Much Ado About Nothing: The Gay Hullabaloo

Much Ado About Nothing: The Gay Hullabaloo

Uganda media crackled with emotional excitement:  Kadaga, Canadian Minister in Gay Row , Kadaga Gets Kudos for Defending Country. While many hailed the Madam Speaker of the Uganda Parliament, I have a contrarian opinion that her hysterical defense of Uganda government's stance on gay rights was a waste of energy. The lady was probably venting her frustration for having been undermined back home by her president who pushed approval of a rejected minister through a quisling of a deputy speaker suffering from a bout of the Stockholm Syndrome.


Gay issues, judged from the hundreds of online comments, get the juices of Ugandans boiling. You could probably get only about thirty or so comments on Dr. Besigye being hauled to a dingy dirty little police cell. Amazing priority, if you ask me.

For more @The Liberal Manifesto

It Is More Than Just About Investors and Consumers

It is More Than Just About Investors and Consumers

 

A tell-tale dark clouds hanged over the venue for the national fête to the 50 years of "freedom" from our colonial masters as the chief cheerleader pronounced his ambtious plan to catapult the nation to a first-world state. Key to this latest farce, per The Monitor, is yet another of Museveni's New 10-Point Plan. And the impetus behind all this is "the sovereign" power of "the investor" and "the consumer," so says the master tactician. Whatever happened to the last one as he emerged from the bush? The wonks have often called him to task on the original ten. But the man on-the-move has often answered with more vacuous gimmicks after gimmicks because they sell. The population likes such simplistic one-liners as " Let them get rich," coupled with strategic brown envelops

 

More@The Liberal Manifesto

 

Is the God Business Any Help?

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2012

Is the God Business Any Help?

@http://the-liberalmanifesto.blogspot.com/2012/10/is-god-business-any-help.html

God's Existence in Limbo

Will Science Someday Rule Out the Possibility of God?

White House Beer Recipes

Free Speech; What Free Speech? Only in America!

A reminder to always be on the look out because the caveman lurks in power.

US Presidential Politics Today

Diabetes Hits Acoli

My Ghanaian friend had a wonderful day at the beach with his family. He set off on the highway back where he veered off the road and crushed, killing himself and the rest of his family except a young daughter. He had a diabetic shock—a state of extreme low blood sugar.

Recently I read a story in one of Uganda’s dailies that said there has been a surge of diabetic cases in the Acoli region. This is in addition to the other negative statistics that are coming from the sub region. A reflective rabbi once asked himself: What is it about me that attract these negativities? In the same vein, what is it about the Acoli that allow the activities of two psychos in Museveni and Kony to land them in concentration camps, disrupting their core ways of life with devastating long-term consequences? Many would probably rise up in arms that such a question is an attempt at blaming the victim rather than the perp.

I am not a medical doctor. The information about diabetes is available out there for anyone curious and/or concerned. The basic information is that glucose, an end product of what we eat which is also produced by the liver, needs insulin to enter cells for brain function and energy for the body. Insulin is produced by the pancreatic gland which is located just behind the stomach. For some people body cells become resistant to the action of insulin even as the pancreas deteriorates and unable to produce enough insulin to overcome the accumulation of sugar in the blood stream. Early treatment usually begins with taking some medicine orally and combining it with diet selections and regular physical activities. Eventually the insulin will have to be supplied by regular self-injections. Without proper care other organs begin to fail leading to premature death.

The question one might ask is: why are Blacks and, Acoli in particular, more susceptible to diabetes? Increase in diabetes has also been noted in Southern Sudanese Acoli who have been relocated to the US from refugee camps in Uganda. Such predispositions, if any, can similarly be asked of the prevalence of stomach ulcers in people of western Uganda. There may be some genetic component to some of these maladies. Some other causes of diabetes include diet, obesity, virus infection, age, emotional stress and smoking.

Acoli of our fathers were generally tall and leanly sculpted. This was probably an adaptation to the paucity of food supply and/or the kinds of food that were eaten. Besides, the lives of an Acoli was often outdoors. A male child hanging around the kitchen instead of out playing was frowned at. While the default mode is to blame, may be it would help if one looks back in order to act skillfully now for a better future.

