Posted on

Looking At Money Makes The Mouth Water, Study Finds

Alexander Eichler

For all the reasons to pursue wealth that seem to be rooted in rational self-interest — money gives you more opportunities and greater freedom; it represents protection against cold and hunger; it allows you to create a comfortable life for your children — a deeper one might simply be this: money makes your mouth water.

Students who looked at pictures of money drooled the most.

That’s the conclusion of a study performed by David Gal, an assistant professor of marketing at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Gal had undergraduate participants look at various pictures while holding cotton dental rolls in their mouths. When he collected the rolls later and weighed them to see how much saliva they’d absorbed, he found that the students who looked at pictures of money had drooled the most.

How much a person salivates while thinking about money — or high-end consumer goods — seems to depend on their mindset at the time. For the pictures-of-money experiment, Gal first primed the students by having them write about either a time when they felt powerful or a time when they felt powerless.

The students who’d been made to feel powerless, it turned out, produced much more saliva when shown pictures of money, suggesting that at some level they were more focused on the question of how they might gain power.

Similarly, Gal asked one group of men to imagine going to the barber, while he showed pictures of attractive women to another group of men and asked them which ones they’d like to date. He then showed both groups pictures of expensive sports cars. One group salivated more than the other when looking at the cars — the men who’d been primed to think about dating.

According to Gal, the findings suggest that thinking about money and luxury goods activates the same neurological reward system as thinking about anything else desirable — food, for example, or mating.

Social psychologists have long thought that many people, whether consciously or unconsciously, want to acquire money not for the financial security it brings, but because it suggests power and may increase one’s sexual desirability.

 Gal’s experiment isn’t the first to demonstrate the direct physiological power of thinking about money. A couple of years ago, researchers found that test subjects who dipped their fingers in hot water after counting stacks of cash actually reported feeling less pain than subjects who dipped their fingers after counting stacks of blank paper.

Conversely, the fear of not having enough money seems to be strongly associated with certain negative health consequences. Numerous studies have pointed up the damaging physical- and mental-health effects of the economic slowdown and the foreclosure crisis, with anxiety, depression, hypertension, diabetes and compulsive behavior all linked to the stresses of losing one’s job or home.

Share
Posted on

Marks on Eyelid Can Warn of Heart Attack

 Yellow markings on the eyelids are a sign of increased risk of heart attack and other illnesses, say researchers in Denmark.

A study published on the BMJ website showed patients with xanthelasmata were 48% more likely to have a heart attack.

Xanthelasmata, which are mostly made up of cholesterol, could be a sign of other fatty build-ups in the body.

Cardiologists said the findings could be used by doctors to help diagnose at-risk patients.

The research team at the Herlev Hospital in Denmark started following 12,745 people in the 1970s.

At the start of the study, 4.4% of patients had xanthelasmata.

Yellow alert

Thirty three years later, 1,872 had had a heart attack, 3,699 had developed heart disease and 8,507 had died – and the data showed that those with the yellow markings around the eyes were at greatest risk.

Those with the markings were 48% more likely to have a heart attack, 39% more likely to have developed heart disease and 14% more likely to have died during the study.

The authors believe patients with xanthelasmata may be more likely to deposit cholesterol around the body.

A build up of fatty material in the walls of arteries – known as atherosclerosis – leads to stroke and heart attack.

For both men and women in several age groups, the data said there was a one in five chance of developing heart disease in the next decade if the patient had xanthelasmata.

The authors said such patients were “generally considered to be at high risk” and should have “lifestyle changes and treatment to reduce [bad] cholesterol.”

However they warned that: “Today, most people with xanthelasmata are seen by dermatologists, when they want their xanthelasmata removed for cosmetic reasons.

“Some of these people may not have been managed according to their increased risk of cardiovascular disease.”

A review of the study, by US cardiologists Antonio Fernandez and Paul Thompson, concluded that: “Xanthelasmata could be used by general clinicians to help identify people at higher risk of cardiovascular disease.”

Judy O’Sullivan, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said: “There are many different techniques to predict someone’s risk of developing heart disease in the future, none of which are perfect. The most important thing is that any one of these techniques is used in the first place.”

James Gallagher
Health reporter
Share
Posted on

Libya: Museveni and Zuma dump Gaddafi

The Monitor (Uganda)

Kampala (Uganda) – Ousted Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has finally lost the official support of the African Union which had stoutly stood by him throughout the seven months of armed conflict in his country.
Five African presidents sitting on the AU ad hoc committee on Libya, who were also known to be Col. Gaddafi’s friends, resolved on Wednesday to recognise the Libyan National Transitional Council if it formed an all-inclusive government.

President Museveni, his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma, and Congo’s Dennis Sassou Nguesso, recommended that the AU should help the NTC form a unity government.

