It is time to start my healing process...
I shall answer to my God
If question ever were He to of my love for her.
He knows it,
she knows it,
I know it,
That the love was love.
The love was immense.
Endless was the love.
We stuck to our love,
Through the mill,
We believed in each other,
Through the storm,
We were each other's rock.
Yesterday I cried.
Today I cry.
The tears come trickling.
I know not if I shall stop,
The pain too severe.
But my dear,
Through all the hurt,
I still will find it in me
To forgive.
As you desire,
I shall set you free.
So fly.
Fly high
Go for your dreams
The world is yours to conquer.
My one and only love.
Monday, May 14, 2007
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
...Somber day in Cameroon...
Email from my friend in Cameroon:
Dear friends,
It has been a dark weekend for Cameroon;
In a split second we lost prominent local businessmen (Cameroonians, Chinese, etc.), Top management staff of MTN Cameroon (CEO, CFO & husband, and 2 others), 3 of Cameroons international referees on their way to manage a continental clash, and the list goes on.
To the families, friends, colleagues and other close ones of these victims I pray for courage in this time of grief.
Have a safe week ahead.
********************************************************
Flight 507 engine failure a focus
POSTED: 9:23 p.m. EDT, May 7, 2007
Story Highlights
MBANGA-PONGO, Cameroon (AP) -- The searchers drove as far as they could into the swamp and then set out on foot, crawling over soggy earth until they found signs of so many lost lives.
A white tennis shoe. A black purse of braided leather. A length of orange and blue cloth that a woman might have worn as a skirt. Unrecognizable, shredded debris hanging from trees.
Crash investigators were combing through the wreckage of Kenya Airways Flight 507 on Monday. They were concentrating on the possibility that the jet lost power in both engines during a storm and tried to glide back to the airport before plunging nose-first into a mangrove swamp.
All 114 people on board were killed.
Members of the recovery team -- some soldiers in camouflage and red berets, others barefoot villagers in shorts and T-shirts -- used branches as walking sticks during the 20-minute hike to the site. Workers placed bodies and body parts found nearby on stretchers and carried them to waiting ambulance. Trees had been chopped down and placed over puddles to make the walk easier.
The Nairobi-bound Boeing 737-800 sent a distress signal shortly after takeoff Saturday from Douala, delayed an hour by storms, and then lost contact 11-13 minutes later. It took more than 40 hours to locate the wreckage, most of it submerged in murky orange-brown water and concealed by a thick canopy of trees.
"The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp," said Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport. He said the plane disintegrated on impact.
The early investigation is focusing on a theory that the plane lost power in both engines but did not have enough altitude to glide back to the airport, a source close to the airline's investigation in Kenya, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
A Cameroonian coast guard official helping lead the recovery operation said late Monday one of the plane's two black boxes had been found, a development that could help investigators determine what happened on the flight. It was not clear whether it was the data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder, or what condition it was in. The official, Capt. Francis Ekosso, did not immediately have further details.
The wreckage was found late Sunday along the plane's expected flight path. Procedures for losing all power in an aircraft call for the pilot to try to return to the airport along the same path. A nosedive crash also is consistent with a plane stalling as a pilot desperately tries to coax the plane farther along the glide path.
There were no survivors, said Luc Ndjodo, a local government official.
"We assume that a large part of the plane is underwater," said Ndjodo. "I saw only pieces.
'Scene of horror'
Debris at the crash site is spread over a small area roughly the size of a soccer field.
"It's a scene of horror," said Bernard Atebede, prefect of the nearby town of Vouri. "I saw things that should never be seen. It makes you realize the fragility of life."
He said 20 bodies have been recovered, and DNA testing would be used to determine the identities of some.
Among the 105 passengers on board was Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent Anthony Mitchell, 39, who had been on assignment in the region. Nine crew members also were on board.
Initially, the search focused on the rugged, forested area near the town of Lolodorf, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Douala. Sobakam said officials were led astray by an incorrect satellite signal, possibly emitted from the plane.
But fishermen living in the swampy mangroves near the Douala airport reported hearing a loud sound at the time of the crash.
"It was the fishermen ... who led us to the site," Sobakam said Sunday. "It's close enough that we could have seen it from the airport -- but apparently there was no smoke or fire."
