Swine flu

The UK government is doing its best to keep people from panicking. On the radio we're being informed that swine flu is a mild illness, only to be informed a few minutes later that the 17th person to die from the disease in the country has just died, and that the person was previously healthy and was not known to suffer any underlying health problems. Then some senior medical person in the government comes on air and tells us that the outbreak of the disease is nearing epidemic proportions in the London area, and that GP surgeries are having difficulty coping with the massive influx of people reporting flu-like symptoms. Then a government minister comes on and tells us not to worry and that we will all be ok. It's all very confusing.

I think there has been a failure by the authorities to contain the outbreak of the disease at the time when they still had the chance to do so, and now they are refusing to accept responsibility for this failure or even to acknowledge it. This is only the summer, it's not even the flu season yet. They tell us that the outbreak is set to get worse later in the year and that more deaths are inevitable. But at the same time they tell us not to worry.

My friend in Australia told me of the panic in that country when the disease first arrived there. Relying on what the UK government had been saying all along about the disease, I tried to reassure him that it was only a mild ailment and that he need not to worry so much. That was a few weeks ago. Now with the news reports coming through as to how virulent this outbreak has become in the London area and news of the deaths, (two previously healthy people died yesterday), I'm not so sure anymore. In fact, I've become a bit scared. I'm avoiding shaking hands with people, washing my hands at every opportunity and keeping away from all forms of public transport for the time being.

Chryseobacterium greenlandensis

Over the weekend I was reading about ancient bacteria discovered in ice taken from more than two miles beneath the surface in Greenland. The ice was obtained by drilling ice cores down through the ice. The ice in which the bacteria was found is thought to be about 120,000 years old, and the really amazing aspect is that the bacteria have now been revived in a laboratory, after having been buried for such a long time. Researchers have managed to isolate and grow the bacteria in the laboratory, where they have established thriving colonies of small, purple-brown microbes.

It is thought that the prospect now arises that similar primitive lifeforms may exist in other extreme environments, even on other planets like Mars, or on a moon like Europa one of the moons of Jupiter, which is believed to be covered by ice, and where the conditions beneath the ice are thought to be similar to the conditions in which these bacteria were found. 

The microbes' ability to survive the harsh environment of a Greenland glacier for such a long period of time suggests that extraterrestrial life forms (if they exist) could survive in equally extreme environments. 

The study has so far revived two kinds of bacteria, which have been formally named as Herminiimonas glaciei and Chryseobacterium greenlandensis. H. glaciei is about half the size of C. greenlandensis. To read more click here.

Nigeria victims hail $15.5 million Shell payout

Agence France Presse : Victims of murder, torture and other abuses by Nigeria's former military government on Tuesday hailed a landmark out-of-court settlement with Royal Dutch Shell over its alleged complicity in the crimes. Shell agreed on Monday in New York to pay out 15.5 million dollars (10.7 million euros) to relatives of Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and others executed in 1995 in what plaintiffs said was a campaign of repression backed by the oil giant. The settlement brings to an end a long battle by the Nigerian victims and means that Shell avoids a potentially embarrassing court case while having to accept no actual wrongdoing.

Saro-Wiwa had led a non-violent campaign to protest environmental destruction and abuses against the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta before he was hanged along with other activists after his trial in a military court. "We welcome the 15.5 million dollars compensation for the illegal killings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other eight Ogoni leaders," Bariara Kpalap, spokesman for the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), told AFP.

But Kpalap insisted Shell must still address the issue of environmental pollution and change the way it does business in the oil-rich Niger Delta, where farmers and fishermen are being driven off.

For details of the case and the settlement click here.

The end of an era

The death of President Omar Bongo in a Spanish hospital brings an era of African history to an end. Omar Bongo was so successful at the art of holding on to power that by the end of his life there was no one left in his country with enough authority to pronounce him dead. It took more than 24 hours for the death of the 73-year-old president of Gabon to be confirmed, during which time there were no less than three official denials. The final word eventually came from Gabon's prime minister Jean Eyeghe Ndong, who confirmed the president had died of a cardiac arrest in a Barcelona hospital. This was just hours after the same official had held a press conference at the clinic to say he had seen his president "alive and well".

"President Omar Bongo's greatest legacy is the political stability he was able to achieve and maintain throughout his time in office," said Tara O'Connor, managing director of Africa Risk Consulting. "Unlike neighbouring Congo-Brazzaville and Cote d'Ivoire where the elite's resistance to democracy ultimately provoked civil war, President Bongo met the challenge and later artfully co-opted his opponents into high government office."

Albert Bernard Bongo was born in 1935, the 12th son of a farmer who died when he was seven years old. His official website boasts that "he didn't come into the world on a hospital bed, and he didn't have a cot or a nanny". In 1973, six years after taking over from Gabon's first post-independence leader, he converted to Islam, taking the name El Hadj Omar Bongo. By the time of his death, his name was Omar Bongo Ondimba, after he added a pre-colonial traditional name, reclaimed to underline his African credentials. There was very little that the man who wore platform shoes to disguise his short stature, (reportedly, he was only 4ft 11 tall), would not do to get an edge. And this played no small part in the fact that when he died, he was one of the richest men in the world.

