Mbeki persisted that Aids was not caused by the HIV virus: it was all a Western conspiracy. The sad result was the loss of lives that could have been extended by proven scientific cocktail medications. To this day there are people who are convinced that there was a CIA-Mafia-Cuban connection to President John F. Kennedy assassination, that landing on the moon was but a US brainwashing—it never happened, and 911 was a US government construct. Then, of course, in the murky opaque world of Uganda, conspiracy theories can run amok.
Why is conspiracy theories so enticing to some people? And what goes on in the minds of their purveyors? Is it a healthy avenue for truth for the powerless? Is it a conspiracy of conspiracy of the powerful to dupe and confuse the masses?
In the present stage of human development conflict is inevitable. More so where there are no credible ground rules and there are lots of mistrusts. Soon conflicts deteriorate into degrees of warlike atmospheres. And in war there are always the orthodox and the unorthodox strategies. The latter is shady and is noted for shock effects meant to demoralize and create fears. So, you chopped up dispensable targets, cook them up and blame it on your enemy to engender hatred from a sympathetic population. Or kill civilians in a war zone for similar effects. Or you go to a negotiation table and, while your adversary is sleeping in his high-minded stupor, you outflank his unprotected rearguard, sending him deliriously in exile, not knowing what hit him. And, since the winners write history, losers are left with whispers of anecdotal unofficial evidence they don’t have the sophistication and the wherewithal to get to the bottom of. Thus conspiracy theories are born.
It is good to doubt and ask questions. That is the mark of an inquisitive mind that may lead to the truth. Often, however, you have to make an educated guess and come up with a reasonable working hypothesis that can be revised when new evidence comes up. Or you can get bogged down with the search for a mirage of absolute truth.
Take the case of the 7/11 bombings; there are already rumors and gossips galore. Masters of conspiracy theories are having a field day. They are encouraged by weirdo followers who think the serpent headed wiseacres are the true anti-establishment radicals. They throw all kinds of mud on the wall, hoping they stick—even when there is mounting tentative persuasive evidence of radical militant Somali involvement. In the end, you can take the prevailing evidence in the public domain, or keep on wondering, losing sleep, and you might end up in Butabika.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Ultimately Museveni is to Blame
• Somalis. People times ten. From grief to laughter, from love to hate Somalis seem turbo-charged. Hyper-driven with life force. Dowden, ‘09
•The trouble with the United Nations is that if we ask them for help, they will send us some African who has already destroyed his own country and will come and mess up ours too.
A Somalia Minister of Tourism & Wildlife
-----------------------------------
The blame game is quintessentially Musvenian: All his failures are the faults of his “enemies” and detractors. Whereas his stances are cowardly, evasive and tacky attempts to duck realities, we indulge in the blame game for cause: his recklessly bringing the curse of Somalia to our doorstep.
The dismembered state of Somalia is a morass that had the so-called only Super Power scrambling out of there on the double with bruises to its ego. The ferocious Somalis had shot down two Black Hawk helicopters in which eighteen young Americans died horribly. Reuters showed us all how one dead American was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. These events did not play well at home. And the immediate casualty might have been 1994 Rwanda in which the UN was shy in any more African “misadventures.” (Dowden, 09) “Leave African solutions to Africans” was the new wisdom.
Somalis are a hardy lot, weaned by a landscape that is “craggy, hard, arid, a vast griddle, scoured and scorched daily by the sun for thousands of years.” Somalis are Cushitic speakers with relatives in Ethiopia—a language as harsh as their nature. They don’t regard themselves as Africans. In fact, in pre-colonial times they raided what is now Northern Kenya and took away African slaves. When these slaves were freed by the coming of European rule they were never incorporated into the Somali clan networks.
Imagine simmering of inter-clan hostilities among some Uganda tribes; multiply that by one hundred, and you get a sense of the spirit of Somalia. Siad Barre tried to ban clans and family groupings, and even any mentioning of them. But, like many African Big Kahunas, his Marehan clan was top dog. As soon as he was chased out of town the chess game unraveled: Hargersia, capital of the north was in rubbles. So was Mogadishu. Clan fiefdoms sprouted overnight.
And this is the milieu in which Museveni, in hubris high, having routed some confused and disorganized tribes in Uganda, thought he would be a “peace-keeper.” Restless because there were no more armed challenges at home and because of a necessary desire to win kudos from Massa as insurance, he couldn’t help himself. To the wind went the old masters’ maxim of a true warrior: know thyself, know thy enemy, and know your AO (Area of Operation) and the rest will only be details against one as against a thousand. And another 76 innocent Ugandans perished because of the reckless decision of one man. When will this stop? Now, if he is wise, he should count his losses and, with his tail between his legs, leave Somalia to Somalis. Ugandans will appreciate it with their lives.