'Just a big muddy hole'
A U.S. Embassy official who saw the crash site from a plane Monday said it would have been impossible to find from the air without coordinates provided by searchers on the ground. He said searchers in planes saw nothing when they flew over the site Sunday after hearing reports that the plane could have gone down in the swamp.
"It's not what you expect -- a bunch of trees knocked down and charred," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. "It's just a big muddy hole, like many others out there."
The U.S. and France are among the nations providing aircraft and other equipment to help Cameroon. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board team was expected to arrive Tuesday.
Capt. James Ouma, Kenya Airway's chief pilot, told journalists that Douala airport does not have weather radar but that such equipment was not mandatory because airplanes are required to have their own weather radars.
Stormy weather, power failure a focus
Officials said it was too early to tell what caused the plane to go down so soon after takeoff. But crash investigators focused on the stormy weather as a possible contributor to the crash.
Another source close to the investigation, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said officials wanted to know if the storms caused the plane to lose power in both engines. Also of interest was whether a power failure caused the aircraft's own radar to fail, the source said.
One of the many unanswered questions is why the plane stopped emitting signals after an initial distress call. The plane is equipped with an automatic device that should have kept up emissions for another two days.
An exhausted battery could be one reason, said Capt. Paul Mwangi, head of operations for Kenya Airways. He also said Sunday the device could have been destroyed upon impact.
Kenya Airways is considered one of Africa's safest airlines. The Douala-Nairobi flight runs several times a week, and commonly is used as an intermediary flight to Europe and the Middle East. Many passengers had been booked to transfer in Nairobi.
The plane was only six months old, said Titus Naikuni, chief executive of Kenya Airways.
The last crash of an international Kenya Airways flight was on Jan. 30, 2000, when Flight 431 was taking off from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on its way to Nairobi. Investigators blamed a faulty alarm and pilot error for that crash, which killed 169 people.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Dear friends,
It has been a dark weekend for Cameroon;
In a split second we lost prominent local businessmen (Cameroonians, Chinese, etc.), Top management staff of MTN Cameroon (CEO, CFO & husband, and 2 others), 3 of Cameroons international referees on their way to manage a continental clash, and the list goes on.
To the families, friends, colleagues and other close ones of these victims I pray for courage in this time of grief.
Have a safe week ahead.
********************************************************
Flight 507 engine failure a focus
POSTED: 9:23 p.m. EDT, May 7, 2007
Story Highlights
MBANGA-PONGO, Cameroon (AP) -- The searchers drove as far as they could into the swamp and then set out on foot, crawling over soggy earth until they found signs of so many lost lives.
A white tennis shoe. A black purse of braided leather. A length of orange and blue cloth that a woman might have worn as a skirt. Unrecognizable, shredded debris hanging from trees.
Crash investigators were combing through the wreckage of Kenya Airways Flight 507 on Monday. They were concentrating on the possibility that the jet lost power in both engines during a storm and tried to glide back to the airport before plunging nose-first into a mangrove swamp.
All 114 people on board were killed.
Members of the recovery team -- some soldiers in camouflage and red berets, others barefoot villagers in shorts and T-shirts -- used branches as walking sticks during the 20-minute hike to the site. Workers placed bodies and body parts found nearby on stretchers and carried them to waiting ambulance. Trees had been chopped down and placed over puddles to make the walk easier.
The Nairobi-bound Boeing 737-800 sent a distress signal shortly after takeoff Saturday from Douala, delayed an hour by storms, and then lost contact 11-13 minutes later. It took more than 40 hours to locate the wreckage, most of it submerged in murky orange-brown water and concealed by a thick canopy of trees.
"The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp," said Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport. He said the plane disintegrated on impact.
The early investigation is focusing on a theory that the plane lost power in both engines but did not have enough altitude to glide back to the airport, a source close to the airline's investigation in Kenya, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to the press.
A Cameroonian coast guard official helping lead the recovery operation said late Monday one of the plane's two black boxes had been found, a development that could help investigators determine what happened on the flight. It was not clear whether it was the data recorder or the cockpit voice recorder, or what condition it was in. The official, Capt. Francis Ekosso, did not immediately have further details.