The Flip-Flopper Club

From:
 http://the-liberalmanifesto.blogspot.com/

Flip-Flopper sounds like the sound of sandals Ugandans call slippa. In the American political lexicon, it is the political opportunist who changes his or her tunes by slurping the finger with saliva and testing where the winds are blowing. The sole purpose is winning and/or scoring a point. In that vein ex-governor and investment banker Mitt Romney fits the mold. The Obama campaign machinery, making a calculated guess that Romney is the likely Republican opponent to beat in 2012, has labeled the man as having no core value. Coming to crunch time of their primary season, Romney’s fellow competitions are also drumming similar beat.

Romney’s apologists are out countering with something of the cliché that change is a constant. Obama has also flip-flopped, so they say. We all change our positions at one time or another on the basis of new information or better insights. True, that we change. But how does one distinguish a flip-flopper from someone who has evolved due to better knowledge of a situation? That one is a tough one. May be we could call on the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his stated test for identifying pornography: I know it when I see it. When Governor Romney destroys hard-drives to erase his trails during his tenure, there is a red flag.

If we know a flip-flopper when we see one, then there is no greater flip-flopper of the 21st Century than Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Museveni has defined opportunism to the extent that some wonder about his mental health. Is he so full of himself that he can say just about anything at no cost to himself? Is he a sociopath? Or, is he, like the rest of us, has some issues arising from suboptimal developmental attachment circumstances that often chain the adult in skewed self-regulation states. Does a Mulokole background have something to do with it? What happened in the Banyimas’ household from which he is now bitterly alienated? Whatever it is, unfortunately for him and to our chagrins his outcome is playing out in the public arena.

What would you do if you stated publicly that the problem of Africa was leaders who hang on to power for too long? The flip-flopper did just that at the beginning of his rule. You know the rest of the story.

The man castigates the opposition in his country for harping on the issues of corruption without concrete evidence, but goes to the neighboring country of Rwanda and states that he is surrounded by thieves in his government. What kind of man is this?

Surprise!

Surprise!
http://the-liberalmanifesto.blogspot.com/

Long before there was the Putin dance of constitutional manipulation, there was the original night-dancer of central Afrika. With the tacit complicity of a rubber-stamp Parliament he did his Afrikan witchcraft to ensure his effective life presidency. A few magic coins in the pockets or bras of parliamentarians sealed the deal.

Now, self-assured, here are what we get in this dirt-poor country. By the way, did you know that Uganda's GDP is less than half what Americans spend on their dogs and cats?

The dancer must of necessity have his swanky presidential jet which he must upgrade to a newer model every so often. His travel comfort taken care of, not unlike the wajeti of corporate America, there is no need for a national airline for the despised ninety-nine percent of us.

The treasury plunked in millions to refurbish a colonial governor’s mansion to a palace befitting of a dancing president. The Egyptian dancers may call theirs a palace, but look at what became of the last occupier. In the magic kingdom we know the power of words, so we choose the less pretentious “state house.”

An obscene sum of money, few Ugandans can wrap their brain around, was paid to an NRM robber baron for a failed commercial transaction. The attorney general was corralled into signing off on the loot. Apparently his weak balls trumped his legal mind. It is conceivable that the fund found its way into the NRM political election machinery.

Are we into fiscal irresponsibility yet? The dancer, being afraid of his own shadows, runs the treasuries dry of the almighty dollar in order to equip his coercive forces with the latest phallic symbol of the latest Russian fighter jets. There were seismic tremors in the tiny economy as a result. I should be happy that now my remittances to those who benefit from my largesse can receive relative larger shillings from the tiny dollars I have to part with every so often. I am not happy for them because, on top of the dearth of dollars, gazillions of shillings were dumped into the economy to buy votes, bringing with them the inflationary Grinch.

You want to demonstrate? There is a law making its way that will lock you up without bail along with child rapists and body-parts hunters. Will history repeat itself? As a wily hunter of the delectable delicacy of anyeri, I always made sure I knew where I laid a trap lest I “accidentally” had my feet chopped off. Ms MP worthy of her chops should take it from a seasoned trapper that this law is a trap that might come to haunt her.

Ever been near a spoiled brat? Should you refuse to give him that shiny toy, he will scream and stomp his feet in an apoplectic frenzy. And so, if the 6th parliament had not frustrated him, the dancer would have had power reaching my grass-roofed-mud-and-wattle village paradise—so, he complained, whined and called names.

Other than news, few shows on TV captivate me more than watching Nature. In one show it was fascinating to see the process of how a once-mighty alpha lion, with a huge mane, being manhandle (or rather lionhandle) by up-and-coming young Turks for dominance over mating rights in a pride. The old warrior ended up sauntering away limping alone to die in the brushes remote from the center of action he once controlled.

