Religion is the Opium of the People

Karl Marx wasn’t kidding. Police in the Parisian suburb of La Verriere failed find a trace of any other hallucinogenic drug after a family of 12 leapt from their second floor balcony claiming to be fleeing Beelzebub. According to police, the incident occurred when a wife awoke to find her husband moving about naked in the room. She began screaming 'It's the devil! It's the devil!' and the man ran into the next room where the others were watching TV. One woman grabbed a knife and stabbed him before others pushed him out through the front door. When he forced his way back in, the terrified lot leapt from the balcony screaming 'Jesus! Jesus!' Inexplicably, the nudist also leapt from the balcony. Detectives are treating it as a case of mistaken identity.


Zimbabwe’s Governor of the Reserve Bank, Gideon Gono, likes to portray himself as very religious. He is apt to quote the Bible in his speeches, sometimes adding a few revelations of his own, such when he divulged God’s advice to Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane: "My Son, take it like a man …" Last week, however, it was reported that Sabina Mugabe, the younger sister of octagenarian president Robert Mugabe, had had a revelation of her own to make regarding Gono. Shortly before she died three months ago, she reportedly told her brother that Gono and Mugabe’s wife of 14 years, Grace, had been making a cuckold of him. Though the President is said to be "ready to go to war," things might still turn out OK for the former tea-boy. As one intelligence official put it, "once Mugabe hears something like that, I think someone will go and meet God."

Many self-declared religious types abhor any discussion of sex outside the home. In keeping with this, an Australian church has kicked out a woman who dared to act in an impotence treatment ad. Libby Ashby told the Melbourne-based radio station, 3AW, that she had been “disfellowshipped” from her local congregation, following her starring role in a commercial where seems to use her husband’s erect penis as a stepping stone to higher things. In the ad, after she asks for his help to reach a container above the fridge, he opens up his dressing gown to reveal a sight which the viewer can’t see – but which she is clearly happy about. Ashby then steps onto the hidden prop and gets the jar. The single mother said she knew the advert would be controversial with church-goers but a lack of funds left her with little option. “My Visa was calling out for mercy,” she revealed. The church is unlikely to be so charitable. “They have said I will not be reinstated until the advert comes off air,” Ashby said.

In a bid to restore morality and fight the vice of sexual harassment, the mayor of the Italian sea-side town of Castellammare di Stabia, south of Naples, has ordered his police to fine women who wear 'very short' miniskirts or tops that display too much cleavage. Luigi Bobbio, who was elected on Silvio Berlusconi's People of Freedom party ticket, won a council vote to ban anything that doesn’t fully cover underwear. Police, who now have the authority to hand out fines of up to $450, were however cautioned against being too zealous identifying offenders. "They won't need to carry out checks up close. One glance will be enough to judge," said mayor Bobbio, who also wishes to criminalize blasphemy and playing football in public parks.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki’s sermons about the evils of corruption have a decidedly hollow ring to them. While campaigning for re-election three years ago, he promised to run a clean government. Now, barely a week after he and Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, were forced to suspended William Ruto, a cabinet minister facing graft charges, another, Foreign Affairs Minister Moses Wetangula has resigned (or in the parlance of the day, stepped aside to allow for investigations) after he was named in a parliamentary report looking into shenanigans surrounding the acquisition of property by Kenyan embassies abroad. And that may not be the end of it. Other members of the “clean” cabinet with the proverbial Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads include Kiraitu Murungi (under whose watch $100 million worth of oil disappeared in the Triton Oil scandal), Prof. Sam Ongeri (in charge when another $100 million in free education funds went missing) and Naomi Shaaban (whose ministry was blamed for the loss of $2.5 million meant of resettling the internally displaced).

Last Word

You could say South Africa has a problem with AIDS. And not just because the condition kills 1000 South Africans every day. The nation is still working to correct the damage done by years of "Aids denialism" under the leadership of former president Thabo Mbeki, who delayed the roll out of life-saving anti retro-viral drugs, while his health minister suggested a diet of beetroot and garlic could cure the virus. Now a pastor has at the non-denominational Way of Life church in Khayelitsha, near Cape Town, has hit upon a novel way to change attitudes. He recently caused outrage by preaching a sermon entitled "Jesus was HIV positive". Reverend Xola Skosana, who has lost two sisters to the disease, said his sermon was designed to combat the stigma surrounding HIV and Aids. His approach has been praised by Aids campaigners in the country but condemned by some Christians, who accuse him of portraying Jesus as sexually promiscuous. WWJD?

__________________________________

Ghana on the other hand, has issues with English. Recently the leader of the main opposition National Patriotic Party sparked controversy by calling President Atta Mills "Professor Dolittle". For a week, the full machinery of the state was deployed to counter this. While that controversy raged, an even greater row broke out when the chairman of Mills' National Democratic Congress called for a purge of the judiciary. This in a country where the word "purge" evokes images of nasty medicines for bodily functions. The idea of party officials lining up judges and forcing purgatives down their throats or rectums to empty their stomach contents drove tensions up. Things got worse when he was asked how he intended to do the purging. "There are many ways of killing a cat," declared the NDC chairman, who comes from a region where cats are considered a delicacy. And again, this in a country where independent-minded judges have in the past been abducted and murdered by government goons. Eventually, President Mills calmed the furore by assuring all that he had no intention of interfering with the judiciary and even thanked his opponent for not calling him “Professor Do-nothing”!

