Powerless against the 'Gitmo' noose

Our Imperfect World

When news arrived that 3 inmates of Guantanamo bay had committed suicide by hanging I was not surprised, rather I was taken aback by how long it had taken for anyone to come to that point of absolute despair.

Like it or not, regardless of the purported evil and despicable intentions of those inmates, they are flesh and blood like you and I, they were born into this world and have had their lives shaped by the circumstances of upbringing, society and environment like any other human being.

If this world were a perfect place

+ where everyone lived in peace and harmony,

+ where the strong helped the weak out of the milk of humanity rather than ideological domination,

+ where sickness and disease were met with the concerted efforts of all mankind deploying their compassion and knowledge,

+ where leaders really did command the respect of their people through probity, honesty, wisdom and prudence

We would not be in the in the state we are in now where globalization, war, disease, unrest, inequalities, tyranny and corruption are competing elements thwarting every attempt at human progress.

The most important element to progress is fairness expressed and justice seen to be done with the highest moral standards.

The Genesis of our times is in the past

America as a superpower had been attacked by a terrorist organisation that did not fit the mould of nation state but religious ideology built on the abhorrence of certain America activities around the globe.

Whilst it is enough to give platitudes to the inclination that these terrorists are against our freedoms, democracy and liberty, we would be remiss to think that is the whole story. The catalogue of American activities in other lands where they have purported to offer a lifestyle similar to theirs is almost bloodier than conquests of the Jews, Normans, Vikings and Crusades put together.

America might not have been the primary cause in some of these even but it is questionable that some of their activities were pro patria even if their leaders have presumed their acts have been in the best interests of the American people.

Guantanamo Bay not Montego Bay

Guantanamo Bay is the culmination of all that is wrong in the pursuit of peace in the world we are today. The benefactor superpower in this situation has done little to benefit the war on terror and done a lot to recruit malefactors that continue the make the Middle East the cauldron of human conflict and other arms of law enforcement in “free” countries jittery, lacking in resolute analysis and prone to procedural error.

Soon after 9/11 the goodwill America garnered in abundans cautela non nocet as to retaliation allowed level heads with the support of the many to invade Afghanistan going after the Taleban who gave refuge to Al Qaeda.

However, this is where the whole value system began to break down as prisoner swept up by this war lost the title of “prisoner of war” and became “enemy combatants” and were transported to Guantanamo Bay under circumstance less humane of what is to be expected of leaders of freedom albeit aggrieved from loss.

Enemy Combatant’s Lot

The Enemy Combatant appellation allowed for extra judicial and extraterritorial exercise of domain outside the scrutiny of due process, the courts and civil oversight from which the American democratic project derives its legitimacy and validity.

So, beyond the scrutiny of organs that ensure that rights, freedoms and liberties are protected, the hapless pawns in Afghanistan and other places ended up in that Cuban enclave feeding every speculation and conspiracy about the untoward.

Abu Ghraib gave us unprecedented insight into the way things were done at Guantanamo bay since the man-in-charge there took responsibility of retraining people in the way “things are to be done”.

Guantanamo Bay as it stood with its inmates was the middle of nowhere and the pit of despair as many did not know their status, the semblance of justice or the possibility of freedom – all we were fed by Donald Rumsfeld was that they were very horrible people who were humanely treated – Mr Rumsfeld is a very smart man, but I cannot take lessons of justice, fairness and due process from him.

Power against hunger powerless against the noose

Only recently, we were told a number if inmates had gone on hunger strike, I would think the only reason anyone would go on hunger strike is because the system is failing to apply reason to their plight.

Those people were force-fed to prevent the separation of soul from body to much disdain as the voice against Guantanamo Bay gets louder and clearer and the people in charge are beginning to have no other options but to begin to oblige.

With all the supervision, deprivation, inspection and surveillance in the dog cages these people occupy three people having not been able to bring reason to bear through other means took their apparel and hung themselves by the neck till death.

One could cynically surmise you can force-feed a hunger striker but how do you mend a broken neck?

