East London, SOUTH AFRICA - Africa is one continent that has acquired the image of a conflict zone because of numerous colonial and post-colonial wars, political instability, oppression, economic stagnation, droughts that result in crop failures, and other natural disasters. Africa is also known for pandemics like malaria, ebola, and -- more than any -- HIV/AIDS.

One may almost be pardoned for doubting Africa's potential for addressing the spread of disease when considering all of this.

Few things are as depressing as looking at AIDS statistics in Africa. I understand the unreliable and dubious nature of these statitistics, which -- even when remotely accurate -- tend to be used by people with various vested interests to serve their own bias. But they do give us an estimate of what really goes on.

Christianity is the avowed predominant religion of Africa, followed by Islam. I shall then limit my comments on AIDS and religion to these two religions. ... READ MORE

Lagos, NIGERIA - The houses have deserted their occupants
The road runs faster than the traveller!

If you sit in the shade of a neame tree one tired afternoon towards evening, my story is at once the salubrious breeze and the bumblebee that alerts you in all directions. It begins from the day before my departure from Lagos. For several months, I have flirted with the idea. Now I have made up my mind: leave Lagos. Leave the city, Lagos, which is where I have been for almost two decades and which has almost become another home? Yes. The tortoise does not cast off his shell when the weather is hot, he simply changes environment!

I can make nothing of the world around me, this feeling that I am tucked in the wrong corner of it. There are better ways of correcting a mistake but not certainly with another, probably worse and gnawing greedily in the fabric of the society.

The recent increase in fuel price is one too many and has shifted the equilibrium of the city to the far left. My landlady, Madam Onita Imran, whom we call Iya ibeji, taking cue, has also increased her rent twofold. I can easier afford to die than to cope. I have to trek to work in Apapa, between it and my apartment, two hot and sweaty miles of jumping out of the path of molue buses. And once out of this enervating exercise is the leather factory where, in the words of workers, you are milked dry and given a quaff of water in return. It gets me down. ... READ MORE


JOHN D. GOLDHAMMER ON "THE SHADOW":

Seattle, WA, USA - A mouth that prays, a hand that kills. - Arabian proverb

Psychological projection of a group shadow tends to make the enemy appear to be far more dangerous and "evil" than actual reality. The U.S. is "the Great Satan," and they (terrorists) are going to "destroy civilization." For example, consider our declaration of a "War" on Terror that has created a shadow-inflation enormously elevating the status and celebrity of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda to that of a nation state or even a world power when in actuality we are dealing with scattered cells of cult victims who have been brainwashed by militant, fundamentalist Islamic cult leaders into believing that mass murder is the way into Paradise.

Terrorists are what they are, no less, no more: extremely dangerous, criminal psychopaths manufactured by a set of powerful, destructive group dynamics.

One of the best ways to observe a group's dark side is to look at what is particularly upsetting to our group-what "we" (or they) are accusing someone else or some other group of doing. Take the political storm over Newsweek's report about the Koran being flushed down the toilet at Gitmo. The Bush cadre was suddenly VERY "upset" that Newsweek printed an allegedly inaccurate story as a result of supposedly faulty information from one of their "trusted sources" -- a story that "seriously damaged" our image in the Arab world.

Of course it follows that Islamic fundamentalists' reaction to our disrespect for the Koran also exposes their group shadow, a dark side crawling with their own s avage disrespect for human life as in killing innocent people and their violent intolerance for different beliefs and views.

Now we can see more of the George W. Bush group's dark underbelly, fundamentalist politics' long heavy bag. The Bush administration-we were told-went to war in Iraq because of allegedly "faulty intelligence" from trusted sources. Eight months before the invasion of Iraq the Downing Street Memo (" ... But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."), ¹⁹ provided even more proof that the U.S. and Britain "fixed" intelligence in order to support the Bush administration's war plans.