Mauritania and Mali, the other members of the committee, were represented by their ambassadors to South Africa at the one-day meeting held in Pretoria even as the whereabouts of the former Libyan strongman, who has not been since Tripoli fell to the NTC in August, remain unknown.

The AU resolution to support the NTC is an indication that the continental body now recognises the futility of opposing the transitional council as the legitimate government in Libya.

Until Wednesday, the AU had swum against the tide of Western-led international opinion, taking a generally isolated and ambivalent view of events in Libya, with some member countries backing the new dispensation, while others remained undecided or openly regretful that Col. Gaddafi had been removed from power.

However, Uganda’s Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary, Ambassador James Mugume, said yesterday the AU position remains the same on having an all-inclusive government.

“There is no change of position as African Union. The condition by African Union is still the same,” he said.

Mr Museveni and Mr Zuma have been among the most vocal of African presidents against the Libyan war and tried to push for a negotiated settlement between Col. Gaddafi and the NTC throughout the period the Western military alliance, NATO, bombed Tripoli and provided air support to the rebels fighting to topple his 42-year tyranny.

The two leaders were mostly ignored by a Western coalition that was determined the world had seen enough of the authoritarian colonel, who at the beginning of the fighting declared an intention to commit widespread killings if that is what it would take to retain his grip on power.

The AU has so far been one of the few international organisations that have withheld recognition of the NTC – on the grounds that it was NATO which supported the overthrow of Col. Gaddafi, and in so doing interfered in Libya’s internal affairs. As a result, sharp divisions have emerged among African governments as some like Nigeria and Botswana quickly recognised the NTC as the legitimate government while Uganda, South Africa and others have not.

Uganda’s Foreign Affairs ministry had on August 24 issued a statement, saying they were not ready to deal with individuals within the NTC. The AU’s change in position followed a promise by the NTC to create a unity

Share
Posted on

The President, God, and Progress

Comment/Ghana Developmen

Let’s go into the mind of President John Atta Mills, a PHD in law, and envision with him his infatuation with God.

In this imaginary Ghana, there are no ethnic problems, no sanitation plight and no vehicular accidents. Poverty is wiped out. God would be in such control that nobody would blame witchcraft, evil spirits or demons for their existential tribulations. Ghanaians would have enviable life expectancies.  There would be no infant or maternal mortalities. There is wonderful human security. Ghanaians are highly educated and all have the same income. There is perfect gender equality. Every Ghanaian eats well, drink and bath with very clean water. There will be no diseases to worry Ghanaians. All Ghanaians sleep well and have deep peace of mind.

Ghana would stop to be on the 130th position of the 169 countries ranked by the United Nation’s Human Development Index that measures human well-being globally. Ghana would have the highest development indicators in the world.

President of Ghana, John Atta Mills

On and on it goes. Dr. Atta Mills’ God-ruled Ghana would pile up dazzling development indicators for Ghanaians. All the earlier post-colonial African development impediments such as the state being in some sort of dystopian wasteland of Idi Amin’s barbarism or Jerry Rawlings’ incomprehensible moral disaster or Murmmar Gaddafi’s frightening utopian Green Book planet will be no more. Democracy, the rule of law, social justice, freedoms, equality, good governance, prosperity, liberty: all are closer reality.

The point in looking at Dr. Atta Mills God-possessed mind isn’t to poke fun at him. Or at least, it isn’t triviality. Aside from Dr. Atta Mills’s fascination with God, to the point of sometimes infuriating Ghana’s development game, there is not much that’s unusual in this vivid exercise in the Dr. Atta Mills God-mania futurology.

In his almost two-and-half years since becoming President, Dr. Atta Mills practically tops all Ghanaian Heads of State in his obsession with God. Behind this climate is Dr. Atta Mills mired in prophets of all stripes. The Ghanaian political chatting class is constantly abuzz with all kinds of gossip about Dr. Atta Mills and his dalliance with prophets in the seat of government, the Osu Castle.

The attention-seeking Nigeria prophet, Temitope Balogun (TB) Joshua, founder of the highly rated The Synagogue, Church of All Nations, appears to have entrapped Dr. Atta Mills spiritually. TB Joshua is alleged to have prophesized that Dr. Atta Mills would be President of Ghana during the 2008 presidential election. Superstitiously, Dr. Atta Mills visited TB Joshua before the 2008 presidential elections in Lagos, Nigeria. Prophet TB Joshua is a vastly noted man of God in Dr. Atta Mills’ God cosmos.

Like Grigori Rasputin, the Russian mystic who had immense influence on the Russian Emperor Nicholas 11, TB Joshua has comprehensively powerful sway over Dr. Atta Mills. No doubt, as democracy help Ghanaians to exercise their freedoms and thinking, Dr. Atta Mills’ fixations with God and prophets have become popular mass media and social media talks and jokes.

