Two African Queens, Similar Fates

Thursday with Azu, Email & Tel: azubuikeishiekwe@thisdayonline.com, 07062319465 (SMS Only), 08.19.2010

It’s not a good time for African queens. Two months ago, the deposed Deji of Akure made the headlines for the wrong reason. Oba Oluwadare Adesina battered his youngest wife, Olori Bolanle Abiola, over what the oba said was “a small domestic affair.” The word in town was that the oba suspected that his wife was having an affair.

Whatever it was, the oba decided to settle the small domestic affair in a big, dramatic way. He drove across town to his in-law’s house where his estranged wife now lives, ordered his thugs to drag her out and showered her with hot ashes.

About 2,800 miles away in the Kingdom of Swaziland another royal spectacle has smeared the headlines. City Press of South Africa scooped a report that Queen Nothando Dube, the 12th of the 14 wives of King Mswati of Swaziland, is in hot soup for shagging with Swazi’s Justice Minister, Ndumiso Mamba. The queen, also called LaDube, is currently in confinement, while the police are holding Mamba by the balls.

No one is sure what LaDube’s or Mamba’s fate will be. The king who was away to Taiwan on a state visit when the devil came knocking, is said to be mulling his options. But for all you care, I have a sneaky feeling that LaDube will be dying for a shower of hot ashes, if it will save her the shame of being ostracised.
There’s not much she can do now. It’s not just a man’s world; it’s the King’s world in Swaziland. And that’s one big difference between Olori Bolanle and LaDube. When the Nigerian Oba battered his wife publicly and claimed that no one had a right to ask him any questions because it was “a small domestic affair,” the public was outraged. The young boys around the area not only rallied to rescue the queen, they chased the king away with sticks.

The state government dilly-dallied at first but was later forced to strip the king off his title and hand him over to the police for prosecution.
In Swaziland, the press cannot even report the sex scandal. Those who read it on the Internet may be doing so in the base of their beds – the kind of place where Mamba hid himself when the police pounced. LaDube cannot squeak, much less get a fair hearing. How can she? She did not have a choice in her marriage in the first place; she was only 16 when she was captured by the king’s roving eyes.

It’s easy to argue that women must learn to accept their lot and stay in their place. Or to say that marital infidelity – especially when women are involved – is wrong. Of course, it is; whoever is involved. But when we root for a culture that robs our children of their childhood; a culture that treats our daughters as boys’ collector’s items; and treats citizens as slaves of their majesty’s pleasure, then we cannot complain too much about our harvest of rotten grapes.

His Royal Majesty, King Mswati, who ascended the throne in 1986, has married an average one wife every two years, most of them, like LaDube, were captured in their teens. In a country where the HIV prevalence rate is put at 40 per cent and poverty is rampant, you would expect some exemplary conduct, or some pretence of it, in royal and high places.

Not in the Royal Villas in Mswati’s kingdom. After imposing a ban on sexual relations for youths under 18 years of age in 2001, the king himself broke the law two months later by taking a 17-year-old as wife and fined himself a cow for the offence. In 2005, the king bought himself a luxury car worth $500,000 as a Christmas present and promised ten of his queens BMW cars worth $820,000.

King Mswati must be mad at Justice Minister Mamba, who literally ate the king’s bread and drank the king’s water, for sleeping with the king’s wife. He would hardly be assuaged by Mamba’s resignation. But I bet the king’s subjects – and anyone who looks up to him for leadership – would have felt similarly betrayed when he broke his own law on sex and teenagers nine years ago.

The real tragedy of Africa, and I think of all those who have been long under tyranny in a patriarchal society , is that the people go on submitting when one more little push might have brought them freedom.

This is true for Olori Bolanle in Nigeria as it is for LaDube in Swaziland. Who would have believed that after pressing a case in court for damages against her husband, Olori Bolanle would call a press conference to appeal that her husband should be forgiven and restored to his throne – the same throne from which she oppressed her without mercy?
I won’t be surprised if LaDube offered to do time in purgatory, just to remain Mswati’s 12th wife.

Wole Soyinka’s “The Avoidable Trap of Cultural Relativism”* – A Comment

Akintokunbo Adejumo, a social and political commentator on Nigerian issues, lives and works in London, UK

I think in order to discuss Wole Soyinka’s speech, (whether I am really qualified and intellectual enough to do this is another question, but I will try nevertheless) as above, it is necessary to understand what Cultural Relativism implies. The first use of the term, “Cultural Relativism” was around 1924 when Alan Locke described Robert Lowe’s “extreme cultural relativism”, and since then there have been numerous debates between cultural relativism and universal human rights.

It is normal to assume that any intelligentsia from the so-called Third World will find the philosophy of cultural relativism abhorrent and definitely unacceptable. This is because it is the principle that an individual human’s beliefs and activities should be understood in terms of his or her own culture. Some school of thought also believe it to be an undeniable fact; moral rules and social institutions evidence a surprising cultural and historical inconsistency.

