Shetani anapotawala akili zako

Shetani anapotawala akili zako

Wadau katika mambo ya kuepuka basi epuka akili yako kutawalia na mawazo yasiyona maana, ebu ona mtu mzima na ukubwa wake anavyofikiri kuhusu huu ugonjwa hatari wa ukimwi!

Hii ni balaa ukizingatia elimu ilikwisha tolewa kuhusu janga hili. Nikiwa kama mwanajamii kutumia blogu hii ya maishani nakemea na kulaani fikra butu na potofu kama hizi!

Kwa pamoja tupige vita gonjwa hili pia tupige vita fikra mbovu na zisizo na msingi wowote wa maana!

Tanzania Bila Ukimwi! Inawezekana!

richard

Bahati ilioje
Hebu fikiria wewe mdau mwenzangu upate nafasi ya kukaa kwenye jumba la raha! Humo kula bure, kuvaa bure, kunywa chochote upendacho na mambo mengineya faragha, fanya lolote utakalo, watu kutukanana, kugombana kisha walipwa dola $100,000/= ukatumbulie nazo raha mbele ya safari! Hii ni bahati ilioje na imemtokea mtanzania mwenzetu Mr Richard nadhani wote mnajua ila sijui kama alitoa hata senti tano kwa mayatima na wale ombaomba wetu waliojaa mabarabarani na nasikia bado anauza sura kwenye sinema zakibongo duuh jamaa kiboko! Ila habari ndio hiyo kupata bahati kama hiyo si jambo la mchezo wadau! Tumeni maoni yenu!

Amina wa Chifupa

Amina wa Chifupa

Lala mahali pema peponi dada Amina! Kama ilivyo ada ya wanadamu kuna siku za furaha na siku za huzuni ila hakika tungelijua siku ya huzuni itakuwaje basi tungelijipanga tuwe tayari kupambana nayo.
Waweza ona picha mbili tofauti zikimuelezea dada yetu huyu ambaye alikuwa mwanasiasa kijana shujaa katika mapambano zidi ya wauza unga enzi hizo laiti leo angekuwapo hata hao mafisadi na wauwaji wa maalbino angepambana nao kwa nguvu zote! Ila si tija mapambano bado yanaendelea! Upumzike kwa amani dada!

Hujafa hujaumbika

Hujafa hujaumbika

Akiwa bado binti mdogo sana Benezir Bhutto alipenda sana siasa, waweza ona hapo akiwa na baba yake katika siku za zama ya usichana wake. Ila maisha ni safari ndefu na kwa mama huyu kauli hii ni thabiti kwake. Kwani mwisho wa maisha yake ulifika pale alipolipuliwa na bomu pamoja na kupigwa risasi iliyositisha maisha yake.
Wadau maisha ndivyo yalivyo wazaliwa waishi na wafa!mungu aiweke sehemu pema peponi roho ya mwanasiasa huyu hodari.

Charlie Chaplin

Charlie Chaplin

Kwa dunia ya leo hakuna mpenda sinema za kuchekesha asiyemjua huyu gwiji wa vituko

Mr chaplin, akitumia teknolojia dhaifu ya picha za rangi moja na bila kutumia sauti jamaa aliweza kukonga nyoyo za watu kibao kwenye miaka ya 1950’s na kuendelea mpaka leo hii hakuna mwigizaji aliyeweza fikia kipaji chake licha ya kuwepo na teknolojia la khali ya juu katika upigaji wa picha za sinema! Hapo ndio utakapokuja jua ya kwamba kipaji ni hazina nadra sana duniani. Wadau wote wenye vipaji msisite kutumia vipaji vyenu kwani huwezi jua waweza weka historia katika uso huu wa dunia

MFUNGWA WA DENI NDANI YA CHUPA

Kajamaa ka chupa kadaiwa!

Huyu jamaa kweli ni kiboko!

Hako kamtu unakakaona kwenye mfuniko wa kioo ni mdaiwa wake, yaani jamaa kadai kaona kheri amfunikie kwenye hiyo chupa ya kioo ili jamaa atie akili au kama kuna ndugu zake waje wamlipe ili mshikaji apate chake!

Kweli sasa wanadamu wamepinda, pia maumbo mengine kimeo.

LUDAAAA

LUDAAAA

Mshirika anaitwa Ludacris! Jamaa anachana maverse kama kameza cd vile.

Ila jaman hiyo minywele ni too much! Sasa hata hicho kichwa kinaweza kweli kuzunguka? Analalaje huyu jamaa?

Kungekuwa na duka la kuuza nywele za wanaume tungesema anafanya promo ila wapi!

Sasa huyu sikuhizi ana upara sijui manywele katupia wapi!

Habari za chini ya kapeti zinasema amepata manzi ambaye amempa sharti la kwanza la kutoa ili afro kama anampenda kwa dhati.

Na jamaa ametoa kweli mapenzi si mchezo. Haya ni kama yaleeee ya Samsoni na delila au Adam na Hawa na mambo yao ya tunda.
Je wewe kijana wa leo unawezeja kushinda nguvu ya mwanamke?

Tuma maoni mdau!

Mama bonge

Mama bonge

Haya jamani! Unajua wakati mwingine tuache masihara na maisha yetu ya kula ovyo na kutojishughulisha kabisaaaa.

Ona dada hapo yaani khali imekuwa tete kupita maelezo ila bado anafukia kwa kwenda mbele.

Kwa khali hii mtu waweza toa uhai kwa misosi tu.Huu ndio ubwanyenye wadau kula kuliko maelezo.

Msongo wa Mawazo aka STESS!

Msongo wa Mawazo aka STESS!

Khali ya msongo wa mawazo si ngeni kwetu sote.

Kwa maisha ya sasa kupata msongo wa mawazo ni jambo rahisi kupita kiasi.

Matumizi na mahitaji yetu kibinadamu yamekuwa makubwa na yanazidi kila kukicha, watu wanataka mali, heshima, nguvu na mambo mengineyo mengi.

Watu wanadiriki hata kutaka viungo vya wanadamu wenzao! Jamani hii ni ‘too much’.

Kwa kuishi maisha ya kuridhika na unachopata pia kuishi vema kimaadili na jamii yako na kujua kusamehe na kuomba msaada pale ushindwapo basi kwa kiasi kikubwa waweza punguza msongo wa mawazo.

JENNIFER LOPEZ NA MALAVU

Jennifer lopez

Wadau nadhani wengi mwamjua huyo dada hapo! Anavipaji lukuki, pia si mchezo kajaliwaaa! Sasa swali langu je watu hutazama vipaji vyake ama maumbo yake au vyote kwa pamoja?

Mie sina jibu ila najua watu kibwena wameshaoa na kubwaga ila kuna kidume kinaitwa Marc Anthony kimempa watoto mapacha! Je wewe ungekuwa jamaa huyo ungekuwa na furaha ama huzuni? Je ungemlinda na wakware ama ungeacha watu wamfukuzie? Kwa kweli dada Jennifer lopez ni moto wa fire kwani licha na mapacha wake bado moto bati! Je weye ungemvalishaje ili watu udenda usiwatoke!

Ungemvalisha kininja, hijabu au kimini?kwani dada kwa kijishoo majaliwa yake ndio apatiapo maslahi.

