I did not waste my time in deciding to go on holiday immediately after learning that the project I was on was suspended literally without warning or notice; things were just up in the air.
It meant bringing my holiday forward a good 6 weeks in the height of summer heat as I had planned that Gran Canaria would be the place to return to.
The general idea was whilst the companies sorted out the considerations and goals of the project we had the freewill to seek other opportunities or wait out the possibility of recall for the month of August.
Courtesies with recalls
This morning I got notice that we were being recalled to the project but I missed the basic courtesy of expressed regret at the way matters were handled, those in permanent employment would simply have been reassigned to other duties, and people like me in self-employment were just left high and dry.
Surely, there should be a sense of gentlemanliness in the conduct of business and it appears certain conditions will be written into the recall to ensure we are not met with this kind of situation again.
The Englishman in me was a bit miffed but again glad that I did not have to visit the job market so soon seeking new opportunities.
Expectations and abilities
We expect the details to be fine-tuned and finalise over the next couple of weeks and hopefully we can return to doing what we know best to do; take on challenging projects, offer working solutions and deliver excellent results.
One question remains for me though, should I retain my Wednesdays off or stretch myself for the 40-hour week – it has been over 5 months after chemotherapy, I feel good and strong though still not as fit as I once was – it might just be smart to take things easy, doing my best over 4 days is probably better than petering out over 5 days.
Meanwhile, a week of holidays still remains with a trip to the island of Tenerife tomorrow, the alarm is going off at 04:45 hours, surely, I should still be in bed then.
President Goodluck Jonathan has been on Facebook for all of 15 days and the numbers are staggering from basic observation.
Since then, at the time of this write-up he has acquired 113,910 fans which in Facebook terminology is listed as “Likes”, in other words, that many people like his Facebook page.
He has in each day posted a comment which represents what is on his mind at the time of his writing, some of his statements have been characteristic of identifying problems and issues that concern Nigerians and others have been in reaction to the feedback that he has been getting from his new found audience and followership.
The numbers on the times
For the 16 statements posted, all those have now garnered a total of 36,663 likes and 32,415 comments – this has no doubt become unwieldy, the President himself along with all his other duties cannot afford to become a Facebook addict, I would think like I suggested in my NigeriansTalk review of his Facebook advent he has a number of readers who filter through these comments.
Another thing to note is that the President appears to be an early riser in that at least one statement was posted at 06:06 hours and he retires quite late, maybe there is some therapeutic or soporific quality to Facebook that allows him to post between 22:30 hours and 01:20 hours though a majority of the posts have been around the midnight hour.
Reactions from the President
Obviously, this Facebook phenomenon would help us appreciate what the President has on his mind, but most critically, without having to wade through the comments, the real effect of this Facebook forum would be in what the President does in response to all the views expressed either in reaction or as information that he has not been able to gather from other sources.
In that respect, I think the Facebook forum is working, at first, he created a Facebook page as he promised at convocation 6 week before, he directed the Nigerian Ambassador to the US to review the status of an abandoned Nigerian property in California, he has asked personnel from his office to contact someone with an idea to help solve the power crisis, it influenced his decision to rescind the ban of Nigerian participation in football, he has defined the strictures of our federalism in terms of what he can do with regards to the states on living wages.
Facebook Watch on Goodluck Jonathan
In the words of the comment left by Bayomi Williams on the blog I posted about Goodluck Jonathan on Facebook, the conclusion is best elicited as – “While a lot might be naive to think the President will read each massage or are too excited about the virtual proximity to power to leave only praises … it has virtually left most feeling as if they have a friend they can trust.”
I would regularly post a Nigeria: Facebook Watch on Goodluck Jonathan observing trends, ideas, reactions and views of the President but reading the comments is a full-time job not for me or the President, how the President responds is what matters in the end.
Analysis after analysis has painted the once most-wanted man in England in the worst light possible, as a convict, a murderer, a violent personality, a fugitive, a suicide and much else.
Raoul Moat is no hero nor is he a role model by any stretch of the imagination but he once lived within a community, had friends, had family, had children and evidently made enemies.