•The trouble with the United Nations is that if we ask them for help, they will send us some African who has already destroyed his own country and will come and mess up ours too.
A Somalia Minister of Tourism & Wildlife
-----------------------------------
The blame game is quintessentially Musvenian: All his failures are the faults of his “enemies” and detractors. Whereas his stances are cowardly, evasive and tacky attempts to duck realities, we indulge in the blame game for cause: his recklessly bringing the curse of Somalia to our doorstep.
The dismembered state of Somalia is a morass that had the so-called only Super Power scrambling out of there on the double with bruises to its ego. The ferocious Somalis had shot down two Black Hawk helicopters in which eighteen young Americans died horribly. Reuters showed us all how one dead American was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. These events did not play well at home. And the immediate casualty might have been 1994 Rwanda in which the UN was shy in any more African “misadventures.” (Dowden, 09) “Leave African solutions to Africans” was the new wisdom.
Somalis are a hardy lot, weaned by a landscape that is “craggy, hard, arid, a vast griddle, scoured and scorched daily by the sun for thousands of years.” Somalis are Cushitic speakers with relatives in Ethiopia—a language as harsh as their nature. They don’t regard themselves as Africans. In fact, in pre-colonial times they raided what is now Northern Kenya and took away African slaves. When these slaves were freed by the coming of European rule they were never incorporated into the Somali clan networks.
Imagine simmering of inter-clan hostilities among some Uganda tribes; multiply that by one hundred, and you get a sense of the spirit of Somalia. Siad Barre tried to ban clans and family groupings, and even any mentioning of them. But, like many African Big Kahunas, his Marehan clan was top dog. As soon as he was chased out of town the chess game unraveled: Hargersia, capital of the north was in rubbles. So was Mogadishu. Clan fiefdoms sprouted overnight.
And this is the milieu in which Museveni, in hubris high, having routed some confused and disorganized tribes in Uganda, thought he would be a “peace-keeper.” Restless because there were no more armed challenges at home and because of a necessary desire to win kudos from Massa as insurance, he couldn’t help himself. To the wind went the old masters’ maxim of a true warrior: know thyself, know thy enemy, and know your AO (Area of Operation) and the rest will only be details against one as against a thousand. And another 76 innocent Ugandans perished because of the reckless decision of one man. When will this stop? Now, if he is wise, he should count his losses and, with his tail between his legs, leave Somalia to Somalis. Ugandans will appreciate it with their lives.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Playing by the Numbers
• I think chance is more a fundamental conception than causality; for whether in a concrete case, a cause-effect relation holds or not can only be judged by applying the laws of chance to the observation.
Max Born
• Manche menschen andern sich nie. (Some people will never change)
Die felten Jahre sind vorbei! (Your days of plenty are numbered)
Film, The Edukators
-------------------------
Probabilities are everywhere and, yet for some evolutionary primordial reasons, aided by medieval theology or juju imperatives, we rarely take heed of them in our survival enterprises. Why is that? Modern education doesn’t seem to help either. Most of us can’t see sense beyond the classical Newtonian physics and Euclidian geometry of our education, literally and figuratively.
In the 19th century Pascal and gambling informed of us some explanation in natural phenomena by probability. Since then some elegant laws have been expounded and, if we choose to use them, our lives’ ventures could be less unpredictable. And we could dispense with human sacrifices to bend fate, or be less caught up in sweaty tribal jingoistic emotions for a particular homeboy presidential candidate.
When we set out on a venture, most of us often do not ask the question: What are the chances?
When I was a kid, a neighbor retired and decided to invest all his retirement moneys in a car. Those were the days when having a car in my village meant you had arrived. Soon the car broke down and there were no spare parts. The poor guy began hoofing the village paths like the rest of us. I often met him walking, head down, thinking, seemingly oblivious to the customary greetings as one passed by a person. We kids soon gave up and watched somberly—testimony to our psychological mirroring. Other naughty tykes would have thrown stones at him, and he wouldn’t have cared.
The question is: What would have been the result had he worked out some kind of subjective decision tree with some equally subjective probabilities? His decision would have been wiser and, assuming a constant of objective, he could have got himself a new bride, a few heads of cattle, or a small dry-goods dukan (store) in the ‘hood.
