Here in 2013, if Japan can donate even $50m to Africa after the Fukushima disaster, then African leaders as a whole must bow down their heads in shame! As far as I am concerned, the recent and current African leaders have failed their people and I feel so disappointed about that.
In fact the development in Japan clearly shows that African leaders have been wasting our precious time for far too long! I feel so ashamed that instead of weeping for the 50 years of failure, leaders rather chose to celebrate 50yrs of “success” in Addis Ababa.
What is wrong with Africa? When are we in Africa going to have visionary leaders like those in Japan, China, South Korea, Singapore and others?
Japan and Fukushima Crises
It was barely two years ago since Japan was hit hard by the Fukushima disaster. The world watched with great pity and sorrow, the extent to which a whole country was almost washed out of the surface of the earth.
According to many economic forecasters and other political analysts, after the disaster the Japanese economy became too hopeless to the extent that any short term policies designed with the intention to transform the country within a decade would have been a day-dreaming exercise. The country had suffered to a magnitude that there was no way she could survive such economic turmoil any time soon.
Yet, it is very surprising that in less than 2 years after this Fukushima, coupled with its financial tsunami, the country managed to survive. Obviously, this couldn’t have been without visionary leadership, selflessness, hard work and commitment to true leadership principles.
Thanks to selflessness and true leadership. Today the Japanese economy is booming so much such that the government is now in a position to donate huge sums of money to the tune of $32billion to African leaders, who are shamelessly queuing up to collect the said aid behind closed doors. This is despite African leaders collectively declaring at the just-ended AU summit on the need to be bold and shun aid once and for all.
What is wrong with Africa? And when are we in Africa going to have visionary leaders like those in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and others?
A few weeks ago (May 27) when African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the OAU (now called African Union), while reading their speeches at the time, many of the leaders suggested that the time was right for Africa to be bold and reject all forms of foreign aid. Leaders rather urged themselves to demand fair trade instead. African leaders made all sorts of impressions that the continent is now bracing itself for a new sense of economic revolution devoid of foreign aid of any kind.
To refresh our memories on the words of our excellencies, here are a few statements some of them made at the just-ended AU summit:
1. President John Mahama (Ghana): the time is right for the AU to develop a funding mechanism with the goal of weaning itself from the heavy donor support.
2. Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma AU C’ssion Chairperson: It can’t be business as usual. We can’t continue to depend on foreign aid. Yes, outside help is crucial and greatly appreciated, but we must also look at ways of making ourselves independent.
Unfortunately, 2 days after making these powerful and impressive speeches, the president of Ghana then flew to France where he lobbied for French aid. From there, he then flew to Japan where he again lobbied for Japanese aid. As if that is not enough, the Japanese government then pledged to give the entire African leaders, a total of $32billion dollars in aid for the next 5 years- a development which clearly indicates that these same African leaders have no intention to stand by exactly what they preached during the 50th celebration ceremony in Addis Ababa.
For this reason, Granfadaa’ Ayitomeka, a Pan-Africanist who spoke on Radio Ghana’s Current Affairs Programme, stated that the entire AU Summit was a wasteful exercise. He called on leaders of the AU to conduct referenda in their countries as to how the ordinary citizen wants to handle the problem of neo-colonialism which has reared its ugly heads everywhere in Africa, making in impossible for the African child to benefit from Africa’s abundant resources.
What lessons are these leaders teaching the younger generation? Can the African people truly have any confidence in the words of our leaders? Can the world ever take African leaders serious when they issue statements?
When President Mahama travelled to Japan, the people of Ghana were expecting that he would have held serious discussions with the Japanese side, asking more questions about how the Asian country managed to emerge out of the Fukushima crisis with a much stronger economy in less than 2 years.
Ideally, Africans expected the president of Ghana and his African colleagues to have asked for all the strong economic policies and the measures which the Japanese counterpart put in place and ultimately made it possible for the government to generate all these money’s within such a short period to the point where they’re in a better position to give financial aid to Africa once again.
If Japan could do it in the midst of such crises, why can’t our leaders do it here in Africa? And why do we Africans get mesmerized and awed by the strength of other to support us while we do not strive to build our own strength? African leaders of today must bow down their heads in shame! Japan is a clear example of how bad has been without visionary leadership.
I have or the past few years expressed strong doubts about the ability of the continent to achieve economic independence in the next foreseeable future for as long as the thick colonial borders, tough visa restrictions on freedom of movement and the lack of confidence in the African products are concerned. Currently, there are simply too many trade agreements which have been signed by African leaders which are not working due to foreign influences based on colonial legacies.