However, there is a conflict with those who hold universal human rights very dear, and this is evident from the Wole Soyinka’s treatise. However, the Nobel Laureate made no attempt to reconcile the competing claims of cultural relativism and universal human rights, and indeed is wary of the claims made by the proponents and promoters of the former.

The eminent, Nobel Laureate Professor also outlined the issue of “Cultural Diversity” of the human, which is of course an undeniable and acknowledged fact. Human beings are diverse and hence we have for example, blacks and whites, Africans and Asians, and even amongst Africans, we have Nigerians and South Africans, and furthermore, within Nigeria, we have Yorubas, Igbos and others.

To acknowledge other people’s diversity is a good thing and this, as is increasingly evident to all, should ultimately bring about the peaceful co-existence of diverse cultures and people in the world. However, the danger, as Wole Soyinka pointed out, is in the usurpation of the cultural diversity by the proponents of cultural relativism, despite the fact that they are mutually exclusive philosophies.

This has then led to a distortion of the principles of universal human rights, even as imperfect as it is. And perhaps, it is because of this imperfection that cultural relativists have been able to exploit the weakness

Furthermore, the essay pointed out the how the philosophies of cultural relativism could be distorted to endorse certain human differences which are inherent in this world, and then used to justify certain barbarisms which we have experienced since the beginning of time. But then, we know that all ideas, philosophies and religious creeds could be so distorted even by the most devoted of practitioners of these creeds. We know how the holy books of The Bible and The Koran have been distorted for largely personal reasons, or to justify hatred, killings, etc. It is the same way that cultural relativism has been, and is still being warped today, and will probably continue for a very long time.

The essay again asserted that cultural relativism has created an environment in which diverse views or opinions on various cultural, or rather socio-cultural issues in the society are refused or totally ignored, such that dissent is not permitted. This has therefore led to dictatorship, discrimination and even state-sanctioned genocide. An example of the latter that comes to my mind is the “ethnic cleansing” that happened when the former Yugoslavia broke up.

Diversity of culture and human rights are better presented without the baggage of cultural relativism. All humans, as the essay/speech pointed out, have rights by virtue of their humanity and those rights cannot be conditioned by gender or national or ethnic origin. Also, we know that human rights as

it exists universally are the highest moral rights, so no rights can be subordinated to another person (e.g. a husband) or an institution (e.g. the state). This is in diametric opposition to the philosophy of cultural relativism.

One could therefore see the antagonism of human rights proponents and supporters to the theories of cultural relativism.

Personally, I believe, and this is also reflected very visibly in the essay/speech, that cultural relativism, if we are not careful, is leaning more towards accepting the inequality of the races as a natural phenomenon, and therefore promotes racism. The essay also presupposes that it is this doctrine that could have been responsible for ethnic and religious problems and occurrences we are having all over the world today, and whose proponents are vigorously trying to push down our throats, especially in the so-called Third World or developing countries and economies of the world.

My own take on this is this. I am definitely not a fan or follower of the ideals or philosophy of cultural relativism. However, with a little bit of research to get more knowledge about the topic, I have come to realise that it is possible that both sides of the debate on cultural relativism and universal human rights are manipulated to be made reciprocally exclusive and both sides make claims that are not only valid but reconcilable.

From the point of view of someone whose people are always on the receiving end of injustice, discrimination, inequality, etc, (that is, Africans), Wole Soyinka is right to be wary of a doctrine which instead of promoting equality and dignity of the races (that is Human Rights), seems to be doing the opposite while couching the deed in a way that seems acceptable to everybody, and in fact is being promoted in high places around the world.

However, the fact remains that Human Rights, as we have it defined today, are not universal, but predicated on Western moral values which might not necessarily be adaptable to, say, someone in Botswana or Thailand, and therefore should not be imposed as model on non-Western societies in disregard of those non-Western societies’ historical and economic progress and in disregard of their cultural differences and perceptions of what is right and wrong.

Universalism holds that more “primitive” cultures will eventually evolve to have the same system of law and rights as Western cultures. Cultural relativists hold an apposite, but similarly rigid viewpoint, that a traditional culture is not changeable.

This then reflected what I have pointed out above that universalism is modelled after only the Western viewpoint, disregarding other cultures and in fact denigrating other cultures as inferior. This is racism of the highest order.

As again pointed out in the speech by Wole Soyinka, cultural relativism has great problems and potential for abuse, however, I submit that universalism or universal human rights in its current state is not the ideal solution. Why, for example, if we have an African King, who has an advisory council of 12 senior chiefs, this system is any less representative than the supposedly more liberal Western societies?

I think the challenge to moralists and proponents of both concepts is to “marry” the two viewpoints or philosophies or ideologies to find an ideal solution or a common ground for the betterment of the society at large. We still need to take into consideration such issues as efficacy of international laws, international system of human rights, promotion and protection of human rights, and state compliance.

