THE IGBO GIANT STRIDES AGAINST ALL ODDS
9 years ago
For history buffs, the fact that an aspiring artist named Adolf Hitler was, as a young man, rejected by the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts is a stark reminder of the tantalizing contingency of historical events.
A nascent megalomaniac may wear many hats before donning the service cap and shades of a despot.
But would Hitler’s dangerous ambitions have been contained, or his malevolence deflected, had he become an accomplished artist? As history reminds us time and time again, the road to evil often contains some rather surprising detours along the way. And, as the following cases show, a nascent megalomaniac may try on many — unexpected — hats before donning the service cap and shades of a despot or mass murderer.
1. Pol Pot, Parisian Student
Three decades before his anti-intellectual regime imposed a monolingual, agrarian socialism on the people of Cambodia and claimed the lives of more than 1 million people, Pol Pot was a bilingual foreign student and bon vivant living in the City of Light. In 1949, the 24-year-old future dictator earned a scholarship to study radio electronics in Paris, where, like many student activists, he enjoyed dancing and discussing politics over vin rouge in his Latin Quarter apartment. His study-abroad experience ended after he failed his course three years in a row, forcing him to return to Cambodia in 1953, the same year that the former French colony became independent.
2. Jim Jones, Human Rights Crusader
Jim Jones, the charismatic American religious leader and founder of the People’s Temple, is best known for his role in the group’s cult murder/suicide at Jonestown in 1978, including the poisoning of more than 300 children. But prior to becoming a cult leader, Jones was an avid community organizer and integrationist who was appointed director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission in 1961. That same year, when an ulcer-suffering Jones was mistakenly placed in the black ward of a local hospital (because his doctor was black), he refused to move, and his subsequent agitating led to the integration of the hospital.
3. Idi Amin, Heavyweight Champion
Nelson Mandela was not the only former big-name African leader to have spent a great deal of time in the ring as a young man. Just a decade before he staged a 1971 coup to seize power in Uganda, a 6-foot-4-inch, 270-pound Idi Amin was the nation’s heavyweight boxing champion for more than eight years. A former officer in the British Colonial Army before turning tyrant, Amin was also a capable rugby player, though not the sharpest tool in the scrum. Army officials observed of Amin — who would later be responsible for the deaths of up to half a million of his people — that he was “a splendid type and a good (rugby) player … but … virtually bone from the neck up, and needs things explained in words of one letter.”
4. Ayatollah Khomeini, Philosopher and Poet
For most of his adult life, Ruhollah Ayatollah Khomeini was a teacher and lecturer, primarily of Islamic mysticism and philosophy. Prior to embarking on his mission to turn Iran into an Islamic theocracy, Khomeini, influenced by Aristotle and Sufi mystics, penned at least 25 books and treatises, and even some original poems. One poem, published in an Iranian newspaper just four months after Khomeini issued a fatwā against author Salman Rushdie in 1989, begins:
I have become imprisoned, O beloved, by the mole on your lip! / I saw your ailing eyes and became ill through love.
While it appears the Ayatollah is adopting a poetic persona to express a more mystical love of God, his ardent words are not what you’d expect from your average mullah.
5. Timothy McVeigh, Decorated Veteran
Four years before the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 and left hundreds more injured, terrorist Timothy McVeigh was a uniformed member of the U.S. Army participating in Operation Desert Storm. On the second day of fighting, McVeigh decapitated one Iraqi soldier and killed another, firing from more than a mile away, actions that earned him a Bronze Star. In 1997, after McVeigh was sentenced to death for his crimes, President Bill Clinton signed special legislation to prevent McVeigh from receiving the military burial and honors concomitant with his service.
The good news — and there is some — is that, according to Harvard’s Steven Pinker, in his book The Better Angels of Our Nature, recent declines in levels of human violence suggest that the correlative journey from artist, poet or scholar to mass murderer is not as achievable a career goal as it once was thanks to the growing number of social, moral and political obstacles in its path.
Still, even today, we might want to keep an eye on a former ophthalmology trainee (Bashar Assad) or a Jesuit-trained secondary school teacher (Robert Mugabe), among many others. You just never know what they may want to do when they grow up.