Si unaona makopa manne!

Inamaana atapendwa na wangapi au anamilikiwa na wangapi!

Au ndio wakina Jolan, Puffy Daddy, Chriss Judd, Ben Affleck?

Je kama ndio hao wa kale je ya mumewe wa sasa iko wapi?

Au akimwagwa na yeye atapewa kopa yake!

Kweli hii ni hatari! Wizi mtupu hapooooooo!

MANENO NA VITENDO NDIO MSINGI WA HESHIMA YAKO

MAISHANI MNA SIRI MBILI,ZA MSINGI.

SIRI HIZO NI :

1) MANENO

2) MATENDO

SIRI HIZO NDIO MSINGI WA MAISHANI. ILI BINAADAMU AWEZE KUENDESHA MAISHA YAKE, YA KILA SIKU LAZIMA ATUMIE
SILAHA HIZO ( MANENO NA VITENDO ). MANENO NA VITENDO, NI VIFAA VIZURI VINAPOKUWA NA CHANZO KIZURI NA VINAWEZA KUWA SUMU AU VIBAYA VINAPOKUWA NA CHANZO KIBAYA.

KILA BINADAMU ( NAFSI ) ANA UWEZO WA KUTENGENEZA
MANENO NA VITENDO VYA KIPEKEE.

TAFAUTI YA MANENO NA VITENDO INAWEZA KUJITOKEZA PALE,AMBAPO NAFSI YA MTU HUSIKA,INAWEZA KUNENA JAMBO FULANI NA ISIWEZE KULITEKELEZA, KUTOKANA NA UDHAIFU WAKE AU UPUNGUFU WA MILIKI ( MALI,MDA……..Etc ) AU UPUNGUFU WA ELIMU KUHUSU NENO LILILOTAMKWA NA NAFSI HUSIKA.

MANENO NA VITENDO NDIVYO VYANZO,VYA KUONESHA SURA AU MUONEKANO WA NAFSI HUSIKA. HEKIMA YA MTU HUTOKANA AU INAONEKANA KUKANA NA VITE NDO NA MANENO YAKE.

HII NDIO SIRI YA MANENO NA VITENDO , MAISHANI MWETU.
NIVYEMA UKITOA ,AHADI UITEKELEZE.

ILI UJENGE HESHIMA YAKO NA KUHESHIMIWA.

JARIBU KUFIKIRI,KUHUSU MANENO YA AHADI ULIOPEWA NA WATU,WAKASHINDWA KUKUTEKELEZEA AHADI HIO ?

ULIJIHISIJE MOYONO MWAKO ?

BILASHAKA ULICHUKIA NA KUPOTEZA ASILIMIA FULANI YA UAMINIFU,JUU YA YULE MUAHIDI.

WANGAPI UMEWATENDEA MABAYA, NA UNAJIHISI VIPI JUU YA UBAYA HUO ?

AU WALIOKUTENDEA MABAYA UNAWAHISI VIPI JUU YA UBAYA HUSIKA ?

KWA KWELI JIBU UNALO,MWENYEWE. TAFAKARI KISHA TUPE MAONI NA MSIMAMO WAKO, KUHUSU MANENO NA VITENDO.

World crisis calls for new economic governance partnership – UN official

World risis calls for new economic governance partnership – UN official

Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs Sha Zukang9 March 2009 – The “enormous challenges” facing the world present a unique opportunity to forge a new partnership for governance of the world economy, the chief of the United Nations’ development arm told a meeting of advisers that opened in New York today.
The Committee for Development Policy – consisting of 24 experts with diverse development experience who advise the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) – opened its 11th session today, focusing on the achievement of international goals in public health.
In his opening remarks to the body, Sha Zukang, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs said that the worst economic crises since the great depression have thrown many more people into poverty.
“But they also present a unique opportunity for the United Nations and, in particular, the Economic and Social Council, to provide leadership in addressing the crisis,” he said,
For that purpose, he told the Committee, “the quality and relevance of the work of ECOSOC need to be strengthened further. In this effort, your expert advice is indispensable.”
In the area of public health, he noted that developing countries have recently made significant strides towards achieving the health-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), ambitious targets to slash poverty and other ills by 2015.
He noted, however, that there are still large gaps between what has been achieved and what still needs to be achieved, and the Committee’s focus – on persistent inequalities in healthcare – is very timely.
“It is not acceptable that a child has a significantly higher probability of dying before reaching the age of five simply because he or she was born to a poorer family or in a poor country,” he said, calling for new donor approaches to the problem.
Turning to the triennial review of the list of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), with which the Committee is also tasked, he acknowledged that both joining and exiting the category seem to provoke a great deal of agitation for countries.
For that reason, he welcomed the dialogue the Committee has held with countries potentially affected by its recommendations, including Equatorial Guinea, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.
In that light, he invited Committee members to propose ways by which development partners could further ease the transition out of the category, by reducing the uncertainty caused by the phasing out of special support measures available to LDCs.
“In other words, their vulnerability must be reduced and their graduation must be durable,” he said.
The 11th session of the Committee for Development Policy runs through 13 March.

LION AND LIFE

The Lion King of the Beasts (Lion King), if you are lucky you will see Lion on your African safari. It's always nice to take pictures of Lions in Africa, especially when they are hunting or feeding on a carcass. Most of the time you will see a Lion or pride of Lions on your safari. Sometimes the male Lion will have a pride of more tgan 20 females + cubs. Good places to see a large Lion pride is the Savute region in Chobe National Park Botswana.
Lion are dangerous, stay away from them if you are on footh with a walking safari. As they are the Nr. 1 predator in Africa it's very easy to get killed by a angry Lion. Howver, most of the time they will run off as soon as they see or smell you.
Best National Park to see Lions in Botswana are Moremi Game Reserve and Chobe National Park. Also the Central Kalahari Game Reserve is a nice place for taking a Lion picture. There you can find the rare blankmanned Kalahari Lion.

Data:
Lion (Panthera leo)Male Lion: total length 2,5-3,3 meter; tail 1,0 meter; shoulder height 1,2 meter; mass 150-225 kg.Female Lion: : total length 2,3-2,7 meter; tail 1,0 meter; shoulder height 1,0 meter; mass 110-152 kg

PLANTS,AIR AND SUN

We all need some forms of Power in order to live.

For example, trees, plants and animals, genrally all need energy from the Sun to live.

If it was not for the write conditions of Sun, air, water and Eath, then then the sensertive Eco-Systems and infrastructures of life and the enviroment would not be able to live.

We associte power with many activites throughout our lifestyle, some of what are necersary for essential life activites, such as cooking washing and warmth .

other things we associte with Power are associated more with lesure, such as listening to music.

Modern day society and civalisations seem to contain a whole inferstructure of mechanisams of Power which together contribute to the kind of Society and Enviroment that we live.

For example Trains, Factories, Shops ect.

Much of the electricic Power used in supporting Post Contempory generated by Poluting methods that can be harmful to life and may also contribute to Climate Change.

or otherwise Dangorus methods of Power poduction, for example Nuclear Energy.