Africa must consider the issue of industrialization, intra-African trade and the free movement of goods and services very serious. It is time for African leaders should listen to their people about the issue of importation of foreign goods which are killing the local industry.
Certainly, a country like Japan could not have survived without a strong commitment to industrialization and exportation of commercial products. They couldn’t have developed by merely holding begging bowls, looking at some other nations to come and “save” them just as we in Africa have been doing for the past 50 years of our so-called independence.
How long should Africa continue to be the supplier of raw materials and the dumping grounds of imported goods?
Action is seriously needed from African leaders to see to the swift industrialization of the continent. We have had enough of the speeches and the lectures.
H.E Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda recently stated, if we admire the strength of others such as the USA, China, Japan and Brazil, let us build our own strength now.
The time to launch Africa’s industrial revolution and to remove all those colonial chains (border and visa restrictions) which are hampering our development is now. Tomorrow may be too late.
kunwil: Mr Wole Soyinka you are wrong!! I am not a gay person, i have three children, boys to whom i will never again display public shows of affection towards in support of this anti gaylaw(un-vetted by any law society)I shall no longer kiss my infant son as i may be seen as one of the "demon gays" who is going to bring an end to the Earth with all their technology science and "evil decadent" modern Western ways, and i am happy for it.
I am also satisfied that the law also states that it will criminalize and jail anyone who defends or stands up for them as this means those gay demons will have no right to counsel as such counsel could go to jail for standing up for them in court if they lose their case....that right can be there for a murderer but the gay demons and their gay demon lovers? No way, they are worse than murderers and do not deserve such a right, forget human rights, and let us do the right thing here for posterity!!
I am terrified that their gay affections may lead to molten fire falling upon my head from the heavens as punishment from Jesus for failing to punish them harshly and cruelly enough as Jesus said we should, for them to suffer and see the error of their ways. We judge them, who does God think he is to judge them? We know better...I mean what if my children were turned gay by their gay ways and were raped by these criminals( as is happening in the decadent and dangerous western world, minus the bombings and kidnappings health and corruption and murder Nigeria is a much safer place for my children to grow up) because as we know only homosexuals can be sex offenders..i have never heard of a heterosexual rapist in my life!!. All gays are rapists and force themselves on their victims, is that not a fact? They must be destroyed, slaughtered to a man so that Nigeria can remain the pure country it has always been free from "evil western decadence", because it was never part of our culture..
I also just remembered...forget that my country is accused falsely of being one the most corrupt nations in the world( it is a lie, all our heterosexual brothers are without sin) I just remembered that as a Christian, it is wrong and a taboo and blasphemous for someone to say that Jesus was not the son of God but merely a prophet. We must now also jail Muslims for the cruel way in which they butcher their meat. Jesus will understand why we must now "punish" them for their "evil" and "un-Christian" ways....
I fear my Muslim brothers may now have to slaughter we good Christians as infidels for drinking wine and eating swine? We must kill you first....
lets have a civil war and through blood, carnage,and steel and pestilence, we shall see who is right because we cannot tolerate each others way of life anymore, because they are so offensive,and though the demon gays are in our culture now they were not in our culture in the old days when we only worshiped juju a good and honest religion....only our old culture (like juju) is permissible. I don't know, maybe we can learn to tolerate pagans and muslims to avoid war but we draw the line at gays, this is going too far!!
Although there was no written record in Nigeria of what we were doing in the old days, we know as a fact that there were no gays either...I can't prove it i can only feel it, and even though the "demon gays" are minding their business and doing it out of my sight i just know they are doing it somewhere using their own juju and disturbing my Fundamental right to practice my own peaceful form of juju and worship the god "sango" in peace, so they must face their nemesis and suffer the wrath of my righteous infliction of retribution personified in this case through my superior moral judgment as a Nigerian....But i think its okay to have premarital heterosexual sex because it doesn't spread AIDS at all, not the same way that two men kissing or living together could, that is far more dangerous....
is this a joke? and if it is not i can see why Africa fails
napata102: you can get further information on the authenticity of the letter from: 1 http://allafrica.com/stories/200510060035.html - The letter which follows is Courtesy of Dr. Vera Nobles and Dr. Chiedozie Okoro.
Two further points: 1. Christianity is older in Africa than Europe, the Coptic church has a direct line to the original Christan followers. There are numerous references to Africa in the Bible (Egypt and Ethiopia) but none to Europe i.e. UK or Germany ... 2. If you are unable to distinguish between true christians and those seeking to use the name of Christ and the bible for the evil doings then perhaps you ought to reread your bible. In the Bible are warnings about evil people disguised as followers of Christ. To admit that there are evil missionaries calling themselves Christians should not weaken anyone's faith. If you defend evil people (because they call themselves Christian?) then we know which side of good and evil you stand on.
riyaq: I guess west africans who have been slaves feel fit to talk about the politics of other nations, how ironic
ETHIOPIA is a poor country with no allies, while egypt can has the entire arab league and the muslim world.