Obama Address To Nigerians re-echoed the civil war maxim: To keep Nigerian One is a task which must be accomplished.
Last Valentine’s Day, Oscar Pistorius killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp after firing four times through a locked bathroom door in the middle of the night. He thought Steenkamp was still in bed next to him. He thought she was an intruder, he said, offering up the flimsiest of defences for the indefensible. It was as if Pistorius knew he didn’t need to come up with a plausible explanation and so he did not even try.
Since the trial began in March, we’ve watched and waited and hoped for justice. It has been a bit surreal, given the facts of the case, to imagine an outcome where justice would not be served. Or it has been a bit surreal to accept that we live in a world where a man can justify shooting an unarmed woman through a locked door. Then again, this is also a world where an armed police officer can shoot an unarmed young black man. Whether in South Africa or Ferguson, Missouri, the rules most of us live by hardly seem to apply to white men.
Today, we have a clearer understanding of what justice means for certain groups of people, which is to say that justice can mean far too little. Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa has found Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide rather than premeditated murder. Hers is a verdict that raises the question – what does a man have to do to be found guilty of murdering a woman?
Among her comments, Judge Masipa, who has acquitted herself well throughout the trial, noted that Pistorius’s defence of his crime can “reasonably possibly be true”. The evidence against Pistorius for premeditated murder was “purely circumstantial”. He did, however, act negligently because “a reasonable person with a similar disability would have foreseen that the person behind the door would be killed, and the accused failed to take action to avoid this”. Those words are hollow because a reasonable person never would have been in such a situation in the first place.
We might be able to say that this is a failure of prosecution, that the prosecutors did not do enough to prove that Pistorius committed premeditated murder. Those words feel flimsy right now. A woman is dead at the hands of her intimate partner. She is dead under the most implausible of circumstances because what would an intruder be doing, locked in a bathroom in the middle of the night? We know, because of details that emerged after she was killed, that Steenkamp and Pistorius had volatile moments in their relationship. We know Pistorius had a penchant for modern weaponry. We know a woman is dead, and still what we know is not enough.
Among the other counts Judge Masipa adjudicated, Pistorius was convicted of the negligent handling of a firearm after he misfired a gun in a restaurant last year. One cannot help but feel that interrupting a meal and interrupting a woman’s life are offences held in somewhat equal regard in this world. Now we will have to wait until 13 October for sentencing to find out what the judge sees as a fitting punishment for this lesser crime. That punishment, too, will not be enough.
What makes this all the more offensive is how Pistorius has, essentially, framed his defence as a fear of blackness. By evoking an unseen intruder he has exploited the complex and fraught racial history of South Africa to help justify his crime. As Margie Orford wrote, in these pages, “This imaginary body of the paranoid imaginings of suburban South Africa has lurked like a bogeyman at the periphery of this story for the past year. It is the threatening body, nameless and faceless, of an armed and dangerous black intruder.”
Pistorius would have us believe that he thought his girlfriend was safely in bed next to him. He would have us believe this mythical black intruder was locked in his bathroom. He would have us believe this mythical black intruder was whom he was killing when he fired through a closed door four times, as if somehow that would be justifiable. Though early this morning I may not understand this world we live in, Oscar Pistorius understands it and what he can get away with, perfectly
CULLED: THE GUARDIAN
First of all, it’s not in your head. Mosquitoes really doprefer some people to others, says Dr. Jonathan Day, a medical entomologist and mosquito expert at the University of Florida. And that time your grandmother told you your skin was just sweeter? There’s some truth to that, Day says. “Some people produce more of certain chemicals in their skin,” he explains. “And a few of those chemicals, like lactic acid, attract mosquitoes.” There’s also evidence that one blood type (O) attracts mosquitoes more than others (A or B). Unfortunately, your genes dictate your blood type and the chemical makeup of your birthday suit. Genetics also determine several other factors that could make you an object of blood-sucking affection for your local mosquito population, Day says. Maybe the most important: Your metabolic rate, or the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) your body releases as it burns energy.