With unrenewable Polluting fuels for creating energy such as the depleating gas coal and oil supplys diminishing and unstable volatilee poluting and unsafe nuclear fuel systems of which fuel is also increasingle becoming scarse in its natraul mind ore, the industrie causing mass enviromental deverstation through radioactive thermo nuclear poluttion contamination and international security alarms! It is time to look at greener more sustainable means of energy sources and also look at how we share power and what we use power for, both socioly and personle, as terifc amounts of energy are wasted and centralised energy system like the National Grid does not incorage more industraise, comunitys and people to conserve energy wisley in the first plase and to be responsible for there own Enviromentaly freindly, Energy creating utilities.

Enviromentaly freindly Alternitive energy souses may be divided up into its relevt sources of Power, so as to derive from which method of of Alternitive Energy, a Power source has been derived from.

The main sources of Alternitive Energy Are; Solar Energy Solar Energy means energy derived from the Sun. Our Sun is a one of the main sources of most of our alternitive energy sourcdes, since solar energy from our Sun controls the weather on Earth. Heat from the suns radiation is obsorbed by our Oceans, The poleward flow of warm, moist ait subgected to the possition and and rotation of the Earths surface, creates some of our familiar Weather Paterns. Water evaporated by the Sun, condenceis as rain. As the Wind blows over the strectches of our Oceans, waves are created through the oscilation of the Seas surface. Energy from the Sun can be utilised through to direct methods; Solar Photovoltaics, is the conversion of solar energy, directly into electricity in a solid state, using silicon, monocrystalline and other Semiconducting materials.

Energy is derived from the sun light through the use of a semi condutor like silicon though other semi conductors such as Gallium Arsenide, Copper indium Diselenside and Cadmium Telluride may be utilised to a simillar effect of of generzting electricity when a pur e semi conductor cell is dopped with with a tiny quantity of an impurity, such as phosphurorus or boron.

A Photooltaic silicon cell , (PV Cell), in essence consists of a junction between two thin layers of almost identical semiconducting materiail. One, the N (Negertive)- type semiconductor material would be doped with a minute amount of an impurite such as Phosphurous, whilst the P (Posertive)- type semiconductor would be doped with a minute amount of the impurite Boron. When a P-N Junction is created by joining to dissimilar semiconductors, an Electric field is set upin the regin of the junction.

This electric field is similar to the ectro static field created when rubing a blown up balloon on a wool jumper! Negertiverly charged particles move in one direction and Posertiverly charged particles move in the oposite direction.

This Electric charge builds up and is realised gradualy across the junction, depending on the amount of energy absorbed from the sun through altering weather conditions.

A vast majority of solar modules available today use "waste" silicon from the computer chip industry as the semiconductor material Solar Thermal Energy, May be considerd as utilisig the Energy of the Sun to the most relevent and appropiate use of Energy conversvation and energy use, all be it through Building desighns to utilise and make the most use of heat and light through the positioning of Glass windows and mirrors utilised for best conserving heat and light in arcitectual desighn. integrated into buildings and even made into roof tiles virtually indistinguishable from normal tiles.

Concentrated Solar Panals may also be used in conjuction with copper pipes, for heating up water.

This is a good, cheap and effective process of energy conservation, utilising the natrual heat energy from the Sun and saving on conventional energy use that may be dangourise as well as eradicating dangourise pollution emmiting energy souces that disharge harmfull radiation or Carbon dioxide.

Wind Energy Energy derived from the wind is bearly a new concept,! as it is thought that the wind was first used over thousand s of years ago to power sailing boats.

It is thought that the static explotation of the wind begun about 4000 years ago through windmills, conventunaly used fo milling grain, and grinding other materials.

Windmills have also historicaly in the past, evan to pump water. Energy as derived from Wind turbines carrys some Enviromental Benefits as well as potential compications in there positioning and the effcts of theiar use.

Some of the obviouse potential enviromental bennifits are that wind turbines used for the generation of electricity do not involve the release of Carbon Dioxide, acid rain smog or radioactive pollutants. Wind Turbines do not neecersarly require a water supplie.

The utilisation of wind turbines to produce elctricity, reduces our dependancy on post contemporary energy sources, such as Nuclear fuel and Fossil Fuels. HydroElectricity Hydroelectricity, involves the concetration of Power through the adaption and enginering of water ways, through the use of Turbines and Dams.

The Power generated from an effective HydroElectricity turbine generator is determined from the effective fall rate to the head of the generators turbine, thus rotataing the generators tubine, and the Flow Rate.

The power of pertential of those two charicteristics, (H=Height water falls) and (Q), the number of cubic metres of water fall per second), are averagie 10 times the value of these two factours; Thus, P(KW) = 10 x Q x H There are certan desighn specification to be taken into comsideration from the consnetration of stored water energy realesead through the effective fall rate and the desighn of the turbine propeler and genorator, depending on the construction and enviromental conditions. There are certan Enviromental, ecological and sociol considerations to take into account, as often, the creation of dams to withhold the pressure of stored water energy realesed through the hydro electricity generatours, couses the surounding area to be submerged by water, to the hight and area of the waters concentration. This could have a knock on effect on the serounding habitat and Ecology.

There are also ecological considerations to be had in the change of ecological conditions of the natraul habitat and the ecological effects on species considering there migrational patterns, which for Salmon for instance, could be quite deverstiating for the colonising speciase near large scale progects, which are located near thear migratorie water ways, on there way through eausterias, up rivers to calmer waters to breed.

Sociol consideration to be taken into acount are certonlie ot an ethical leval of the enviromental and ecological consequensies, they are also on a possible ethical leval on any possible individual or public loss of property.

There are certan ecinomical considerations to be had for investment and the possible Energy potentiol of a given Hydroelectricty plant that should be taken into acount of.

Tidal Energy Tidal energy can be harnissed through the desighn of tidal barrages, constructed in sutable locations, taking into acount sociol, ethical, enviromental, ecological and financial aspects of a such a progect. Tidal energy can be harnissed through the desighn of tidal barrages to convert the potential energy of the rise and falling of the tide, to, Kinetic energy from alternating tidal curents of the tides, rotating the blades of the turbine, which propels the genorator, thus producing electricity from a sustainable form of alternitive energy.

Wave Energy The motion of the waves has been able to be harnessed by certan contraptunes to convert the alternating bobing action of the waves into mechanical energy, which can thus be converted into a usable form of energy in the form of electricty.

There are many varies desighns able to deployed to harnis the varies potential energy of waves into a kinetic energy to produce another alternitive means of sustainable energy. There can be land or sea based wave energy genorators, desighned to capture put to use or inhance the variouse posible potentiol energy forces which waves may produce and inflict, in variouse ways, on wave energy genorators, to producing energy.

Coastal Wave energy genorators, tend to use the air pressure of the wave, by arcutecting tube like strutures which enhance and consentrate the air pressure energy of the chamber, which when ingulfed by the wave, produces a force which can be harnissed to rotate turbies and drive a genorator to produce electricity. Biomass Energy The term Biomass reffers to a wide range of subject material as the biomass may be considerd as all of the Earths living matter that exsists in a thin layer of the earths atmospheare and Earths crust called the Biosphaire.

Biomass in terms of Biomass fuels also covers a large subject matter as of apart from natraul examples of Biomass energy conversions in living organisams in an ecology, theair are also a wide range of Biomass processes which may be utilised for Energy production.