However, if cultural tradition or cultural relativism alone governs State observance of international standards, then widespread disrespect, abuse and violation of human rights would be given legitimacy, and these I think, is the crux of Prof. Wole Soyinka’s essay.

*Wole Soyinka, 2008. “The Avoidable Trap Of Cultural Relativism”. Speech on the occasion of the second edition of the Geneva Lecture Series, Geneva, 10 December 2008.

The Making of a Boss

My lecturers at the University drummed it into my porous brain that the difference between a boss and a leader is as wide and divergent as the distance between Lagos and Lake Chad; they also taught me that the differences are discernible and quantifiable through a careful analysis of the styles of adjudicating exhibited by these entities. My understanding of my teachers’ precepting did not go beyond the usual cynicism of a naughty pupil. After all, both terms can be used synonymously. Not until I passed through the demanding life of a youth corper in Sokoto into the tasking existence of a wage earner, was I able to map a distinction between the susceptibilities of these two ‘Ogas.’ The forum for the mapping was not palatable either. This is because I was only afforded the opportunity of witnessing one side of the divide — the boss. My crude imaginative prowess only then rose to the painful challenge of informing me about the other side of the coin. It was then I mused: once one is able to discern what something is, what that thing is not should be crystal clear.

Being a boss is very simple. The first step is to garner every conceivable and inconceivable subterfuges, including blackmail, ethnicism, praise-singing, name-calling, tale bearing, bootlicking, laying claim to bogus intellectual achievements to attract the attention and convince the powers that be that you are capable of bossing. Surely, you would be picked for appointment into the office of the first among equals. From the very first day you assume office, surround yourself with sycophants and refuse to read between the lines. Above all, take a cue from the inmates of either Aro or Yaba psychiatrist hospital by being paranoid.

The fallout of these preparatory steps should lead to appointive elimination of the notables within the organization. In their place choose blockheads, minions, and apologists into sensitive positions as a further proof of your qualification as the Chief Executive. That is not all. Seize every opportunity to intimidate the collective-bargaining bodies in your establishment by writing letters, warning them of impending catastrophes, as a result of discharging their responsibilities.

The second step is to be calculative. Pay regular visit to your local marabout to fortify you with talisman capable of clairvoyance. Then, during crises or once the charm detects a looming crisis, or your olfactory sense senses impending trouble, abscond from your constituency under one flimsy excuse or the other. Do not forget to delegate authority to one or more of your lackeys. But do not stay away for too long; make interval return-to-base visits, lampoon and lambaste the hapless surrogate and off you go again. Never allow anyone within the organization to exercise the power to release a kobo except you. Ensure the departments or sections appreciate your worth by co-opting the co-optables into decision making bodies without actually allowing them to take any decisive actions. I am sure the Queen would send a Lord Emeritus to knight you for furthering the divide and rule policy.

To the already cowed subordinates, pour a little salt on their bruised ego by treating their demands with utmost levity, their plea for equity with disdain and, describe their cry for comfort as hard lining. Seal their hope by instructing your hack writers to prepare queries for every public announcement made by the subordinates. That is not the end of the ploy. Pay a visit to the experts in the field of economic deprivation, imbibe their theories and practicalize them. Surely, your encounter with these experts and the wisdom acquired from them should combine to lead you to exhume the documents that spell out the quantity of responsibility your subordinates should discharge. For the sake of all that is holy, shun every instinct of the unrealistic nature of such work-load. Now, invoke the content of the document and ensure that those of your operatives who are not in position to execute the required quantity of responsibility (ignore the fact that it was not the making of some of them) are made to work extra hours without being paid for such hours, of course. This prodigious supervisory calculation will ensure that you conserve enough funds to perpetuate hedonistic living which is the next stage in the plot.

You should live the life of a rich spoilt child. All the state-of-the-art gadgets are the best for you. When you are on official and personal assignments, collect as many thousands of the local currency as possible. Please, do not forget to have one of the daughters of Eve in tow. After all, what is the use of a portfolio full of naira without a hairy bank as safe? There is one problem you are likely to contend with, though. The people whom you administer are bound to raise eye brows and some may even question the legality of your decisions. Don’t blame them; there is an antidote. At every meeting, if you ever convene one, shout them down, call them all sorts

of unprinted names, if you are that way inclined, load them with enough assignments to occupy their curiosity. However, if they still have time to complain about your style, threaten them with removal. I am sure they will toe the line of reason.

Lest I forget, engage in issuing verbal directives involving the release of expensive equipments in charge of your sectional heads to execute projects in which you have vested interest. If they refuse to comply, hound them, browbeat them, if they are still obstinate, trump up some trivial charges against them and relieve them of their appointment. In their stead, place a trusted but unqualified tribesman. Talking about tribes, whip up tribal sentiments from time to time in appropriate quarters. Visit your tribal Lord and let him understand the relevance of your office. Make him realize it is the turn of your tribe to head the organization. Keep replenishing the visit because you might need him when things get really hectic. To ensure that he sees reason with you, dole out thousands of your local currency to him on each visit. The fact is, our tribal Lords need the money to maintain their harem.

