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by Clarius Ugwuoha

Special to the G21

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a people's history of the world

G21 #428: TALKING DRUMS AMERICAN DREAMS DAY ONE G21 AFRICA SPECIAL SECTION JOIN OUR MAILING LIST. It contains more jokes than not. G21 E-MAIL NEWSLETTER GLOBAL*BEAT HOT LINKS HOUSE OF CARDS MEMOIRS OF THE INFO AGE NEW YORK STATE RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT ARCHIVES SMOKE & MIRRORS LAST WEEK's EDITION MEET THE G-CREW! These are the people behind this jam-band every week. HOME TABLE OF CONTENTS & BACK ISSUES BECOME A SPONSOR OF THE WORLD'S MAGAZINE. WHY should you advertise here? We'll tell you. We know you're lazy. Here's a button for a quick translation of this page. Just click on the flag for your country. You're welcome! OR TRY THIS GOOGLE TRANSLATION SERVICE.

Clarius Ugwuoha

Port Harcourt, NIGERIA - As the news of the tsunami and hurricane disasters rage in turn, my grand uncle, who has his own grasp of international milestones could only wonder why Osama bin Laden should continue to strike at these points in time despite the outrage that trailed his attack on the World Trade centre -- and this time in USA again and even in Asia of all defenseless continents; it has turned into a sordid sport and poor Africa would be the next victim! To him, tsunami and hurricanes were other versions of the Al Queda terror network.

Such misconceptions as this only point to one thing: We are living under threats -- threats of nuclear holocausts, threats of international terrorism, of natural disasters and above all, the threat of self extermination. In the midst of all these, the question burns -- how safe are we?

Time was when Man was at the mercy of wild beasts. But today man is at the mercy of SELF. We seem to be in an odd cycle of security-and-insecurity. This oscillation has managed to remain constant at all times, with the result that safetiness and security have become mere clichés used by Man to assure himself that life is worth every effort.

If a place is safe it is probably secure, but a secure place is not necessarily safe! The Shell Petroleum Development Company's Egbema Production Centre here in Nigeria was regarded as an impenetrable fortress. The Centre features double iron-bar fencing with electrocution wires to discour age any attempt at scaling the walls, add that to the military and police sentinels always on guard and it marked off the place as the most secure habitation for miles around. Therefore when burglary occurred repeatedly within this impossible fastness, fingers could not be pointed in any known direction, the occupants of the camp could not have burgled their own offices and smuggled their loot out through the stiff entry and exit protocols.

Then, it was discovered that a dare-devil gang of four, one of them an ad-hoc contract employee of the company, had cut the double iron bar fencing with precision instruments, stolen their way in above the noses of the occupants, broken into the affected stores and secreted an entire cache of tools and other equipment to their safe hideout. The capture a day later of two of these daredevil boys with their loot did little to dispel the air of mystic insecurity that pervaded the whole place. No one was safe after all!

I will relate another scenario, entirely different but bearing on the subject at hand. A Government body executing a contract in my community had need of a sentry and according to their agreement, could only source for this within the community. The person finally selected -- by omission or commission -- was the very person who would constitute the greatest threat to the security of the place. Daily, he depleted systematically the entire stock of the stores so that there was a wide berth between items supplied and those he declared -- a microcosm of what obtained out there in the corridors of power -- everybody knew whom the thief was, SHOULD point fingers. But nobody COULD. The contractor had to contend with this secretive depletion and would be seen later complaining to pockets of natives in isolated corners, eyes darting furtively else the wrong ears eavesdropped. Sadly enough, they found his complaints more entertaining than the usual Afro beats that thunder from street corners. NO ONE COULD DO ANYTHING.

It would appear that we are not safe at all. The discovery that merely breathing in and out -- an integral function of all beings -- was unsafe, courtesy of SARS, and that procreation was no safer than death through HIV/AIDS, stunned the discerning world. Never before, now very alarming. Unknown is what other intractable viruses -- to assist these health albatrosses -- are being cloned in terrorist laboratories elsewhere.

Where KNOWLEDGE had fought to defeat us, IGNORANCE completes the circuit.? HIV, Ebola -- these deadly viruses are busy incubating in their intravenous fortresses, catalyzed and spread by human vectors completely unaware of the presence in them of these debilitating scourges.

In the wakes of hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Wilma, and other natural disasters, there is the growing concern about the safety of human life on Earth. If economic giants like the United States could be overwhelmed of a sudden and whole cities swept into mountainous debris, what becomes of Third World countries in the face of such monumental dislocation boggles the mind.

It is quite appalling that NATURE, regrettably with the connivance of our very selves who degrade it, has contrived a terror cell far more dreadedful than a million Al Quedas.

The discharge of harmful chemicals continues unabated, in fact aided by ignorance in mostly the Third World. According to the Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change: "An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system."

The question of the safeness of life on Earth does not arise. We are not safe point-blank. The tiny cord that holds us in sanity and separates us from crass anarchy always creaks with tensile stress with every milestone attained. Take, for instance, the recent discovery in commercial quantity of Uranium in Nigeria, a development that holds bright prospects for the economy of that country, but which, on the other hand can be quite alarming as it is in one of the country's flashpoints with proven volatility and rumours of Al Queda links.

Uranium, a radioactive isotope. in the wrong hands is as potent a weapon as hurricane Katrina and even more dreadful. We are all unsafe!