The South Africans dub him the Lion of Africa. Of course, brisk one-way trade to Uganda helps elicit such praise songs. The question for us here, however, is: Are the young Turks in Parliament now virile enough to challenge the lion and maul his tail? Or will the roaring and stomping of his feet scare away wanabe statesmen to retreat into their mothers’ wombs?

All along for twenty five years the writings have been on the wall. Only now are some benefactors shutting down the spigots of Dollars/BP/Euros. Probably seeing the man buying war toys from savings on Debt-Forgiveness gimmick ticked them off. Now, you also hear from the class of chief-you-kill-me-with-laughter brownosers: The man has changed. Surprise!

Posted by Sokolokobangusay

Talking with Two Sides of the Mouth

From
http://the-liberalmanifesto.blogspot.com/

Andrew Mwenda is a hard-hitting journalist. Some people in my circle hang on his every word for insights into the murky waters of Uganda politics. Take his latest, Uganda is bigger than Museveni, Besigye (7/8/11), which seemingly is an attempt to portray a balanced perspectives on the two protagonists, but, in fact, is a tirade on Dr. Besigye and his opposition, FDC. There is also a certain amount of self-pity in the piece: Oh poor me, harassed by Museveni’s goons, and maligned by Besigye’s people.

Mr. Mwenda puts on his Economist-in-Chief hat. He dissects how the economy came to be what it is and provides some prognosis. One wonders whether many of his audience understand what he is talking about. What they experience is high prices and intuitively know that there is something wrong with the economy, but whether or not it is a consequence flooding the economy with printed money in supplementary budget to finance campaign “brown envelops,” chais to MPs, or spending dollars to buy the spiffy phallic symbols, aka, fighter jets, they don’t give a hoot. Somebody is responsible for the plight, and not the opposition.

Having analyzed the problem and provided the solution, the “economist” then heaps blame on the opposition for wailing without giving any solution. What?! It is not incumbent on the opposition to provide detailed alternative solutions at this stage of the game. Theirs is to point a bird’s eye-view assessment of the problem and pound on the failure of the government to deliver. Theirs is to point out that “the emperor has no clothes,” otherwise we may as well go back to the “umbrella” dispensation.

The labeling by unnamed opposition members that Dr. Besigye’s rather combative stance in the walk-to-work as counter-productive is a framing that does not probe into intention. He leaves it to us, the readers, to assume. Coming from a premise that behind every behavior there is good intention (albeit maybe misguided from an observer’s point of view), what if the boorish behavior was intended to draw attention of a world where the killing of Bin Laden, the Greek economy, the tottering US economy, or the Arab Spring were front pages? On cue, the government reacted heavy-handedly and the walk-to-work in little Uganda filtered into BBC and earned some mentions in major US papers. Did it matter? Very little, but every scratch and dent in the dictator’s armor counts. This government would rather have horse-trading deals with governments in these locales rather than have its negative underbelly enters their public consciousness.

In the end, what are Ugandans “sick and tired” of? Might it be Mr. Mwenda’s abuse by Museveni’s operatives and the taking him to task by Besigye’s hatchet loyalists? What Ugandans are really sick and tired of is a balding man clinging to power when he has no new ideas. And that is what Mwenda, if he is fighting for a change of course, should concentrate on rather than talking with two sides of his mouth and getting into trouble.

The Mother Halitosis

There was a strange odor in the car, like someone had pooped in it. And, then she spoke, and out came a whiff of such unbelievable smell. Instinctively and subtly I touched my nose and winched—curse be my strong sensory acuity honed over my meditation practice!

Now, do you tell the person or not? It depends. In the end I did in a nice way. In the meantime we were going to have a Mandingo do, which, except for baby-regression over the papayas, there was not going to be frothing and slurping at the mandibles.

Brushing one’s teeth alone may not help with bad breath—also known as halitosis. For some people the problem runs deeper—no pun intended.

Memsahib was and still is (across the Atlantic) an extremely passionate and, by extension, very greedy in all her enterprises, including eating. The problem is as we grow older our metabolism slows down and, if you take in more than necessary to burn for fuel for daily activities, the excess has to go somewhere. Often the extras are sent into storage, resulting in big stomachs, swollen faces, and wide enormous buttocks. Since the storage process takes time, the excess food piling in the stomach turns to literal putrid pit latrines. Hence, the deep and nauseating foul breath oozing out of Mother Halitosis.