Act of war – my foot!

So, in all the circumstances and the depth of despair that represented the fact that many had resolved they were incarcerated epso perpetua the suicide being depicted as an act of war or rather “an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us” by the camp commander is a complete dereliction of responsibility in a policy that would have made Stalin’s Gulags look like play school.

Asymmetric warfare? You must be kidding me, I have never heard such tripe, ever!

I will not buy that view no matter the preponderance of law, evidence or inclination, the reaction is beyond belief and Mr George W. Bush with his concerns are much more about the new low to hit the unpopular Guantanamo Bay than the death of enemy combatants.

The 3 men of blessed or cursed memory took the only avenue to their freedom and liberty and many ore would if that aberration called Guantanamo Bay is not consigned to history before it becomes the cornerstone of the Bush II presidency.

quidquid Latine dictum sit altum viditur – just exactly what I mean to say whatever has been said in Latin seems deep.

Force-fed with Ones and Zeroes

Daytime parcels for night time delivery

Earlier in the week, I picked up a parcel notice from my mailbox. I am still surprised that courier and delivery firms have not cottoned on the fact that the working population in the Netherlands would probably not be at home between 9 to 5, at least the morning shift of 9 to 5 rather than the evening shift of 9 to 5.

I am still of the opinion that evening deliveries is a niche business proposition for any business that decides to get into that business. Basically, everyone with a landline which would be linked to an address can register with a simple code indicating they prefer late deliveries for the period between 20:00 to 22:30.

The information is then accessed by the courier/delivery company when a parcel arrives and for every evening delivery request there is aa annual subscription for the search and a charge for the delivery. The money people can sort out the best pricing model.

So, if anything as big as a thimble is addressed to me, I need to find time to go down to the main post/parcel point with my passport and the parcel notice, it cannot fit in my postbox.

Persons Unknown in silly databases

In the Netherlands, you can put two notices on your postbox latch, No to flyers and unsolicited mail and No to trash – a good deal of what I pick up invites my wife for a beauty treatment amongst other things. I have taken the stuff upstairs but I am yet to find my wife – they must know something I don’t – in my conscious life, I have never been married.

So, the day I got a cold call asking to speak to Mrs Yours Truly, I simply told the caller to stop trying to have an affair with my wife and never ever to call this number again. That serves 2 purposes, a salutary warning that would reverberate and the conscious effort to expunge my name from their databases at best or an annotation – crazy man, don’t call him.

Before my visit, I can check on the Internet to see if the parcel is on location or still in some delivery truck doing an Amsterdam tour from a postman’s perspective.

Big Parcel Big Surprise

So, after showing the post counter my parcel notice and passport the postman produced a rather huge box from UPC – my jaw scraped the ground – I stuttered in bewilderment – I never ordered that.

So, the postman said, UPC (the cable company that delivers my cable TV and Internet services) has been delivering digital media boxes to all addresses with the 6-month free offer which switches to an extra EUR 2 thereafter.

However, if I do not want the service they would return the box at no cost to me. Decision time – I agree to take the box, next problem how to ride back home with a box under one of my midget arms.

My television which is just under 10 years old, was purchased in the UK and it does not work in the Netherlands because the PAL system is really an array of subsystems that do not work together – the UK uses PAL I and the Netherlands uses PAL B/G.

I have always needed an intermediate Dutch VCR to convert the signal to one my television could show with picture and sound in sync. There was a time in the 80s when televisions had the ability to decode 7 systems, but we have gone backwards on that advancement.

The UPC MediaBox

Do the first thing I did, not knowing if the UPC MediaBox would do the signal decoding was to remove the cheap Dutch VCR which could not even do Long Play – I could not believe after I got the VCR back home that any VCR could leave a factory in the 21^st Century without Long Play – well, you learn.

So, I plug in the Media Box, connect the SCART cables and the RF Input from my cable socket and switch on TV and MediaBox.