The general views from the commentators are that with his PHD in law, as long time professor of law at the University of Ghana, as an administrator with some academic publications, and with his lovingly mature age of 65, Dr. Atta Mills is expected to glow with soaring rationality within the context of the irrationalities hindering Ghanaians’ advancement. Some Ghanaians are convinced that Dr. Atta Mills is rationally fragile, has weak grasp of Ghana, is basically unrealistic, and have feeble sense of God’s place in Ghana’s progress.

In his campaigns for the presidency, Dr. Atta Mills not only borrowed from US President Barack Obama’s “change” mantra but also fixed his campaign pictures beside Obama’s. The end of story. And the beginning of the search for the actual Obama in Dr. Atta Mills.  Though far older than Obama (who just turned 50) and with Obama stuck in the dense development issues left by his predecessors that have let him grow gray hair in just two-and-half years as he struggles to solve the problems, critics of Dr. Atta Mills’ too-much-God-talks think he should talk very rationally, realistically, deeply and plausibly like Obama in the context of Ghana’s development struggles.

Obama is very religious but he doesn’t waste all his time exasperatingly and illogically on God when tackling thorny development matters in the difficult United States political climate. Obama’s God-given cerebral powers are constantly at display as he confronts the United States’ development challenges. Ghanaians are yet to see this broadly in Dr. Atta Mills.

Nevertheless, over time Dr. Atta Mills’ God-issues have become nauseating. His latest God-this-God-that was at Fetu Afahye festival in Cape Coast, the capital of Ghana’s Central Region, where traditional oracles, shrines, mosques and churches of all character compete for spiritual prominence in the atmosphere of fear of witchcraft, demons, evil spirits and malevolent forces. In Cape Coast, Dr. Atta Mills told superstitiously gullible Ghanaians “it was God who set up kings and therefore the next President for the country lay in the hands of the Almighty God.”

There is nothing wrong in Dr. Atta Mills saying this in a culture that has strong belief in God. After all, the basis of most progress begins with deep spiritual practices. The American thinker Francis Fukuyama indicates in The End of History and The Last Man that the root of Western progress cannot be fully discussed without its spiritual origin. But the spirituality has to be unambiguous and not entangled in false believes in prophets, juju-marabou mediums, witchcraft, demons, evil spirits, supernatural beings and malevolent forces.

Such traditional spiritually unhelpful entanglements have impacted unconstructively on Ghana’s real progress. The community in the northern part of Ghana that believes in God but also believes in witchcraft and left a baby named Mercy to die in a room simply because they believe (wrongly) that she is a witch, is in need of a Dr. Atta Mills who will simultaneously talk God and talk rationalization of believes in witchcraft within the Ghanaian culture so as to save the life and the human rights of baby Mercy and her community from such destructive thinking. In the Dr. Atta Mills’ presidency, the God talk hasn’t been equal to the rational talk in the Ghanaian development actuality.

In the authentic Ghana, as the impending 2012 general elections looms, there may be God in the affairs of Ghanaians but the next President, come 2012, will be elected based entirely on the exercises of Ghanaians’ God-given rational faculties that are expected to help them rationalize issues, policies and programmes of either President Atta Mills’ ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) or the main opposition National Patriotic Party (NPP) or the minority Convention People’s Party (CPP).

God surely will not physically get involved in the 2011 general elections: God will rather let Ghanaians weigh the contending personal merits, issues, policies and programmes presented by the political parties to vote the next President and Members of Parliament of Ghana.

The simple truth about Dr. Atta Mills in the past two-and-half years is that his awkward God-obsession has been met with a good number of Ghanaians increasingly pressurizing him to emit systematic reasoning in tackling the development challenges facing them. And not the quixotically God-will-solve-the-development-problems (some very dire) ways of thinking.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

Share
Posted on

Hazards of Cell Phone to Your Health

Since the 1980s when mobile phone otherwise known as cell phone, made an in-road into the market and became very popular in developed nations, its spread has been a blessing to all manners of people across gender, race and age. Even at the time, the number of cell phones in the world was a mere 11.2 million- just two phones per 1,000. According to the United Nations, as at 2010, mobile phone users hit 5 billion. Thus, by 2011 the 5 billion would have added one or two million when many people in remote and distant places owning cell phones, with over 1,000 customers added every minute, while the world population currently stands at 6.94 billion.

The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed the upsurge in mobile phone ownership; and saw telecoms companies rushing to telecoms-virgin lands of Third World countries with their large populations, whereas global capitalism finds new markets. There is hardly any country, even in Third World nations where people are struggling to make ends meet; there are many competing telecoms companies doing the business of ‘connecting people to people, people to business, business to business; and one family member with the other, as well as friends. According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the growth of telecommunications in the developing world is driven by the use of the phone for mobile banking, and health services. While many farmers use their mobile phone to sell the farm produce. Be that as it seem, more people in developing nations use their mobile for friendship and family contact than for business.