In the end, food, which has pleasure properties to encourage body nourishment for survival, morphs into suffering of obesity, foul smell and possible encounters with diabetes and other organ malfunctions. At the same time, the brain organ, for one, produces a mind that is cloudy, full of negative emotions of anger, revenge and resentfulness, inter alia.

Mind over Mood

Lately there have been a series of teenagers committing suicides after relentless taunting on the Internet social networks. A son of Bernie Madoff committed suicide because he couldn’t handle the disgrace following the story of his father’s billion-dollar chicanery blanketing the old and new media outlets. Politicians and other public figures are often subjected to withering calumnies on the tabloid media that could burn lesser mortals to ashes. Personally, I have had my fair share of vicious and malicious attacks on one Internet social media site. The latest began with my posting some relatively contrarian out-of-the-box points of view. A man (probably with the support of “enemy” bevy of rodents burrowed in the underworld of gossip dens), in such high-octane apoplectic rants, inveighed against me about my supposedly undistinguished life history: my family relationship and my gallivanting philandering loser self.

First, admittedly, when one throws the kitchen sink at you, there is an instantaneous instinctive reaction. Thanks to the evolutionary properties we are all endowed with. Notice and observe the moods that course through your body. How you deal with them is a function of your trained or untrained mind. You don’t want to lose balance and a commitment to your mission.

Mindful of my reactive moods, I asked the questions: Who is this guy? What mind state is he operating on? What are his motivations? How do I handle the situation?

I take the view that often the attacker or attackers do not know your core self, and yet have the temerity to focus on your life. Often these people have serious problems of their own. They are bullies full of inadequacies. Their morbid exercise may not be a Freudian projection, a defense mechanism for protecting oneself against anxiety arising from undesirable feelings of some forms of emotional and mental perturbations. It is more a Functional projection of some inner turmoil on to others in ways that is perceived to promote one’s survival enterprise. (Kenrick, “11).

Life always has choices. We do the best we can with what we have at the time. Assuming you have a handle on the fight-flight automatic evolutionary gift, get on a game plan of what I call Mind-over-Mood:

-Size up the situation

-Experience and become friendly with your moods in the moment

-What are your automatic thoughts on the incident?

-Evaluate the thoughts: concrete versus phantoms

-What alternative thoughts, if any, are there?

-Decide on a course of action

Here are some options:

1-Keep quiet and refuse to engage. Depending on your temperament, this may be a course of action that can shut up the perpetrator because he cannot rant against a silent wall.

2-Go toe-to-toe with the red-eyed monster on his reframing of the issues. Chances you will be in a shouting match, talking pass one another until hell freezes over. This is because both of you are operating at different chunking levels of basic premises to allow for genuine discussion. (Linden, ’97).

3-Stand up to the bully, but not on his terms of framing the issues. This was my choice. The dude chunked to two lateral levels

a. Superman coming to expose the evil me

b. Superman coming to save me from myself

I, on the other hand, chunked up to: What the fuck is this creature, I have never met or know doing with my family and my life? Fuck off!

Ab initio, we were not discussing anymore but talking to ourselves. And so, began the odyssey: He, proud of himself for having all kinds of unflattering information about me. Some double-headed cobras were in a state of orgasmic delirium from the pungent gunk gushing from the man’s rear-end orifice. I threw some stinging jabs a la Ali. That got him madder and madder. There were hints that he believed he was actually doing me a favor—a tell-tale sign to his mental state. End of story.

4-Where profits in money or votes are involved, or if you are so inclined, you might mount a counter-intelligence offensive and dig out muck on the perpetrator. There is always information on anybody that can be manipulated and twisted without context. So, you might play what the dude called “matches” with matches.

In the end it boils down to having a core and unshakable believe in who you are. Once you have that then “a word is not experience” or “a map is not the territory.” In the process of protecting your mood you might consider some loving-kindness mental exercise to ease your disgust of your “enemy.” You don’t want to flood your system with dangerous cortisol that can be triggered when the body senses real or imagined dangers. You are now a Teflon—a mind warrior—protected even in death.

Glimpses into the Out-group Homogeneity

Friday, June 17, 2011Glimpses into the Out-group Homogeneity*

http://the-liberalmanifesto.blogspot.com/
Wes Nisker posits that in the journey to self-discovery and understanding of our behaviors, the fundamental place to start with is to pose the question: “Who am I?” This is not about me, the teacher, the footballer or what have you. It is about getting some idea to the questions: Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? The answer to “Who am I?” is “…of vital importance to our happiness and well-being. How at ease we feel in our body, mind and the world, as well as how we behave toward others and the environment all revolve around how we view ourselves in the larger scheme of things.”