The wreckage was found late Sunday along the plane's expected flight path. Procedures for losing all power in an aircraft call for the pilot to try to return to the airport along the same path. A nosedive crash also is consistent with a plane stalling as a pilot desperately tries to coax the plane farther along the glide path.
There were no survivors, said Luc Ndjodo, a local government official.
"We assume that a large part of the plane is underwater," said Ndjodo. "I saw only pieces.
'Scene of horror'
Debris at the crash site is spread over a small area roughly the size of a soccer field.
"It's a scene of horror," said Bernard Atebede, prefect of the nearby town of Vouri. "I saw things that should never be seen. It makes you realize the fragility of life."
He said 20 bodies have been recovered, and DNA testing would be used to determine the identities of some.
Among the 105 passengers on board was Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent Anthony Mitchell, 39, who had been on assignment in the region. Nine crew members also were on board.
Initially, the search focused on the rugged, forested area near the town of Lolodorf, about 140 kilometers (90 miles) southeast of Douala. Sobakam said officials were led astray by an incorrect satellite signal, possibly emitted from the plane.
But fishermen living in the swampy mangroves near the Douala airport reported hearing a loud sound at the time of the crash.
"It was the fishermen ... who led us to the site," Sobakam said Sunday. "It's close enough that we could have seen it from the airport -- but apparently there was no smoke or fire."
'Just a big muddy hole'
A U.S. Embassy official who saw the crash site from a plane Monday said it would have been impossible to find from the air without coordinates provided by searchers on the ground. He said searchers in planes saw nothing when they flew over the site Sunday after hearing reports that the plane could have gone down in the swamp.
"It's not what you expect -- a bunch of trees knocked down and charred," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media. "It's just a big muddy hole, like many others out there."
The U.S. and France are among the nations providing aircraft and other equipment to help Cameroon. A U.S. National Transportation Safety Board team was expected to arrive Tuesday.
Capt. James Ouma, Kenya Airway's chief pilot, told journalists that Douala airport does not have weather radar but that such equipment was not mandatory because airplanes are required to have their own weather radars.
Stormy weather, power failure a focus
Officials said it was too early to tell what caused the plane to go down so soon after takeoff. But crash investigators focused on the stormy weather as a possible contributor to the crash.
Another source close to the investigation, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said officials wanted to know if the storms caused the plane to lose power in both engines. Also of interest was whether a power failure caused the aircraft's own radar to fail, the source said.
One of the many unanswered questions is why the plane stopped emitting signals after an initial distress call. The plane is equipped with an automatic device that should have kept up emissions for another two days.
An exhausted battery could be one reason, said Capt. Paul Mwangi, head of operations for Kenya Airways. He also said Sunday the device could have been destroyed upon impact.
Kenya Airways is considered one of Africa's safest airlines. The Douala-Nairobi flight runs several times a week, and commonly is used as an intermediary flight to Europe and the Middle East. Many passengers had been booked to transfer in Nairobi.
The plane was only six months old, said Titus Naikuni, chief executive of Kenya Airways.
The last crash of an international Kenya Airways flight was on Jan. 30, 2000, when Flight 431 was taking off from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on its way to Nairobi. Investigators blamed a faulty alarm and pilot error for that crash, which killed 169 people.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
...Better than an episode of Cheaters...
These two were caught pants down... literally. LOL! In many parts of Africa, if you are caught cheating on your spouse, you can face punishment up to and not limited to being stoned to death. Most parts of Nigeria for example, where Shari laws prevail take this very seriously. In Zimbabwe, where these two are from, I guess the pictures tell you how they treat them. I wonder how this would be handled in Cameroon since it seems he is married to her but sleeping with her, her and her, and she is married to him, but sleeping with him, him and him. Man, I need to open a manufacturing plant for condoms.
I probably should have told you that these two didn't even have the courtesy to get a room. They were right behind the market.
I probably should have told you that these two didn't even have the courtesy to get a room. They were right behind the market.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
...Why Africa is poor. Really!