Moreover, the arrival of 3G technology fitted into smart-phones, Black Berry and i-phones have made the internet also available at a punch on consumers’ phone pad or screen. This is fast gaining currency among young and mobile population, and the working-class with higher preference for the much-talk-about popular social network sites such as Facebook, Twitters, Netlog, Tagged etc. Telecoms operation has open a wide array of opportunities!

Majority of the new users, about 59 percent, are in developing countries where cell phones are the first telecommunications technology in history to have more users there than in the developed world, according to the Washington Post. This exponential rise in cell phone users has simplify how businesses are conducted, reduce travel time/cost and improve the level contact among many persons.

All the same, while the spread of cell phone is commendable, especially for the aforementioned reasons and many more; cell phone has side –effects that users must be wary of besides enjoying the best opportunities and access it gives them. For instance, there is a debate (research-based), as to whether or not cell phone use has a strong relationship with cancer. Proponents of the argument like Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (an appendage of the National Institutes of Health), reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), that cell phone’s electromagnetic radiation can lead to certain changes in the brain activity, since then there has been apprehension that the oomph from the cell phone can cause cancer. Energy emitted from cell phone, called radio-frequency energy, is a form of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation.

Some researchers from the International Agency for Cancer on Research (IACR) added its voice to support the JAMA‘s position in its separate publication, though they later debunked the claim, yet IACR has “classified cell-phone-radiation exposure to be ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans”. The research further asserted that even if there is no link, there is “…and increased risk of glioma and malignant types of brain cancer in association with wireless-phone use”. Glioma is a common type of brain tumour that is always linked with the ear. Other cancer researchers have opposed these findings as they posited that cell phone use has no relationship with cancer.

There is another strain of argument that is rife- the scratch card. A friend sent it to my mail box quoting a group of researchers, from the US had confirmed; that the silver coating covering recharge cards or refill voucher from telecommunications companies also causes cancer. The coating contains silver nitro oxide which causes skin cancer. Researchers have reservation for this revelation as well. This dimension is introduced because millions of phone users scratch the silver coating off with their nails. And the propensity that people who use their finger nails to scrape off the covering and do not wash their hands with soap afterwards is very high.

In addition, a more striking research finding on the effects of cell phone is the lowing of sperm-counts in male- which might lead to impotence in men. A report in the Journal of Andrology entitled ‘Cellular phone and male infertility” says using a cell phone can decrease the quality and quantity of a man’s sperm if men stay on the phone more than four hours a day. The report further warns that children, adolescents, young adults and especially pregnant women should take precaution and avoid keeping phone close to reproductive organs, in addition to their heads. These parts of the body are highly sensitive to electromagnetic radiation coming from cell phone, the report concluded. Besides, there is a link between radio frequency energy from cell and fire when it comes in contact with gas, hence people are always warned to have their cell phones turn-off in gas/petrol stations or fuel dumps. Yet, people make and receive in gas/petrol stations

One begins to wonder why almost everything about cell phone is cancer-related. Like the case of HIV/AIDS since in 1980s, the interconnectedness between frequent cell phone use and cancer is still a subject of debate, because it is a puzzle that can only be solved by scientists working on cancer and those developing telecoms soft-wares that would not compromise the user’s health. While it remains so, there is need for cell phone users to take precaution through the following ways.

One, always keep your phone away from your body, especially your head. By doing this, you protect vital organs of the body from the electromagnetic emission. Men should avoid putting cell phone in the thigh-pocket or breast-pocket, instead make use of leather-case and stripe to belt. Ladies can use their hand-bag. Among market women, cell phones are kept in their bra. This is very dangerous! If cell phones could cause cancer to the brain because of their proximity to the ear when in use, how much more lady’s br***t?

Two, the habit of using ear-piece in cell phone conversation must be nurtured. The quality of ear-piece to be used is another issue to grapple with here. This is because, ear-piece that serves as antenna to the phone while playing radio still transmit the emission from the cell phone no matter how distant the cell phone is from your body. Therefore, quality ear-piece with filter is most likely to be the safest. When playing radio on your phone, the hands-free or loudspeaker mode could be activated.

Three, do not use your cell phone as your alarm by your head on your bed’s side. Provided the cell phone is not switch-off radiation still travels, not only when your make/receive calls. Get a standard alarm that will save you from the hazard of keeping your phone by your head- remember the research-based debate of brain cancer and cell phone?

Four, spend less time on the phone at one time, because if for anything, the frequency of contact with the cell phone is the root cause of the linkage. Many young people stay up and spend their nightly hours in phone conversations just because such calls (dubiously call ‘happy hours’) are free from some telecom operators. I think people engage because of weak economic situation. So, make short calls and always send text messages, or at best, use good quality ear-piece with filter to avert body contact.

