Aspirant elimination depicts murderous democracy

Senseless killing

Just two weeks ago, we learnt of the brutal murder in Lagos State, Nigeria of a ruling party gubernatorial aspirant.

The man was bound, strangled, stabbed and probably shot, anyway, that is delving into detail where information can at best be sketchy as it gets manipulated to ends to make the police seem like they know what they are doing.

And so, the Inspector General of Police suggested that the murder might not have been politically motivated, a view that got me thinking about who would gain the most from taking the political heat off a dastardly murder.

This is weighed within the fact that were still a majority of gubernatorial aspirants locked up in prison as possible murder suspects (They were all released yesterday under strict bail conditions.) as the Scotland Yard hopefully helps clean up the morass of investigation, forensic analysis and consequent nabbing of the culprit, in the hope that the culprit is not already in the position to pervert and circumvent the course of the investigation and justice.

Painting a picture of false rectitude

Definitely, the ruling party – PDP – has the most to gain if this murder can be read is not being political. Considering how tetchy if not asinine, the President has become to the most basic criticisms of his governance; be it the use of the fraud agency to eliminate political opponents; the failed attempt to get a third term; the suspicion that the treasury might be looted with that recent cabinet reshuffle amongst other things.

The feeling that the ruling party under the leadership of the President has become a law unto itself with possible candidates sent six-feet-under for daring to allow the thought of electioneering to pop into their heads is uncomfortable enough as choices necessary to exercise our democratic rights are being made without our consent.

The landscape of security and peace in readiness for the 2007 elections does not look like an encouraging scene; the deeper foreboding would be a return to military regimes if this situation does not receive a more professional handling. Already, the military are gearing themselves up for protecting the peace during the 2007 elections as the Army Chief of Staff indicated when on a visit to the head of the Nigerian National Petroleum Company who praised the army for their work in Niger Delta.

Let us be sincere, what work? People still get kidnapped with reckless abandon in the Niger Delta and our oil production is at 75% of nominal capacity. This is not that kind of force that would ensure violence is kept at bay around the whole nation in 2007.

Another murder another riot

Yesterday, we read again that another PDP gubernatorial aspirant had been murdered in his own home, in Ekiti State where hoodlums are said to now run the roost – it is said that certain politicians now run hire-a-mob services to perpetrate fear and instability around the state to the extent that the house of the state PDP chairman was burnt in the aftermath of the murder.

The PDP has now issued a threat to disqualify aspirants who allow their supporters to fall out of the discipline of well-mannered citizens – Fat Chance!

What makes this even scarier is the fact that these deaths are of aspirants, people who are yet to receive the mandate from their party to standard election in the name of the party – this is long before the primaries have taken place.

Learning the maturity of compromise

The political scene is fraught with difficulties, everyone who is anyone wants to run, for instance Lagos State had at least 18 aspirants looking to represent one party, imagine having 18 runners in a horse race - the Grand National in England usually has more but it is a murderously dangerous course that rarely do half the horses finish it.

It is clear that the people who aspire do not communicate with each other, all sorts of power brokers create factions within their party to command and wield influence more like an arm wrestling contest to ascertain who can make things happen as kingmaker.

It shows a party in utter disarray, the chairmen of caucuses do not command the respect of their party to the extent that they can impose order and discipline amongst the members. If at the grassroots level we suffer such splintering of hierarchies, the party system has failed us and we had better just have independent candidates.

Nigeria still has a lot to learnt about democracy and the fact that it does not have to be a do or die, free-for-all, no holds barred brawl of thugs, mobs and strays – it would take some time for evolution to elevate many to the stage of civilised democratic decorum.

References

Another PDP Aspirant Killed - Party reads riot act on violence

Riots follow killing in Nigeria

Williams: Ogunlewe, 14 Others Gain Freedom

Hoodlums Hunt for Ekiti Politicians

2007: Army Prepares to Check Violence

The American-Israeli tinderbox that Hezbollah lit up

Surely, this cannot be true

This reads like a conspiratorial plot out of a Tom Clancy novel and if there is any truth in this, I would have to find my voice to condemn this without reservation.