All instructions appear in Dutch, I can read more than I have ever been able to speak, so I configured the system which threw up 106 or so channels and a good few radio stations (I eventually found the setting to switch to Engels [English in Dutch]). Within 15 minutes the pictures arrive and now I have to note the new locations of my favourite channels as well as find out about the new ones.

News Overload

As I have often been called a news junkie, I was on the hunt for the additional new channels – now I have BBC World (Balance), CNN (Propaganda), Sky News (General), Fox News (Yankee Tripe), Bloomberg (Staple for Creative Accountants), CNBC (Money talk in strange English) and Al Jazeera (The missing Middle East perspective) – These are my personal views which might not find true with my audience.

Then the Discovery Channel comes in four guises and my TV has been stuck on Discovery Channel – Civilisation feeding my fascination with the Second World War.

It appears you do not have a plasma, high-definition television with ambi-light to go digital – my trusty 28” Sony Television has just had another lease of life as Ones and Zeros get forced down our necks to move us all to Digital Television in the Netherlands.

Unhealthy directors of Nigerian Health

Oafs in charge

My blood reached boiling point as I watched the episode of Bad Medicine in BBC World as the toad of a Health Minister in Nigeria (Professor Eyitayo Lambo) could not seem to take any interest or responsibility to investigate a swathe of rotten incidents in the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH) in Enugu.

A report was submitted to the Ministry of Health by NAFDAC the agency in charge of ensuring the quality of drugs available in Nigeria. This, within the months in which this minister was sworn in and he from his statements indicated he needed another report addressed specifically to him to take any action.

For once, I thought each minister’s tenure had a terminal end with no semblance of continuity; the sacked or redeployed minister simply has all his files and documents burnt as each new minister arrives for a clean-slate appointment. I hope not.

One cannot but commend Dr Dora Akunyili who in her crusade to rid Nigeria of fake, substandard and poisonous drugs internally and at source, has suffered various threats to her life.

Heart Starter stopper

The episode at the UNTH was palpable when it transpired that children had undergone major heart surgery with possible fake medications and in intensive care a particular child arrested and was administered ineffective adrenalin.

The visiting surgeons from the United States in exasperation simply concluded they were injecting the children with water.

When NAFDAC got in on the case, the results should have people like me asking for the institution of the death penalty for drug counterfeiters.

The forensic analysis conducted by NAFDAC came to the conclusion that the drugs were sourced from a local marketplace, a place many cautious people would not even deign to purchase basic electronic equipment.

It is all in the money

However, the web of intrigue goes further as popular block-buster drugs are copied and replicated sub-strength in countries like India and China and exported to countries where local collaborators fill their countries unconscionably with poisons.

Poison in the sense that certain drugs are supposed to exhibit potency when adjusting the chemical balance in the body in treatment – some are ineffective, some are of insufficient strength that the body develops resistance and others are just poisonous.

I could not bear the thought that some tested eye drops contained chemicals that should not be miles near the eyes – the possibility of blindness in the thought that one is receiving treatment of a condition gets relegated to divine providence than evident criminal activity.

Medical misdirection

The Reporter Olenka Frenkiel homed in on the feckless Medical Director of UNTH who completely feigned ignorance of the episode in his hospital; this just shows how people in authority can be so indifferent to their responsibilities.

In the case of both the Health Minister and the Medical Director, it should not have been about things landing on their desks, but them searching out issues in their departments and selflessly working to make things better.

Most especially those which have been in the news, but from my reading of their words, they probably do not keep up with the news either.

All we got was bluster, excuses and denials, I was disgusted to the point of violent vomit, Nigeria deserves better than these educated but seriously unintelligent oafs who are remiss of their briefs.

The sooner this issue moves in line with the crusade to ensure that anything ingested is exactly what it is purported to be and the weight of the law should come down heavily on all those who profit from trading in human misery, the better.

Important drugs should be working drugs

If we cannot trust our hospitals, especially teaching hospitals or the local apothecary, what hope do we have whilst we develop religious faith to pray through our healing?

The matter of the collusion or indifference of the major drug companies in this matter in their quest to protect their reputations leaves much to be desired.