Amoungst these are Biodiesal and ethanal, produced from Vegatable oils, Maize, sorghum and Miscanthus for Bio-ethanol Production, and Ethanal from Sugar cane, which is now used for alternative fuel vehicles, aviation fuels and as an additive to meet clean Petrolium standards. Other forms of fuels derived from Biomass are; Biogas, Animal waste, Landfill gas Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Municipal Solid Waste is basicaly though, the burning of waste through incineration, to produce electricity, therfore we shall not class this as a Sustainable energy because of the enviromental and health issues concerned through more carbon emisions and the release toxic emissions and heavily contaminated ash. which is useuly dumped in landfill sites. Ther are also seriouse dangerouse to health through the release of dioxines.

The Energy from waste (EFW) incinerators are also enviromentaly unsound because they send valuble resources up in smoke.

For a enviromentaly sustainable future, we need to stop the waste of non-renewable resources like aluminium, steel and cemen and stop wasting wood and paper.

The waste of plastics is also an unsustainable resource as the production of plastics accounts for 4 per cent of oil consumption and oil is a unsutainable resouse, as it is calculated that oil supplys could run out in 2050.

Incinerators produce toxic emissions and heavily contaminated ash, which is then genrally dumped into landfil sites.

Landfill Gas and anerobic Digesters for MSW use Biogas as a fuel. Landfill gas, (LFG), has between 50% and 60% of Methane, CH4 + and CO2. In sucsessful conditions, a site could other 150-300m3 of gas, per 5-6Gj per tonne of waste processed.

MSW, municipal solid waste, consits largly of biological material, putricible waste, as well as other Recycable matirals such as 29% Paper, 1% non ferrous metal, 6% wood and Garden waste, 7% Plastics, 8% Glass, 9% miscellaneous combustable, 13% miscellaneous non-comustable and 9% putrescible.

Obviously better waste manejment progrsms for recycling need to be in progress. The term Gasification is about the synthesis of Gas. This may be through Lanfill Gas, Anaerobic Digestion, through Biogas.

Lanfill gas is colected through borrows of populated pipes, uder a layer of pouras clay, so to incourage anerobic digestion.

Rotting vegitation, and dung can be be used to synthesise gas through anerobic digestion on farm biogas digesters. Gasification may be used to synthesise Gasfrom fermentation, in order to produce ethanol, which can be used for internal combustion engines in converted engines.

Fermentation is a n Anaerobic biological process where sugars are converted to alcohol by the anerobic digestion of Micro Arganisams, for instance, which produce alcohol.

Sugarcane is the most commonly used fuel source for producing ethanol, though Corn maize, Cassava root and Sweat Potatoe may lao be used as an anerobic andertive ffrom the fermentation of micro-organsams.

Methanol may also be produced through the synthesis of gases released in from anerobic digesters and Landfill gases and may be used tfor creating energy from gas tubines or as a liquid fuel to replace Petral.

The Power of Money

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

The Power of Money
[ 40 ] If man’s feelings, passions, etc., are not merely anthropological phenomena in the (narrower) sense, but truly ontological [41 ] affirmation of being (of nature), and if they are only really affirmed because their object exists for them as a sensual object, then it is clear that:
1. They have by no means merely one mode of affirmation, but rather that the distinct character of their existence, of their life, is constituted by the distinct mode of their affirmation. In what manner the object exists for them, is the characteristic mode of their gratification.
2. Wherever the sensuous affirmation is the direct annulment of the object in its independent form (as in eating, drinking, working up of the object, etc.), this is the affirmation of the object.

3. Insofar as man, and hence also his feeling, etc., is human, the affirmation of the object by another is likewise his own gratification.

4. Only through developed industry — i.e., through the medium of private property — does the ontological essence of human passion come into being, in its totality as well as in its humanity; the science of man is therefore itself a product of man’s own practical activity.

5. The meaning of private property — apart from its estrangement — is the existence of essential objects for man, both as objects of enjoyment and as objects of activity.
By possessing the property of buying everything, by possessing the property of appropriating all objects, money is thus the object of eminent possession. The universality of its property is the omnipotence of its being. It is therefore regarded as omnipotent. . . . Money is the procurer between man’s need and the object, between his life and his means of life. But that which mediates my life for me, also mediates the existence of other people for me. For me it is the other person.
“What, man! confound it, hands and feetAnd head and backside, all are yours!And what we take while life is sweet,Is that to be declared not ours?
Six stallions, say, I can afford,Is not their strength my property?I tear along, a sporting lord,As if their legs belonged to me.”
Goethe: Faust (Mephistopheles)
Shakespeare in Timon of Athens:
“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, Gods, I am no idle votarist! ...Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair,Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant.... Why, thisWill lug your priests and servants from your sides,Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads:This yellow slaveWill knit and break religions, bless the accursed;
Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thievesAnd give them title, knee and approbationWith senators on the bench: This is itThat makes the wappen’d widow wed again;
She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous soresWould cast the gorge at, this embalms and spicesTo the April day again. Come, damned earth,Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st oddsAmong the rout of nations.”
And also later:
“O thou sweet king-killer, and dear divorce‘Twixt natural son and sire! thou bright defilerOf Hymen’s purest bed! thou valiant Mars!Thou ever young, fresh, loved and delicate wooer,
Whose blush doth thaw the consecrated snowThat lies on Dian’s lap! Thou visible God!That solder’st close impossibilities,And makest them kiss! That speak’st with every tongue,
To every purpose! O thou touch of hearts!Think, thy slave man rebels, and by thy virtueSet them into confounding odds, that beastsMay have the world in empire!”
Shakespeare excellently depicts the real nature of money. To understand him, let us begin, first of all, by expounding the passage from Goethe.
That which is for me through the medium of money — that for which I can pay (i.e., which money can buy) — that am I myself, the possessor of the money. The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my — the possessor’s — properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness — its deterrent power — is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame.

I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest.

I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has a power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary?
If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation? It is the coin that really separates as well as the real binding agent — the [. . .] chemical power of society.
Shakespeare stresses especially two properties of money:
1. It is the visible divinity — the transformation of all human and natural properties into their contraries, the universal confounding and distorting of things: impossibilities are soldered together by it.

2. It is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.
The distorting and confounding of all human and natural qualities, the fraternisation of impossibilities — the divine power of money — lies in its character as men’s estranged, alienating and self-disposing species-nature. Money is the alienated ability of mankind.
That which I am unable to do as a man, and of which therefore all my individual essential powers are incapable, I am able to do by means of money. Money thus turns each of these powers into something which in itself it is not — turns it, that is, into its contrary.
If I long for a particular dish or want to take the mail-coach because I am not strong enough to go by foot, money fetches me the dish and the mail-coach: that is, it converts my wishes from something in the realm of imagination, translates them from their meditated, imagined or desired existence into their sensuous, actual existence — from imagination to life, from imagined being into real being. In effecting this mediation, [money] is the truly creative power.
No doubt the demand also exists for him who has no money, but his demand is a mere thing of the imagination without effect or existence for me, for a third party, for the [others], and which therefore remains even for me unreal and objectless. The difference between effective demand based on money and ineffective demand based on my need, my passion, my wish, etc., is the difference between being and thinking, between the idea which merely exists within me and the idea which exists as a real object outside of me.