The man who exposed the embarrassing Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the Vietnam My Lai massacre has a new scoop that would rock the diplomatic world to its foundations. Thank you – Seymour Hersh.

I have only had to listen to Mr Bush’s slant about the suffering of Lebanese being brought on by Hezbollah, Syria and Iran – well I have another view, it was Israel attacks with American bombs that wrecked Lebanon over the last month.

Prearranged and executed as planned

Now, it transpires that Israel had been planning the attack Lebanon with American knowledge and support long before the June 12^th kidnap by Hezbollah presented coincidental opportunity for Israel to carry forward and carry out their pre-conceived plans.

It might also explain why there was an urgency to deliver bombs from America as the war began because there should be no need for those kinds of sophisticated weapons if there was no plan to use them somewhere.

The more sinister twist to this tale is that America thought they could do the following:

· Turn the Lebanese against Hezbollah using the loss of Lebanese life and property to create a backlash against that movement. – Failed.

· Get to completely disarm Hezbollah such that when America attacks the nuclear infrastructure of Iran; Hezbollah would not be able to retaliate against Israel. – Failed.

· Strengthen the democratic forces in Lebanon, especially giving the government the ability to control the South of Lebanon. – Failed.

Probably some truth to this

It may be that Seymour Hersh is reading too much into this contact between Israel and America where they sought the support of Dick Cheney and gained the support of the US President and UN Secretary of State.

However, with what has transpired, I am wont to see more to what Mr Hersh has to say because it all seems to add up in trying to understand why Israel had such unstinting support from America in that bombing campaign.

The losers in this battle are mainly Lebanon in terms of the sacrifices, Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defence Minister in underestimating the possible resistance and United States for their conniving, colluding and conspiring gamble – Hezbollah has in some ways won and the Israeli soldiers are still bargaining chips in what would be become a diplomatic situation where America has no clout.

America has lost authority and respect

If there is anyone who can command the respect and authority to see progress on the Middle-East issues I raised in my last blog, it is probably Bill Clinton, failing him, Nelson Mandela.

I do not think it is in the power of the people in today’s American government to sufficiently redeem themselves enough to earn the epithet of arbiter to the Middle-East crisis.

Mr Blair unfortunately has eliminated the United Kingdom from a role where we could have really shown ourselves as power worthy of the status we hold on the UN Security Council and it in the world at large.

Destabilising legitimate governments

The quest to continue to support dissident and liberal groups in governments that are not friendly to the United States in order to foment civil unrest to destabilise legitimate governments is patently unacceptable if Iran and Cuba get special funding but similar authoritarian governments in Egypt and Saudi Arabia get no mention.

Like it or not, despite the theocratic organisation of the Iranian government, it has a better working democracy than that of either Afghanistan or Iraq, they are hardly the kind of examples of freedom we are told they are with all the bloodshed and insecurity that underpins their terrible lives.

Like I said in my introduction, if there is any truth in this allegation, the forked tongues I talked about over a month ago belong to slithering deceitful snakes that are up to one thing but proclaiming something else.

Seymour Hersh is in some ways a security risk if people in government have been up to no good.

References

Steppingstone to War - House passes 'Iran Freedom Support Act'

Israel, Defeated - Round one: Lebanon, 1 – Israel, 0

Bush blames Hezbollah for Lebanon fighting

Israel, U.S. are biggest losers in this war

A large body count with no ease as war ceases

The seeds of war

Just over a month ago when hostilities started with some Hamas faction seizing an Israeli soldier killing two others and the Hezbollah seized two Israeli soldiers killing eight, we now have a body count for the number that have perish in this senseless war. Does anyone remember Gilad Shalit? No, he has become an irrelevance in the whole scheme of things.

Gilad Shalit - refreshing your memory.

First of all, ostracising a duly and popularly elected Hamas by denying them funding when we all know that Palestine has no other means of income generation, in order to either force Hamas to abdicate the platform on which they were elected or create unrest to topple that government was definitely not the smartest thing to come out of the West.

Occupation is the problem

There are reasons why Israel finds little legitimacy in the Middle East, much of which stems from the occupation of Arab lands and the lack of progress towards the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine – that would remain the sticking point till a kind of grand solution is proffered that is acceptable to all – it would not be far from the 1967 lines and anything different would continue to fuel the extremism that seeks the destruction of Israel.