Egypt can flank ethiopia from the rear in somalia, the east from eritrea and djibouti, and from the north in sudan
ethiopia has no ocean nor navy........further more ethiopia cant even handle somalia or its own ethnic grups seeking independence
i don't think eritrea and djibouti will take part in it. and how you gonna attack Ethiopia with a navy? it is landlocked. Ethiopia got Kenya, Uganda and most other Nile nations on it's side and the Arab league is useless as you can tell by Somalia and the Arab spring. and if Egypt attacks Ethiopia it will not look good with the rest of the world. somalia can't handle it's on problems by its self. somaliland wants to breakaway.
Uganda joins Sudan in support of Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam http://nazret.com/blog/index.php/2013/06/13/ethiopia-uganda-joins-sudan-in-support-of-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam "It is advisable that chauvinistic statements coming out of Egypt are restrained and through the Nile Valley Organization rational discussions take place," Mr. Museveni said. "No African wants to hurt Egypt; however, Egypt cannot continue to hurt black Africa and the countries of the tropics of Africa."
Somaliland What is Somaliland?s stance on this issue and what role would they play?
The people of Somaliland will never forget the role Egypt played during the struggle years against Siad Barre?s regime. Egypt armed and supplied military hardware that was used to slaughter the people of Somaliland. After reclaiming our independence in 1991, Egypt has been using their influence in the Arab/Africa world to hinder any chance of us getting recognition.
Somaliland?s strongest ally in Africa is Ethiopia. Since reclaiming the independence we were granted in 1960, Ethiopia and Somaliland have shared an unbreakable bond. Both countries have operated on issues such as trade and security. A close relationship ? but not close enough considering the fact they have yet to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign nation. Regardless, Somaliland remains loyal to their brothers of Ethiopia. If the two countries do go to the war we will support them through thick and thin.
The Somaliland government has made their stance on this issue clear and expressed their commitment to defend Ethiopia. That being said, we need Ethiopia to meet us half-way and take the lead of granting us our rightful recognition. It?s time we stop lying in bed with each other and make our relationship legal and official.
Ethiopia has every right to use the Nile waters to develop their nation and provide for their citizens just like other countries situated on the Nile. It?s in Egypt?s best interest to diplomatically resolve this issue with Ethiopia and reach a common solution that will benefit both countries. If Egypt insists on stirring chaos, Ethiopia can definitely count on the people of Somaliland to help them fight off any potential threat. http://somalilandpress.com/somaliland%C2%B4s-role-in-potential-egyptian-ethiopian-war-42555
this is hilarious ......99 percent of egypt is arab
and the 1 percent who are nubian who look s[b]omali/ethiopian are not black
go see how negroids are treated in egypt, they are called boonka boonka lol[/b]
"Egypt’s indigenous Nubians still battling to find a place"
"The lush farmland where Bakri Gaffar played as a boy, scaling palm trees and fishing the Nile, now lies deep underwater.
Gaffar, 75, still remembers every contour of his village, which the Egyptian government submerged in the 1960s along with dozens of others to make way for the landmark Aswan High Dam.
At the time, international outrage over the project focused on the threat to the treasured Abu Simbel temple, built in the 13th century B.C. by the Pharaoh Ramses II and considered one of Egypt’s great archaeological sites. A U.N. salvage operation that relocated the temple block by block above the new water line made headlines across the globe. A smaller temple nearby also was saved, and now stands at a public park in Spain.
There was considerably less concern, however, for the fate of the area’s indigenous people, Egypt’s Nubians, the African descendants of one of the world’s oldest civilizations. For them, the rising waters meant leaving villages they’d inhabited for millennia, abandoning centuries of traditions. Their ancient language has gone all but extinct.
Now, after decades of being denied compensation, the Nubians have enjoyed a string of victories that have transformed this tranquil patch of southern Egypt into a hotbed of politics and activism. Still to be seen is how the current round of political turmoil in Cairo will affect that progress. Mohammed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate who was declared Egypt's next president on Sunday, carried Aswan, the governorate that includes Abu Simbel, but the Nubian roots of Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the leader of the military council that’s ruled Egypt since Hosni Mubarak resigned the presidency, are considered of little value. A Twitter campaign on the anniversary of the evacuation of the last displaced village declared the powerful general “Nubian in name only,” just the latest in a long line of leaders who’ve failed them.