If I have no money for travel, I have no need — that is, no real and realisable need — to travel. If I have the vocation for study but no money for it, I have no vocation for study — that is, no effective, no true vocation. On the other hand, if I have really no vocation for study but have the will and the money for it, I have an effective vocation for it. Money as the external, universal medium and faculty (not springing from man as man or from human society as society) for turning an image into reality and reality into a mere image, transforms the real essential powers of man and nature into what are merely abstract notions and therefore imperfections and tormenting chimeras, just as it transforms real imperfections and chimeras — essential powers which are really impotent, which exist only in the imagination of the individual — into real essential powers and faculties. In the light of this characteristic alone, money is thus the general distorting of individualities which turns them into their opposite and confers contradictory attributes upon their attributes.
Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.
Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things — the world upside-down — the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.
He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every quality for every other, even contradictory, quality and object: it is the fraternisation of impossibilities.

It makes contradictions embrace.
Assume man to be man and his relationship to the world to be a human one: then you can exchange love only for love, trust for trust, etc. If you want to enjoy art, you must be an artistically cultivated person; if you want to exercise influence over other people, you must be a person with a stimulating and encouraging effect on other people. Every one of your relations to man and to nature must be a specific expression, corresponding to the object of your will, of your real individual life. If you love without evoking love in return — that is, if your loving as loving does not produce reciprocal love; if through a living expression of yourself as a loving person you do not make yourself a beloved one, then your love is impotent — a misfortune.

WOMAN AND MONEY

WOMAN AND MONEY

The financial battle of the sexes
Women are earning - and spending - more than ever before.

But they also have greater demands on their cash and as the divorce rate rises and they cannot or choose not to depend on their husbands, women are having to take greater responsibility for their finances.

A poll by Alliance & Leicester shows that more than a third of women think they hold the purse strings.

But the men see it differently - only one in five said their wife or girlfriend was in charge of household finances.

For 44% of couples, money matters are a shared responsibility.

When it comes to managing money, is it you or your partner that wears the financial trousers?
Historically, men have better numeracy skills than women and with the exception of savings ACCOUNTS , men currently own more financial products than women.

Research from finance watchdog the Financial Services Authority (FSA) shows that men and women hold different attitudes to financial products with women being more cautious, more careful and more traditional than men.
Women are also more likely to remain loyal and stay with a financial provider with whom they have an existing relationship.

They prefer to buy financial products face to face, feeling happy to take the recommendation of a financial adviser, whereas men are better at shopping around.

ut regardless of age and status (employment, ethnic origin, marital status) women are much less likely than men to read the financial pages of the newspapers. Overall more than one in three men regularly read the financial pages compared to only one in five women.
Secret savings
Interestingly, many women interviewed by the Fawcett Society - which campaigns for women - initially claimed that financial decision-making was shared with their partner.

However, when questioned further they frequently referred to instances where they had not been able to challenge a partner's spending decisions.

They also felt inhibited about spending money on themselves because they earned less than their partner.

'Bringing money into the household brings with it a sense of entitlement to decide how it is spent,' explains Geethika Jayatilaka of the Fawcett Society.

'Because men earn more than women they have greater control of how money is spent or shared, and more access to personal spending".

The Fawcett report found that a quarter of women with personal incomes of under £400 a month say that it is their partner who has the final say in financial decisions.

Women place a higher priority on saving than men but with little input into financial decisions resort to secret saving to redress the balance.

A typical comment from a secret saver was: 'It sounds terrible, but I'm not hiding it from him.

I just haven't told him it's there otherwise he would say let's go on holiday or something and then it would be gone'.
Home girls
Today's women want to manage their own money and MORTGAGE, even if they live with their other half, according to research from Standard Life Bank.

More than half of women with their own mortgage would keep it and their property for as long as possible even if they met a partner and decided to settle down.

With nearly one in five working women in the UK now having a mortgage on their own, home ownership is no longer men's domain.

Women are also more likely to get to grips with remortgage says The MarketPlace at Bradford & Bingley, and find the process easier than men.

'Our research shows that when it comes to remortgaging, women unequivocally wear the trousers,' says Elliot Nathan of the MarketPlace.

'They appear to have a much better understanding of the process itself and how long it takes.

Increasingly, women are making a greater number of financial decisions in the home and this research shows why.'
Girls also take the lead in turning a house into a home.

Latest findings from the Sainsbury's Bank Home Improvement Index, which tracks the amount people plan to spend on their homes over the next six months, reveals that around 6.28 million women have home improvements projects worth an estimated £29.29 billion in the pipeline, compared to just over five million men.
Stockmarket stunners
According to a study by website DigitalLook, women who play the stock market actually outperform men. Its analysis, based on a survey of 100,000 portfolios, shows that ordinary women investors, living all over the country and dealing in shares by the internet, telephone or investment clubs, are consistently doing better than the well-salaried professionals in the City. During the period of the study, the average woman's portfolio rose by 10%, compared to just a 7% rise for the overall FTSE index and a 6% increase for that of the average man. Women are also more demanding of the companies they invest their money in and more likely to opt for socially responsible or ethical companies when buying shares.

Why Is Africa Still Poor?

Why Is Africa Still Poor?

A slogan painted on trucks and taxicabs all over Africa, much beloved by metaphor-hunting authors, reads: NO CONDITION IS PERMANENT. This is true, but some are recurring. Tyranny in Zimbabwe, famine in Niger, a constitutional coup in Togo, rampant corruption in Kenya, protesters shot in Ethiopia, an epidemic in Angola, civil war in Sudan--those are this year's headlines, but if you think you've heard it all before, you have. Martin Meredith, in his new book The Fate of Africa, writes that "what is so striking about the fifty-year period since independence is the extent to which African states have suffered so many of the same misfortunes." Some countries, like Nigeria and Zambia, have gone through cycles of reform and decay. But Meredith's subtitle--From the Hopes of Freedom to the Heart of Despair--sums up the overall trend. It's hard to imagine now, but in the heady days of the 1960s, much of the continent was no less prosperous than South Korea or Malaysia. While those Asian nations have transformed themselves into economic "tigers," however, gross domestic products across Africa shrank during the last two decades of the twentieth century. Africans are getting poorer, not richer. They are living shorter, hungrier lives.

The decline of an entire continent confounds our preconceptions about human advancement. The economist Jeffrey Sachs points out in his recent book The End of Poverty that our Hegelian notion of linear progress is relatively new. For most of history, humans lived miserable existences and couldn't expect better before the afterlife. But since the Industrial Revolution the situation has improved, and not only in the rich countries of Europe and North America. Between 1981 and 2001, Sachs says, hundreds of millions of people, many of them in Asian nations like China and India, emerged from extreme poverty. But a billion have been left behind, most of them in Africa. "The greatest tragedy of our time," Sachs writes, is that one-sixth of all humans still live a dollar-a-day existence, scraping by on the margins of starvation.
How can one continent be so out of step with humankind's march of progress? Everyone agrees that Africans are desperately poor and typically endure governments that are, to varying degrees, corrupt and capricious. The dispute is about causes and consequences. One group--call it the poverty-first camp--believes African governments are so lousy precisely because their countries are so poor. The other group--the governance-first camp--holds that Africans are impoverished because their rulers keep them that way. The argument may seem pedantic, but there are billions of dollars at stake, and millions of lives. The fundamental question is whether those who are well-off can salve a continent's suffering, or if, for all our good intentions, Africans are really on their own.