Scientific researches are increasingly proving what has long been hypothesized that beneath the veneer of civilization and culture, our behaviors are functionally primal and inclined towards basic survival and procreation as a means of gene succession.

Take the case of Ugandans: Most of us have received formal education and many make claims to religious faith. The majority pay allegiance to Christianity whose basic tenet is “Love thy neighbor.” However, from the same mouth that sings the glory to the Christ, the champion of ‘Love thy neighbor,” also gushes morbid coded venoms, such as: “Those people,” “You people,” “The Anyanya (not the ones of the 50’s and 60’s Sudan),” “A good Muganda is a dead one,” or “Biological substances (forgetting we are all biological organisms).” We have insulted one another, we have killed one another, and we have hogged power and suppressed others. All the while saddling the other with being primitive. All the while some have been good parents, good sons, good friends, good church goers, good priests and imams, and may have even been generous to a fault. What is going on?

It is seems that we are not one Self. We have multiple selves or rather may be sublevels of or forms of the mundane Self. Often we negotiate each sublevel appropriately for the occasion. Often we don’t and, at the extreme end, may even be pathological.

And this brings us back to “Those people,” a euphemism for painting the “others” with one brush of Out-group Homogeneity—“you have seen one, you have seen them all.” In my childhood eyes, for example, I could not figure out the physical differences between people in the Indian community. This persisted until eventually I began to recognize individual differences. What was happening was that I could only use my limited cognitive resources to interactions and differentiations within the larger in-group of the black population of my lottery win.

As an adult, did this phenomenon of seeing no differences in the out-group disappear or still lies dormant somewhere in the labyrinthine hard-drive of my amazing brain?

It seems the Out-group Homogeneity has been horned over millions of years for survival: Those people came from over the river and brought diseases. So, stay way from them. When they came, our crops failed. Their women are witches. Those people came and rampaged through the village, killing males and old women, and carrying away young girls. They are our sworn enemy; never marry into their clan.

While Out-group Homogeneity has served us well, it also has its dark sides. Princes of darkness and demagoguery can take it and use it to destroy a group. History is full of it. The latest mayhems in Bosnia and Rwanda are testimonies to that. Many Acoli in Uganda and abroad feel that they have been subjected to the same. We risk relationships when we dismissively say it never happened, which then feeds into the “they-and-us” divide. Similarly, carping in discordant harangues may not win sympathetic ears and has the same “they-and-us.” effect.

So, it doesn’t seem that my childhood outlook vanished from my mind. It is undercover and could easily pop up as a default state at times of stress. Whether I use it or not, depends on whether I train myself or somebody has trained me to use alternative skills in conflicts. If I do, and you do, it will mean “taking whole” in the situation and we become super-cooperators**, which seems to be a much stronger and elegant survival tool.

*Douglas T. Kenrick, ‘11

**Nowak & Highfield, 11

The Liberal Manifesto

This is a sister blog that is worth checking:
 http://the-liberalmanifesto.blogspot.com/
The Liberal Manifesto

The Liberal Manifesto is a blog that endeavors to work for Uganda’s Freedom, Equality, Fairness, Progress and Happiness—the essence of any 21st Century enlightened people. While Museveni relies largely on his infamous troika of cooking stones as the bedrock of his rule deluged with anxieties and intrigues, we believe that the pentathlon principles are the foundation mortar for transforming a society. Courage, Objectivity, Fairness and Open-mindedness will guide us in dissecting issues.

The Liberal Manifesto focus is on the individual—and by extension, the entire population. Assuming maps of reality differ from one person to the next, the questions we ask are: What does freedom, equality, fairness, progress and happiness mean to a Ugandan man or woman? Hopefully, in time, we will come to a collective consensus map of reality that gives more empowering choices for actions to the individual.

The Liberal Manifesto believes that we are all born Free to realize our individual potentials. We also believe everyone’s main objective is Happiness, however defined.
As a member of society the individual’s Freedom and Happiness have in time hinged on societal advancement and promotion of Equality, Fairness and Progress—lack of which have often led to imbalance and disharmony.

Uganda, at its core, is now in state of disharmony and imbalance. The Liberal Manifesto’s work to help steer the Uganda to harmony and balance is cut out. We know the historical nightmares. We know the characters that are taking the ship towards a precipice.