If your organization is charged with the responsibility of processing raw materials to man the machinery of national development, then you are in bread. How? Simple. Usurp the responsibility of the section charged with evaluating the worthiness of the raw materials. Next, assess the eagerness of the raw materials at acquiring knowledge. If they are really thirsty for knowledge, charge them a few notes in local currency, a few more in hard currency and smile to your bank. Those of the materials who are unable to scale the hurdle of the qualifying process should be sirens whose admission into your factory must be processed in a hotel room. Think of it, you have achieved quit a number of ends with your phenomenal maneuvers: rendering a section of your organization redundant, making some bread in addition to your salary, enjoying the freshness of cool blood, and since you are the overall controller, nobody is wiser. Is it not sweet to be the boss?

Now that the raw materials are ready to commence the process of being processed, it is pertinent to extend some of the measures you took against the processors to them, if only to make them feel the weight of your reasonability. If, for instance, they demand for certain rights and in the process of the agitation that characterize the demand, some of them touch your flowing gown, go home and spend sleepless nights reading through documents that spell out your executive prerogatives. Rush to your office the following day, suspend the forum of their collective bargaining, shut down your organization, to cap it all, place their leaders on suspension. This should teach the raw materials some lesson in decorum and assure them that you have thoroughly digested the content of the document. Do not tarry to call your chief image maker and instruct him to write and publish a trash justifying your closure of your organization. He might choose a topic like BEHINDE THE CLOSURE OF THE ORGANISATION….. After all is PR not tantamount to glossing over the jejune reasoning of the boss?

While grappling with the effrontery of the raw materials, do not forget that your operatives are watching the sordid drama with keen interest; you should be prepared to compete with them, as they are sure to raise objections to your illiberal tendencies. If they all belong to one body, all well and good. However, if you have the unfortunate luck of their being dichotomized into dependent and independent categories, then, you have a serious trouble on your hands. For clarity sake let me explicate the terms: the independent category is the ‘thinking machine.’ This group is rigorous, critical and unassuming; that is the nature of their calling. A few queries may silence the dependent category because the body is made up of humble and meek but not stupid individuals. However, if the two categories have the sensibility of joining forces to challenge your chief execuvitism, do two things in a hurry: pack your bags and baggage but do not go yet. You may need to apply the following tricks to counter their compactness.

They are likely to compile your atrocities and forward the document to the powers that actualize you. If they do, simulate a journey and tell them that you are the boss. Delegate the authority of dialogue to some of your stooges. Your ultimate is to foot drag so as to cool the temper of the operatives or to make your stooges compromise so that when you return from your purported journey, you can heap the blame of failure on the stand-in’s head; both ways you are still the winner!

However, if the operatives fail to dialogue with your stand-in and their temper remain constantly boiling, visit your contemporaries who are in similar positions and executing comparable style, I am sure they will avail you of their libraries. Pack some books from the libraries. While digesting the content of the books, ask your driver to chauffeur you to the palace of your tribal Lord. Blackmail him into intervening on your behalf. At least he has collected naira from you; now is the time to sweat for the money. If these tricks fail to perform the miracle, your marabouts may be contacted. If they fail, then pile your belongings on your head and step aside. Chikena

Muslims & Islam; Under Siege, Pressures In America, Still!