Recently, the poverty-first crowd has been making a lot of noise. The weekend before the July G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, millions of people watched as pop stars in cities around the world played concerts organized by Africa crusader Bob Geldof. The event's platform--forgive Africa's debts, increase its development aid, end trade policies that undermine its exports--echoed the recommendations of Sachs, the antipoverty movement's house economist. A Columbia University professor and an adviser to Kofi Annan, Sachs has lately become a favorite brain of the US Weekly set: Bono wrote his book's introduction, and he recently starred alongside Angelina Jolie in an MTV special about their travels in Kenya. The celebrity endorsements amplify Sachs's serious argument that for too long, rich countries have done too little to help the poor. At the end of the Gleneagles summit, world leaders announced that they would increase global aid by about $50 billion by 2010. Sachs says the poor need much more, right away: about $75 billion a year, half of it for Africa. "I reject the plaintive cries of the doomsayers who say that ending poverty is impossible," he writes.
The doomsayers, sadly, include many of those who know the continent best. Two other recent books--Meredith's sweeping history of the post-independence era, and Robert Guest's more tightly focused The Shackled Continent--have joined the immense corpus of literature arguing that, for all the continent's geographical and historical handicaps, Africa's main problems are political. Guest, an optimist, believes that with better leadership African countries could catch up. But Meredith reaches a dismal conclusion. Even "given greater Western efforts," he writes, "the sum of Africa's misfortunes--its wars, its despotisms, its corruption, its droughts, its everyday violence--presents a crisis of such magnitude that it goes beyond the reach of foreseeable solutions. At the core of the crisis is the failure of African leaders to provide effective government."

edith, a British journalist and historian, is the author of biographies of Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe. Here, he offers an ambitious survey of fifty years, fifty-three countries and countless wars and coups. The story begins in the early 1950s, with the first stirrings of nationalism among the colonized peoples of Africa. Seventy years of rule from afar had left the continent spectacularly ill-equipped for self-rule--a collection of states that were nations in name only, drawn up according to the realpolitical whims of the likes of Gladstone, Bismarck and Belgium's King Leopold, who presided over the deaths of millions of Congolese. Some European powers were spiteful about leaving: French President Charles de Gaulle, piqued by the lack of deference shown him by Guinea's Ahmed Sékou Touré, had colonial officials cart away their office furniture, while the Portuguese fought a series of bloody wars to hold on to Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau. Other colonial powers were more benevolent. Britain, for instance, built some good schools and decent roads in East Africa. What none of the Europeans left behind, however, were societies equipped to approach the immense challenge of mending the tribal, regional and religious rifts created and exacerbated--often deliberately--in the interest of dividing and ruling

may be found in the continent's own social movements.
Yet in those early years, all these challenges seemed manageable. "Expectations were high," Meredith writes, with charismatic leaders like Léopold Senghor, Senegal's philosopher-president, and the regal Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, seemingly poised to lead the continent to democracy and self-sufficiency. The rains were good, the harvests bountiful and the infrastructure, left behind by the Europeans, adequate. The "sense of euphoria," Meredith writes, "had been raised to ever greater heights by the lavish promises of nationalist politicians campaigning for power, pledging to provide education, medical care, employment and land for all. 'Seek ye first the political kingdom,' Nkrumah had told his followers, 'and all else shall be added unto you.'"
Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's first president and the first man to lead an African colony to independence, is of especial interest to Meredith, perhaps because his career established the pattern of disappointment. A former political prisoner of deep nationalist conviction, he took over when the British exited Ghana in 1957. Nkrumah was hailed worldwide as a prophet of liberation, and he acted the part, wrapping himself in kente cloth and talking of a United States of Africa. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars in a five-year spree, constructing lavish public buildings, creating nationalized industries from scratch and establishing a Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute to codify his thinking. He encouraged a personality cult and took grandiose titles, such as Osagyefo, which means "redeemer."
When his popularity waned, Nkrumah turned to other methods of rule. He doled out patronage, as his cabinet ministers demanded 10 percent cuts of every public contract. (When one Nkrumah crony was questioned about his exorbitant lifestyle, he replied, "Socialism doesn't mean that if you've made a lot of money, you can't keep it.") As Ghana went bankrupt, Nkrumah became increasingly remote, surrounded by sycophants inside Christianborg Castle, a former slaving fort. He crushed labor unions and imprisoned political opponents. After more than one attempt on his life, he created a praetorian guard within the army, made up mostly of his own tribesmen. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to China, the military overthrew him. Ghanaians celebrated in the streets.
With eerie uniformity, this same drama played out in country after country, as colonial exploitation gave way to the rule of homegrown tyrants. In Meredith's account, these so-called Big Men begin to blur together. Even their flourishes seem interchangeable. Meredith, who has a gift for the mordant aside, tells us that Nkrumah built himself a large zoo that featured a boa constrictor sent by Fidel Castro. The Ivory Coast's Félix Houphouët-Boigny allowed a sacred elephant to roam the grounds of his palace. Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie kept caged lions and leopards. Jean-Bedel Bokassa of the Central African Republic, another cat person, used to feed his lions dissidents.
Ghana was lucky by comparison. Its dictators were gentler than the likes of Bokassa, a reputed cannibal, or Idi Amin, who had one of his wives killed, dismembered and dumped in a car trunk. Coup leader Jerry Rawlings, an Air Force lieutenant, led Ghana well enough to be hailed in the 1990s as one of a "new breed" of enlightened autocrats. Rawlings presided over World Bank-mandated economic reforms. Pleased donors flooded the country with billions in foreign aid. Rawlings eventually handed over power to an elected civilian. Nonetheless, Meredith writes that in 1998 "Ghana's gross national product was still 16 percent lower than in 1970." This, mind you, is one of the continent's success stories.
Meredith's book is full of tales like this, and worse. The author seems to be emulating Thomas Pakenham's The Scramble for Africa, an epic history of the early colonial period. But Meredith is a victim of his own scope; when he leaves southern Africa, his area of expertise, he leans heavily on earlier writers. As his narrative flits from crisis to crisis, his attempts at a wider analysis disappear into the repetitive gloom. What's missing is a unifying idea, an explanation. For that, one must turn to Robert Guest and Jeffrey Sachs.
Guest spent years traveling the continent as an editor and writer for The Economist, and his fine book is filled with the kind of vivid details that come from spending too many nights in dingy, sweltering hotel rooms. (I should mention that he is a professional acquaintance; he edited several stories I wrote for his publication between 2002 and 2004.) Before being assigned to Africa he was stationed in booming East Asia, an experience that shapes his view of the continent's predicament. "Any country inhabited by human beings has the potential to grow rich. We know this because many countries have already done so," he writes. "If Africa is to succeed too, it is crucial to understand what has gone wrong in the past. Just why is Africa so poor?"