John Dermatini says that there are seven areas that show up in every society and in every person: Intellect, Culture, Vocation, Finance, Social, Spiritual and Health. Any time a person or society is disempowered in five of those areas, they will be overpowered. Any society that has been suppressed, there is usually lack of Intellectual, Vocational, Financial and Physical Strength. Where do many Ugandans stand today?

Our individual narratives form the stories of our lives. My identity, your identity is informed from each of our stories to date. Superimposed on this identity are cultural narratives and stories that gel into the collective identity of a society. Narratives, Stories and Identities are the raw data from whence realities emanate. Our challenge is to be cognizant of those narratives, stories and identities to incorporate what we perceive as the liberal universal sense of Freedom, Equality, Fairness, Progress and Happiness.
No opinion is off-limits as along as it is not vapid tirades that do not elegantly advances pro and counter arguments. We especially would like to know from those who think or believe that the status quo is tenable.

AntiDemocratically Gifted By Nature

He has confined Dr. Besigye in the prison of his home—all out of fear of what the so-called “walk-to-work” might unleash: the pent-up frustrations of millions. He lectured the diplomatic corps on the history of Uganda of his conjuring. He threatened changing the constitution so that peaceful demonstrators could be denied bail alongside murderers and child molesters. Knowing the power of incumbency with unlimited access to state resources, he purchased changing the constitution for his effective life presidency. Idi Amin was cruder by declaring himself so. The so-called press freedom is but a sham: it is encumbered with thorns of gags. Criticize the Big Man to your peril of disturbing the peace. Mention the fact of the generals (the de facto powers behind the throne) being stacked with his homeboys and you will be slapped with promoting sectarianism.

At the advent of his “liberating” the country, he proclaimed bringing fundamental change. A change indeed! But what kind of change was heralded?

He scoffed at African Big Men who overstayed in power. Now we have voodoo math where twenty five years is equivalent to five years and counting for the transformation of Uganda society—a task that he alone can do.

The Marxist-Socialist has turned into a pernicious wild-wild west free marketer who has seen vast concentrations and controls of wealth by a few who must of necessity stroke his ego and be loyal to his authoritarian rule. He has shifted society’s responsibility to the individual on such cardinal issues as health and road safety.

The blokes that lost to him did “panda gari,” which, while obnoxious, does not compare to the elaborate maintaining of order by fear, intimidations and blind obedience.

The judiciary and parliament have largely wimped out, allowing concentrations of powers in the executive with the attendant coercive instruments of the military and the police. Balance of power, an anti-dote against excesses, is but wishful thinking in the realm.

When all have come to pass, the question to be asked is: What did the revolutionary Museveni mean when he declared a “fundamental change”? Where we listening through different world-views?

Classic social change has always been about the “…material (who controls what wealth), institutional (who runs what powerful institutions) and political (who wins elections [or murders his way to power])”
If politics is about economics, power and social organization, then –for better or worse—Museveni has delivered as promised. How anybody sees or experiences the change depends on how one thinks. So then we could add the mind as a factor in politics. (Lakoff, ’08).

Let us take the case of the Acoli who have been brutalized and humiliated by the NRM under this man. Acoli is now sending more NRM MPs to parliament than the opposition parties combined. The Baganda, whose allegiance to the monarchy, in part, fueled the five-year brutal bush war, are the linchpin to the NRM hegemony even as the monarchy is humiliated in broad daylight.

What is going on here? A fact of populations voting against their supposed self-interests is not unique to Uganda. In the US of A, for example, the Republican Party machines have mesmerized poor whites to a trance of supporting agendas that protect the interests of the rich. As a consequence, in part, the rich get richer while the incomes of the relative poor (that include millions of whites) have stagnated for years even as the capitalist machinery bamboozles them to buy more and more stuff.

To get a clue on this phenomenon we have to understand that human decisions are largely beyond conscious reason. Adept mind assassins know this. So they sneak in messages via the cognitive unconscious, unbeknownst to the people of interest. The unconscious is responsible for ninety plus percent of what we are all about. Those who know it use it to conquer themselves and the world.