Although many people consider Africa poor, the continent is rich in resources and one can only bemoan the situation in which the people of Africa are. How does one explain being rich in resources but really poor? How do you come to see that a people that are so warm and friendly can be so destitute and corrupt? How do you explain an act so inebriated and cancerous that a government official, instead of trying to help his people would be ridding it of the financial regiment that sustains such a lethargic economy?
“Africa: Rich in Resources but Economically misfit. The Case of Cameroon.” is the title of a term paper I submitted in 2006. In it, I talked about the theoretical and conceptual principles in the economical and financial health of the 82nd richest country in the world, (GDP-Gross Domestic Product of $16,875,000,000. World Development Indicators database, World Bank, April 23, 2007) cross referencing such wealth to the current factors that cripple any meaningful sustainable economic development and growth in the country of 16million people. Although Cameroon has this much potential, ranked among the top ten percentile in Africa, ahead of Gold-producing power houses Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, little is left to be desired in the country’s futile trade and industry scene. In 2005, it was estimated that a little more than 40% of the country’s households live on less than $2 a day, while the average household lives on about $6-9 daily.
While the economic picture vis-à-vis the potential show a considerable departure from progress or adequate utilization of its resources, Cameroon has never failed to RSVP economic meetings abroad. This, most ministerial budgeters see as an opportunity not just to go abroad, but also to transport their ill-gotten loot to foreign banks and sap their country of any more financial resources as they report exorbitant expenses. For example, when the Minister of State of Communications visited Bonn, Germany for a conference in 2006 for three business days, he had a delegation of four. The report they submitted for expenses totaled almost $40000. Now, imagine how many round trip air tickets and hotel room packages can be bought for that much. But then, since there are no checks and balances, the government is bound to absorb the charges. How ironic that this delegation had just flown back from Bonn with an insurmountable amount of knowledge learnt from the conference that was based on the role of Communication in the Good Governance and Anti-corruption war.
Please look at the picture below and tell me if you see what these people learnt during a conference just like the one my Minister of Communications attended, and whether they are more likely to plunge a country into the troughs of poverty rather than development.
...Yea you guessed right, probably the jet lag!
“Africa: Rich in Resources but Economically misfit. The Case of Cameroon.” is the title of a term paper I submitted in 2006. In it, I talked about the theoretical and conceptual principles in the economical and financial health of the 82nd richest country in the world, (GDP-Gross Domestic Product of $16,875,000,000. World Development Indicators database, World Bank, April 23, 2007) cross referencing such wealth to the current factors that cripple any meaningful sustainable economic development and growth in the country of 16million people. Although Cameroon has this much potential, ranked among the top ten percentile in Africa, ahead of Gold-producing power houses Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, little is left to be desired in the country’s futile trade and industry scene. In 2005, it was estimated that a little more than 40% of the country’s households live on less than $2 a day, while the average household lives on about $6-9 daily.
While the economic picture vis-à-vis the potential show a considerable departure from progress or adequate utilization of its resources, Cameroon has never failed to RSVP economic meetings abroad. This, most ministerial budgeters see as an opportunity not just to go abroad, but also to transport their ill-gotten loot to foreign banks and sap their country of any more financial resources as they report exorbitant expenses. For example, when the Minister of State of Communications visited Bonn, Germany for a conference in 2006 for three business days, he had a delegation of four. The report they submitted for expenses totaled almost $40000. Now, imagine how many round trip air tickets and hotel room packages can be bought for that much. But then, since there are no checks and balances, the government is bound to absorb the charges. How ironic that this delegation had just flown back from Bonn with an insurmountable amount of knowledge learnt from the conference that was based on the role of Communication in the Good Governance and Anti-corruption war.
Please look at the picture below and tell me if you see what these people learnt during a conference just like the one my Minister of Communications attended, and whether they are more likely to plunge a country into the troughs of poverty rather than development.
...Yea you guessed right, probably the jet lag!
...So VETOed; What can you do about it?
My man, Dub-ya did say yesterday that he didn't think the bill before him made much sense. While I applaud his resilience and duck-taped stubborness on anything concerning Iraq, I also realise he is the ultimate deciding power in this country. Should Bush have waited for more intelligence before dragging us into Iraq? Sure. Should he have gathered support and tried his hand at diplomacy first? YEAH!