Lastly, do not scratch you recharge card with your finger nails. Always encourage your vendors to get a spatula-like object to peel-off the silver covering concealing the card’s secret pin whenever you want to recharge. And always obey signs that prohibit cell phone use in gas/petrol stations, fuel dumps, hospitals etc. Do not risk your life with your cell phone!

Share
Posted on

Is the West losing Africa to China?

Teo Kermeliotis

With Chinese yuan and Indian rupees increasingly finding their way into Africa’s economies, Western powers are worried that they are losing influence in the resource-rich continent, according to analysts.

Driven by their appetite for natural resources, trade opportunities and political alliances, emerging powers such as China and India are moving from the sidelines to the center stage in Africa — a region the West has long considered to be its own trading partner.

While Western countries are still important players in Africa’s energy sector, the deepening engagement of China in Africa’s infrastructure, mineral sector and telecommunications is creating “deep nervousness” in the West, says David Shinn, the former U.S. ambassador to Burkina Faso and Ethiopia.

Asian giants scent opportunity in Africa

The competition in these areas, he explains, usually pits big Chinese enterprises that are financially backed by Beijing’s deep pockets against Western companies that often have shareholders to consider and are by-and-large acting independently of their governments’ desires.

“If the Chinese government wants to encourage an engagement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they can make it happen,” says Shinn. “If the United States wants its companies to get involved in the DRC all they can do is say ‘look, there’s an opportunity there, why don’t you go explore it’ and if they want to explore it, they do and if they don’t they don’t.”

According to Shinn, this different system of government “does create anxieties” because “the United States and the West see China filling all kinds of voids that it thought it would eventually fill.”

China overtook the United States as Africa’s biggest trade partner in 2009, according to OECD figures, whereas in 2000 the United States’ trade with Africa was three times that of China’s.

India’s bilateral trade with Africa jumped from around $1 billion in 2001 to about $50 billion last year.

India bids to be Africa’s ‘new best friend’

The European Union still accounts for more than 40% of Africa’s trade but the share of Africa’s trade with the EU and U.S. fell from 77% to 62% over the last decade. At the same time, the share for new economic forces — China and India but also countries like Brazil, Turkey and South Korea — rose from about 23% to 39%.

China’s first official aid project in Africa took place in the 1960s, and in 1975 it completed construction of the iconic Tanzania-Zambia railway. In the early 1990s, when headline-writers would often label Africa as the “failed continent,” Beijing decided to step up its foray into the continent, filling the gap left by an exodus of Western investors.

“Just as Western companies were mothballing mines, walking away, certainly not bringing new investments, China plunged in and dared to go where the white man feared to trade,” says Richard Dowden, director of the Royal African Society, based in London.

“It was quite amusing to see the Western mining companies, who’d been shrugging their shoulders at Africa and looking elsewhere, suddenly rushing back in.”

The emergence of China as a major player in Africa has prompted many Western countries to change their strategies on the continent and emphasize the need for collaboration.

“Earlier on, you heard (U.S.) officials maybe talk about China as a threat or as a competitor in Africa,” says Richard Downie, deputy director of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “All the language from officials now is about Africa as a place where competition is good … and all the efforts here (in the United States), at least in public, are about seeking areas for cooperation and collaboration with China — so the language has shifted.”

Yet concerns about China’s role are still being voiced in public.

When U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about China’s growing influence in Africa, during her visit to Zambia in June, she said that Africa must beware of a “new colonialism.”

“We saw that during colonial times it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave,” Clinton said from the mineral-rich country that has attracted heavy Chinese investment in mining.

Although Clinton avoided naming China specifically in her remarks, the suggestion that it could be fostering colonialism in Africa was immediately dismissed by Beijing.

Downie says Clinton’s comments come at a moment when China’s increasing role is creating “a sense of unease” in the United States which echoes a larger debate about America’s declining influence as a world power and China’s rising prominence.

“The U.S. is very sensitive about it at the moment,” he says. “Africa is the corner of the world where that declining U.S. influence is most evident,” he adds.

Ayo Johnson, director of Viewpoint Africa, a media organization dealing with news from the continent, says the growing influence of emerging players has left the West feeling “very rattled” and put African countries in a stronger bargaining position.

“It’s becoming very difficult for the West to deal with Africa from their usual perspective,” says Johnson.

“When you’ve been used to doing business in a particular fashion, when you’ve been used to dealing in a certain way and then there’s an injection of a third or fourth player who risk the entire dynamic — that’s exactly what has happened with India and China and now made it so much easier for Africans and their leaders and their communities to choose among the various investors.”

Shinn says that to the eyes of many African leaders China’s capacity to move fast, coupled with its policy of non-interference in other countries’ internal affairs, often makes Beijing a more attractive partner than the West, whose policy in the continent is usually linked to conditions about good governance and human-rights reforms.