There is nothing that can justify the crimes he committed and the lives he ruined in his rage against the world and everything else that might have mattered to him including the police but there cannot be just one side to his story.
Waves of news and waves of views
His death was a public spectacle drawn out over days of a relentless media feeding frenzy that just had to pad out the inactivity and absence of summer news with the blow-by-blow account of every move made by both the fugitive and the police.
Whilst experts, commentators and tabloids might want us all to take the view of total condemnation of Raoul Moat, other elements of significance about Mr. Moat’s life are coming to the fore.
In the same public spaces either where he met his end or on the Internet there are people who identify with him for all sorts of reasons, to some it is considered twisted, but to the affected persons there is a facet of his existence that subscribes to a rational affinity with others – they should not be begrudged.
His relationships still endure
His friends might not agree with everything he did but they had a closer relationship with him that with his victims – they cannot for the shame of association or for the inclination to conform disown the man they once knew.
His relations apart from his mother knew him as a different man from the vengeful person who left prison almost 2 weeks ago and who could have been prevented from becoming the anti-hero he became if the police had acted on the warnings they were given about his quest to harm his ex-girlfriend after release.
Other acquaintances know what they saw in Raoul Moat to endear him to their hearts and that is just the way things are about the world.
Raoul Moat is mourned
Raoul Moat would be mourned by those who knew him and he will be buried by those who loved him, the public spectacle that results from this is not so much his fault than for the fact that if the media just left the story alone, it would have no legs.
But our emotions have to be stirred, someone has to express an outcry, some disdain, utter revulsion and amazing incredulity at the events and as their views get an airing to sell the whatever media product is on offer so would everything that made Raoul Moat have significance in other lives as a father, a brother, a nephew, a neighbour and a member of the community within which he found his standing and anti-hero.
They will not forsake him or his memory and no castigation of the majority would deny them the opportunity to pay their respects to the man they knew.
In our own lives too, we would recognise that there would be people who would stand to be counted with us in life and in death regardless of how we have lived our lives and that is the amazing bond of friendship, kinship and anything else that makes people identify with whoever we were for the better or for the worse. C’est la vie.
As the world gathered to watch the greatest spectacle on earth in unity of mind and purpose some to whom any sense of enjoyment or community gathering is anathema wreaked havoc with two bomb blasts in Uganda killing scores.
It is suspected that Al-Shabab, an Islamic fundamentalist group linked to Al-Qaeda is behind this carnage because of the peace-keeping efforts in Somalia by Ugandan contingent of the African Union forces.
It remains a thing of outrage that any human-being would scheme to kill scores of innocent people to make a political or religious point and one wonders about whether the perpetrators have any conscience, a sense of retribution, an awareness of a so-called afterlife or even an element of faith.
A harem of 72 virgins
So warped is their theology that it is amazing that it gains any traction at all in the thinking of an sane being. Suicide bombers have been offered the promise of paradise, paradise painted in the basest elements of sexual lust – a harem of 72 virgins.
One does wonder if the sexually repressed male who has lived an unnecessarily ascetic life with no ambition or goal in life whose existence has been coloured with pain, suffering and a lack of prospect could in anyway be prepared in his naivety for the highly libidinous task of taking away the virginity of 72 damsels.
A virgin obsession
An untested claim, an unverified existence and a pie in the sky that makes one question the whole concept of faith and an afterlife but seems compelling enough for those impressionable men under the control of evil and nasty religious patrons to be persuaded of the joys of copulation to the exclusion of any other purpose to give up their lives for the cause.
In a culture that is so virgin-obsessed that women regardless of status have to be presented as chaste, covered, concealed and chaperoned as virgins even if they have long been dispossessed of their virginity there is need for more anthropological insight.
The sexually obsessed men are the ones who always appear to lack the self-control in managing their urges but they are never the ones caught committing adultery, the burden of guilt lies with the woman who generally is not able to fight off the advances, who is the victim twice for having been abused and then murdered for having “besmirched” family honour.
Only for the men
The paradise seems only to be made for men on earth and beyond, they have no responsibility to be well behaved or honourable but are ready accomplices in seeking heinous retribution against their womenfolk, no provision seems to have been made for women in general and especially those who become suicide bombers, and it is unlikely they would be recreated virgins but there is probably a story of bliss prepared for them too.