Mosquitoes use CO2 as their primary means of identifying bite targets, Day says. Why? “All vertebrates produce carbon dioxide, so what better way could there be for a mosquito to cue in on a host?” And while it’s true that you can moderate your metabolic rate through diet and exercise, you can only change your metabolism so much, Day says.
“Pregnant women and overweight or obese people tend to have higher resting metabolic rates, which may make them more attractive to mosquitoes,” he explains. Also, drinking alcohol or physically exerting yourself raises your metabolic rate—and also your appeal to winged biters, he adds. (Exercising before grabbing a beer and heading outside = asking for trouble.)
While CO2 detection is the primary technique mosquitoes and other blood-sucking bugs use to spot hosts, they also rely on secondary cues to differentiate you from cars, decaying trees, and other CO2-producing objects. And you can control some of those secondary cues, Day says.
For example: Dark clothing is more attractive to mosquitoes than light oufits. Why? “Mosquitoes have problems flying in even a slight wind, and so they keep close to the ground,” Day explains. Down there, they spot hosts by comparing your silhouette to the horizon. Dark colors stand out, while light shades blend in, he says. At the same time, lots of motion distinguishes you from your surroundings. So if you’re moving around a lot or gesturing, you might as well be shouting, “Hey, mosquitoes! I’m right here, ladies!” (Only the females bite, Day says.)
Obviously, you’re not going to spend the summer sitting stock-still in a white suit. So what are the best ways to avoid itchy bites? Day recommends protective clothing, which doesn’t mean baggy jeans and long-sleeved sweatshirts. “Lots of the lightweight, breathable fabrics made for athletes or fishermen are woven tightly enough to protect you from bugs,” he says.
If your summer style isn’t negotiable—or for those parts of your body you can’t cover up—Day recommends a mosquito repellant with 15% DEET. Just make sure to follow the label’s instructions for safe application. “Spray it into your hands and then rub it on your skin to avoid inhaling it,” he says. “That’ll protect you for around 90 minutes.”
Also, mosquitoes usually feed at dawn and dusk when the wind tends to die down and the humidity rises, Day explains. If you can stay indoors at those times, you’ll avoid bites. A good fan pointed in your general vicinity will also do a great job of keeping the bugs away. “Mosquitoes can’t fly in a breeze faster than 1 mile per hour,” Day says.
If all that fails, hug a bite-free buddy. Maybe some of his mosquito-repelling skin chemicals will rub off on you.
Culled: Time
There is no gainsaying the fact that joblessness or call it unemployment is usually the nightmare of most graduates across the globe. In a bid to disentangle oneself from the biting grips of this ugly situation, most jobless folks have adopted different approaches from the conventional to the radical. Here are three pictures of three jobless folks in three different climes, one here in Nigeria, the other in Tunisia and another in UK.
In the first picture we can see an unemployed graduate of Mechanical Engineering from Ekiti State University, Mr. Sunday Omotayo, being pleaded with by a police officer to get up after he allegedly jumped out of a speeding Toyota Hiace expecting to be crushed by oncoming vehicles.
According to him: “There is no state that I have not gone to in search of a job in the past 10 years. I came to Akwa Ibom because this is my last hope because of the stories of Governor Godswill Akpabio and his uncommon transformation. I came with the hope that with what is going on in the state, getting a job would be easy so that I can begin to be a man. But since I came, I discovered that many people from Akwa Ibom are also crying because of poverty and joblessness.”
The riots and demonstrations that have swept through Tunisia during the past 10 days also began with a small incident.
Rioting followed and security forces sealed off the town. On Wednesday, another jobless young man in Sidi Bouzid climbed an electricity pole, shouted "no for misery, no for unemployment", then touched the wires and electrocuted himself. The reactions to these events in Tunisia quickly spiralled out of control and snowballed into the Arab Spring that Swept away Muommar Gaddafi & Hosni Mubarrack of Libya and Egypt from power.
For Mr Sunday and Mohamed Bouazizi as well as Sidi Bouzid , hopelessness had set in after years of joblessness and hence their choice to express their frustration in the manner they did. But that was not obviously the case with Alfred, who graduated in May and have been applying for jobs ever since. Though Alfred has been finding it very difficult at the moment, one morning however, Alfred stood at the entrance to a busy station holding a sign that read: 'Marketing graduate (BA Hons 2:1 Coventry Uni) Ask for CV.'