One of China’s big advantages is that “the Chinese have no mission, no intention at all to change Africa,” agrees Dowden.

He adds: “There’s still a narrative in our minds in the West that Africa is backward and Africans have got to become like us — ‘we have got to change them’ — I think that Africans feel that and the young African generation that’s coming through are now very resentful of that.”

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

Share
Posted on

America’s Role in the New World Order

Harvard Professor Joseph Nye argued that America’s domination of the world does not seem to be on the decline because the political will of the US continues to prevail around the globe. Now, the position of the Professor may be in diametric opposition to conventional belief but a closer analysis of world political events appears to support the notion that, US imperialism shows no signs of abating now or anytime soon.

American foreign policy continues to prevail in an international political arena where no emerging power seems to be potent enough to challenge the might of the last true superpower. Recent events around the world such as the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi or the assassination of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan as well as the unilateral declaration of war in Iraq or the US call for the replacement of hackneyed leaders such as Laurent Gbagbo of La Cote D’Ivoire showcase one country’s ability to impose its will around the world. In fact unchecked American dominance in the new world order has resulted in numerous conflicts that probably would not have been possible in a bipolar international political environment. The US led NATO bombardment of Libya for instance would not have been so straight forward if Gaddafi could call on allies in the defunct Warsaw Pact to come to his aid.

A lot has been said about a growing China but is the might of the Chinese significant enough to curtail US imperialistic domination? Not likely; a 700 billion dollar annual military budget and the continuous spread of democratic values around the world means that America’s soft power continues to grow as Washington garners more friends in former enemy territories in the Middle East and Africa.  What this also means is that US control of precious resources such as oil are going to be guaranteed for the foreseeable future because unfettered American access to petroleum resources in Iraq and Libya will  no longer be challenged thereby consolidating America’s economic dominance through political imperialism .

The cold war made it difficult for the United States to have its way around the world because of the Soviet menace. Lately however, it looks like whatever Washington wants Washington can get; resulting in a new form of international anarchy expressed in the inexorable rise of attacks from terrorist groups and organizations such as Al Qaeda desperately seeking to remove the US as an obstacle to their global theocratic aspirations. Furthermore, conflicts in Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan reflect a global political system that is becoming increasingly unstable partly due to US unilateralism. Interestingly, the Trans Atlantic defense initiative was never activated during the cold war. Since the collapse of the iron curtain however, NATO has led military operations in the Balkans and now North Africa. In the absence of the Soviets therefore, there seems to be no real global power to check the excesses of Washington’s militarist policies hence the ensuing chaos which did not exist even at the peak of the cold war.

The grand recession may be a protracted one with unemployment remaining high in spite of the efforts of the Obama administration but that is hardly a threat to America’s hegemonic status. Lest we forget US might has been challenged before by the Japanese in the late 80’s and 90’s and the Soviets during the cold war. When the Russian spacecraft sputnik crossed earth’s atmosphere to venture into outer space and orbit the planet the general impression was that America had ceded its power to the Soviet Union. American superiority in space exploration was however restored with the Neil Armstrong lunar walk.

So the emergence of new powers and challenges to US global dominance is nothing new. The credibility in this challenge however must travel well beyond swellings or growths in one country’s economic indicators and must be felt in a meaningful way such as the ability to successfully impede the globalization of US political will. In the absence of such a challenge, international unipolarity will continue to be defined by the pre-eminence of US foreign policy.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

Share
Posted on

The Twisted African Democratic Revolutions

Special Feature/African Democracy                 

Either in Libya, Nigeria, Chad, Egypt or Tunisia, the African nation-state, from its birth, has been in some sort of undeviating inanimate democratic revolution. The reason is that the African state, as a political entity, is yet to have everlasting grip with the African nation, as a community, hence the almost constant schisms and the revolutions. African revolutions occur not because of the African community, which is intact, but the African state, which is unbalanced and unreflective of Africans’ innate democratic feelings.

Upheavals against colonialism for independence aside, post-colonial Africa’s bad leadership, endemic corruption, poor governance, horrific tyrants and dictatorships, and generally unstable domestic authority structures have put African states in almost permanent revolutions for democratic order. Hard questions abound as to when the revolutions will end and democratic institutions set up.

As I witnessed as a teenager during the 1979 Rawlings revolution, revolution can bring momentary joy to a people who are depressed from bad political leadership and economic shortages. Ghana witnessed this under the Kutu Acheampong military junta, which also described itself as revolutionary. Doug Saunders, of the Toronto-based The Globe And Mail, writing about world revolutions following the Egyptian, Libyan and the Tunisian revolutions, explains that, “The joy of revolutions is that they make ordinary life interesting. Suddenly, the streets glow with importance; anything seems possible.”  Under such atmosphere, the state, of which the revolution is about, fades into the background momentarily.