· An African Solution

HIV & AIDS

Andrew Rice: Two new books on the AIDS epidemic in Africa suggest that the best treatment may be found in the continent's own social movements.
The answer, Guest believes, is misrule. In his view, corruption isn't just a symptom of Africa's deeper problems. It is the deeper problem. When government ministers loot social programs, it exacerbates poverty, disease and illiteracy. When customs agents demand bribes for allowing trucks to cross borders, it increases shipping costs, and hence the prices poor consumers pay. When rulers distribute jobs and contracts to their own tribal kin, it deepens ethnic divisions.
It's no accident, Guest writes, that "the poorest one sixth of humanity endures four fifths of the world's civil wars." In Africa, where so many have so little, it's easy to foment rebellion against Mercedes-driving kleptocrats. Because those who lose power are usually stripped of their ill-gotten wealth, rulers have an incentive to be paranoid and cruel. Perversely, Guest notes, countries that are blessed by nature tend to suffer the most. Nigeria has pumped $280 billion worth of oil since the 1970s, and has seen much of it siphoned off by a series of dictators. Angola endured a long, bloody conflict over its oil and diamonds. Congo is endowed with vast quantities of almost every precious mineral, and today it lies devastated by an interminable war of plunder.
Guest's book is at its best, however, when it abandons these big stories and focuses on the everyday, showing how corrupt governments plague the lives of normal Africans. In one chapter, he recounts his experiences riding along with a truck driver and his cargo of Guinness Stout on a ridiculously arduous four-day journey across Cameroon. The route is in terrible shape; Guest notes that since 1980 the government has allowed about two-thirds of Cameroon's roads to be reclaimed by the rainforest. But the worst holdups come at countless police roadblocks, where officers fabricate phantom offenses to generate bribes. "Do you have a gun?" a police officer asks when someone raises an objection. "No. I have a gun, so I know the rules."
Too often in Africa, Guest says, men with guns twist the rules to enrich themselves, further impoverishing their countrymen in the process. Still, he thinks countries can work their way out of the mess, particularly if they adopt the sort of free-market policies The Economist champions. Some of Guest's ideas are compelling, such as when he cites the work of Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto to suggest that African governments could unlock nearly $1 trillion in capital by recognizing the land rights of squatters, who might then be able to borrow money against the value of their property. Elsewhere, he is less convincing. Guest believes that a simple fear of bad publicity will prevent multinational corporations from mistreating African workers, a contention that is quite at odds with historical precedent.
When it comes to development aid, Guest believes that donor nations "should be both more generous and more selective," rewarding countries that are "trying to implement sensible policies" and cutting off those that aren't. Aid isn't the answer, he says. Rather, only Africans can save Africa, by building competitive economies. Right now, he writes, Africa possesses 10 percent of the world's population and accounts for only 2 percent of global trade; it "hardly produces anything that the rest of the world wants to buy." Until it does, Guest believes, the continent's shackles will stay locked.
By this point, you may think you know why Africa languishes. But you're wrong, says Jeffrey Sachs. In making his passionate call for more foreign aid, he challenges the conventional wisdom that Africa isn't ready for help. African governments are dictatorial? Sachs says that the thieving-tyrants-with-fly-swatters stereotype of African leaders is "passé," and that "by the early 1990s...a little-heralded democratic revolution was sweeping the continent." Corruption is the source of all misery? That contention, he writes, "does not withstand practical experience or serious scrutiny." Sachs believes Africa's problem is not politics but simple misfortune. Its soil produces less food than, for instance, East Asia's. The continent suffers disproportionately from debilitating diseases like AIDS and malaria. Much of its population is concentrated away from its coastline, and this, combined with its lack of good roads and navigable rivers, hampers trade and economic growth. "Africa's governance is poor," Sachs writes, "because Africa is poor."

· An African Solution
HIV & AIDS
Andrew Rice: Two new books on the AIDS epidemic in Africa suggest that the best treatment may be found in the continent's own social movements.
The idea that Africa is a victim of geography is not new, but Sachs's book dares to offer a big, bold solution. And an author of Sachs's pedigree can't be taken lightly. The globe-trotting Columbia professor is a kind of macroeconomic Winston Wolf. Like Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction, he shows up at scenes of carnage with a snappy plan to clean things up. Sometimes he succeeds, as in Bolivia in the hyperinflationary 1980s. Sometimes he fails, as in post-Communist Russia--but never for lack of self-assurance. He says economists should think like scientists when diagnosing Africa's ills. "In some ways," he writes, "today's development economics is like eighteenth-century medicine, when doctors used leeches to draw blood from their patients, often killing them in the process."
Sachs first approached Africa in the late 1990s, at a time when foreign aid was plummeting from cold war highs. He concluded that many Africans are stuck in a "poverty trap." They don't make enough to save, so they can't amass the capital necessary to build a future. (For an illustration, read Robert Guest's account of a Malawian farmer who dreams of becoming a merchant but can't because he finds a bicycle hopelessly expensive.) The End of Poverty contains many common-sensical ideas: Use irrigation and fertilizers to increase crop yields; distribute mosquito nets to combat malaria and pharmaceuticals to lessen the symptoms of AIDS; give rural villages cell phones to ease communication and trade. What's grabbed the world's attention, though, is not such incremental prescriptions but Sachs's claim of a cure.
"The end of extreme poverty is at hand--within our generation," he declares, if only rich nations, especially the United States, open their coffers. This, Sachs writes, "is the great opportunity of our time, a commitment that would not only relieve massive suffering and spread economic well-being, but would also promote other Enlightenment objectives of democracy, global security, and the advancement of science." Sachs attacks those who don't share his utopian vision, lamenting the "anti-African and antipoor attitudes" of skeptics. "Africa gets a bad rap as the 'corrupt continent,'" he writes. "Even when such sentiments are not racist in intent, they survive in our societies as conventional wisdom because of existing widespread racism."
Invoking the R-word in this context seems overheated, especially since those who complain loudest about corruption in Africa tend to be Africans themselves. (Bob Geldof, to his credit, recognizes this.) One might forgive Sachs's rhetorical overkill if it weren't emblematic of his book's deeper failure to engage with the most serious argument against him: history. Ending African poverty is a worthy aspiration. It is also an old ideal, a shoal on which many buoyant ideologies--liberalism, communism, pan-Africanism--have run aground. Sachs talks of the need for an effort akin to the Marshall Plan for postwar Europe. Guest points out that since independence Africa has "received aid equivalent to six Marshall Plans"--with little to show for it.
Much of this assistance has been consumed by graft. Corrupt leaders have proved to be highly adaptable to changing times. When statism was in vogue, they nationalized industries, which they proceeded to operate as patronage mills. When the World Bank demanded privatization, they sold off the state companies to their cousins and cronies. Nowadays, the watchword is "transparency," but the situation remains much the same. According to a 2002 study conducted by the African Union, corruption consumes more than a quarter of the continent's gross domestic product every year, about $148 billion.

Faced with such facts, Sachs tries to recalculate reality. He publishes a chart of corruption figures that have been "controlled statistically for income levels" and concludes that Africa is not "distinctly poorly governed by the standards of very poor countries." This is a little like saying if you control for height, the Ivy League is the best conference in college basketball. The generals who looted Nigeria--a government of "average" honesty by Sachs's measure--were not stealing relative dollars: Check their Swiss bank statements. Some, like Guest, contend that in Africa corruption matters more than anywhere else, because the margin of survival is so thin. Rapacious rulers are literally stealing bread from the mouths of those they serve.

