “Do as I say?” – Well, that is debatable, read as rhetorical.

However, if we look at this issue from a perspective of justice, fairness, freedom of choice and association without the fear of persecution, then the civil law must not be used to impose moral values on a people.

What is even more interesting is where people are so up on morals but having nothing on ethical conduct, the abuse of women, the abuse of power, the abuse of influence, the abuse of children and the prevalence of disease, poverty, war and deprivation goes on as the leaders of our moral race dine and wine with impunity.

Morally bankrupt would need some redefining in the light of these issues.

Don't Panic! - it is only Polonium-210

The terror of poisons

We have been advised that the risk of being affected by Polonium 210 radiation is minuscule that we do not have to bother. But, the man died.

This is despite the innocuous but benign endangerment being found in 12 places in London, on three commercial planes involving contacting 3,000 British Airways crew and 30,000 passengers.

Don’t Panic!

One ex-Prime Minister of Russia is allegedly poisoned and in hospital.

To paraphrase a cliché, the only thing to panic about is panic itself – we are sitting calmly listening to all this propaganda that lures us into a great sense of terror and fear – expect a raid on our civil liberties soon.

If that radioactive material did come through Heathrow airport, air travel as we know it is dead.

As for the half-life of Polonium 210 being 138 days, we have a few more days to run on this matter as the plot thickens.

Meanwhile, if you do need the glow of radioactivity to kill your cockroach infested boudoir, for $69 you can order it online from the USA and it would be delivered to your door – Don’t Panic!

Left with the bread crumbs of Middle East diplomacy

I’m not doing dinner

It probably was an expression of glee that came across my face when last night we learnt that the Prime Minister of Iraq had decided not to join George W. Bush and the King of Jordan for dinner.

I should know the feeling, I should have been having dinner with my agent when for some “personal” reason she pulled out of the arrangement and then invited me for one of those dastardly Christmas parties where, I end up being the only sober one at 1:00AM listening to the drivel of inebriated colleagues – No thanks!

Every which way it was spun; it was a clear snub to the leader of the Free World who had squandered every opportunity to make a positive difference to world as his non-Midas touch begins to turn golden opportunities into cack-handed diplomacy.

We can, without America

There seems to be an “in spite of America” development in the Middle East; the Palestinians have negotiated a ceasefire with Israel which seems to be holding. Iraq has renewed diplomatic ties with Syria, and whilst Dubya was busy sulking about being blown out, the President of Iraq was being feted in Iran.

America should have been speaking to these countries for the peace and stability of Iraq, but their myopic sense of hubris has personalized what can only be realized through deliberation and consensus.

In the end, the country that used to be the mediator of grand Middle-Eastern handshakes was left trying to gather the crumbs of diplomacy falling from the table of self-determinant negotiations between neighbouring countries that recognize their need for each other.

So, Condoleezza Rice is on a scurry between Israel and Palestine, giving assurances and offering lame support, those are circumstances that America has with adept created for themselves.

It all comes out – sooner or later

Beyond that, 35 years before, as the India-Pakistan war came to be, some rather unpalatable things (bitch) were said of one of the principals in conversation, that recorded conversation made the light of day in 2005, tensions rose, with anger expressed, profuse apologies after from Henry Kissinger to the heirs of Indira Gandhi and the Indian people.

It did not stop the President of that time – a Richard Nixon from referring to her as an old witch – historians would be at pains not to consider the views of the President and his Secretary of State as policy or the standard with which they had dealings with India despite protestations to the contrary.

Leaks and no plumbers about

As we humans are the poorest students of history as a means of learning to do things better, Mr Nouri al Maliki’s snub came just when a leaked document from the National Security Adviser questioned the ability for the Iraqi leader to handle the mess that America created in the first place.

Obviously, there was the little issue of supporters at home in Iraq not keen on this Iraqi-American summit.

Mr. Stephen Hadley must have thought his advice would be covered by some official secrets diktat such that the dramatis personae would only have learnt of this poor vote of confidence 30 years on.

At the risk of sounding cynical, one can only wonder what they also think of their man in Afghanistan and beneath of the public veneer of great freedom and democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan, the lesser known reality is the bluster is really an attempt to stage a suitable “cut and run”.

For now, it is too late to send any of these American diplomats for a course in Diplomacy 101 – What you never want discovered must never be thought, let alone spoken, if published, you are damned.

Now, taking applications for “How to be nice 001”.