In either Jerry Rawlings’ Ghana or Idi Amin’s Uganda or Samuel Doe’s Liberia, almost all the African revolutions share the basic belief that life will be better for the average African. Against these beliefs is the fact that not all the African revolutions are the same, coming in diverse contours.

While the Idi Amin revolution saw him turn Uganda into a primitive enclave with roughly constant chaos and Uganda later saved by the amalgam of Julius Nyerere’s Tanzanian army and Ugandan freedom fighters, Mobutu Sese Seko effectively destroyed the traditional institutions (by deeper meaning, the soul of the country) of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and left the DRC virtually soulless with almost continuous cataclysms, especially in the eastern and northeastern parts.

Experts explain that what ring constantly in revolutions are the human possibility, that what was previously thought of as unimaginable becomes imaginable, that what was thought of as rotten could be overthrown and something fresh could be sown. Doug Saunders inferred of revolutionary traditions globally that, “Even when” revolutions are “sidetracked or seized, the seeds planted by a democratic revolution remain in the ground.”

The African who has gone through revolutions will tell you that their revolutions have turn out to be mostly disappointments than contentment. However, as Ghanaians and Nigerians will tell you today, out of this disenchantments are emerging democratic order from the democratic seeds planted by the various democratic revolutions. Jeff Goodwin, a sociologist at New York University, discussing the nature of revolutions following the Libyan, Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, is quoted by Joe O’Connor, of the Toronto-based National Post, as saying revolutions “ … are a complex genus with different species.”

The insurgent-ridden African Great Lakes Region aside, Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF) is a typical African case of revolution that went mad. But out of its ashes democracy and good governance are flowering in Sierra Leone. The RUF revolution against the rots of the long-running Siaka Stevens’ autocratic one-party system, later carried on by Joseph Saidu Momoh, turned out to be exceptionally fatal. The RUF amputated Sierra Leoneans limbs, turned girls into prostitutes, looted diamonds, fire-bombed properties, practiced cannibalism, and frequently carved the initials “RUF” on their child soldiers’ chest. RUF officers rubbed cocaine into the open cuts on their troops to make them maniacal and fearless, and for entertainment, some RUF soldiers bet on the sex of an uborn baby and then sliced open a woman’s womb to determine the winner.

Still, and as Samuel Doe’s Liberia revealed, some African revolutions have turned out to be unimaginable, sending the likes of the Liberian or the Ivorian state into flames. Some African revolutions endings are worse than the previous conditions the revolutionaries sought to correct. Jerry Rawlings’ revolution, initially seen by some Africans as “enlightened,” saw the execution of some Ghanaian military junta leaders, mainly for their alleged corruption and moral ineptitude (The Rawlings coup d’etat had more to do with the rot within the military establishment than the Ghanaian society).

But Rawlings’ almost 20 years in power became perverse and saw Rawlings and his associates amassed more wealth than all those they had killed. At present, most of Rawlings and his associates’ children and families live high lives (sometimes bordering on ostentation), attended pricey schools abroad (and still do) and had medical treatment abroad (and still do). In Rawlings’ revolution, perhaps Africa’s most high profile because of the high profile killings, the new reality is that the revolution didn’t live up to its hype. Like most African revolutions, corruption was the Rawlings revolution’s first mission, but his regimes grew up to lack accountability and transparency. The regime also suppressed freedoms that resulted in the famed “culture of silence,” where Ghanaians were afraid to talk freely for fear of either being killed, imprisoned or disappearing.

Nigeria also went through numerous military juntas that hypothetically had sought to revolutionarize the Nigerian society and make life better for Nigerians. Though this did not happen, out of this cycles came enviably anti-corruption institutions such as the amazing Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) set up in 2003 to tackle endemic graft. Despite top flight killings, the Rawlings regimes were sadly short of this.

In the Rawlings’ revolution, Africa witnessed that high-tension sloganeering didn’t translate into reality. Jeff Goodwin, is cited by Joe O’Connor, as explaining that, “Countries generally have revolutions because they are in bad situation, and revolutions don’t always get you out of that hole … Revolutions happening in poor authoritarian countries, well, those countries usually end up remaining poor and authoritarian.”

In Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macías Nguema revolution of some sorts turned out more lethal than thought of and nobody knew what kind of regime was going to come out of the terrible mess. Tapping into traditional African irrational supernatural believes, Macias forced Equatorial Guineans to believe that he has supernatural powers. That he can change into a cat, a dog, a mouse or any other animal or object, or vanish into thin air. Macias used the knowledge of witchcraft he inherited from his sorcerer father and built a huge collection of human skulls (from most of the people he has killed) at his homestead to hypnotize Equatorial Guineans into supernatural submission. Macias believed he was some sort of God..