“They all talk about the return of Nubians and compensation. They talk about ‘respecting’ the culture,” said Fatma Emam, a Cairo-based human rights activist and prominent Nubian blogger. “But they don’t talk about recognizing Nubian as a local language or teaching Nubian history as part of Egyptian history, and nobody makes clear what’s been happening to us since 1902. Nobody’s talking apologies.”
Gaffar, swatting flies one recent afternoon in a mud-brick house in a Nubian village near the Sudanese border, has modest aspirations. “I’m hoping that we’ll win back at least some of our rights,” he said. There's no way to recover what was lost to the dam. “The palm trees, the grass we grew, our way of life, all that’s gone. We just want something back, anything.”
The legacy of displacement is a deep wound throughout the entire swath of Nubian Egypt, which stretches about 200 miles from the Sudanese border north to the city of Aswan, north of the High Dam. The moves were traumatic enough – survivors and activists recall how primary school once began at third grade because a generation of children had died in the last transfer – but that wasn’t even the final blow. Nubians were barred from most sensitive security positions and stripped of their language, and they endured bitter racism from the lighter-skinned Arabs.
“They call themselves the grandsons of the pharaohs! Ha! Can you believe they even make the pharaohs white in the movies?” said Mohamed Abdel Basit, a Nubian teacher who has no state-issued ID card because he won’t pay the nominal processing fee “to buy an identity that’s not my own.”
Successive Egyptian governments systematically repressed southern murmurs of dissent, buying off local leaders and dispatching emissaries from Cairo to guard Arab interests. When Arab nationalist President Gamal Abdel Nasser submerged historic Nubia in his High Dam project, he named the vast man-made lake he created after himself – yet another insult to the indigenous people who wanted it called Lake Nubia.
“When someone dies, you put HIS name on the grave, not the undertaker’s,” said Yahia Zaied, 26, a Cairo-based activist who hails from the southernmost village of Adindan along the Sudanese border.
When the state agreed to open a Nubian museum in Aswan, Egyptian officials tried to leave “Nubian” out of the official name, but they caved when the U.N. threatened to pull its funding. Arab curators struck back by installing a tablet at the museum’s entrance that describes Ramses II’s Nubian conquests more than 3,000 years ago.
Until this year, Nubians weren’t allowed to use the museum for their cultural events, and all the main administrators were non-Nubians. Since the uprising, however, Nubians have planned a lecture series and other events in an attempt to assert their own stewardship of a museum dedicated to their history.
Since Mubarak’s fall, Nubian activists have pressured the authorities to loosen the restrictions on their community after decades of close surveillance and constant suspicion of secession plots. They registered a civil society group that had been denied approval for four years and are pursuing business ventures with partners across the border in Sudan. They now can apply for deeds to the government-built houses they’ve lived in since the 1960s.
They’re training instructors who’ll be able to teach the endangered Nubian language openly. Bookstores are free to stock formerly banned historical texts that show Nubians as the original Egyptians, erstwhile emperors in a land where they’re now relegated to the marginalized servant class.
Impatient with the state’s unfulfilled promises of funds for a return to lands along the Nile, young Nubians from Cairo and Aswan are pooling their money in collectives that buy plots and encourage Nubians to return. They’re targeting prime farmland along the Nile, the traditional center of Nubian life, and boldly challenging elders who are holding out for government redress.
“We’re doing it on our own. We’re not waiting for the government to move us again,” said Mabrouk Mahgoub Amara, 38, an activist at the vanguard of the land-buying movement. He’d swapped his city clothes for a traditional white gown as he strolled a plot of reclaimed farmland in the heart of historic Nubia.
“I feel that the spirits of my ancestors roam around me here,” Amara said, surveying his verdant acres in Abu Simbel. “I imagine our lands underwater, and it makes me dream. This hope I have now, I really want to see it implemented in changes.”
“I’m so excited and happy that they’re cultivating here again,” said Gameel Abdel Kader, 70, a lifelong Abu Simbel farmer who’s welcomed the return of Amara and other Nubians to their ancestral lands.
Most controversially, young Nubians have adopted the tactic of demonstrations, a course many older Nubians cringe at as an affront to the Nubian tradition of nonviolence. Last September, revolutionary Nubians torched a government building in Aswan after security forces dismantled their protest camp, the first such Nubian uprising in anyone’s memory. Nubians in Abu Simbel blocked the road that tourists take to the famed temple to protest the lack of clean water.
Nubians say such acts are justified.