Verdonk in leadership slam dunk - Update

Goats in, Votes out

After the Dutch elections last week, I am still gob smacked about how the results have turned out. The ruling party (Christian Democratic Appeal - CDA) with its burgher, lack-lustre, dour leader who at times appears in need of a radical charismatic lobotomy after his anti-Harry Potter makeover, lead the team to another electoral victory.

He would now have a fourth bite at the cherry in 4 years, even the Dutch should be getting election weary.

Victory, in the sense that they won more seats in the Second Chamber, but 76 are needed to have a majority government, they got 41 losing 3 seats from the last time and needing 35 to form a majority government.

The opposition Labour Party got 33 losing 9 seats; the Socialist Party increased their share from 9 to 25 and the Liberal Party (VVD), the party of the Minister of dis-Integration and Emigration – Mrs Rita Verdonk, lost 4 seats to end up being the fourth party with 22 seats.

A Dutch coalition of pain

The old coalition of CDA, VVD and D66 would only garner 66 seats; however, it is unlikely that D66 would play having lost half their seats nor would they be seen in cahoots with Verdonk the cause of the fall of the last government.

The salutary lesson of this election is, people want more of the same with a lean to the left, then a bit of tough talk on those immigration and religious issues espoused by Geert Wilders whose locks once looked like a permanent lawyer’s wig. His new party of tough-talking intolerance pulled in 9 seats but he is too much of a firebrand to be called into a coalition – he was once in the Liberal Party – methinks we are in the death throes of liberalism in the Netherlands since the standard bearers of that ideology have lost electoral ground.

There is no doubt that a good few people would like to see Mrs Rita Verdonk sacked and pensioned off into obscurity, but not that easily.

She is back – again!

In 10 minutes, I heard the number 620,555 from her lips just as many times, the number of votes polled by Mrs Verdonk as number 2 in the VVD Party list which by circumstance happens to exceed the leader’s number by 50,000 votes. A precedent, they say.

Early on Tuesday, she said she would not challenge for the leadership of the party, having 4 months ago clearly lost the vote of the VVD party for the leadership, well, this evening she is back in a surreptitious and outrageous power grab for the leadership.

First by saying the people have spoken, she is probably more popular than the leader of her party, however, she would not challenge for the leadership of the party.

Rather, a commission should be set up to review this unique situation, and meanwhile, she is loyal to the party and to the leadership of Matt Rutte.

Rotten politics

If I have ever heard a fork-tongued, double-speak, back-stabbing, political about-face of the most slithering snake of treasonable political Brutus-tricks, Mrs Verdonk personifies the side of politics that would make you puke your toes from the inside – the moniker of Lady Oddjob now really fits.

There are rules for the election of a party leader and that is not decided by a general election, but by party membership, the leader only had 3 months to prepare for the elections, Mrs Verdonk has hugged the headlines for years with her tough stance on immigration and she neither won it within her party nor did she win it for her party.

If the VVD has a liability, it would be her, but like we have with the Weakest Link, the party members may not see through this political travesty of honour and integrity.

For a person who being unelected caused the fall of a government to now want to reap the fruits of democratic ascendancy, shows that she has all ambition and has little to show in political maturity or leadership – it would be not surprise me if like the List Pim Fortuyn, her leadership of the VVD leads the party to political obscurity through in-fighting and rancour – some lessons do have to be learnt the hard way and the Liberal Party looks like a ready and willing student.

Update – 29/11/2006

Having not been able to persuade the party hierarchy to establish an unnecessary commission, to examine the unique situation of the party leader polling less than the next person in the party list; Mrs. Verdonk has now pledged allegiance to the party and thrown her weight behind the party leader respecting the decision of the party to retain Mark Rutte and the leader of the Liberal Party (VVD).

References

The Verdonk Blog Trail

The Lady Oddjob Blog Trail

Do not cross the cross

Handbagging rotten design

“Terrible, terrible, absolutely terrible”, she said as she covered those so-called “world designs” with a handkerchief and walked off with her trademark Salvatore Ferragamo handbag.

Years, before, they paid hefty legal fees, generous compensation and ate humble pie as their institutionalised “dirty tricks” campaign against a business man who does not wear a suit blew up in their faces.

The was the watershed, the comeuppance of the domineering influence of the bastions of British establishment as the common man refused to be cowed by overbearing and reckless abuse of privilege to perpetrate what is patently wrong.

Secular uniforms for the working pagans

Generally, British Airways just seems to find a way of hugging the spotlight for the wrong reasons which border on the inexplicable earning brick-bats from all people of stature till they are forced to adopt what is supposed to be the common sense view.

There are people who would promote the secularist argument about religious symbols and apparel, and this excites social and political comment nowadays with the veil and the burqa.