Alfred's direct approach received a warm response from commuters, with many stopping to discuss potential positions. According to him, he realised that there are thousands of students out there using the same old methods of applying for jobs on-line and through recruitment agencies and so I thought I'd try something different.
'I got up early and went to the station he said. At first people just looked at me but after about 10 minutes people starting stopping and talking. They said they'd never seen anything like it before and were really impressed.Alfred's direct approach received a warm response from commuters, with many stopping to discuss potential positions. According to him, he realised that there are thousands of students out there using the same old methods of applying for jobs on-line and through recruitment agencies and so I thought I'd try something different.
As I write, another batch of corpers have just left the orientation camp. For some of these corpers, especially those of them that will come to terms with the reality inherent in the distorted acronym of NYSC as "Now Your Suffering Continues"; the morale lesson from these stories is for them to confront the situations the find themselves with approaches that are not only acceptable to the climes they find themselves but approaches that wont be counter-productive.
If out of frustration, a Nigerian graduate decides to tow the line of the Tunisian duo of Mohamed Bouazizi as well as Sidi Bouzid both of whom took their lives in order to draw attention to their plights, that fellow can be rest assured of a double jeopardy in the sense that he or she wont only have failed to better his lot or that of others but will also be dismissed as an outright failure because our society does not approve of such suicidal missions. Thank goodness that Mr. Sunday Omotayo's suicidal mission was not successful but even if he had been crushed by incoming vehicles as he had wished, he would just be dismissed as a lazy man and thus confined to the ash bin of history.
Alfred's direct approach in UK may have received a warm response from commuters, with many stopping to discuss potential job offers but the success of such approach will be minimal here in Nigeria. The reason being that the jobs are not just there. What we need is a new orientation towards job creation or self employment. While this may be a hard nut to sell, it surely remains the best option for any graduate that would not like to be frustrated.
If out of frustration, a Nigerian graduate decides to tow the line of the Tunisian duo of Mohamed Bouazizi as well as Sidi Bouzid both of whom took their lives in order to draw attention to their plights, that fellow can be rest assured of a double jeopardy in the sense that he or she wont only have failed to better his lot or that of others but will also be dismissed as an outright failure because our society does not approve of such suicidal missions. Thank goodness that Mr. Sunday Omotayo's suicidal mission was not successful but even if he had been crushed by incoming vehicles as he had wished, he would just be dismissed as a lazy man and thus confined to the ash bin of history.
Alfred's direct approach in UK may have received a warm response from commuters, with many stopping to discuss potential job offers but the success of such approach will be minimal here in Nigeria. The reason being that the jobs are not just there. What we need is a new orientation towards job creation or self employment. While this may be a hard nut to sell, it surely remains the best option for any graduate that would not like to be frustrated.
A British soldier who spotted a boy with a terrible deformity while on patrol in Bosnia has spent ten years fundraising to finally deliver his promise of giving him - a new FACE.
Staff Sergeant Wayne Ingram, 44, met four-year-old Stefan Savic a decade ago while on peacekeeping duties in Eastern Europe.
The youngster was born with a debilitating condition Tessier facial cleft which meant his eyes were 4.5cm further apart than normal and he had no proper nose.
But father-of-two Wayne, formerly of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers, was so moved by Stefan's plight he vowed to get him state-of-the-art medical help.
He collected an amazing £85,000 with a fundraising drive across Bosnia and the UK before bringing Stefan back to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital in 2003.
The youngster underwent 12 hours of surgery with plastic surgeon David Dunaway who cut his face in half before moving his eyes closer together and building him a nose.
The op was a success but Mr Dunaway warned that a second surgery would be needed a decade later.
Just a normal, playful little boy
Determined Wayne kept in touch with Stefan and his parents Slavenka, 36, and Milos, 44, raising a further £20,000 to bring him back to the UK to finish his treatment.
Stefan, now aged 14, returned to Great Ormond Street this week for his second operation with Mr Dunaway to improve his face and help his breathing.
Modest Wayne, from Weymouth, Dorset, said he was just happy to complete the remarkable job of helping Stefan lead the life of a normal little boy.