Therefore, if Museveni’s “fundamental change” is not what some of us expected and wanted, we have to be creative in gaining access to the population’s mind, hearts and actions through enchantment as Guy Kawasaki would say in his Enchantment book. It is a Herculean task against powerful and motivated dark forces flushed with relatively overwhelming resources. It is going to be a marathon, not a sprint. There is no compromising because the world-view of this regime is self-perpetuation. It is a regime that inherently and fundamentally totalitarian and undemocratic in its sinews. Its expertise is the immoral act of camouflaging true intentions and duping gullible people “…who don’t have the ability to discern the truth or what is best for them…” (Kawasaki, ’11).

The Strauss-Khan Syndrome

Evolutionary processes took eons to come up with a rational civilized up-right walking human. Through cataclysmic weather changes, pandemic diseases, gene mutations, adaptations, and eventual bottle-neck phenomena, about two hundred thousand years ago modern man emerged—complete with a central control systems that regulated the internal working systems and response to external stimuli. While this man could make tools, it was only forty thousand years ago that his tools became more complex as he began to associate with his neighbors. The dawn of human civilization had arrived, and by ten thousand years ago began the ascent to the present days. Thanks to the Holocene period of relative climatic calm.

If we take the premise that all sentient beings came from the same source, human beings should have similar basic mechanisms for regulating our activities, such as internal workings, desire for protection from danger, and desire for feeding and replicating. These basic qualities took millions of years to encode into our genetic make up. What happened forty thousand years ago was a fortuitous change (mutation) that happened only to the Homo sapiens. This brought about self-awareness and a sense of reading others and relating, and eventually to sound-making that evolved into systematic language.

We now know that the basic coding relate to lower parts of the brain, and we share that with other sentient beings. This is the seat of survival and self-perpetuation—the home of instincts. The upper part is the seat of reason that builds cathedrals, high-speed trains, civilizations, or reflects before acting.

Now, in a clutch of civilization versus instincts, which would win? The former has been around for about forty thousand years. The latter has been refined for millions of years. If experience counts, you do the math. The answer can come by way of examples. The president of the most powerful nation in the present world dips a cigar inside a student intern working for him. Is this sexual depravity, or having been a victim of an ambush by a force greater than his reputed intellect? An eloquent governor, who shook up Wall Street’s greedy titans and is destined for the White House, spends thousands on escort service, aka, hooker service. Is this stupidity or what? A Bible-Belt preacher man gets hooked on the inside rear end of male orifices. Then we have priests who like boys a little too much. What’s up with that?

And, of course, we have the story of the day: Strauss-Khan, the masterful IMF managing director, who is built like a Spanish fighting bull. He is the man who would be King of France. Now, his chances are dashed to ashes, and we scratch our heads.

“There, but for the grace of God, goes I,” the man said. And we should join in chorus if we are wise.

The same heuristic tools we often use for learning and making quick decisions, sometimes ambush us to our detriment. As the upper brain function is crowded out, we cut to the chase: reach for the jugular; save a child from danger, oblivious to our own safety; or go for the cunt or die.

The top dogs whose dick-brains take over are not doing these things because of power as some women think. These testosterone-laden executives are often sharp and witty, caring family men who are men’s men. May be in the scramble to reach the mountain top they forgot to mindfully throw a lasso and tame the beast, which is at the same time a source of their effectiveness.

To Each His Own

1. So long as the US gub’ment ain’t runnin’ a pussy deficit—me, personally, really don’t give a shit.—A character in Redbone

2. Don’t listen to everything people say. You might hear your servant insulting you.—Ecclesiastus 1:27

3. Anthony Quinn in Zorba the Greek film:


--Life is trouble, only death is not. To be alive is to undo your belt and look for trouble.

--I have got to go fast. You know, they say that age kills the fire inside of a man, that he hears death coming. He opens the door and says:

“Come in, Give me rest.”

That is a pack of old damn lies. I have got enough fire in me to devour the world. So…I fight.

--God has a very big heart, but there is one sin he will not forgive: If a woman calls a man to her bed, and he will not go.

--A man needs a little madness or else he will never dare cut the rope and be free.

4. Life must be lived forward, but it can only be understood backwards—Soren Kiekergaard

5. Buddha: I am awake.

6. Rene Descartes: Cogito, ergo sum---outdated!

7. T pray is to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy --Ambrose Bierce—bravo!

8. I laugh when I hear the fish in the sea are thirsty—Kabir

9. Napoleon: To get power you need to display absolute pettiness. To exercise power you need to exercise greatness. Such pettiness and such greatness are rarely found in one person.—I agree

10. When I ask God, God is silent. Why then do I try to explain God's existence when it is shrouded in mistery?-- Anon

The Science of Being a King of Kings

So you thought Mesmer Musava of the Magic Kingdom of Hugadia had a copyright to the title of “King of Kings.” Think again; apparently his handlers forgot to register the title for the exclusive use of the Master. Anybody—a business owner, a boss, husband, a policeman, a military man, a school teacher or a common village bully—may appropriate the title and put it to good use à la Masava.