Although no clear figure of his net worth has been confirmed, the scale of his plundered riches had begun to emerge, thanks to a court case in Gabon's former colonial master, France. Mr Bongo was one of three African leaders accused this year of embezzlement by the French wing of corruption watchdog, Transparency International. Also under investigation are Republic of Congo leader Denis Sassou-Nguesso, a close ally and father-in-law of Mr Bongo, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. The trio have been accused of looting state coffers. Their extensive portfolio of French properties, worth many multiples of their stated official earnings, have been cited as evidence of corruption.

Throughout his four-decade stint in office which began with the death of his predecessor Leon M'ba in 1967 in a French hospital, former army officer Bongo displayed an acute understanding of the importance of relations with Paris. "Gabon without France is like a car with no driver. France without Gabon is like a car with no fuel," is how the former French air force lieutenant liked to describe the bond.

When French oil giant ELF was looking for a base of operations in the 1970s, Mr Bongo made sure it was Gabon to which they turned first. The Paris trial in 2003 of former Elf chairman Loik Le Floch-Prigent revealed the extent of the corruption and shady dealings in the resultant oil boom where the company was allowed to operate as a "state within a state" in a manner that foreshadowed companies like Royal Dutch Shell in their later dealings with Nigeria. The Gabonese president shrugged off revelations of huge kickback payments to his personal accounts, dismissing them as a "French matter".

Prior to the current suit brought by Transparency International, a police investigation into French real estate owned by the president and his family uncovered 33 properties in Paris and on the French Riviera worth an estimated $190m. A decade ago, a US Senate probe into private banking operations at Citibank estimated that the president held $130m in personal accounts and concluded that there could be "no doubt that these financial assets were sourced in the public finances of Gabon".

 

In the two photos (courtesy of REUTERS), above left and below are two properties in France registered in the names of President Bongo and his son, part of a real estate portfolio said to top $190 m.

Through a shrewd disbursement of this vast wealth, collected from oil, the farmer's son maintained friendships with French politicians of every ideological hue that sustained him almost until the end. "He was a great figure of Africa," a "man who had influence", said French Defence Minister Herve Morin when told of his death. The special relationship had become strained, though, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy whose government is considering dismantling its 1,000-strong army base in Libreville. The current frostiness was demonstrated by the ailing autocrat's decision to seek treatment last month in Barcelona, rather than a French hospital. Amid rumours that he had cancer, Gabon officials insisted he was having a "routine check-up". Even after his death, the country's prime minister insisted that Mr Bongo had died of a "cardiac arrest", making no mention of cancer.

In Libreville the capital city of Gabon, one of the favourite jokes was that the quickest way to become a millionaire was to set up an opposition party. The experience of Pierre Mamboundou, leader of the Union for the People of Gabon – who until recently was considered the president's main challenger is proof that it was more than a joke. Mr Mamboundou, the veteran of two bruising and ultimately unsuccessful presidential contests with Mr Bongo, enjoyed a reputation as an uncompromising free speaker prepared to go to jail for the strength of his convictions. Since 2006 he has gone politically quiet and has since revealed that Bongo offered to give him $21.5m for the development of his constituency.

If his case illustrates the carrot used by the farmer's son, then Joseph Rendjambe reveals the stick. The opposition leader died in mysterious circumstances in 1990, the very year the president finally bowed to pressure to scrap the one-party state and bring in multi-party democracy. Only there was no one to lead the opposition. Rendjambe's death sparked riots that rocked Gabon for weeks and presented a rare threat to the regime.

The reality of the Bongo years meant that while Gabon missed the worst of the instability that has affected much of sub-Saharan Africa, it also missed the opportunities to transform itself as a country with the same per capita wealth as Portugal could have done. A small elite were the closest that Gabon came to fostering a middle class and many in the rural areas remained untouched by the oil money. While the country has almost 900 miles of oil pipeline, it has less than 600 miles of paved roads.

The passing of one of Africa's more memorable "Big Men" caused confusion and fear in Libreville, where many shops and businesses have been closed since reports first emerged in the French media on Sunday night. For the vast majority of the nation's 1.4 million people, the diminutive farmer's son was the only president they had known, having been in charge for 41 years. "We closed the restaurant since the announcement," said one waiter. "People are scared."

(Culled from an article in The Independent newspaper)

Oh my God!

Djimon goes into several shops in SoHo while his fiancee waits in the car. New York City, USA - 26.05.09

Africa, are we preparing for a rapidly changing climate?

It is not in dispute that the world's climate is changing. Hand in hand with this change is environmental degradation on an industrialised scale, the rate and extent of which has never before been known.