The cross, a symbol of Christianity was the centre of a debate that had the principled stance of a BA employee elicit the support of civil liberties and put the BA in the crosshairs of religious disappointment and political opprobrium.

Eventually, the fence-sitting Archbishop of Canterbury finally cantered into the debate having flown to Rome in a BA flight – read as a tacit approval of the BA stance or a lack of conviction on a rather serious religious issue.

The employee had gotten suspended for wearing a cross having not been able to reach an agreement with her employers to compromise on a basic inoffensive principle – visibly wearing a cross no bigger than a small coin.

Disappearing Christianity in Europe

This is not the only problem with the way Christianity is being consigned to ignominious irrelevance, you only have to visit a card shop and notice how few cards talk of Christmas and many more talk of Winterval, Seasons Greetings and so on – God forbid, the mention the Christ or Jesus – people might find it offensive to hear about Christmas but be willing to take the holiday and the knock-down sales of the consequent days.

We now have to apologise for being Christian in Europe as people cannot profess their faith publicly because a foreign but non-indigenous faith is gaining prominence. We know the dominance of those faiths in their origin-lands is used to persecute other faiths, with impunity.

Sometimes, it appears political correctness is thumping commonsense values to the chagrin of many and this is becoming unacceptable leading to growing animosity between formerly accommodating societies and the seething intolerance to visiting cultures.

Teaching an old dog …

Now, that BA has backed down from this unsupportable stance having made us cringe from the bluster of official-speak and semantics, the impending boycott of their services can be suspended. Till the bishop customer cannot wear a visible large cross, the imam cannot wear a turban or show his prayer beads or some other inspired idea that a publicity faux-pas official can dream up to bring the BA back into the spotlight of every stupid thing that exemplifies British-ness (Brutishness). Just what we need – every time.

If British Airways can learn any lessons, it would be, you must not cross the cross.

References

New Tory cover-up shock

BA turns tail on colours

BBC ON THIS DAY | 11 | 1993: BA dirty tricks against Virgin cost £3m

Christian BA employee to take legal action over suspension for wearing cross

And the man died ...

Rare poisons

A few days ago, my DVD buff friends was over and we happened to see on of his Star Trek episodes (Death Wish), this one to do with the a Q who wanted to commit suicide – in the end, he obtained a rare poison that the computers on Voyager could not find an antidote for, this was because the poison was obtained outside of the realms of available knowledge, it was called Nogatch Hemlock – and the man died.

On 9/11 28 years ago, a man sought refuge in London and found a platform from which to criticise the government and policies of his home country, he had just walked over Waterloo Bridge when for some reason he got stabbed with an umbrella.

It so happened that the umbrella was a dart gun that injected a ricin capsule into his thigh, four days after that attack, having waited 9 years after his defection – the man died.

Slow death through unknown causes

Over the last week, we watched as a young man who sought exile in the UK and had become a British citizen, but attacked policies of his original home government where he had worked for the secret service – decay slowly as all speculated on what kind of poison might have been fed the man.

At first, it was thought Thallium, but further tests discounted that supposition, each day his systems failed till he had a heart attack and the eventually – the man died.

Then, they found out, he had somehow ingested Polonium 210, the last time I read about Polonium I was reading the history of Marie Curie and her work in radiation which eventually lead to her receiving the Nobel Prize - Polonium was named for the country of her birth, which at the time was not independent – it was auspiciously political, highlight the plight of her homeland.

The realities and the mirages

Whilst we have been distracted with the spectacular War on Terror, we watched the slow death of another man who being a victim of terror unmentionable left traces of radiation in a restaurant, a hotel, his home and no doubt the 2 hospitals in which he received treatment.

As it dawns on us that a “so-called” dirty bomb can be dispensed without the fanfare of a cack-handed Al Qaeda operative – it need not be a bomb, it only needs a host – but the material if administered in the sushi bar would most likely have contaminated the food batch on that day and subsequent days.

Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko had become a dissident having left Russia, which only recently had its Parliament approve a - James Bond “Licence to kill” – opportunity to take out dissidents even in foreign countries – but we should not get ahead of ourselves.

Putin on people of no significance

Mr. Litvinenko was investigating the brutal murder of Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya in Russia who only died just about 7 weeks ago, then Mr Putin was meeting with Angela Merkel – he dismissively noted that Anna was not an influential person and as such all this media circus around her death was unnecessary.

This time, as Alexander died in London yesterday, Mr Putin was in Finland meeting with the EU, in the midst of offering condolences he alluded to the medical report that his death was not so violent.