Should he have had a consistent plan and a strategy for withdrawal after success? Sure. Are our friends, relatives and loved ones dying in the war? Damn Right! So why is he so stubborn and in utter denial of the reality of the war...
The reason is simple: You voted for him ... twice! Now take that. Actually, I take that back. You voted for him once because of Florida.
Many people would gladly say this man, Dub-ya, is going to go down in history as the worst president ever in the history of the US. True, but he may also become a heroic influence for rogue leadership as he has set an untellable presidence, that I am sure others would gladly emulate.
The Senate understood that their bill would do very little to shake Bush of his stance, but they nonetheless went ahead and put it through. At least they did something right for once. Remember before the war, they all voted to send our man, Dub-ya to war with a blank check? Then come time for elections, they all came out swinging at Dub-ya saying the war wasn't going right, the war could have and should have been avoided, etc. You voted them back in, and they are now back to big ole buddy-system voting for bills. Politics is an institution of fanatics even greater than religious extremism, I must point out here. These old goons have the powers to make decisions but when they get to the Hill, their resolve is to do what their next buddy is doing, and pass irrasive bills.
Let's see what these people at the Hill and our man, Dub-ya at the Maison Blanche or La Casa Blanca or das weiße Haus have done to our beloved country:
1. Gas is $3.00 a gallon when before our man stepped into the White House, gas was $1.09. The economy could have suffered no worse fate.
2. I cannot have a normal phone conversation because I know they are listening.
3. The-US-dollar-to-UK-pound conversion rate was 0.96 in 2000(the dollar was almost the same value as a pound, now, it is 0.49 (dropped to almost half the value of a pound)This tells you the value of the US dollar outside of its boundaries.
4. The justice system has been made fun of in so many ways. Some of which are:
a)THEY Fired Atty Generals because of their failure to acknowledge republican power and lied that their performance left lots to be desired. When the inquest by House Committee started, they tell everyone that Karl Rove's emails went missing. Email records from 2001 to 2006 from his computer and also from the servers. How convenient!
b)THEY Leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. As if firing her husband was not enough, they went ahead and told reporters that his wife was a CIA operative.
c)THEY Drowned people in New Orleans. I don't need to elaborate this point any further...actually I have one for this point. THEN THEY Had their mother call people in the astrodome, refugees "living in better conditions [in the astrodome,] than they are used to in their regular daily lives." ...Oh and gave THEIR friend, FEMA director, a new job after his "commendable and excellent handling of the Katrina disaster".
d)THEY Lied to Congress about his rationale for war. Do I really need to elucidate here?
e)THEY Disgraced a decorated war hero, Colin Powell, by reducing him to a lying-cheating-coniving head hunter for an administration riddled with indignant affinity for revenge on Saddam and strip his country of its oil.
f)THEY Massacred the queen's language on numerous occasions,etc
5. The list continues... (don't want us to spend the day on this, but please feel free to add to the list)
Why are you surprised about Iraq?
From its inception, the War to Free Iraq was doomed to go sour. The administration was never forthcoming with their motive for war and time went on and international opposition mounted, they continued to make up reasons. Saddam has WMDs
(which have not been found till date); Saddam hosts Al-Qaeda terrorists (which is a blatant lie); Saddam is a dictator and is killing his poeple (I will get back to this later); Saddam bought uranium from Niger, Africa, to build WMDs (Ginomous lie-Ambassador Wilson proved it); the reasons went on as the war progressed. I wonder how they could have passed up the fact that Saddam cheated on his wife too.
The administration lied from day one and they still continue to throw (for lack of a better term) shit in the faces of the American people and actually smear it all over. It is ridiculous that in this land of freedom, the administration would hijack personal liberties, amongst other things and blatantly violate the constitution by infringing on the rights of its people and actually act as though to say: "what would you do about it?"
Although the motives for war were shady and the conduct of said war has been far less inspiring, Dub-ya is the ultimate executive power in this country and decided whether or not we go to war, and also decides how much can be spent at the war, and how it should be run. It is what the constitution says so the Senate was sort of fighting a battle that was out of their arena when they cut a spending bill and sent one to Bush saying that troops should start leaving Iraq by July 1st, 2007. The war was waged by the President, and until the President says it's enough, our troops are going to be in Iraq . All we can do is organize rally after rally after rally and hope that he understands that we hate the idea of war.