As the Palestinians seemingly crumbled under the onslaught of Israeli belligerence, Hezbollah launched their own raid which resulted in a large scale destruction of Lebanese infrastructure as well as the loss of innocent life.

This situation could have been arrested, but there is not politician presently in the world of the stature that can really bring the kinds of ideas that would command the respect of all affected parties.

The sad thing is, this war turned into a proxy war where America supplied sophisticated weaponry to Israel and Iran offered some weaponry and even men to Hezbollah turning Lebanon into the grass trampled on as a result of two elephants fighting.

The solution is not military

If there is any lesson to be learnt about this reckless gamble with human life in the quest for a military solution to a political and diplomatic puzzle, it is that guns might kill people but they cannot kill the aspirations of a people.

Hezbollah has been called every unprintable terrorist-linked name under the sun, they are however, victors in the eyes of their people, and they now garner a lot more support amongst Arabs than they ever did – they might have been curtailed but definitely not subdued.

Lumping Hezbollah together with the elements of Al-Qaeda is disingenuous at best and really a scandalous propaganda which should heap derision on America because their involvement in this war has earned them no plaudits from either Arabia or a good deal of the non-religiously biased world view of Israel’s status.

New occupations is not the answer

We now have a ceasefire or sorts, but we are still with the selfsame problem that has bugged the Middle-East for close to two generations – Israeli occupation of land that is not theirs.

The guns have stopped but Israel is in Lebanon up to the Litani River, this peace just cannot hold, neither would it hold if the Israelis are replaced with a UN peacekeeping force. The way forward is the legitimate return of lands to their proper owners, this affects Palestine – Gaza and the West Bank in its entirety; Syria with the Golan Heights and Lebanon with the Shebaa Farms.

The occupations must stop, if Israel then wants to build walls, the walls must only be built within the confines of the legitimate state of Israel.

The Middle-East in a nutshell

The Economist of August the 5^th, sums up the Middle-East problem in these topics – The bomb in Iran; the future of Iraq; the isolation of Syria; the Hezbollah state within Lebanon and the unrequited cause of the Palestinians – the amazing thing about these situations is that all this is linked up with the resolution of the Israeli-Palestine question.

This does even begin to address the issue of authoritarian religious governments, absolute monarchies with democratic trimmings and dictatorships.

The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 was a counter-reaction to American influence in the corrupt monarch of the Shah of Iran as well as the non resolution of the Palestinian cause. The Iran “bomb” which only really exists as an American suspicion rather than a North Korean reality takes up more diplomatic energy than more pressing issues of greater importance.

America backed Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war; however, Iraq went on to support Palestinian causes in supporting families of suicide bombers – hence, the ability for American government to link Iraq with terrorism.

Syria is isolated for its involvement in Lebanon, however, they were also instrumental in getting Israel out of Lebanon, and their support for Hezbollah is mutual, in the sense that Israel still occupies Syrian and Lebanese land whilst the unanimously adopted UN Resolution to return those lands languishes in the dormant basket.

Hezbollah has always justified its existence on the basis of the occupation of the Shebaa Farms, their legitimate purpose for bearing arms would be diffused if that land is returned as they are also already part of the political and democratic process in Lebanon.

No one dares take bold decisions

Land for peace would be the core requirement for peace in Israel, it would involve removing settlements in the West Bank regardless how they read their religious tomes, the world order should be a secular acceptance of the civilisation of man and the dispensing of justice for the good of all including that contentious division of the Mandate of Palestine into the state of Israel and the state of Palestine.

America must come in for sound criticism and condemnation for letting this war carry on for so long and for literally goading Israel into doing their dirty work of hopefully eliminating Hezbollah – we now know the better of this wishing thinking and drunken gamble.

The devaluation of human life

After the loss of about 4,000 lives in the World Trade Centre, America has become a blood-thirsty marauder that has have done much to foment war and done little to sue for peace. The value of human life has depreciated to basic collateral damage, we see much for damaged buildings than for loss of innocent life.