He said: "I was on a routine patrol In Bosnia when I was introduced to his father and went to meet Stefan.
"The condition had been left untreated and had grown between Stefan’s eyes, crushing his skull, forcing his eyes apart to the point he couldn’t see what was ahead of him.
"But aside from the facial deformities he was just a normal, playful little boy. He was confident and cheeky, climbing all over me as we played football in the yard.
"He was too young then to be self-aware. But his facial cleft was blocking his airways and without medical attention could kill him.
"I had two young sons myself at the time and there was no way I could stand back and do nothing. I knew in an instant I had to do everything I could to help."
Massive fundraising drive
As Wayne set about raising funds, he wrote to a long list of celebrities - but only David Beckham replied, politely explaining he had already chosen his charities for that year.
Mr Dunaway was offering his services for free but Wayne still needed to pay for flights, accommodation for the family, as well as essential hospital costs.
He raised 6,000 Euros by staging a charity football match in Banja Luka, with Muslim, Serb and Croat players setting aside their conflicts to help Stefan.
And back in the UK, Wayne launched a massive fundraising drive, persuading his local Asda to put collection boxes beside their tills.
Wayne said: "Donations poured in and I was bowled over by the generosity.
"Stefan needed three operations back then - one to remove his teeth, another to reconstruct his nose and another to reconstruct his skull.
"He was back and forth to the UK many times, staying for as long as a month at a time.
"The doctors warned us it wasn’t over, however, and that ten years later Stefan would need follow up surgery.
"But we have kept in touch ever since and as ten years neared I let Stefan’s family know I would raise the necessary funds - over £20,000."
As Wayne set about raising a second lot of cash to pay for visas, hospital costs and flights, he was once more amazed by people's generosity.
In his native Dorset one anonymous donor, calling herself simply ‘the kind granny' contributed a "large, undisclosed" amount.
And this time celebs including comic Jim Davidson and musician Billy Bragg also answered his SOS.
Honouring a promise
With the funding in place, brave Stefan underwent his four-hour follow-up operation with Mr Dunaway on Saturday and is making a good recovery.
Mr Dunaway, who once more waived his fees, said: "This operation was really about reconstructing his nose and improving his nasal airway.
"His nose was very wide and he basically didn't have a tip to it at all.
"We took a cartilage from one rib, fashioned it into the shape of a nose, then used it to reconstruct his nose.
"This will allow him to breath more easily, eat more easily, it will improve his speech and he will look much more like the rest of us.
"To have the opportunity to greet him again and finish it off so he can lead a normal life and not worry about these things is just great."
Stefan will likely need a further operation on his nose and orthodontics to realign his teeth before one final surgery to correct the roof of his mouth.
Wayne, who was so inspired by Stefan's medical progress he became a paramedic after leaving the army, says he'll be there every step of the way.
Wayne, whose own sons Harry and Toby are now 18 and 16, added: "Stefan has never moaned or complained the whole time I've known him.
"His mum says that after his latest operation he looked in front of the mirror and said: 'this is the best thing that has ever happened to me'.
"For me this was about honouring a promise I made all those years ago and doing everything I could for Stefan.
"He's changed my life as well and inspired me to become a paramedic. We'll always have an inseparable bond."
Wayne's fundraising efforts have been supported by the Facing the World charity, which provides life-changing surgery to children from developing countries with severe facial disfigurements.
To make a donation visit facingtheworld.net
SOURCE MSN
No Kidding! Baby Goat Has Eight Legs
A goat born in Croatia this week had one befuddled farmer questioning his own eyes when he counted eight legs on the kid.
Nicknamed "octogoat," the baby also had both male and female reproductive organs, leading local vets to believe that the newborn's condition was a result of an under-developed twin, ITV reported today.
"I counted his legs and I thought I was seeing things. Then I called my neighbor to make sure that I am not crazy," farmer Zoran Paparic told inSerbia.
He said his goat Sarka gave birth to the kid at his farm in Kutjevo, in northeast Croatia.
It's unlikely the goat will survive, the vets said, but Paparic said he would keep the goat as a pet if it survives.
Source ABC News