“It’s not that we’ve been neglected, it’s that we sacrificed our land for other Egyptians and they have to recognize that,” said Fikry Kachif, 57, the owner of a Nubian guesthouse and cultural center in Aswan. “Before, it was just about monuments and temples, but nobody was talking about the people. I think we have a big chance now.”"
Logicboy03: Bullshyt. Most pagan religions are actually patriarchal as well.
Before you throw out your eastern religions. Jus remember that no Asian country has full gay rights and equality, especially the ones where the eastern religions come from- India, China, (Japan)
not really a lot of pagan religions have a lot of powerful female gods/spirits. hell a lot of African religions seem to have a lot of women priestesses. here is something about euro paganism
The history of Paganism began in about 10,000 BC, during the Paleolithic Age. It was a time when primitive people were nomadic, and had to hunt for their food, having to follow the herds of animals to survive. This is where the belief of the God of the hunt first appeared. The men worshipped the sun, the stag horned God, and the language of the animals, as hunting was crucial to their survival. The women, who were the child bearers and the healers, where those who took care of the tribe, and were looked upon as having more power, as they were the givers of life. It was during this time, that the women discovered that their bodies were in tune with the lunar phases, and therefore they worshipped the moon, and the Goddess diety, and they were the ones who led the rituals. There were some men however, who stayed behind from the hunt, with the women, as they were old, or sick or injured. And the women, shared these lunar mysteries with these men, and this is how there became priests in the lunar cult.
In around 8000-7500 BC, agriculture was discoved quite by accident, as the food the women stored in the ground began to grow. With this realization, that the people could plant and grow their own food, came the realization of the mystery of fertility. Up until this time, the diety had been the Goddess of the lunar cult, as the men did not understand their role in the cycle of life until this point. The discovery of agriculture proved that the men also had a part in creation. Prior to this, there had been a division between the men and the women for the most part, and after this discovery, they had to work together and they no longer needed follow the herds for food to survive. This was when they became "paganized", the word pagan meaning "country dweller" Now the people were able to settle in one place and breed animals, and grow their own food. This was when the people began exploring and discovering the mysteries of life, death and rebirth.
Several writers have noted the strong historical tradition of open bisexuality and homosexuality among male Buddhist institutions in Japan. When the Tendai priest Genshin harshly criticised homosexuality as immoral, others mistook his criticism as having being because the acolyte wasn't one's own.
Nanshoku relationships inside monasteries were typically pederastic, that is, an age-structured relationship where the younger partner is not considered adult. The older partner, or nenja ("lover" or "admirer", would be a monk, priest or abbot, while the younger partner was assumed to be an acolyte (稚児 chigo?), who would be a prepubescent or adolescent boy;[6] the relationship would be dissolved once the boy reached adulthood (or left the monastery). Both parties were encouraged to treat the relationship seriously and conduct the affair honorably, and the nenja might be required to write a formal vow of fidelity. Outside of the monasteries, monks were considered to have a particular predilection for male prostitutes, which was the subject of much ribald humor.
There was no religious opposition to homosexuality in Japan in non-Buddhist kami tradition. Tokugawa commentators felt free to illustrate the kami engaging in anal sex with each other. During the Tokugawa period, some of the Shinto gods, especially Hachiman, Myoshin, Shinmei and Tenjin, "came to be seen as guardian deities of nanshoku" (male–male love). Tokugawa-era writer Ihara Saikaku joked that since there are no women for the first three generations in the genealogy of the gods found in the Nihon Shoki, the gods must have enjoyed homosexual relationships—which Saikaku argued was the real origin of nanshoku.
Military same-sex love
From religious circles, same-sex love spread to the warrior (samurai) class, where it was customary for a boy in the wakashū age category to undergo training in the martial arts by apprenticing to a more experienced adult man. The man was permitted, if the boy agreed, to take the boy as his lover until he came of age; this relationship, often formalized in a "brotherhood contract", was expected to be exclusive, with both partners swearing to take no other (male) lovers. This practice, along with clerical pederasty, developed into the codified system of age-structured homosexuality known as shudō, abbreviated from wakashūdo, the "way (do) of wakashū". The older partner, in the role of nenja, would teach the wakashū martial skills, warrior etiquette, and the samurai code of honor, while his desire to be a good role model for his wakashū would lead him to behave more honorably himself; thus a shudō relationship was considered to have a "mutually ennobling effect". In addition, both parties were expected to be loyal unto death, and to assist the other both in feudal duties and in honor-driven obligations such as duels and vendettas. Although sex between the couple was expected to end when the boy came of age, the relationship would, ideally, develop into a lifelong bond of friendship. At the same time, sexual activity with women was not barred (for either party), and once the boy came of age, both were free to seek other wakashū lovers.