America has lost so many soldiers in Iraq we have literally stopped counting, this war on terror is prosecuted in a way that terrifies all and brings little in gains to preserve our freedoms and way of life, it would appear world leaders could not really care less for how humanity suffers in the quest for their radical and unconscionable goals.

We do need strong leadership but not of the kamikaze sort which is what we experienced in this Israeli-Lebanon pseudo-war.

Blood on many hands

And there was no man to bring us the grand solution to the Middle-East problems, the life blood of terrorism as we are taught to know it. Great is the tribulation we suffer because they would rule are soaked in blood and like King David of old, that blood, even if shed in legitimate caused prevented him from building a temple for the Lord.

If no one values human life, thankfully, God up there does count human blood for something, good guy and bad guy alike. The religious guys had better listen up; you cannot fully participate in honouring God if you are complicit in shedding blood.

The body count – Israel 163, UN 4, Canada 8, Lebanon 1,000 and Nigeria 2 for 3 living Israeli soldiers and 10 dead ones. ‘Nuff said.

References

Hamas Isolation on Israeli recognition

United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701

Lebanon's middle class is disillusioned with America

Hezbollah leader a hero to many Arabs

To King David – You are not to build a house for me

Israeli-Lebanon Body Count

Not leaving on a jet plane soon

A place off the itinerary

The news is full of passenger woes of not being able to board flights or endless queues at British airports.

A foiled terrorist plot, either intended or imagined, whichever the case, it is causing serious disruption to our way of life and freedoms as restrictions are imposed on the so many who are trying to visit the land of the free – the United States of America.

Somehow, we may never know if these plots would ever have been carried out, but the list of items that have been banned from cabin luggage would make travellers look like refugees who have just escaped a situation with only their shirts off their backs.

No handbags, no glass cases, no liquid medication, baby milk should be tasted by passenger, no contact lens solution, free-range tampons – what is this world coming to?

We soon might not be able to pass urine on the plane as the combination of urine and disinfectants might release noxious fumes.

My advice – cut America out of your itinerary, let them visit instead; then cut air travel out, if you can avoid it. However, this is also a British problem, air travel is no more looking like the fastest means of travel of you are visiting continental Europe..

The domestic science of explosives

Somehow, the banned stuff can be concocted into some sort of explosive to bring down planes, it all sounds like science fiction, and not to say that Al Qaeda seems to be been accorded a status of scientific genius that can use everyday items to create dangerous stuff.

I did not fully appreciate this craze till I went through Schiphol Airport; all the rubbish bin compartments were open and visible, and this was not for the cleaner to empty the bins but as a response to our fear of terror dressed up as being secure.

We need a rethink about all this terror stuff, name-calling and lumping groups together under an Al-Qaeda banner is getting us nowhere, the more we advocate our freedoms the more we lose our liberties to quests for greater security.

Terror mind games

These terrorists seem to create a stampede without anyone realising if the reaction is real or imagined, obviously, democratic governments are adopting more authoritarian slant to governance all in the name of greater security.

The sooner we begin to review the causes of terror and why people take up such despicable causes, we leave ourselves with false sense of security.

For one, the British government has dismissed comments by Muslim leaders that our foreign policies in certain Middle-East countries leave us vulnerable as facile – well, we ignore that view at our great peril.

References

Airport checks 'not sustainable'

Why al-Qaeda's real power may be all in the mind

A dead man dishonoured

Still a murder most horrid

As it happened, the murdered Lagos State gubernatorial aspirant – Funso Williams was laid to rest on Friday, that event was not without controversy, a twist in a tale that looks a bit far from resolution.

Ayoke’s Exodus did reference a link with comments from the Inspector General of Police (IGP) suggesting the murder might not be political but the political dimension does offer a possible smokescreen to other motives – they are however, they are keeping an open mind – I would hope so too. Ayoke however touched on the amount of bloodshed in Nigeria, I am concerned issues this death reveals about Nigeria.

In the same light we were informed that 10,000 men would be deployed to keep the peace at the burial of the dead man.

There was a funeral mass and some other service in which the presiding priests had a lot to say, a good bit was true, one should not speak evil of the dead, it does not also mean that the facts should be distorted to help the grieving process, though burial services do present the opportunity for bold sharp talk.