In launching his candidacy, homeboy Barack Hussein Obama, smart as he is, probably asked: What are my chances? He saw a chance if he played by certain game rules. Thus we could see candidate Obama emphasizing his white maternal side exclusively. His middle name “Hussein” was, prior to election, nowhere to be seen except in the pens or mouths of his detractors. He threaded the race—which is effectively tribal—question gingerly. The rest now is history, and the salient tacit fact remains that he played by the numbers.
In Uganda we can holler and bend out of shape but let us be clear about the objective: Is it about getting rid of the quarter century ignominious Museveni rule? Or is it about indulging in our fancy of one form or another? Either way, Moses will have to go to the Mountain by the numbers—the Mountain will not come to Moses—prayer or no prayer; juju incantations or no juju incantations. Once the objective is clear, we can then work on improving the chances of our candidate in the probability distribution scale, and not act crazy after the fact.
Max Born
• Manche menschen andern sich nie. (Some people will never change)
Die felten Jahre sind vorbei! (Your days of plenty are numbered)
Film, The Edukators
-------------------------
Probabilities are everywhere and, yet for some evolutionary primordial reasons, aided by medieval theology or juju imperatives, we rarely take heed of them in our survival enterprises. Why is that? Modern education doesn’t seem to help either. Most of us can’t see sense beyond the classical Newtonian physics and Euclidian geometry of our education, literally and figuratively.
In the 19th century Pascal and gambling informed of us some explanation in natural phenomena by probability. Since then some elegant laws have been expounded and, if we choose to use them, our lives’ ventures could be less unpredictable. And we could dispense with human sacrifices to bend fate, or be less caught up in sweaty tribal jingoistic emotions for a particular homeboy presidential candidate.
When we set out on a venture, most of us often do not ask the question: What are the chances?
When I was a kid, a neighbor retired and decided to invest all his retirement moneys in a car. Those were the days when having a car in my village meant you had arrived. Soon the car broke down and there were no spare parts. The poor guy began hoofing the village paths like the rest of us. I often met him walking, head down, thinking, seemingly oblivious to the customary greetings as one passed by a person. We kids soon gave up and watched somberly—testimony to our psychological mirroring. Other naughty tykes would have thrown stones at him, and he wouldn’t have cared.
The question is: What would have been the result had he worked out some kind of subjective decision tree with some equally subjective probabilities? His decision would have been wiser and, assuming a constant of objective, he could have got himself a new bride, a few heads of cattle, or a small dry-goods dukan (store) in the ‘hood.
In launching his candidacy, homeboy Barack Hussein Obama, smart as he is, probably asked: What are my chances? He saw a chance if he played by certain game rules. Thus we could see candidate Obama emphasizing his white maternal side exclusively. His middle name “Hussein” was, prior to election, nowhere to be seen except in the pens or mouths of his detractors. He threaded the race—which is effectively tribal—question gingerly. The rest now is history, and the salient tacit fact remains that he played by the numbers.
In Uganda we can holler and bend out of shape but let us be clear about the objective: Is it about getting rid of the quarter century ignominious Museveni rule? Or is it about indulging in our fancy of one form or another? Either way, Moses will have to go to the Mountain by the numbers—the Mountain will not come to Moses—prayer or no prayer; juju incantations or no juju incantations. Once the objective is clear, we can then work on improving the chances of our candidate in the probability distribution scale, and not act crazy after the fact.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Cultures, Rituals and All that Jazz
They demonstrated. They were angry. In answer to a reporter’s question, one dude spitted:
“It is about our culture. Museveni violated the pillar of our culture—the Kabakaship.”
One would hope that, beyond the flaming emotion, there was a genuine and salient understanding of the importance of culture to a people. It was an outrage that, in a sense, many non-Baganda were empathetic, with the tacit understanding that it was an assault (besides the murders) on the core of a people’s essence. Odo me goyo nyeki bigoyi bene. (The cane for beating your co-wife will likely be used against you. So, don’t rejoice at the pain of the other woman).
We are all born into some group or another. We had no choice about it—it was a crapshoot, a lottery draw of nature. The group defines us, gives us a basic formative view of the world from which we set our sails to navigate the often treacherous terrain. The group is also supposed to protect us from forces within and without.
Whether be it family, clan, or tribe, the group is a function of social evolution that took thousands of years to build its characteristics. And, like all evolutionary processes, an ingredient for survival has been competition resulting in wars, trade, espionage, exploitation, domination, slavery, alliances, strategic cooperation, deception, humiliation, abuse, etc.