I know you don't want to hear this from someone who has been Dub-ya's nultimate fan from his days at Stanford, but the constitution says so and I am a sucker for history and the law, so constitution hurray! The only thing though is that the other articles of the constitution preventing wire- tapping without warrants, bank account tracking without warrants, etc have been swept under the rug. It is lamentable that the cherry-picking never ends. HURRAY CONSTITUTION!
Saddam's dicatorship and effects of imperialism from the West
The situation in Iraq now is worse off than it was years ago, when Saddam was their leader. Minus the fact that they are at war, the country is now in a civil war that pits tribes against each other. The Sunnis and Shiites hated each other and now, it is only more prevalent as violence keeps escalating. This is what Saddam knew and sought to put to rest. No wonder he was so draconian with his rules and would crack down at the sign of any uprising.
The US, just like colonial powers in the mid 1800s to late 1900s, failed to realise that instituations that work for one society will not work for another society. Islam and it's people have a democracy of their kind and although this doesn't necessarily work for the West in general and the US in particular, did not necessitate a strike and war as has been the case in the past 4 years. Moslems through Islam are keen to allowing themselves be ruled by someone they believe is doing all in their interests just as Allah commanded. They retire their freewill to the common good of their religion, which is evermore present in their government.
In the US and much of the West, on the contrary, our democracy obliges us to each exercise individual freewill and choice. We have a say in everything that we want done and the affairs of state are distant to religion because we each have a freewill to either believe or not believe in God or not.
The picture is that of two contrasting ends of the spectrum and for us to come out successful, we need to understand not only the culture behind their way of life, but also the fashions of their thoughts.
You march in with guns and bombers, they throw stones but still come out martyrs to their country men. They will go as far as blowing themselves up in crowds in order to put through their message.
I would close with an anecdote that my father once told me. A man was in his house watching TV when he noticed a mouse running around. He caught the mouse and took it outside and set it on fire. The mouse, on fire, ran back into the house and the structure was incenerated.
Should he have had a consistent plan and a strategy for withdrawal after success? Sure. Are our friends, relatives and loved ones dying in the war? Damn Right! So why is he so stubborn and in utter denial of the reality of the war... The reason is simple: You voted for him ... twice! Now take that. Actually, I take that back. You voted for him once because of Florida.
Many people would gladly say this man, Dub-ya, is going to go down in history as the worst president ever in the history of the US. True, but he may also become a heroic influence for rogue leadership as he has set an untellable presidence, that I am sure others would gladly emulate.
The Senate understood that their bill would do very little to shake Bush of his stance, but they nonetheless went ahead and put it through. At least they did something right for once. Remember before the war, they all voted to send our man, Dub-ya to war with a blank check? Then come time for elections, they all came out swinging at Dub-ya saying the war wasn't going right, the war could have and should have been avoided, etc. You voted them back in, and they are now back to big ole buddy-system voting for bills. Politics is an institution of fanatics even greater than religious extremism, I must point out here. These old goons have the powers to make decisions but when they get to the Hill, their resolve is to do what their next buddy is doing, and pass irrasive bills.
Let's see what these people at the Hill and our man, Dub-ya at the Maison Blanche or La Casa Blanca or das weiße Haus have done to our beloved country:
1. Gas is $3.00 a gallon when before our man stepped into the White House, gas was $1.09. The economy could have suffered no worse fate.
2. I cannot have a normal phone conversation because I know they are listening.
3. The-US-dollar-to-UK-pound conversion rate was 0.96 in 2000(the dollar was almost the same value as a pound, now, it is 0.49 (dropped to almost half the value of a pound)This tells you the value of the US dollar outside of its boundaries.