A bliss is that very obtainable on earth if the leaders allow for the conditions to exist for a fulfilled life on earth before that so-called paradise is populated with novices, idiots and easily lead fools to their own destruction.
Once those 72 virgins are exhausted, one could only imagine whether the tale has any legs, if the virgins would the replenished or paradise would end for that is the only reward beyond which the management of a 72-person harem becomes an eternal hell.
The 72 houri
There are references to 72 houri (could translate to virgins), in the Hadith and this constitutes the minimal reward for people of heaven along with 80,000 servants – which in general terms would a logistical organisational nightmare for people who have been followers only and never had an inkling of leadership.
Surely, servants would want to be gainfully employed in the service of their great master the suicide-bomber who just arrived from earth – no, it just does not compute even from an irrational perspective.
The houri however are described in terms that appeal more to the men and expect the women to conform to some code, which is fair enough for those societies but does the pool of 80,000 servants also get populated by persons who once lived on earth and would this servant-hood have benevolent masters or harsh task masters whose masochism on earth is rewarded with opportunities of sociopathic sadism they once experienced from others before heaven?
Silencing the apostles of hate
As for the apostles of hate and death whose power of persuasion belongs to the primitive and pre-human instinct, none of what they do on earth now can justify any sense of bliss in the afterlife, their existence now is one that calls for them to be hunted down as prey and eradicated as vermin.
The whole purpose of religion should always be in service of humanity, where it harms our humanity it is no more religion, it has become terrorism and worse – justice will only be served when all those whose lack of passion for life are taken out of the circulation of those of us who believe there is more to life and probably something more exciting to the afterlife than the satisfaction of our sexual expression.
It is time for well-meaning and true Islamic scholars and leaders to address this matter with urgency provide the context, the reasoned teaching and the framework that honours the cause of Islam as a religion of peace with possibility of happiness and joy on earth and the hereafter and blow into smithereens the warped doctrine of 72 virgins.
A majority of patrons were in their orange colours with a few errant boys rooting for Spain, I watched the full 120 minutes of the game I would take nothing away from the performance and spirit of our boys – they played their hearts out and only a few minutes would have turned it into the lottery of penalties.
We’ll meet again
That part I would have been unable to watch anyhow, but that is the game of football and 2014 beckons whilst 2018 is when we host the World Cup with Belgium.
Nothing could have prepared me for the feeling of disappointment I felt for my adopted country where I have lived for 10 years only to experience their being beaten whilst holidaying in Spain by Spain.
Just as I shared the excitement of all their victories I found I was not able to celebrate their loss by loving Spain, I received commiserations and congratulated those who I knew would feel my pain but there is no point waiting to watch the presentations or much else.
Viva España
Vuvuzelas were not needed on the main streets, everyone who had a car had their horns blaring at full volume even one of the buses gave a full blast of ululation for the Spanish victory.
I kept my orange vest on and just thought about what might have been, for the third time, our little Dutch nation has just come short and not for the want of trying.
Viva Espa̱a but the spirit of Dutch football shall never die, we have come this far again, only time with tell when we would lift the World Cup as victors РHup! Hup! Holland! You did well.
I have always
loved visiting Las Palmas the capital of the island of Gran Canaria. In fact,
it is known in full as Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and it has that dreamy feel of
paradise not too far from home and a wonderful experience.
I was able to
look for a camera and also get Miquelrius notepads which I have not obtained anywhere
else, I am not a Moleskin fan at all, Miquelrius, a Spanish firm just has that
right feel about them. It has saved me a trip to Barcelona again, I have
wondered how to get the notepads especially when the specific type I bought in
November 2007 is no more available – the pictures on the website did not convey
as well as sight and touch afforded me today.
The Spaniards
never expected to meet the Netherlands at the World Cup finals, they seem to
have catered for country strips of all the big footballing nations as France
(deplorable), Italy (disappointing), Argentina (overwhelmed), Brazil
(expendable), England (unfortunate) and Germany (promising) apart from our
Netherlands (excellent). Well, Spain was all over the place with every kind of
brand, I just could not think of spending EUR 80- on a polo shirt.
