Africa (Dis)United.

Today, May 25, 2013 is Africa Union Day and once again our leaders from all over the African continent are gathered in Addis Ababa to celebrate with pomp and pageantry a so-called African Unity. In fact they are commemorating the 50th anniversary celebrations of the formation of the African Union( formerly Organization of African Unity). i will like to know the sort of unity they are celebrating and what sort of unity have our leaders achieved for the continent so far. I will call it African disunity as a result of the many factors that have gone against the successful unity that the African continent deserves so as to promote her development. As i write this post, Mother Africa is so sad as to why her children can not unite for a common purpose and goal. Our leaders continue to talk about African unity, but look on helplessly as the West loot our resources and even determine the prices of our commodities for us. We do not have control over our gold, diamond, bauxite, aluminum, timber etc etc. Even our own petroleum resources we are given only a small percentage and the West takes the greater part. Whiles our leaders condone and connive with the West against their fellow African leaders just to kill them or haul them to the ICC other judicial courts established in the West. Examples of those killed were Patrice Lumumba of DR Congo and Muamar Gaddafi of Libya, those sent to the international courts are Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast and Charles Taylor of Liberia. Why can't we try our own leaders rather than wait for the West to do it for us. This leads to more unrest and confusion on the African continent. A classical example is the Libyan situation which has generated a spill over effect into Mali and Nigeria. Why do we still move with difficulty from one African country to the other? Immigration officials still extort  huge sums of money from their fellow Africans at most of the border posts whiles our leaders always look on unconcerned. This hampers the movement of people and it also affects trading activities at the border posts. We talk about unity on the African continent, but we don't have a single common currency for the continent. Our leaders are forced by the West to remove subsidies given to farmers while they subsidize the products of their farmers. Our leaders sit down unconcerned whiles the continent becomes a dumping round for all sorts of inferior goods. Our water bodies are being polluted and all they do is wishful thinking. We live on a continent where we still don't have a common language. We live on a continent where our leaders loot state money and stash them in foreign bank accounts and the West also benefits from them. I see so much disunity on the African continent and the talk shop at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa still goes on. Majority of the youth on the African continent see the AU as an irrelevant organization. What has the AU done for the poor African? If our leaders don't change their style and stop kowtowing to the whims and caprices of the West, the much sought after unity they are striving for will forever elude Africa like El Dorado, the fabled city of gold. God bless Mother Africa. 

When Espionage Goes Wrong.

The world media was awash with news of the Russian Secret Service FSB's arrest and detention of an American CIA agent on May 13, 2013 in Moscow. He was trying to recruit  an agent of the FSB, but luck ran out on him and the unfortunate happened. The CIA Agent at the centre of this murky and embarrassing episode for the Americans was named by the Russians as Ryan Fogle. He was arrested and pinned to the ground by the same agent he was trying to recruit. Ryan Fogle should have known better as the Russians are now very alert of any suspicious activity in Russia, since the Kremlin's long tentacles can reach all corners of the world. A typical example will be the radiation poisoning and murder of a former KGB agent, Alexander Litvinenko in the UK some years back, and recently the death of  the Russian billioniare Boris Abrahmovic Bereszovsky. All these deaths are still being investigated and it is being alleged that Kremlin has a hand in these deaths. This current incident has caused so much embarrassment to  the Americans and they have accused the FSB of breaching protocol and naming the CIA agent. It seems the Americans  and the CIA in particular are mute and are crafting a carefully worded statement to assuage the disgrace this incident has caused to their image. The arrest of Ryan Fogle is just the latest twist in the long history of spying between the U.S. and Russia. Famously, 10 Russian sleeper agents were arrested in June 2010 and accused of spying for the Russians in the U.S. The best known is Anna Chapman who has become a major celebrity in Russia since being deported from the U.S. In the Cold War period, however, U.S. and Soviet espionage was often a matter of life and death. In 1985, a military officer Arthur D. Nicholson was shot dead by a Soviet sentry while spying in East Germany. One of the Cold War's major crisis was caused by the shooting down of an American spy plane in 1960 and the subsequent capture of its pilot.

Ryan Fogle should count himself lucky to be alive, he could have been injected with a lethal poison and rendered a vegetable for the rest of his life or could have been killed outright, and a nice picture would have been painted to make him look too guilty. In the world of espionage three words must always be in your head if you are a spook, these words are "Don't Get Caught", so what went wrong for Ryan Fogle? The U.S. and Russia still do not trust each other as they are still trying to learn each others secrets. God save this world.