Like later Edo same-sex practices, samurai shudō was strictly role-defined; the nenja was seen as the active, desiring, penetrative partner, while the younger, sexually receptive wakashū was considered to submit to the nenja's attentions out of love, loyalty, and affection, rather than sexual desire. Among the samurai class, adult men were (by definition) not permitted to take the wakashū role; only preadult boys (or, later, lower-class men) were considered legitimate targets of homosexual desire. In some cases, shudō relationships arose between boys of similar ages, but the parties were still divided into nenja and wakashū roles.
Your own madness is greater that. I use to wonder why you people don't even know the history of your religion. What would you say about inquisition? this is a process were by any none catholic member is born alive. is that not madness of the first order?
that was a long time ago Christianity is losing power especially in Europe for the better. i hope it will lose in Africa so Africa can advance. lol "born alive"
mahdino: I think u should read my reply again, when I talked on Tibet I did not say ban rather say molesting of muslims. Vatican, if u don't know is an independent state (country) and it bans islam. U can say that it is an official place so and so, then why do u see the wound in your brothers eyes and see not the one in your eyes. Mecca and Medina also is the cantonement (official) area of the muslims. You said u can go on metioning (to lists) countrys which bans christians. That is not true and it is either u are talking without knowledge or u are delibrately lying. On the countrary u should know that it is states like France that bans the muslims to cover there hair indirectly forcing them not to practice their religion. If u can go through history u will see that for over a 500 yrs muslims have ruled Egypt, India and Spain if they have used any kind of force even economic force there would not have been a single christian left in the land. In Egypt today u have coptic christians (christians from generation to generation) I ther had been bans or force how would u see them? Those christians in all the muslim ruled areas they are given testimony that there was no force or bans.
non Catholics can't live there as a matter of fact the only way you can live if you work for the church at least anybody can visit the Vatican.
riyaq: those south africans are weak, why didnt they have the balls to kill the whites who opressed them but they killing somalis who have their own buisnesses
how are we taking ur jobs, if we have our own buisness
filthy nigggggers
yeah lets kill the people who build the nation it will only prove that blacks are dangerous
just cause you people are slaves doesnt mean everyone is
somalia and egypt have been allies for more than 5,000 years
we dont like ethiopia for different reasons, egyptains helping somalis doesnt make us slaves
the fact that they are christian and they have a chunk of greater Somalia that's it. and what would Somalia benefit from helping Egypt? nothing. Ethiopia has the right to use the Nile
Eri8: Is their anybody supporting ethiopia on building the dam?
the other nile nations On 14 May 2010 at Entebbe, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda signed a new agreement on sharing the Nile water even though this agreement raised strong opposition from Egypt and Sudan. Ideally, such international agreements should promote equitable and efficient usage of the Nile basin's water resources. Without a better understanding about the availability of the future water resources of the Nile River, we could expect more conflicts between these countries relying on the Nile for their water supply, economic and social developments.
kinguwem: The Tamil Liberation Tigers were a very popular terrorist organization until they were brutally crushed by the Sri Lankan Government in May, 2009. The Tamils are predominantly hindus.
it had more to do with nationalism than religion
commonly known as the LTTE or the Tamil Tigers) was a separatist militant organisation that was based in northern Sri Lanka. Founded in May 1976 by Velupillai Prabhakaran, it waged a violent secessionist and nationalist campaign to create an independent state in the north and east of Sri Lanka for Tamil people.
In case you are thinking these pictures are photoshopped. Below is a videoclip of how an evil bird crash landed inside the church after spiritual warfare.
Two guiding premises underlie this article. The first is this: this article does not support or reject homosexuality as a sexual orientation. The purpose of this article is not to plead the cause of homosexuality as a lifestyle—there are many who have done that, and this is no place to rehash the argument. This article instead recognises the existence of homosexuals as a distinct sub-culture—a minority, if you prefer—within a larger culture, and is concerned, instead, about a philosophy of hate and prejudice against this minority which is about to be set in motion in the guise of legislation.
The second premise is this: that you, the reader, are not entrenched in some belief system that supersedes any attempt at reason. And so, this article is not for those who rely on prejudice, and by “prejudice”, I mean the bigots, the fanatics, the fundamentalists and all those who will support the stoning of a woman to death in the belief that she is a witch. It’s a waste of time and ideas to attempt a rational discussion with a person whose fundamental philosophy precludes being reasonable. If you see yourself as one of these: Dear Sir or Madam, the following paragraphs are probably a waste of your time, and the insults you intend to hurl in the comments are assuredly a waste of your talents. You would derive more satisfaction by exiting this page now. The button is quite easy to locate.