In this milieu of competition the outcome for a group generally hinges on the strength of its culture—the way of life, clear understanding of its place in the universe, and availability and use of resources. So, when you take away a man’s culture you “set about distorting [his] version of reality, figuratively and literally destroying his trust in the world and his confidence in himself.” (Lung & Prowant, ’02).
Besides superior firepower, or arrow-power, or rungu-power, accomplished mind-slayers know that the key to winning is through the mind-gates of eyes, ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the urethra and the anus. Through these orifices they adroitly undermine a culture and literally destroy a people, leaving them quarrelling among themselves, distrusting one another, resorting to self-abuses of all kinds—basically becoming dysfunctional.
For example, this can be done by the use of symbols that cause our minds to involuntarily form thoughts and images, symbols that trigger responses within us whether we want our minds to or not. Why is that? Symbols bypass the critical and logical conscious part our minds and talk directly to the nonjudgmental subconscious levels of our minds. (Lung & Prowant, ’02). The slayer then can insert anything he wants at will.
Any culture worth its salt has rituals: for marriage, coming-of-age, settling quarrels and mistakes, forgiving, groveling for favors and appeasing the gods, etc. A good mind slayer will put a different mind filter that junks your rituals and reconstructs your mindset, often resulting in a dysfunctional confusion. Is there any wonder that we find ourselves spinning our wheels in a journey to nowhere?
Take the example of the ritual of coming-of-age which was supposed to instill a sense of such qualities as honor, identity, group coercion and solidarity, responsibility and all the good stuff. It has been subtly replaced by western education, Christianity and Islam. The latter two being, in reality, just merely other peoples’ mechanistic mind inferences to experiences with existential phenomena. (Boyer, ’01). If this replacement was good for us, overall, what are the results?
“It is about our culture. Museveni violated the pillar of our culture—the Kabakaship.”
One would hope that, beyond the flaming emotion, there was a genuine and salient understanding of the importance of culture to a people. It was an outrage that, in a sense, many non-Baganda were empathetic, with the tacit understanding that it was an assault (besides the murders) on the core of a people’s essence. Odo me goyo nyeki bigoyi bene. (The cane for beating your co-wife will likely be used against you. So, don’t rejoice at the pain of the other woman).
We are all born into some group or another. We had no choice about it—it was a crapshoot, a lottery draw of nature. The group defines us, gives us a basic formative view of the world from which we set our sails to navigate the often treacherous terrain. The group is also supposed to protect us from forces within and without.
Whether be it family, clan, or tribe, the group is a function of social evolution that took thousands of years to build its characteristics. And, like all evolutionary processes, an ingredient for survival has been competition resulting in wars, trade, espionage, exploitation, domination, slavery, alliances, strategic cooperation, deception, humiliation, abuse, etc.
In this milieu of competition the outcome for a group generally hinges on the strength of its culture—the way of life, clear understanding of its place in the universe, and availability and use of resources. So, when you take away a man’s culture you “set about distorting [his] version of reality, figuratively and literally destroying his trust in the world and his confidence in himself.” (Lung & Prowant, ’02).
Besides superior firepower, or arrow-power, or rungu-power, accomplished mind-slayers know that the key to winning is through the mind-gates of eyes, ears, the nostrils, the mouth, the urethra and the anus. Through these orifices they adroitly undermine a culture and literally destroy a people, leaving them quarrelling among themselves, distrusting one another, resorting to self-abuses of all kinds—basically becoming dysfunctional.
For example, this can be done by the use of symbols that cause our minds to involuntarily form thoughts and images, symbols that trigger responses within us whether we want our minds to or not. Why is that? Symbols bypass the critical and logical conscious part our minds and talk directly to the nonjudgmental subconscious levels of our minds. (Lung & Prowant, ’02). The slayer then can insert anything he wants at will.
Any culture worth its salt has rituals: for marriage, coming-of-age, settling quarrels and mistakes, forgiving, groveling for favors and appeasing the gods, etc. A good mind slayer will put a different mind filter that junks your rituals and reconstructs your mindset, often resulting in a dysfunctional confusion. Is there any wonder that we find ourselves spinning our wheels in a journey to nowhere?
Take the example of the ritual of coming-of-age which was supposed to instill a sense of such qualities as honor, identity, group coercion and solidarity, responsibility and all the good stuff. It has been subtly replaced by western education, Christianity and Islam. The latter two being, in reality, just merely other peoples’ mechanistic mind inferences to experiences with existential phenomena. (Boyer, ’01). If this replacement was good for us, overall, what are the results?
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