__________________________________

Africans in general have a problem with the weather. Not only do thousands perish every year from the results of droughts and floods, but some have also taken to blaming climate change for the seemingly interminable wars on the continent. Last year, a research paper suggested that climate had been a major driver of armed conflict, and that future warming was likely to increase the number of deaths from war. However, recent study suggests that this is not the case and challenges assumptions that environmental disasters, such as drought and prolonged heat waves, had played a part in triggering unrest. The findings, which have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the United States, instead blame traditional factors - such as poverty and social tensions - for the outbreak of conflicts. One might also include traditional, melanin-induced, stupidity.

__________________________________

Chimpanzees in the wild don’t take too kindly to snares. And now the primates are learning to outwit their human hunters. Researchers in the rainforests of Guinea are going ape over the discovery that chimps have not only learnt to recognise snares but, astonishingly, intentionally seek the traps out and deactivate them, setting them off without being harmed. The observation was serendipitously made by primatologists Gaku Ohashi and Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa who were following chimps living in Bossou, Guinea to study the apes' social behaviour. The two, from the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University, Japan, observed five male chimps, both juvenile and adult, attempting to break and deactivate snares on at least six separate occasions. On two of them, the traps were successfully deactivated. In all cases, the chimps avoided touching the dangerous part of the snare, the wire loop.

__________________________________

Jemaine Jackson, brother of the late pop sensation, Michael, obviously has no problem with torture and repression. In May, the pop star, who was attending the birthday celebrations of Gambia’s President Yahya Jammeh, declared that the dictator, who is famous for a herbal concoction that he claims can cure AIDS on Thursdays, was “doing a wonderful job, and putting a smile on the faces of the people… He's not just a politician; he's a wonderful, genuine person." It’s enough to make one question whether the President’s birthday fell on a Thursday, and whether he shared his concoction with the guests. At the very least, it is a cautionary tale for those who confuse celebrity with intelligence or wisdom.

The Fat Lady Sings

What does Robert Mugabe have in common with 1990’s fake pop stars, Milli Vanilli? “Blame it on the rain” was the duos last number one hit before their lip-synching scandal broke. It also happens to be Uncle Bob’s go-to explanation for Zimbabwe’s food shortages. During his recent visit to the World Expo in Shanghai, China, the octogenarian president said his country’s poor harvests were as a result of “inclement weather.” Many would however blame it on his 20-year reign, citing the disastrous land reform programme which crippled the agricultural sector, the bedrock of Zimbabwe’s economy, and bankrupted the country. Mugabe, though, is not one to dwell on his countrymen’s misfortunes. He was later photographed engaging in some retail therapy in Hong Kong, where he owns a house and his daughter attends university. He reportedly spent the weekend shopping for high-end suits and shoes in the city's Kowloon district.

____________________________________

"When you're in love with a beautiful woman, you watch your friends" goes a popular 1970s single by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. Africa’s last absolute monarch, King Mswati III of Swaziland, should have been paying heed. While he was attending to State business in Taiwan, his childhood friend, Justice Minister Ndumiso Mamba, was nabbed in bed with the Mswati’s 12th wife, Queen Nothando Dube, a former Miss Teen beauty contestant. The pair were busted by state security agents, who had apparently been following them for weeks, at the lavish Royal Villas Hotel. Though Swazi laws prohibit dishonouring the monarch, this did not stop the agents snapping photos of Mamba emerging head first from underneath the 22-year-old royal's bed where he was attempting to hide. The images later made their way onto the web. Mamba was immediately arrested on the orders of the King, whose mother - the Indlovukazi or Great She-Elephant - has reportedly sent a delegation to Mamba's village to lay charges of "trespassing into another man's home". He could face the death penalty if found guilty, while mother-of-two Dube would be banished from the kingdom.

____________________________________

In 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks, a Texas based country group, declared: “We don't want this war, this violence." Seven years, and over a million Iraqi civilian casualties later, the last US combat troops have left the devastated country. However, 50,000 are staying behind to, according to their commanding officer, Gen. Ray Odierno, “prevent foreign powers from meddling with the new government.” Apparently the Americans do not consider themselves a foreign power in a country six thousand miles from home.

____________________________________

The US musical duo, Wilderland, and some top music industry veterans recently released a new song titled “Fragile Day” which was written about two years prior to the BP Gulf oil spill, and features lyrics about fish swimming and dying in an oil-filled ocean. To counter such impressions, US President Barack Obama had a White House photographer take a picture oh him and his daughter, Sasha, swimming in the sea off Florida last weekend. The official picture was intended to provide evidence that the region's beaches are back to normal. However, it soon emerged that the President was actually trying to pull a fast one. The private beach on which it was taken, off Alligator Point in St Andrew Bay, north-west Florida, isn't technically in the gulf.

____________________________________

South Africa’s journalists may soon be singing the blues following government plans to institute a so-called “media tribunal” as well regulate what can be reported on and what constitutes a state secret. The government claims the law under consideration is necessary to limit the damage caused by media houses and their newspapers which they claim represent only a narrow, predominantly “white” interest. Predictably, the controversial head of ANC’s Youth league, Julius Malema, who has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, declared that the media must be regulated because "they think they are untouchable". The move comes in the wake of news reports that Ebrahim Rasool, who in 2008 was fired as Western Cape premier partly because of allegations that he had bribed journalists to report favourably about him, had been appointed South Africa's ambassador to the United States.