A questionable legacy

So, in the midst of 10,000 deployed policemen for Operation Total Peace, the grieving family and the people who gathered to see off the man; there was a plan to have the man lie in state; extracting the coffin from the hearse would normally be the just of the undertakers or people selected by the undertakers to provide that service from the hearse to the catafalque.

A group of hoodlums called the Young Vanguard who are supposedly supporters of the peaceful dead man thwarted the “lying-in-state” plan by refusing to allow the professionals – the undertakers – to perform that service, arguing that this function should be their exclusive preserve. In the end, the man did not lie in state.

Now, one would surmise that consider that there could have been an amicable arrangement that would have fulfilled the primary purpose of letting the man lie in state, but if the people who supported him in life could not find the level of respect and deference to allow such an important last act to be performed in honour of their leader, one does wonder if the legacy he bequeathed was really that of peace and conciliation as we have been told all through.

A truthful assessment

Back to the funeral, the priest did highlight a few things that fetch true, the sense of security being so appalling that people cannot feel safe in their homes; the sense that so little premium is paid to the value of life that the country is becoming very much like the disorderliness of the animal kingdom.

The priest also mentioned the lamentable fact that we have required forensic expertise from the Scotland Yard to help solve the murder, though the IGP indicated that the investigation is purely a Nigerian one with backup from Scotland Yard. Well, backup could either mean substitute or support; a skeptic would probably plump for the former because the Nigerian Police does not have the best track record for resolving high profile murders.

One does need to ask what the function of bodyguards and orderlies are, that killers could gain assess to the victim’s home and commit a murder when they have conveniently gone to eat. One would think when sentry-keeping that post is never left unattended – this looks like a systemic issue of proper police discipline and understanding of responsibilities.

The praise that then went on to compare Mr. Williams to Jesus Christ was probably a bit off the script.

Obviously, the question of who the suspects are still looms as it appears the other gubernatorial aspirants are still in custody having voluntarily visited the police and then gotten detained since then without charge – that is small issue about rights which do get violated a lot in Nigeria.

Still unfinished business

The IGP also made reference to the murder investigation of the Minister for Justice – Bola Ige who was assassinated in 2001. The IGP did say the suspects were arraigned before the court but the whole case for the prosecution unraveled as witnesses recanted their testimonies that Bola Ige’s wife who had long served as a senior judge in Nigeria succumbed as the incredulity of it all finally left the suspects literally implicated of nothing.

Then, the excuse that the police cannot appeal is offered – I disagree, the police should have lawyers who liaise with some public prosecution department if the police believe they have a compelling case and they should either appeal or retry the case.

To buttress the case for a non-political motive, the IGP cited another case where the previously assumed motive became one where it appears family members and compromised guards colluded to kill the victim – hopefully, the case has been fully investigated that no innocent people are behind bars for that murder.

No Double Jeopardy

Besides, I am of the opinion that the Nigeria Crime-Justice-Punishment system is not mature enough for the double jeopardy rule, furthermore, as our criminal investigation methods are not exhaustive enough requiring outside assistance, to have acquitted someone of a serious crime of a bungled investigation and prosecution and then not be able to charge the person again on new and more sophisticated evidence would be a miscarriage of justice in itself.

Finally, the priest in sanguine reflection says 2007 might have delivered Lagos State to Mr. Williams but in his death he has gained world renown being mentioned on CNN and the BBC – Nigerians sometimes have a concept of grieving that could be interesting, but I’ll rather be a living man with little than a dead man talking.

References

Ehindero: Williams’ Killing May Not Be Political

Williams Buried, Cleric Berates FG

Williams: Detention of PDP Aspirants Faulted

Attack your castle

Down South with down talk

This is short; I was out in Valkenburg, a city in the deep south of the Netherlands which lays claim to being the first city to have a railway station and a tourist office in the Netherlands.

There was a lot to see and I did take a lot of photographs to be unveiled in the not too distant future.

Some of the tourist attractions include the castle ruins and networks of caves that are supposed to serve as a nuclear shelter and so on.