4. The justice system has been made fun of in so many ways. Some of which are:
a)THEY Fired Atty Generals because of their failure to acknowledge republican power and lied that their performance left lots to be desired. When the inquest by House Committee started, they tell everyone that Karl Rove's emails went missing. Email records from 2001 to 2006 from his computer and also from the servers. How convenient!
b)THEY Leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. As if firing her husband was not enough, they went ahead and told reporters that his wife was a CIA operative.
c)THEY Drowned people in New Orleans. I don't need to elaborate this point any further...actually I have one for this point. THEN THEY Had their mother call people in the astrodome, refugees "living in better conditions [in the astrodome,] than they are used to in their regular daily lives." ...Oh and gave THEIR friend, FEMA director, a new job after his "commendable and excellent handling of the Katrina disaster".
d)THEY Lied to Congress about his rationale for war. Do I really need to elucidate here?
e)THEY Disgraced a decorated war hero, Colin Powell, by reducing him to a lying-cheating-coniving head hunter for an administration riddled with indignant affinity for revenge on Saddam and strip his country of its oil.
f)THEY Massacred the queen's language on numerous occasions,etc
5. The list continues... (don't want us to spend the day on this, but please feel free to add to the list)
Why are you surprised about Iraq?
From its inception, the War to Free Iraq was doomed to go sour. The administration was never forthcoming with their motive for war and time went on and international opposition mounted, they continued to make up reasons. Saddam has WMDs
(which have not been found till date); Saddam hosts Al-Qaeda terrorists (which is a blatant lie); Saddam is a dictator and is killing his poeple (I will get back to this later); Saddam bought uranium from Niger, Africa, to build WMDs (Ginomous lie-Ambassador Wilson proved it); the reasons went on as the war progressed. I wonder how they could have passed up the fact that Saddam cheated on his wife too.
The administration lied from day one and they still continue to throw (for lack of a better term) shit in the faces of the American people and actually smear it all over. It is ridiculous that in this land of freedom, the administration would hijack personal liberties, amongst other things and blatantly violate the constitution by infringing on the rights of its people and actually act as though to say: "what would you do about it?"
Although the motives for war were shady and the conduct of said war has been far less inspiring, Dub-ya is the ultimate executive power in this country and decided whether or not we go to war, and also decides how much can be spent at the war, and how it should be run. It is what the constitution says so the Senate was sort of fighting a battle that was out of their arena when they cut a spending bill and sent one to Bush saying that troops should start leaving Iraq by July 1st, 2007. The war was waged by the President, and until the President says it's enough, our troops are going to be in Iraq . All we can do is organize rally after rally after rally and hope that he understands that we hate the idea of war.
I know you don't want to hear this from someone who has been Dub-ya's nultimate fan from his days at Stanford, but the constitution says so and I am a sucker for history and the law, so constitution hurray! The only thing though is that the other articles of the constitution preventing wire- tapping without warrants, bank account tracking without warrants, etc have been swept under the rug. It is lamentable that the cherry-picking never ends. HURRAY CONSTITUTION!
Saddam's dicatorship and effects of imperialism from the West
The situation in Iraq now is worse off than it was years ago, when Saddam was their leader. Minus the fact that they are at war, the country is now in a civil war that pits tribes against each other. The Sunnis and Shiites hated each other and now, it is only more prevalent as violence keeps escalating. This is what Saddam knew and sought to put to rest. No wonder he was so draconian with his rules and would crack down at the sign of any uprising.
The US, just like colonial powers in the mid 1800s to late 1900s, failed to realise that instituations that work for one society will not work for another society. Islam and it's people have a democracy of their kind and although this doesn't necessarily work for the West in general and the US in particular, did not necessitate a strike and war as has been the case in the past 4 years. Moslems through Islam are keen to allowing themselves be ruled by someone they believe is doing all in their interests just as Allah commanded. They retire their freewill to the common good of their religion, which is evermore present in their government.
In the US and much of the West, on the contrary, our democracy obliges us to each exercise individual freewill and choice. We have a say in everything that we want done and the affairs of state are distant to religion because we each have a freewill to either believe or not believe in God or not.
The picture is that of two contrasting ends of the spectrum and for us to come out successful, we need to understand not only the culture behind their way of life, but also the fashions of their thoughts.
You march in with guns and bombers, they throw stones but still come out martyrs to their country men. They will go as far as blowing themselves up in crowds in order to put through their message.
I would close with an anecdote that my father once told me. A man was in his house watching TV when he noticed a mouse running around. He caught the mouse and took it outside and set it on fire. The mouse, on fire, ran back into the house and the structure was incenerated.
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