Written by Paul I. Adujie Wednesday, 18 August 2010 01:37

Muslims & Islam; Under Siege, Pressures In America, Still! Written by Paul I. Adujie Muslims in America, and particularly in New York City, are under sustained barrages of attacks. The latest in the salvo, is the palpable fear . Some in America seem to be subscribing to the silliness, that those who are not Christians and not of our ethnic group, are not entirely human. But,actually, when we devalue others, we devalue ourselves and all humanity. American Muslims are afraid to celebrate the Ramadan at the end of this fasting season. Thousands of Muslims in America are now operating under fear of physical attacks. Thousands of Muslims have publicly express fears of attacks as reprisal for the September 11, 2001 acts 19 hijackers, which has been tied around the necks of the Islam and Muslims, and as such, the fasting season this year ends coincidentally on or about September 11, 2010. American Muslims have expressed the fear that they may be accused of celebrating the anniversary of September 11, attacks. Some bigots have already accused Muslims of celebrating and gloating by planning to build this much talked about Islamic Cultural Center in the general neighborhood of Ground Zero Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Fareed Zakaria a renowned journalist, and now, President Barack Obama has joined the many voices confronting the upsurge of Islamophobia in America, very courageously! Museum of tolerance just opened up a museum of irony, because it is against Mosque near ground zero. It is quite an irony that an entity which styles itself as an Anti Defamation League, has joined the bandwagon of bigots, fear-mongers and campaigners of calumny against efforts to build an Islamic Center, Mosque and religious-cultural center. It is exceedingly clear that a huge chunk or large segment of the American public are stridently opposed to Islam. Too many Americans now exhibit overall hostility to Islam, in many states, the construction of new mosques, Islamic centers, renovations, and expansions are receiving vehement resistance, Jewish group the so-called Anti Defamation League, Religious Liberty Commission of the Baptist Convention are opposing mosques, how do you defend religious freedom and freedom of worship, but oppose mosques? Would American be having this conversation if a synagogue or a Catholic church was being contemplated for a few blocs from Ground Zero?. It is clear that some think Islam is not an American religion and as such, does not deserve same or identical protection as other so-called mainstream American religions The now controversial mosque in New York is not across, adjacent or close to Ground Zero as is being alleged. It is actually a considerable distance from the swath of city neighborhood which was labeled and dubbed the so-called Ground Zero. The emotions surrounding this swath of land, has delayed rebuilding and rebirth in the aftermath of September 11. Wouldn’t rebuilding and rebounding with even more extraordinary edifices and monuments, larger, taller and grander, be a better way to prove a point? But emotions have since stalled, stymied and stunted pace of rebuilding on Ground Zero. Does this all mean that if I owned a private property on 51 Park Place, I could not sell to whomever I want? Or that I could not use my piece of land in the general neighborhood for any purpose, so long as it is not illegal? The truth of the matter is that, there is a church directly opposite Ground Zero! All Christians are saints? President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, Fareed Zakaria and many others are right to take respectful offense at the suggestion, and these selectively invoked outrage, by some, that, of one group, ignore the feelings of other groups. Why is it okay to pick on Muslims in connection with building this mosque? The truth is that there has always been a mosque in this same exact neighborhood now being claimed as mosque and Islam free zone in this very religious, culturally diverse plural and multicultural New York City Why do some want to generalize about Muslims and Islam, merely because of the acts of a few? If this prejudice and bigotry being demonstrated against Islam and its adherents is not hypocritical and illogical, why don’t we apply the same logic and rules to Timothy McVeigh Christianity and its adherents subsequent to the Oklahoma City bombing? Why haven’t American generalize against Christians and Christianity after the dastardly acts of the Reverend Jim Jones or David Koresh? Americans of Japanese descent should not be allowed to live near Pearl Harbor, Sinto Shrine 3 miles away from Pearl Harbor. Shall we ostracize members of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski or Joseph Stack who flew a plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in Texas this year. What shall we do to all Catholics? In view of the fact that pedophile Catholic priests raped and defiled and sexually molested hundreds of thousands of innocent children worldwide! We must we show selective righteous indignation and outrage against the behavior of some Muslim extreme, and then, wage a worldwide crusade against Islam and Muslims, but, we are splendidly uninterested and unwilling to apply the same illogical generalizations against Christians? The truth is, the fact is, the evidence is, all things considered, history reflects Christians or persons who profess Christianity, have caused and inflicted more horrors and brutalities on the human race, and yet, I am not quite willing to generalize against ALL those who profess or claim to be devout Christian. Not all those who claim to be Christians are good Christians, similarly, of course, so it goes, that not all those who claim to be Muslims are good Muslims. Additionally, it has to be said that there are virtues and vices in all humans and in all religions worldwide. Those Christians who claim otherwise, should quit their hypocrisy and holier than thou sanctimony! We cannot and should not, must not, set a different standard or rules for American Muslims, to which American Jews, American Christians are not similarly subjected. Those who perpetuated slavery, colonialism and apartheid are “devout” Christians and so are those brought about the First and Second World Wars. And the sexed up lies and deceits and canards which led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the consequent deaths, maiming of hundreds of thousands, and the displacement of millions by the ongoing conflicts and conflagration in Iraq. Christians are the ones causing “collateral damage” with predator drones in civilian populated zones in Afghanistan, so, why must we selectively target and generalize against Islam and Muslims? Why must anyone pretend that it is right to punish a billion Muslims for the sins of a few extremists? Why must anyone pretend that is good policy to ignore the root causes