However, on the assumption that you are the sort of person who resolves a dilemma through a sequence of rational principles; the sort of person who weighs consequences against actions, understanding the relationship of cause and effect, and has the ability to separate between similar but distinct ideas, then let us reason together on the superficial logic of targeting homosexuals in Nigeria through the following arguments. The Legal Argument
An average student of law will eagerly tell you that there is a clear difference between civil law and criminal law: he will explain to you that civil law “punishes” one person for his irresponsibility towards some other person while criminal law punishes the person for his irresponsibility to the state. If you have some time on your hands, a student of jurisprudence will inform you that there is a clear difference between law and morals, and while it is the role of the state to prescribe laws for the protection of the individuals and the state, it is the role of the society to prescribe morals for acceptance in that society. He could also tell you, if you care to listen, that there are situations where the goal of morals and law overlap in the same activity and that there are situations where the law says one thing and morals state another. If our imaginary student also has ample time, he could give you this example: if you are standing by a pool and you see a child drowning, you have no obligation to save the child, and you will not go to jail for murder—except of course, you pushed the child in. Society may call you a scumbag and you may forfeit your dinner invitations, but you are not a criminal as far as the law is concerned.
In case you are puzzled, the jurist will further tell you that basic role of law is—should be—the protection of the state and other individuals from the acts of other individuals or other states, and every other function of law derives from that basic premise. He will explain that as long as an individual has not threatened the welfare of other individuals, the law has no—should have no—problem with that individual. You see, jurists generally concede that the role of law (with the exception of canon or religious law as agreed to by the adherents of that religion) is not to dictate private action, but to ensure the safety of all persons and property under general parameters. Our jurist friend could give you another example: you can decide to jump off a mountain ledge in the name of sport—that is a private action. But when, in the name of sport, you push someone else off the ledge without his consent, it becomes a crime, punishable according to the gravity of the consequence of your push. Law, therefore, prevents harm to people who have not consented to an action, either directly or indirectly. Law does not—should not—decide on what your private action should be—that’s for a Big Brother reality show. Public opinion should be left for the public, and a legal system should never, compulsorily, substitute a person’s private opinion with that of the public.
But, celebrating a gay marriage is public, you may say. Let us not digress on the issue of whether a marriage celebration—gay or not—is necessarily public. In fact, let us assume that the marriage in question is celebrated just as loudly as church marriages are celebrated. But the law in Nigeria already takes care of that by declaring such a marriage invalid. If you are naturally antagonistic to homosexual marriages—if you think the troubles of a married life are the natural reserve of a heterosexual couple, then fine, the Nigerian law already invalidates homosexual marriage. But this issue is about criminalizing what is already invalidity. An invalid action is far different from a criminal action. Entering a wrong password to your account is an invalid action, hacking into another person’s account is a criminal action. The gravity is determined by the damage it does to other people. A marriage conducted by a pastor in a Nollywood movie does not harm anybody, yet it is invalid—the law does not recognize it as a marriage, because it does not meet the legal requirements for a marriage. That’s enough. Going further to imprison actors in a Nollywood marriage ceremony is just as petty as it is absurd. And this is exactly what the Nigerian legislators propose to do.
The Moral Argument
Maybe you are worried about your sexuality being doubted. If that is a worrisome issue for you, then let me reassure you: No, you do not need to be in support of or approve homosexuality itself in order to disapprove of a law that sets out to make life difficult for homosexuals. Your heterosexuality is intact. You may relax.
This is a basic principle of conscience: just as you do not have to be black to fight slavery, or Jewish to be repulsed at Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Justice defines circumstances—your stand against an injustice should be irrespective of the nature of the person against whom the injustice is committed. Opposing the Nigerian government on its prejudicial law does not automatically commit you to a life of homosexuality.
What you are opposing is simply the use of the law to target a group of people who pose no threat to the life or property of Nigerians. You may find a homosexual person intolerable, you may forget to invite them to your dinner parties and thanksgiving services. But when you target them for jail—or keep silent while this is being done—makes you no different from the Nazis of Germany and their hatred of Jews or the Apartheid whites of South Africa and their repulsion at blacks. You see, it’s easier to sit down and criticize other bigots in history—but do nothing when faced with a similar situation.