What really grates me as we have seen on African Shirts is why people in tourism do not employ good translators to translate information properly into other languages.

This sign in particular makes interesting reading.

Wreck your castle

Here I am, in castle ruins reading about fortifications for the castle only to find the rulers attacked their own castle from the city side – well, why give the enemy the pleasure of destroying your castle when you can do it yourself.

Someone definitely has been tampering with the tourist fare of Valkenburg, have I been duped?

Besides, I was later assaulted with a variant of English that was so bad, it was entertaining.

[The Dutch part of the notice does talk about enemies attacking the castle]

Sweet dreams are made of these

A dream in turmoil

I can remember quite vividly two films I watched on television probably some 20 years ago, I cannot really recall the exact time, but they have made a marked difference to my life in what might have been unintended consequences.

I am not sure which one I saw first, I would deal with the first concerning dreams in this blog, it involved elements of remote sensing, science fiction horror where certain gifted people, probably psychics, were hooked up into Matrix-like devices to enter into dreams of other people.

In the experimental stages, they entered people’s nightmares to chase away the horror and help cure unsettled sleep, but every new technology is always accompanied with some evil machination, they found out that stabbing the dream-subject in their dreams induced a physical response as a heart attack which killed the subject in their sleep.

The dream weapon

So, it became a political weapon where some of those gifted people were employed in a murderous enterprise that left no forensic evidence, so others then engaged in preventing evil, such two or more gifted people occupy a subject-dream battling to kill or save the person.

In one instance a horrendously horrific and scary dragon was slain to rid a child of a nightmare; the president engaged that service to deal with a nightmare about a disaster of burning vulnerable people, some then tried to kill the president, thankfully, they were unsuccessful.

My dreams are my dreams

What I however took away from that film was the knowledge that I could control my dreams; not that it is perfected, but I can now sense when there is going to be violence I cannot handle and avoid, in some cases, my body is triggered to wake up than experience that nightmare.

Since, I sleep with my lights on, when I enter a room in my dreams and switch on the lights, interestingly, they do not come in, sub-consciously, in my dream, I reckon it is a dream and I have been in situations where I have been in a dream, which is in another dream, which is again in another dream and I have to come out of each dream to the point where I finally wake up to light.

Those are areas I can control, the ones I still have not yet resolved are where extreme brain activity creates complex mathematical equations based on straight lines – I tried to deduce formulas and equations that allow parallel lines to meet or worse still, straight lines to meet in more than one place.

The second, I think I can resolve by putting the straight lines on a sphere, that way, they can meet twice, I would not go into how they can meet thrice or n times – that would surely make anyone mad.

A mosquito of a dream

I first had these mathematical dreams when I had to switch from Nivaquine – the malarial drug – to Fansidar, a sulphur-based drug, because the side effects of itchy palms and soles which Nivaquine induced were less so with Fansidar.

However, I still had to take additional anti-histamine, analgesic and soporific drugs with Fansidar to deal with the itch, the headaches and the sleeplessness. Now, when I am seriously restless, I could have these mathematical monsters which could create skull-cracking migraines.

That I do not have to use anti-malarial drugs is more than a blessing, you cannot wish worse on your enemy for the rotten side-effects – if these drugs were already tested on animals and they created such mental mayhem, I wonder what would happen without animal testing.

Dream a little dream for me

Now, I believe that even when you are asleep, you can “consciously” determine what you want in your dreams. In my case, I usually sleep with some sound in the background; however, I now choose that carefully, when at one time, Radio 4 began reading Steven King’s Pet Sematary at night.

That was no bedtime story, tame as the book title sounds, it could take your sleep away for ages, especially if you have a crazy imagination as mine, the more reason, and it needs to be curtailed within the limits of background sounds.

Besides control, there is also authority, you have to exercise authority in the domain of your dreams, refuse to allow uninvited or unintended situations that you think you might not be capable of handling – but then in dreams one can be extremely resourceful in dealing with all sorts of situations.

The worst I would accept is a draw in my dreams, if I have to run away, I wake up, never in cold sweat though.

Postscript

After searching for “film about entering dreams of others” in Google, I have now found out that the film was Dreamscape (1984), amazing what you get when you purpose to write about something.