of anger in the Muslim world anyway? Is it blood lust or there are root causes for animosity and chasms? Since September 11, 2001, 140 Muslims have been accused and or tried for terrorism or activities related to terrorism. The American government as such has played a dominant role in stereotyping Muslims as terrorists, This is identical to the Red Scare during the Cold War era and McCarthyism in which anyone with liberal views were regarded as socialist communists and were hounded, among them, German Americans, Italian Americans and of course, the much maligned African Americans When a hospital has a prayer room is it a church? Or why the fear-mongering about the fact that the planned Islamic Cultural Center will be huge and have a mosque within? There are Jewish Centers in New York City which have prayer space such as 92nd Street Y, and the so-called Ground Zero Mosque is actually an Islamic Cultural and Community Center with prayer space The fact is that many Muslims died during the World Trade Center. And there were Muslims who were part of the rescuers and firs responders after the attack at the World Trade Center. There should be churches, synagogue built in lower Manhattan, but, the area should be mosque free zone, this is Islamophobia to single out mosque and Islam. Quite ironically, Rich Lazio and members of his Republican Party are the underbelly vested in promoting anti Islam unreasoned emotionalism. This is particularly shameful, given the fact that the Republican Party and its Siamese religious conservatives are usually predictably pro-God, but, all of a sudden, religion, is the enemy, when it comes to Islam and Muslims? There are so many Republican Party members who are fanning the embers of hatred and bigotry, as they seek to make political hays out of this debate about a mosque, Islam and Muslims. These Republican Party members are seeking to exploit the debate for purely political benefits, and so, they have made very inflammatory comments to exacerbate the emotions on all sides of the debate! Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York City and Fareed Zakaria, a world renown journalist are men of courage. In the face of anti Islam and anti Muslims protests in New York City in opposition to the proposed Mosque and Islamic Center in Manhattan, these two public figure have tackled bigots and hecklers who are deploying inappropriate language and attitudes to oppose and prevent the building of a Mosque and in Islamic Center. The flimsy and fuzzy arguments are hinged on the fact that the proposed monument is too close to World Trade Center or Ground Zero the epicenter of the specter of attacks on September 11, 2001 Mayor Bloomberg in a straight forward manner, condemned and denounced those who have exhibited so much prejudices and bigotries in their opposition against the Islamic Center and Mosque project. Mayor Bloomberg told these acerbic opponents where to shove their unconstitutional attacks on other peoples right to worship. He gave wise counsel as to why no one should impinge and burden the rights of others to worship their holies and whatever each of us consider sacred Fareed Zakaria, that international journalist of Newsweek Magazine and Cable News Network fame, in a similar vein, return an award which he previous received from Anti Defamation League, a Jewish organization. As he could not reconcile their avowed posture of Anti Discrimination with the very fact that their opposition to the Islamic Center Mosque project is the epitome of hypocrisy and the height of discrimination in the most egregious forms! As it turns out, the US government, through the state department has used and continues to use the Imam behind the Cordoba Mosque and Islamic Center. Mosque project predates September 11, 2001 which is now seen as monument to terrorism. But the truth of the matter is, the imam behind this project is actually known as bridge builders. As if Muslims are not Americans or were not among the victims of September 11, 2001 America’s self avowed and self professed ideals are being put to the severest of tests. This shrill shouting against Islam and Muslims’ freedom of worship and choice, the stridency and vehemence, betrays the hypocrisy of much advertised tolerance, equality, freedom and liberty etc. Only today, The New York Times reported that the government of the United States plans to ease up on, decades old travel restrictions against Americans with wishes to travel to Cuba. Many eye opening comments followed the news reports among which are two excerpts reproduced in quotes here; 1.“Granting Americans the freedom to travel anywhere they want should sound paradoxical in a country inebriated with the words liberty and freedom. This would sound familiar to Southern Blacks who until recently - in the land of the free - could not choose which bathroom to go to, which part of the bus to sit in, or which fountain to drink from.” 2. “It's about time the travel restrictions were lifted. Maybe the reason for preventing our free citizens from traveling to Cuba is that we might find that what we have been told about that country has all been nonsense.” “But even if all of it has been true, so what. We were allowed to travel to South Africa during Apartheid. We're allowed to go to China today, and even now their human rights record is atrocious. We can go to Saudi Arabia, just ask any woman how they're treated there. We can go to Israel, and there's oppression every day every way there. It seems to me that whatever the regime in Cuba may be guilty of, it pales in comparison with what we tolerate elsewhere.” “To allow their alleged injustices as rationale to prevent my travel there to be credible, the same criteria should be applied around the world, but it isn't. As a free citizen of the United States I should be free to travel where I wish. Right now I wish to travel to Cuba but I am not free to do so, and that means I am not really free. Fidel and Raul are not the ones restricting my freedom in this case, and they are not the ones restricting yours either” Similarly, Muslims in America, particularly in New York, are under sustained barrages of attacks. The latest in the salvo, is the palpable fear, hypocrisy motivated and engineered by bigotry and prejudice Some in America seem to be subscribing to the silliness, that those who are not Christians and not of our ethnic group, are not entirely human! In America, we are so inebriated with words such as freedom, liberty, equality. We are so quick to claim to be mother and grandmother of constitutional equality and due process etc, and yet, a New York City Zoning Board has determined that this planned Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque does not infringe upon any zoning rules, no infractions whatsoever! So what exactly seem to be the problem? Bigotry? Prejudice? Discrimination? We should stop demonizing Islam and Muslims Written by Paul I. Adujie