I can understand if I ingest Viagra and find that my erectile dysfunction is not temporarily dissipated in lascivious passion, but having drugs injected to start the heart doing nothing cannot begin to illustrate why the war against drug counterfeiting needs to be the concerted effort of governments, agencies, industry and the public at large.

One thing is definite, that health minister and the medical director along with people of that ilk – surely must go and with them a public shaming of their stance.

Other references

Nigeria: UCH's Heart Matter: - First Heart Surgery in 28 years

Welcome to Nigeria- Federal Ministry of Health

No Ethos at Etos

Shopping like Duty Free

One would think the whole purpose of locating an outlet or shop at a passenger's terminal is to engage the custom of the crowds that pile through that environment as they commence, conclude or continue their journeys.

Hence, having a snack bar, a fast-food outlet, newsagents, sweet shop, essentials shop, drug store, a music and video store, flower shop and basic electronic goods store on that location would make sense.

In major terminals, you can have a dry cleaner, key replication services and shoemakers, a clothes shop, a watch store with a battery replacement service and probably little outlets of bigger supermarket or major high street shops.

That was the example I encountered at Berlin Hauptbahnhof which had shops on at least 4 levels catering to every kind of requirement, though, one should not expect for have a hardware goods or gardening store in a station, those things would appear too cumbersome to lug around and transport by train, for instance.

Customer demands need ready supply

The whole idea of paying premium rentals to afford instant customer exposure that exploits social attitudes as impulse buying, instant requirements, forgetfulness redemption amongst other traits to be available to offer services that meet these everyday issues.

It would be silly to open a shop that never gets visited, like a funeral parlour on a station concourse - what for?

Demographics, logistics and social analysis

Another aspect of this retail phenomenon is to insight into trends and requirements of customers as seasons change - gloves for winter, umbrellas for wet days, ice cream during hot months, medicaments for cold, flu, hay fever, headaches and general ailments.

There is always someone who realises a birthday needs a card, an anniversary needs flowers, a celebration needs sweets maybe cakes, a long journey requires reading material and so on and so forth.

Retailing is not so much about getting stuff off the shelves into customer bags; that is important; but logistics is the heartbeat of retailing - ensuring that the supply of goods readily meets the varying demand with respect to the points I have already raised.

It is no good to play hindsight provisioning in realising that what customers have demanded all day ran out last night.

Out of stock?

So, imagine my discountenance when I, having forgotten my instant relief medication for hay fever and thinking I only have to visit the apothecary (Etos in Dutch) at the station and then finding out they are out-of-stock.

The June and July months are the high season for hay fever sufferers, everyone is purchasing eye drops, nose sprays, tablets and possibly acupuncture if available and the two stores of the same chain at two ends of this major station has run out.

Well, the stores did have every other kinds of medication, but it is unlikely that those would move off the shelves as hay fever remedies would considering the season and the fact that the phenomenon is not some strange happenstance that took hold this summer.

Early rising dearly losing

One would have been able to get the medication from chemists on the high street, but at that time of the day, being the rush hour - shops in stations open a lot earlier, close a lot later, have a ready customer flow and demand and should know what should be on their shelves being no greenhorns in the business.

This time, with Etos, I was entirely unimpressed.

The Freedom of Association vs the Abhorence of Pederasty

Tempering opinion with reflection

After much reflection, I think I have to revisit the views in my blog of yesterday. Now, this is not to trivialise in anyway the sufferings of people who have by occasion of encounters with pederasts had their lives turned upside-down, but to see what in the name of our civilised existence can be done.

I remember years ago, I met a right-wing skinhead who happened to be homosexual and aligned with some Nazi outfit.

The encounter was bruising, but not of the physical kind, thankfully. The conversation went along the lines of the lowness of life of the black race and every other rehashed racist stereotype that could be expressed.

I listened and then said, whilst, I do not agree with your opinions in anyway, I would still defend your right to have them and express them - in the end, if I take offence, I would seek redress in appropriate ways.