· An African Solution
HIV & AIDS
Andrew Rice: Two new books on the AIDS epidemic in Africa suggest that the best treatment may be found in the continent's own social movements.
Sachs's solution sounds simple enough: Lavish billions on good countries like Ghana and punish bad ones like Zimbabwe by stopping the checks. The hitch is that the list of countries considered "good" and "bad" keeps changing. Sachs's favorites include Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique. But fifteen years ago these countries were basket cases; Zimbabwe was the success story, under the wise rule of its benevolent autocrat Robert Mugabe. Fifteen years before that, the paragons were Nigeria and Ivory Coast. Whenever a darling disintegrates, much of what development aid finances--paved roads, schools, hospitals, advanced farms--is destroyed, and the process must begin anew.
The closer you look at some of Sachs's chosen countries, the more you wonder about his judgment. Take Kenya, for instance. Sachs minimizes the problem of corruption there, attacking leery donors for their "useless and false moralizing," but no Kenyan I've ever met would share his lack of concern. (Nor, it's likely, would the country's former anticorruption czar, who resigned earlier this year in frustration.) One leader Sachs frequently consults, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, has lately been acting like an old-school dictator, imprisoning political opponents after an allegedly fraudulent election. In Uganda, where more than half the country's budget comes from foreign aid, a recent confidential report written for the World Bank concludes that donor aid is becoming a "mechanism for regime maintenance," allowing the ruling party to set up "slush funds" to pay for patronage and a military buildup. Meanwhile, the percentage of Ugandans living in poverty has risen. Sachs says this is nothing an extra $1.8 billion a year won't fix.
The point is that playing favorites requires vigilance and a willingness to recognize when success is turning sour. Africa is not the unremitting disaster Martin Meredith portrays. Countries like Botswana and Senegal stand out as models of stability, and Sachs is right to say that more Africans enjoy more democracy today than ever before. Everyone who knows the continent well believes it could benefit from a boost in generosity and--especially--closer attention from the American government. But an endeavor as ambitious as ending African poverty demands a little humility in the face of the task. We must recognize history, and understand the continent as it is, not as we wish it to be. To worry about corruption and misrule is to amplify the concerns of Africans I've met all over the continent, whose greatest anger is inevitably reserved for those leaders who have misspent so much in their names. Their voices should be heard, too, over the din of the rock concerts.

Problems in Love Relationships

“Personal unhappiness is the greatest contributor to relationship problems.”
"You don't love melike I love you"
Problems can creep in when we start to have thoughts of “do I love him more than he loves me?” We start examining all the things we do for our lover. All the ways we express our love and how much time and energy we’re putting into the relationship. Then we try to figure out if our lover is giving an equal amount back. If we perceive a discrepancy in that balance sheet, we start to back away from the relationship. We don't want to love more than they love. We become fearful that if we love them more than they love us, we might be played for a fool.

Useful Questions:
Focus on how you feel when YOU are loving. Does loving someone feel good regardless if it’s returned? Is your loving someone conditional on them loving you back? If so, why?
Do you feel loved when your partner isn’t around? If not, why not? Do you accept yourself, appreciate your qualities?
Are you doing things for your lover that you really don't want to do, but feel you need to, to keep their love? Are you doing things for them, expecting something in return? What are you expecting? And have you told them what that is?
Have you talked to your partner about what things cause you to feel loved? (Don’t get caught up in “if they loved me, they’d know”, cause they don’t.)

"We don't have anything in common anymore."
You love each other and that's why you got together in the first place, but you don't really seem to have much in common anymore. You’re into philosophy and art. They're into sports. You like books and going for walks, and she always wants to go sailing. But you tell yourself that marriage is a sacrifice. A give and take. You’ve been told you should put aside your own interests to make the relationship work. You have to compromise, right? But when you give up what you love for the sake of the relationship, you end up resenting the person and conclude you don't have anything in common.
If you had these differences when you fell in love, chances are it's not about having nothing in common, but not having the connection and intimacy you once had.
Useful Questions:
Has the amount of one-on-one time changed since you first met?
Do you still share everything with your partner like you use to?
What would happen if you did what you wanted, and they did what they wanted?
How much time do you have to spend with your lover to feel you have a successful relationship? How did you arrive at that amount? What would it mean if you had separate interests?
Do you see yourself and your partner as two separate people who choose to be together or do you feel some type of obligation?
Do you believe “Love means to sacrifice.”? If so, why?

"We can't talk about that."
Every time you approach certain subjects, it turns into an argument.

In the back of your mind, you decide to avoid that topic in the future because you don't want to fight. You don't want the conflict. You believe fighting means the relationship is on rocky ground or is threatening to the relationship. You want to stay together, but believe if you fight, you might separate. So you become afraid to talk about one or two subjects. Over time, that list of "don't touch that one" becomes more and more numerous. And as the list of avoided topics grows, it starts to feel like you can't talk with each other anymore. You feel distant and detached. You start wondering how much longer you can live like this. The silence grows.
Useful Questions:
Examine your beliefs about love and arguing. Are you afraid of being hurt in relationships?

Does disagreeing with someone always mean hurt feelings? If so, why?

How could you do it differently?

Do you limit yourself in some way when with your lover?

Why?

What might happen if you let them see and hear all of you?
Is honesty in your love relationship ever a “wrong” move?

Why do you believe that?

Talk to your partner about your concerns while keeping the focus on your feelings and not their behavior. (Helpful hint: Be watchful of terms like “you always, you never, you make me feel.” Try this instead: “When you [the behavior], I find myself felling [your feelings]...”)
Learn to be more accepting of your partner by becoming more.

"It would be easier to start over with someone else."
Some time has passed in the relationship and you've both built up lies. Some big ones but mostly small ones. They're not blatant lies, but mostly unspoken thoughts and feelings. The intentions behind the lies were to protect yourself and your partner from pain. But now, your problems seem overwhelming and you can't talk openly and honestly about them because you've already established a certain pattern of communication. It seems it would be considerably easier to just start fresh with a new partner. One where you could be yourself without fear.

Useful Questions:

Is honesty in your love relationship ever a “wrong” move?Why do you believe that?
Get clear on what you've lied about to your partner.

What would happen if you shared what you learned? What is the worst that would happen? Are you capable of handling that? Why or why not?.

Figure out what you're afraid would happen if you were honest with them about those issues.
Talk to your partner about your concerns of being TOTALLY honest. Keep the focus on YOUR feelings and not their behavior.
Muster up the courage to tell them what you've lied about.

Repeat to yourself, "No matter what happens, I will be okay."


"If you loved me you would....."
Unspoken and unacknowledged expectations take a large toll in relationships.

In having expectations, you're expecting your partner to be a certain way in order to believe they love and care about you.

If you don't get what you expect, you conclude all kinds of negative things about the relationship that may not be true.
Useful Questions:
Do your expectations have to be fulfilled for you to be happy?

If so, why?
Do you expect your partner to conform to your wants?

What does it mean when they don't?
Do you have preset rules in your love relationships?

If so, what are they and why?
Do you find yourself often saying “he should” or “she should”?
Do you have any “If you loved me you would...[fill in the blank]'s”?
If so, what are they?
Can you think of a time you didn't do what someone wanted you to do?

Did you love them, even though you didn't do what they wanted? Could it be the same with your partner?