Then a walk
up to Santa Catalina to Le Muelle the shopping mall of affordables, if one
might put it that way, and how I had forgotten that Spanish restaurants do have
breaks during the late afternoons that I had to make do with a snack.
The Port of
Las Palmas is quite a busy place, with heaps of containers with supplies for the
whole island, though I do wonder why when translated signs are put up no one
cares to consult native speakers to ensure the English signs are correct. Oh! I
forgot; if the British Center (sic) was anything to go by, I have to forgive
all the Spanish mistakes, now, that leaves one rather irked if those whose
mother-tongue it is, fail to conform to correct usage.
The Supreme Court in the UK gave two gay men, one from Iran and the other from Cameroon the right to seek refugee status [1] in the UK by reason of their sexuality.
The men having been through the standard processes of seeking asylum had their requests rejected with the Immigration department advising them to return to their countries, live discretely and in the process avoid detection and consequent prosecution for their homosexuality.
The advice might sound rational to some minds but it really goes against the spirit of the conventions that guide the offering of asylum to those fleeing persecution.
Hostile cultures and laws
In Iran, homosexuals run the gauntlet of execution, in Cameroon and many other African countries their laws codify homosexuality as crimes punishable by long terms of imprisonment.
In African countries especially, many fail to appreciate that those laws are really hangovers from colonial times and the so-called colonial masters of the yester-years have already abrogated those laws and given recognition and rights to homosexuals both from a civil and human rights perspectives.
Whereas, certain of these countries might have emancipated in some ways a fundamentalist streak of religious adherence has increased the level of homophobic advocacy and the promulgation of intolerant laws along with the oft touted idea of homosexuality not being in conformity with their customs.
The fact is our customs in general hardly allows the tyranny of the majority over the minority; the people might at worst be ostracised but usually never persecuted, communities find ways to co-exist rather than execute judgement on the different; that is what is really alien to our culture and new to our expression of identity.
Populism dampening our humanity
In the UK and Europe, immigration has been a serious issue and populist politicians have gained electoral leverage with their rhetoric but surely this should not be at the expense of offering refuge to the persecuted.
Some might even count the monetary cost of each refugee but against the greater sense of justice and the lessons to be taught from offering protection to the persecuted as a message to their hostile home countries this far outweighs the reductionism to the so-called waste of taxpayers’ money. Immigration policy toughness expressed in not granting asylum on clear humanitarian grounds is cold-hearted to say the least.
Obviously, there is the issue of the possible abuse of the system, where heterosexuals or borderline bisexuals might claim to be homosexuals or even transsexuals because they are clearly affected too, to gain refugee status.
Sexuality polygraphs
Crude as this might seem one might suggest the use of some sort of sexuality polygraph test, even a sexuality psychometric test or both. It might be demeaning in some ways but the fate that somewhat awaits those who are really not of the sexuality of the majority on being deported to their home countries is a far worse situation.
I am sure this can be designed with psychological, psychiatric, sociological and emotional sensitivity under counselling and humane guidance teasing out the nuanced and latent sensibilities of the subject offering a refined template of measurement that eliminates to some extent stereotypes.
Such tests should also be designed with input from free homosexuals in the West from these hostile cultures so that the assessments are better tuned to get at the underlying truth.
The case is made and closed
The case for granting asylum to those persecuted for their sexuality is made but the one for truly assessing who is a true homosexual for gaining refugee status should commence as a body of evolving knowledge.
As Lord Hope stated in his ruling, “The refugee convention was not drafted with sexuality in mind. That it has become such an important issue today is attributed in part to the rise of religiously motivated ideologies - Christian, Muslim or otherwise - in certain countries.”
He goes on to say with respect to advances in social liberties in the West that, “It is only by the distance we have travelled as a society that we are now obliged to offer protection to those who would face prison, rape, torture or death for their sexual identity.”
We can only really celebrate our freedoms in truth when we are also ready to grant such to those who find no expression of that freedom in their home countries and seek the protection of ours.