In December, 1975, in a bizarre episode Macias killed 150 alleged coup plotters to the sound of a band playing Mary Hopkin’s tune Those Were the Days in the national stadium in Malabo, the capital. The estimations are that over 100,000 people, approximate one-third of Equatorial Guineans then, were either killed or fled into exile during Macias’ reign. In 1979, Macias was overthrown violently by his nephew Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the current President.  Macias was later executed in a firing squad. The situation today in Equatorial Guinea isn’t more or less better than Macias’ time.

Despite the fact that most African revolutions turn out to be sadness, there are few that are sunnier and bring regime changes. Out of the Valentine Strasser and the Maada Bio revolution came the flowering of democratic tenets and good governance in Sierra Leone born out of the bloodshed of the 11-year civil war. There may be some political and development challenges in Sierra Leone today but the hope is that in the long run, democratic values and good governance will survive for the greater progress of the country.

Helpless African betting on Jerry Rawkings, Samuel Doe, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, Lansana Conteh, Sani Abacha, among others, have been the African way of attempting to change the recurring appalling leadership and generally trembling domestic power configurations. Most African revolutionary outcomes have been largely the African elites fighting for political and material power while the average African languishes in poverty and unfreedoms.

For almost 42 years, Libyans had no freedoms and lived in fear. Libyans could be either killed or imprisoned anytime despite Muammar Gaddafi professing that his much-trumpeted revolution is to free Libyans from the tyranny of King.Muhammad Idri 1. Still, notwithstanding The Green Book (that sought solutions to the problems of democracy and economics) and the People’s Committees (that sought to upgrade the authority of the Libyans), Gaddafi and his associates, for 42 years the privileged few, not only dreadfully controlled Libyans but the principles and institutions of government did not become egalitarian – institutions like the police and the military were ruined, making Gaddafi look for mercenaries when the freedom fighters came calling six months ago.

More seriously, Gaddafi and his The Green Book were allergic to liberal democratic ideals. These are insults to the intelligences of contemporary Africans’ on-going fight for democratic revolutions that sought for free press, good governance, freedoms, human rights, social justice, equality, choices, free speech and good governance. In the absence democratic ideals, Gaddafi and other African tyrants are consumed in tyrannies and dictatorships that have put Africa states in almost unending revolutions for democratic order and good governance.

Unlike Rawlings and Lansana Conteh revolutions, the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions show that non-violent social networking, via social media, is becoming the order of the day in Africa’s democratic revolutions. This made tyrants like Hosni Mubarak and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali turn into sand in matter of weeks, with virtually no resistance. Fear or a “culture of silence” vanishes into thin air. Egalitarianism, choices, elections, democratic tenets, good governance, merits and issues replace the God-has-predestined-me-to-rule syndrome.

With their increasing grasp of social media, these are Africans shining age of their democratic revolutions backed by the increasingly influential African diasporan networks. The era of the old school African revolutionaries picking up arms, standing on armour cars and sloganeering, waving AK47s and their fists, and blasting out the African dictatorships are out.

In come non-violent protests and social networking sites such as Facebook, internet forums, web blogs, social blogs and microblogging such as Twitter, collaborative projects such as wikipedia, podcast, content communities such as Youtube, photgraphy or pictures, video, email, instant messaging, rating and social bookmarking are the key tools of today’s African democratic revolutionaries and not AK47s, Kalashnikov, military tanks and hot-headed sloganeering. The “cascading dominoes,” as Joe O’Connor of the Toronto-based National Post argues, “are characteristic of a revolutionary age. Europe went crazy for liberal democracy in 1848, in a tide of mostly fruitless revolutions … And when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, it took communism with it, a mass combustiom of authoritarian governments often miscast as a spontaneous event.”

Despite the instant power of new media, some experts argue that generally revolutions start in simmering ways before erupting. The Liberian revolution came about because of long years of oppression of native Liberians (the “country people,” as they are called locally) by the Americo-Liberians, who believed they are more civilized than the native Liberians. For decades, the native Liberians were oppressed and effectively made second-class citizens on their own land. A triggering moment happened and Samuel Doe and his associates seized the time.

Like most African democratic revolutions, the Liberian revolution wasn’t any specially planned event, it was largely meaningless flare. So the Liberian revolution happened, it didn’t just happen, as Jack Goldstone of George Mason University would have argued, as he did of the nature of revolutions in the world. Samuel Doe and his associates quickly realize its “game on and there is no turning back” in attempting to clare out the autocratic Americo-Liberian oligarchy.

There may be twists in Africa democratic revolutions and experts may argue that it may be easier to know when revolutions start than when they end, but Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and Uganda point to the reality that African democratic revolutions will eventually move into the direction of real democracy and good governance under the current continental and international atmosphere. There are no two ways about this.

If you like this article, I’d recommend my book “If I Was Famous, I’d Have a Lot to Say”

Share