But even worse is the criminalization of associations that support or advocate gay rights. Any student of human rights will tell you that an attempt to ban people from discussing gay marriage or promoting it is just as bad as an attempt to lock up Arsenal Football club fans. The Nigerian situation is not a joke, however, and I am confident that a court of law in no distant time will adjudge that aspect of the law as unconstitutional. It is bad enough to put homosexuals in jail—it is repugnant to natural justice to then try to muzzle any support for them. And your individual silence in the face of such an injustice is a tacit approval of its execution.
The Cultural Argument
A common argument in support of the prejudicial legislation—and one infamously and misguidedly utilized by Mr. David Mark, the Senate President, states that homosexuality is not part of our “culture”. Let us ignore the obvious fact that Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups with diversified cultures out of which at least one involves a woman “marrying” another woman, another involves a husband “gifting” his wife to a male guest, another approves raiding a neighboring nomadic camp to kidnap a wife, and several involve a brother or son taking the surviving wives of a deceased as inheritance—let’s ignore all of these disparate sexual and marital cultural phenomena and focus instead on the nature of culture. What we call “our culture” is not a set of fixed, written rules handed down by our forefathers in a leather bound book. Instead, “our culture”, like any other culture, is an interwoven set of constantly changing practices. Culture, a student of sociology will tell you, is constantly in a state of flux: it grows new ideas, it borrows from other cultures, it ceases some long-held beliefs, and it is forever changing. You see, the only permanent culture is a dead culture. Jackets and fast cars are not the African culture, but I am yet to see a black man going to jail for perfectly stringing a Windsor knot.
The Religious Argument
Arguably, the two major religions in Nigeria are against homosexuality—but what about those who are not adherents of the major religions? On the absurd assumption that every Nigerian is either a Muslim or a Christian, then why not let’s adopt the full canon of the Old Testament and Sharia? You see, as an average bible student will tell you: every head will roll. From the Christians who enjoy pork and bush meat—despite the clear injunctions of Leviticus 11—to the Muslims who have a fondness for beer. The only people left alive will be the fundamentalists, and they will soon kill each other from sheer intolerance. We might as well speed up this process and hand over the reins of government toBoko Haram. After all, what these terrorists want is the criminalization of sins and the banning of ideas from the “West”. And if we now start deciding to criminalize our sins, then we are all convicts waiting to be sentenced. The words of Jesus are more logical: he whom has no sin, let him cast the first stone.
The Political Argument
The Nigerian democratic setup—in the words of Byron—is an aristocracy of blackguards. Like the Greek gift, the goal of the legislature is to secure the affections of the unthinking Nigerians through a diversionary illusion while plundering us through other orifices. Let us not be ashamed to call a farce a farce. The threat of Boko Haram—and now Hezbollah, the devaluation of the currency, the escalating corruption in the public service, the rising price of goods, the unavailability of electric power—and several more—are far more real and dangerous threats to the welfare of the average Nigerian than the marital issues of homosexuals.
Whatever your inclinations about homosexuality, your bank account has not diminished through the sexuality of a gay person—unless, of course, you set out to spend money on some deliverance mission, which then is your own fault, but let us not digress. The point can be shown to you by any keen student of political science: as a political goal, banning homosexual marriage is at the bottom of the list of resolutions for Nigeria’s 2013. It takes a smug legislator, self-assured in the gullible nature of the average Nigerian, to hurriedly push through a law dealing with a non-issue to score cheap popularity while ignoring pressing matters.
In Conclusion
And now, here’s the worst part: if this law is allowed to sail through, it could be your affairs that will be considered criminal tomorrow. You use your left hand to write? Criminal. You squeeze your paste from the bottom of the tube? Criminal. You wear your wristwatch on the right hand. You criminal! The facts may be different, but the principle is the same. This law is a test by the legislature, a measurement of how much nonsense can be dumped on the public. Of course, it is general public opinion that there is a number of clowns seated in the legislature—some whom attained their claim to lawmaking solely by affiliation with their political party and not through a personal resume—and there is a tendency to just ignore them. However, when clowns begin to create dangerous precedents, then it is time for the audience to get serious and put them in place.
Politics / How Could Japan Offer $32billion In Aid To Africa? by TerryCarr(m): 3:24pm On Jun 21, 2013 
, would be a monk, priest or abbot, while the younger partner was assumed to be an acolyte (稚児 chigo?), who would be a prepubescent or adolescent boy;[6] the relationship would be dissolved once the boy reached adulthood (or left the monastery). Both parties were encouraged to treat the relationship seriously and conduct the affair honorably, and the nenja might be required to write a formal vow of fidelity. Outside of the monasteries, monks were considered to have a particular predilection for male prostitutes, which was the subject of much ribald humor.