Gleaned from psychology, evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, anthropology and social sciences, here are some pointers that are guaranteed to make you a king of kings of your defined fiefdom.

1. Make sure you pick the lottery number that lands you into some form of dysfunctional family circumstances. This is not as bad as it sounds. It gives you an instinctual ability to prove something since you might have had to fend for yourself when your contemporaries were frolicking with girls.

2. Since you had to fend for yourself or you might have been sent off to stay with some people with less genetic sympathy to you, you learned early that, beyond the facades, darkness lies in the hearts of men. This is very important if you are to maintain your omnipotent status as you can see through people even before they know their feelings.

3. You have learned that the cave instinct of fear still rules large in the 21st century, even when there are no more lions likely to drag you out of your pad. From fear emanates hatred, greed and delusion. Such knowledge makes you work your fellow man like a yoyo. You are the puppet master: you can make lapdogs of grown men, young men can fall over swords to ingratiate you, or your enemies are forced to run around deliriously like rabid dogs.

4. A true king of kings does not admit to mistakes—he is infallible like the Pope. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of your detractors. Everything that turns out right is because of your eminence.

5. Have some posse possessed with greed (a fear from wants) who can do whatever they want. They can make voodoo financial deals with public resources with no consequences. This way their allegiance is sealed lest you pull the rug under them.

6. Above all, be a jerk. A jerk does not accept the cosmic phenomena of impermanence and change: the weather changes; seasons change; there is day, there is night; there is birth, growth and death; fortunes are won, fortunes are lost; you name it, it has come and it has gone.

7. You should despise personal power gained by ease and generosity of heart. Instead you grasp and cling to power.

8. You should be able to operate from a hidden agenda, while coyly creating a different impression, thereby, effectively lying to engorge yourself with power.

So, if you are blessed with or can learn the above traits, you have the requisites to impose your will on others. You can become the center of gravity. The sun rises and falls on you. When you are angry, people cringe. It is your way or the high road ‘cause you are the kings of kings.

As the King, so Goes the Country

 • Despotic governments do not recognize the precious human components of the state, seeing its citizens only as faceless, mindless—and helpless—mass to be manipulated at will. It is as though people were incidental to a nation rather than its life-blood.
--

...Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not “given,” it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.

--Ang San Suu Kyi, Burma 's Opposition Leader

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Someone once said: As the king, so goes the country. This means that the resonant attitudes and actions of the leader are picked up by his people and spread far and wide.

So, as one watches some of the images below, it is not beyond reason to surmize they are manifestations of the deep-seated Uganda character that has been spawned over several generations of violence. Even while it dealt violently with any challenges to its rule, the colonial occupier gave a temporary respite to the native-on-native violence. Now, we are back to the basics: I have got the gun, and you don’t, so, I will screw you.

Other people wonder; some of us don’t. Uganda is violent from top to bottom. The violent acts of the state trickle down to how we conduct our affairs with one another. In space and time we see its virtual projections in the belligerent and aversive language on Internet group sites. Beneath the effusive Uganda smiles lurk a darkness that often erupts in gruesome hostility with deaths and mayhems in its wake.

Does the guy (in the video) that is breaking the car windows and hauling the opposition leader into the pick-up truck think that he will have this power forever? If change occurs, as it eventually will, how will the oppressed, if they have the gun, treat him?

“I am just doing my job—following orders”—is no excuse. Everybody has a choice. How can the cycle of violence be broken? These are some of the questions that need to be tackled not only by primal emotional coding, but by the elevated content of reasons bestowed by civilizations. A tall order, considering the protagonists and us, the followers, seem armed with only utilitarian education and precepts from mosques and churches that are not organic and skin-deep.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152948/-/c25w2jz/-/index.html

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152856/-/c25wt6z/-/index.html

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1151516/-/c26ol9z/-/index.html
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152208/-/c262naz/-/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoNt_RKhIdk&feature=player_embedded
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152320/-/c261taz/-/index.html
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/-/688334/1152316/-/c261u0z/-/index.html
http://newvision.co.ug/D/8/13/753370