Tame as this response might seem, it appears it was disarmingly effective because I did not offer the expected reactions to racist abuse.

When he inferred I was a monkey, I retorted, he had either learnt to communicate with monkeys or monkeys have achieved a level of intellect rivalling the genius amongst men.

Flawed views of history

As he went on with his diatribe, I hinted to the fact that even though I would have been somewhere on Hitler's list of undesirables, he as a homosexual would have been in the concentration camps long before those of my kind were rounded up.

Hence, my confusion as to how he could really correlate his adherence to right-wing ideology with his as it was aberrant sexuality.

A couple of weeks later, I returned to the pub for a drink and heard that he had committed suicide and none of who knew him had anything nice to say about him. I found that I was left with the saying, what I once said to him - I did not agree with his views and opinions but he had the will and wherewithal to have those views and express them with conviction. I quietly prayed for his soul.

Anybody who holds a view about anything should be able to express them, though issues of responsibility and sensitivity can apply, it is really left to the individual.

Dutch pragmatism on humanity

So, back in the Netherlands where the world assumes drugs and prostitution are legal, we need to examine why this situation appears so.

The pragmatism of the Dutch understands that human beings would be human beings with their good habits and their vices. Rather than pretend everyone can be perfect, we have allowances for those vices within particular parameters.

So, prostitution is legal and available in certain neighbourhoods, with prostitutes registered, subject to health checks and gatteing necessary aid for their profession.

Certain kinds of soft drugs are available in what we call coffee shops; you can only be sold so much of the drug with a certain level of potency.

However, there might be instances where people go from shop to shop buying the maximum quantity allowed, till they have a large stash, but that is no more the responsibility of the shops and the person is now verging on the illegal in that activity.

Exposed to accountability

Therefore, I have come to the conclusion as we noticed in England where the British National Party which is a right-wing party exists and gets votes to sit on council seats, it offers a general idea of the kind of support those associations get and the greater public an decide how to react to such support.

The pederast party then, if disallowed the opportunity to congregate would deprive us of a necessary demographic that would reveal if there is growing support for lowering the Age of Consent and allow sexual liaisons between adults and children or it is a seriously unpopular notion that has no place in our society.

It would be wrong to allow this constituency to remain underground, unnoticed, un-policed and unaccountable when some have had the courage to put their heads above the parapet.

The lynch mob is not of civilisation

Civilised society would then be the judge of the validity of this association.

I know that this is a difficult stance to take, but our freedoms, liberties, tolerance and democracy is threatened if we allow our subjective assessment of albeit vile views to becloud the opportunity to recognise the fact that some people are so different, and we need to look out better for our children.

We cannot submit to mob rule because we cannot countenance the despicable, that is not what our freedom is about.

Unisex Pederasty seeking a Dutch constituency

To tolerate or not

The nuances and complexities of the Dutch society and the politics that exudes from seeking to represent views, opinions and issues never cease to baffle.

Within the melee that accompanied the election of the leader of the Liberal Party last week, another party was born.

There is nothing wrong in registering political interest to represent a constituency of opinion once you get 500 signatories in the Netherlands, but you need the publicity at first to garner the prospective signatories.

Besides, there is a healthy tolerance of all sorts of political views except probably one in particular and this party became the rallying ground for this.

The paedophile party

This new political party had as its underlying manifesto the reduction of the Age of Consent from 16 to 12 - Age of Consent generally refers to the age at which adults and persons of a younger age can engage in sexual activity without fear of persecution or prosecution.

Many, however would contend that moving the Age of Consent to any age lower than 16 is either statutory rape in some instances, the uncomfortable tolerance of paedophilia and the adherents of acts that promote that activity.

Of the acceptable pleading the unacceptable

There is a quality of tolerance in the Netherlands that allows for people to publicly declare their interest in this matter, and there is a body of vigilantes who would with no provocation seek to do serious harm to those peado-protagonists.

Besides, there are also others who would declare interest in a non-committal way, where, for instance, a company is suing for the use of initials similar to those of its business.