The Politics Of Meaning And Usage In English

What logic regulates correct usage? Why are words and expressions that are perfectly acceptable in one era taboos in another? In other words, why do the meanings and usages of words mutate radically over generations?

These and many other questions were the subject of an interesting email exchange I had with a British editor recently. The Brit stumbled across a previous article I wrote titled, “10 Most Irritating Errors in American English” and liked it very much. It stoked his British ego. But he also noticed an Americanism (read: a grammatical slip by the standards of British English) in the same write-up.

I wrote: “I have decided to dedicate this and next weeks’ columns to discuss common grammatical errors in American English.” He pointed out that it should be “dedicate… to discussing….” The verb “discuss,” he said, should be in the progressive tense.

The practice of using "dedicate" with the regular forms of verbs is peculiarly American, he pointed out to me. I agreed. But I told him that even in modern British English there is a gradual, osmotic, if for now imperceptible, semantic shift in the direction of that horrible Americanism that irks him. He disagreed. “I don't recall ever seeing this mistake from a British person,” he declared pompously.

I then sent him a link to the British National Corpus where that usage (that is, where the verb that comes after “dedicate” in a sentence is not in the progressive tense) has appeared a number of times in current British English. (The British National Corpus is a comprehensive compilation of a representative sample of contemporary written and spoken British English).

I wrote: “Well, I found these examples of the use of “dedicated to” without the “ing” form of verbs from the British National Corpus. Apparently, it's not only Americans that alternate between using the continuous and uninflected forms of a verb after the verb "dedicated." My British friend ate humble pie.

This prodded a lively email conversation on why there is often a disjunction between what has been prescribed as correct usage by experts and what real, living people actually speak and write—and why grammarians later succumb to popular usages, which they then codify and hold up as inviolable standards, which are then violated again by people, usually in a subsequent generation, ad nauseam.

“Meat” used to denote food in general (that sense of the word is still retained in the age-old saying, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison); “girl” used to mean any young person of either sex; “deer” initially referred to any animal, a reason Shakespeare wrote of “rats and mice and such small deer”; “silly” used to mean fortunate or happy; “broadcast” used to refer to the act of throwing seeds in all directions, not to the dissemination of information through radio and TV; “holiday” is derived from “holy day,” but the word is now used for any day of freedom from work, even if these days are secular; “villain” used to mean a village peasant, but it now only means a wicked or evil person; “aggressive” used to mean hostile and destructive behavior, but in modern business practice there is often a tone of approval when someone is described as an “aggressive businessman” or when methods are described as “aggressive strategies”; “academic,” an otherwise respectable word, is now also used derisively to mean impractical, pedantic; “rhetoric,” a time-honored study and application of the art of persuasion, is now popularly used to mean mere loud, confused, and empty talk; and so on.

Similarly, the meanings of words can expand beyond their original meanings. For instance, the word “alibi” initially only meant “elsewhere,” and was used only in legal defense to mean that someone was elsewhere while a crime was committed and therefore couldn’t be blameworthy. Today, the semantic boundaries of that word have been extended to mean “excuse” or “self-justification” of any kind. Grammarians objected to this semantic extension for a long time. Many have given up now.

It’s the same story with the word “alternative.” It originally meant “other of two,” which meant that it couldn’t correctly be used for items that exceeded two. In time, however, people began to talk about “hundreds of alternatives.” Grammarians were outraged by this mutilation of the word. There can only be “alternatives” for two choices, they protested. No one listened. They lost the battle.

They also lost the battle over the correct usage of the word “decimate.” It formerly meant “to kill one of every ten.” To the horror of grammatical purists, people extended the semantic boundaries of the word to mean “kill a large number,” to “wipe out,” to “eliminate.” So everyday users of English again decimated the grammatical purists in the battle over the usage of “decimate”!

Most of the fulmination against the above usage patterns derives from a desire to be faithful to the etymological distinction of the words. But that’s short-sighted. Many common English words today have radically diverged from their origins; their contemporary meanings bear not the vaguest resemblance to their etymological roots.

For instance, the word “dilapidated” is derived from “lapis,” which is Latin for stone. It is now used of deplorable condition. “Alcohol” was an Arabic word for a substance that women used to darken and thicken their eyelashes; today it means liquor that intoxicates. “Edify” is the Latin word for “build” (a meaning still present in the word “edifice”); today it means to improve through teaching and enlightenment. “Hysteria” is derived from the Greek word for womb; now it means a state of violent mental agitation or extreme emotion. In American English, "hysterical" is becoming synonymous with "very funny."

Usage patterns also mutate over time. For instance, “each other” used to be a reciprocal pronoun that referred only to two people, and it was often understood that it was different from “one another,” which was supposed to refer to three or more people. That distinction no longer exists. In modern English usage, both phrases are used interchangeably.

It was also considered bad grammar to end sentences with prepositions. So instead of writing “I don’t remember the name of the drug he was addicted to,” grammarians of the previous generation would insist that the sentence should be rendered as, “I don’t remember the name of the drug to which he was addicted.”