Now, Mr Putin might be the last person you want to challenge to a game of poker, but I would like to understand how these people’s lives could be so trivialised.

Then some ex-KGB person suggested Alexander might just have been a victim in the settling of scores in turf wars amongst Russians in London, now, that is not an original stance to take – Saudi Arabia, years ago dismissed terrorist attacks as alcohol turf wars amongst Westerners until it became too evident that the kingdom was under siege.

Given that is the case, if Russian gangs can obtain something so dangerous and administer it so professionally in the right dose to create the desired effect of the victim walking away before realising he had been done – we live in more perilous times than Al Qaeda can deliver through jet planes, suicide bombers or incitements to violence.

Shackled to energy of compromise

Unfortunately, we cannot be firm with Russia because they supply 25% of our European gas requirements, the softly-softly approach allows for us to appease the rolling back of the frontiers of democracy in Russia.

However, as our inertia, complacency, hesitation and détente gets the better of a principled lecture on the value of human life and the freedom of expression, it would not be long before entering any public place would include being checked out with a Geiger-Müller counter.

The unknown and unexplained might just be made obvious as the crackling and ticking detects alpha and beta radiation.

As for Mr Litvinenko, depending on the level of radiation in his body, I would suspect is appreciable, the Caesium radiation dispersal in Goiania, Brazil offers an unfortunate lesson – they are first put in lead coffins and buried in concrete.

It was a murder most horrid, the culprits might never be found as the possibility of radioactive material entering the UK as diplomatic baggage (my speculation) is going to make this story run into the less expected areas.

Of service in Nigerian businesses

The old Wazobia

At times, I have the opportunity to avail myself of services of Nigerian businesses, though more because they offer a service; I can rarely find anywhere else.

I however worry about the possibility of those businesses turning a success with the lax attitudes and poor professionalism that exemplifies the owners of those outfits.

Finding myself in Antwerp this weekend, I left my executive suite and traipsed past the exquisite restaurant to a dinghy Nigerian restaurant (New Wazobia) or rather “buka” two streets away to have goat meat pepper soup and possibly some pounded yam and spinach.

For the lack other places to go for Nigerian fare, I have frequented this place with a prayer and great risk to my health; I have doggedly returned despite at least two attributable cases for food poisoning.

Many a time, I have had to ask for a glass rather than drink through a straw and the food is served so unnaturally hot because the stuff gets tossed in a microwave oven and one is at risk of scalding from the food rather than the plates, as one would have with Western type dishes.

Waiting for no waiter

Anyway, I was there this evening took a seat was acknowledged by the regular crowd and nigh on 15 minutes, there was no sign of a waiter and I was done with waiting.

So, I took my coat, hat, scarf and umbrella and left without event.

As I returned to my hotel, the bellboy who was all over like a rash came forward to retrieve the umbrella he offered me on my way out, and I took the opportunity to ask about the restaurant.

I got details of all that was on offer and he offered to get me a reservation whilst I returned to my room to get into something less stuffy. A table at the window, fine red wine, my steak – half-bleeding – utterly succulent, an inspired menu creation that was set on a bed of spinach and bedecked with a slab of foie gras, smiling and helpful staff, live music to boot.

Then I think to myself, why suffer for a taste of home if the service is so atrocious, I would consider it utterly unacceptable in any other place.

World Cup to rotten dump

My experience of Nigerian businesses does not end there, during the Paris World Cup, my cousin arranged that we could watch Nigeria – Bulgaria in Paris, I paid just a few pounds short of a thousand to get the two of us out to Paris on a bus with other Nigerians, a place in the stadium to watch my team and a night in Paris.

As it transpired, we arrived just in time to hear the last chords of the Bulgarian National Anthem, the Nigerian one having gone first, then we finally got our seats.

For excitement, electricity and good times, this was one I really enjoyed, I probably never saw the ball as it passed round the field but in the end, I had no voice with which to speak for hours.

We then gathered back in the bus for our next rendezvous which was on the outskirts of Paris, it took two hours to find which happened to be a Formule 1 Hotel – I could not believe it – it had bunk beds, the shower was literally above the toilet, if you could squeeze into that bath-toi-room-let.

What could have been, amongst our company was a man who had traveled all the way from Nigeria along with quite a few well-to-do career people – the desire to make maximum profit spoilt an otherwise beautiful day.

We did not quibble, we just took a taxi back into the town centre and got ourselves rooms in suitable hotels – if I can get better arrangements elsewhere, Nigerian-owned businesses have a lot of work to do to gain my custom – they just cannot compete if they exude such greed or lack of attention to customer relationships.