For all the publicity that ensued, it does not help to realise that the main promoter of this party is a 62-year-old man living in a caravan park (address provided in news stories for the mob), which he has had to vacate due to threats to his collaborators and himself.

The rules again

However, you must never forget - the rulebook - it comes in handy again, the caravan park is supposed to be used for recreational activities and launching a party from a caravan in this caravan park is contrary to the rules.

This unsavoury case of public opinion and paedophilia is played out in stressing other points like the neighbours in the caravan site saying the caravan was so large there were not people living close to the man.

Other parties indicate they would withdraw web-hosting services from this unwelcome organisation.

Outrage, derision, consternation, anger, violence and condemnation gather in unity against a situation where the lines of the responsible exercise of liberties and freedom of expression have been crossed by one side proclaiming the untenable and the others baying for blood in the hysteria that always accompanies child porn, paedophilia and sexual crimes.

Protect the innocent - ALWAYS!

Our children, do indeed, must and need be protected from people who take sexual advantage and favours on the premise of being friendly and caring.

Having suffered such abuse myself before, one is left utterly confused about the rights and wrongs of the acts that probably give pleasure for some but create lasting damage for many.

Whilst, I cannot find a mountain high enough to proclaim or the tolerance deep enough to accept - my defence of the rights of association are definitely taxed beyond remediation - Do not let dirty old men join up in assailing the innocence of the weak and defiling the sexuality of the young and gratifying the lasciviousness of their carnal and unconscionable lusts.

I cannot be this liberal

Beasts from the pit of pederasty, debauched beyond redemption and given to wanton depravity should not roam free to prey like hungry hyenas on our young regardless of our outspoken liberties - our civilisation is about civilising people and not acquiescing to whims of the degenerate.

No, I will not join the hysteria of the mob for a lynching, rather, this needs objectivity in resolution, if they have committed no crimes they cannot be arrested for anything, but their intentions indicate the need for surveillance of their activities just in case these proclamations are closer to reality than fantasy.

For those who have ever been violated, like I was, but mercifully spared longterm damage, I feel your pain, I only wish you can find real support in those who really do love you.

I can tolerate a lot, but this one goes well beyond what I can countenance. Do not give them one chance.

Insemination Tax Credit

Not just an American problem

The leader of the free world has now put the freeze on freedom. As the second proclamation against gay marriage goes out in America, it is not so much the Americans that are affected, but other places in the world where minorities are oppressed and persecuted.

These places have not even gotten to the first rung of granting basic humanity rights to these minorities and this strident American posture simply means they can crack down harder and dehumanise people for being who they are.

Homosexuals are getting killed in the 21st Century and all the President can worry about is getting fundamentalists out to vote in the November election, who cares about those aberrant lifestyles – we should all conform to the norm.

Where do homos come from exactly?

What is so interesting is this talk about strong families, giving the impression that homosexuals are some alien species – sorry – homosexuals also come from the union of man and woman – probably in better functional families that went to church like it was going out of fashion.

However, let us go the whole hog about protecting marriage, not the paltry tax breaks, the pension rights, the familial rights, inheritance rights or child credit.

Mr President, put your money where your argument for strong families is – I suggest the Insemination Credit.

Swab the evidence

Ditch, all this family planning stuff, anytime a man goes in to his wife, without contraceptive protection, a swap is taken and sent to the IRS, which becomes a tax break of probably $100.00 is credited to the account of that happy family.

Strong large broods of families, all encouraged to strengthen the bonds of marriage, even better than the Nazis attempted. Every child carries a label, conceived on the insemination credit – attesting to the work of the state in building loving families of people loving their nation to bits.

Traditional values of homemaking

Forget love, we are back down to traditional values, women as baby-making machines, liberated in the triangle of the bed, the kitchen and the living room.

She knows her lot in life, to help her husband bring up strong vibrant families, in times of tumult, the perfect marriage which gives lordship of the man over the woman … I cannot go any further – but we have just begun to go down this slope because a fundamentalist President rules in the White House.