This rule emerged from a conscious, if unimaginative, mimicry of the syntactical structure of Latin, the language of science and scholarship in Europe until the 17^th century. But the “no-preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence” rule is counter-intuitive, even senseless, and antithetical to the natural rhythm of the English language. It’s no surprise that people had a hard time obeying it. Today most people end sentences with prepositions, and most grammarians don’t seem to be bothered by this any longer.

So meanings and usages are, for the most part, context-specific and historically contingent. If that is the case, why do people fuss over "bad" usage? I think the reason that changes grate on people is that we see usage as making sense according to the grammatical rules that are established in our own minds. These rules in our minds, of course, reflect those rules generally accepted in our environment.

However, it seems that the rules of grammar are changing less quickly in other parts of the English-speaking world than they are in the United States. As my British friend said, “From where I'm standing, people in the US seem to be playing a game of yo-yo to which we Brits have not been invited.”

Note, though, that Americans have done more to extend the semantic and communicative frontiers and capabilities of the English language in recent times than the Brits have. The Brits should actually be grateful that Americans speak English. Without Americans, English would have receded from the world stage in the same manner that French and other once powerful European languages have.

The strength of the English language derives from the material and symbolic power of its native speakers, particularly Americans, the flexibility of its grammatical rules, and the rich diversity of the sources of its vocabulary. Almost every language in the world has contributed to the vocabulary of the English language. (Next week, I will examine the contributions of African languages to the vocabulary of the English language).

Well, the foregoing is essentially the story of the battle between “what ought to be” (i.e., the snooty prescriptions of professional grammarians) and “what is” (i.e., popular usage patterns among everyday folks) in meaning and language usage. But that’s a grotesque simplification. Actually, the “what ought to be” is more often than not aggregated and codified from the “what is” to produce the “what ought to be.”

So usage rules proceed in dialectical triads: the “what ought to be” is often first instituted as the norm, as the thesis. The “what is” then emerges as an unorganized, unconscious antithesis, and the resolution of this antagonism often gives birth to a new set of rules, which then constitute the new thesis that grammarians preserve and hold up as the standards but which are ultimately subverted by a new antithesis, and on and on. Call it grammatical dialectics, if you like.

• Farooq A. Kperogi
• August 17, 2010

2010 Skyscraper Competition Winners

Here are the list of winners of the just concluded 2010 Skyscraper Competition held annually by eVolo magazine. Established in 2006, the annual Skyscraper Competition recognizes outstanding ideas that redefine skyscraper design through the use of new technologies, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organization.

First Place 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Vertical Prison
This project examines the possibility of creating a vertical prison in the sky where inmates will have to work and live in a community that will contribute to the host city below. The prison will have agricultural fields, factories, and recyclable plants that will be operated by the offenders as a way to give back to the community. They will live “free” until they have completed their sentence and are prepared to rejoin their communities.


Second Place 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Ciliwung Recovery Program
The Ciliwung Recovery Program (CRP) is a project that aims to collect the garbage of the riverbank and purify its water through an ingenious system of mega-filters that operate in three different phases. The first one separates the different types of garbage and utilizes the organic one to fertilize its soil. The second phase purifies the water by removing dangerous chemicals and adding important minerals to it. The clean water is then fed to the river and to the nearby agricultural fields through a system of capillary tubes. Finally in the third phase all the recyclable waste is processed.

Third Place 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Nested Skyscraper in Tokyo
The Nested Skyscraper adapts to climatic, urban, and programmatic conditions with the use of advanced materials and robotic construction. Its form and building method derive from the carbon sleeves and fiber-laced concrete performance. It is a composition of multiple layers of louvers which thicken and rotate according to solar and wind exposure.

Special Mention 2010 Skyscraper Competition: The Sky Table
The Sky Table is a large horizontal building suspended above six blocks of an abandoned neighborhood of a generic city. Its primary structure is a steel mesh that peels into four colossal columns that connect to plazas and parks at street level. Due to its large scale and the variety of programs this proposal could be considered a city within a city where offices are located inside the pillars, housing is available in ten levels within the platform and recreational areas cover the entire roof level.

Special Mention 2010 Skyscraper Competition: Hermit Mountains – Towers of Ancient Dreams
The towers are carefully designed to be integrated to the landscape and to provide a proper place to live and work for the different groups along the Lijiang River. It was designed with the use of three dimensional voronoi patterns that follow the configuration logic of the immediate landscape.

[source]

Full Face Transplant Pictures of Spanish Oscar

He is called Oscar, the 31-year-old Spanish guy who recently had a successful full face transplant. Oscar has been described as a farmer who was unable to breathe or eat on his own after accidentally shooting himself in the face five years ago.

Today, the world’s first full face transplant patient has made his first public appearance.

Full Face Transplant pictures of Spanish guy named Oscar:

Before and After Pictures:

[source: yahoo]