As a young child growing up in Lagos, Nigeria in the 1970s, the country was in the throes of putting up an impressive show titled the Festival of Arts and Culture, or FESTAC as it came to be known. Part of the grandiosity of the event was the construction of a brand new town on the outskirts of Lagos, supposedly to provide accommodation for the thousands of participants at this festival. Along with this FESTAC town was to be constructed a 4-Lane motor way between Lagos and Badagry close to the country's border with the Republic of Benin. The road would continue into Benin, to Cotonou, that country's largest city. We lived in Surulere, which itself was then still a newly developed area of Lagos, having been built up for the first time in the 1960s. The Badagry Expressway led from somewhere behind where we lived, on towards the FESTAC town and then further on still for tens of kilometres to Badagry. FESTAC town and the Badagry Expressway were projects that would cause the breaking into of virgin land.

We were children, and this newly constructed highway which was yet to opened because several bridges along its length had not been completed, presented itself to us as a huge adventure playground. And of course, my brother and I took full advantage of this, going for long walks along the newly laid tarmac. What is vivid in my memory is the dense rain forest on both sides of the road, thick foliage, even wild monkeys in the trees. And this was just a few minutes walk from the bustling cosmopolitan city that was Lagos of the 1970s. We would walk down that empty road for what seemed like miles, but which in reality was no more than half a kilometre, and come to the first bridge on that motorway, a bridge across a river which flowed from the Yoruba Highlands to the north of Lagos into the Lagos Lagoon. My memories of that river and its bank, are of a pristine environment almost exactly as nature had intended it to be, crystal clear water with countless shoals of fish visible in the water, swimming against the force of the current. Although I now know better, at that time it seemed like fun when the few fishermen we did see at this place would sprinkle a few drops of IZAL disinfectant into the water, and the fish reacting to the effect of the IZAL in the water, would leap out in their hundreds unto the riverbank. This was such a cool way to catch fish, my brother and I thought, and we would help the fishermen pick up the fish and put them in baskets that they had placed on the riverbank for this purpose.

My family moved away from Surulere a few years later and it was not until many years afterwards that I went on a deliberate mission to find out what had become of that magical place of childhood memory. It took hours of wandering back and forth along the now very busy Badagry Expressway, before I finally realised that what I was looking at was in fact that river of 20 years ago. First of all, it was no longer a river. Secondly, there was no sign of forest anywhere within sight. What was once dense green vegetation was now what seemed like hundreds of rusting corrugated iron shacks of the kind to be found in any auto mechanic's workshop in Nigeria. That river had been turned into a refuse disposal area, where the mechanics dumped waste engine oil, old tyres, broken engine parts. The water, if you could all it that, was black. In fact it contained more oil than water. Having seen what this place once was, seeing it as it is now just 20 years later came as a complete shock, and the experience has forced me in a more acute way to confront the reality of the damage that we humans are doing to our environment.

In Africa in particular, the basic needs for survival are paramount in peoples' minds. Thoughts about the environment and conservation are far removed from the issues that people have to deal with on a day to day basis. But ironically, apart from the direct environmental change of the kind I have described above and further down in this post for which we Africans are responsible, most of the environmental changes that we will have to confront in the near future are not of our own making. According to the United Nations Environment Agency, while Africa accounts for only 4% of the world's CO2 emissions, it is said that it’s inhabitants will suffer the most from the effects of climate change. The huge environmental impacts of climate change and local non-sustainable practices are matters that African governments must from now start to pay more serious attention to.

In Nigeria and several other African countries, unplanned urban sprawl, rapid population growth and consequent agricultural expansion has meant that much of the forest has been lost. Deforestation is a word I've heard being mentioned in Nigeria for decades, but I have no confidence that the seriousness of the problem that it represents has been appreciated at the right levels of government. The remaining woodlands are being degraded by over exploitation for fuel wood and non-wood forest products. To compound the area's problems the land is being farmed nearly continuously, with a shortened or no fallow period for the land to recover fertility. And as the population continues to grow the problem is going to continue to get worse. As Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s minister of environmental affairs and tourism states…“Africa is one of the regions least responsible for climate change, and is also least able to afford the costs of adaptation.”

Climate change knows no territorial borders and recognises no man-made boundaries or lines drawn in the ground. The changes to the world's climate will affect the entire population of the Earth. The poor people of the world are the most vulnerable to natural disasters, the most reliant on harvests coming at the right time, and the least able to adapt or move away from dangerous places. That is why climate change hits poor people hardest. Changing weather patterns are increasingly bringing devastating floods, drought, failed harvests, malnutrition, increased disease and death. Climate-change induced mass migration of entire populations from devastated areas, has the potential of becoming one of the more serious issues that the world will be forced to tackle in the 21st Century. In the meanwhile, African leaders are mindlessly still busy enriching themselves, regardless that their tenure on this earth is temporary and paying little regard to the state of the world that they will be bequeathing to their children's children.