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𝗢𝗡 𝗔𝗕𝗢𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: 𝗣𝗔𝗥𝗧 𝗜𝗜
ɪɴꜰᴏʀᴍᴇᴅ ꜱᴛᴀɴᴅ ᴏɴ ᴡᴏᴍᴇɴ’ꜱ ꜱᴇxᴜᴀʟ ʀᴇᴘʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴛɪᴠᴇ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ
I came to the world via South Africa, where I spent the first fourteen-and-half years of my life, June 1960-January 1975. As I get older and older for each new year that comes and goes, the impact that growing up in that country has had on my fundamental views of life becomes ever more glaring. That as I strive to make sense of the multitudinous manifestations of horrendous sociological choices outcomes in the world today. In that sense, I was born at the right place, in my time.
The horrendous sociological choices outcomes I mention above arising from apparent mental derangement states in which some of our national and global political leaders thrive as they pathetically engineer society to perpetual dysfunctionality. They think out, formulate, and work to impose outrageous rules and laws that are obviously detrimental to the well-being of society. In fact, these lunatics present an existential threat to human and other life on earth. This as evidenced by national social upheavals owing to ever degenerative leadership quality across the world.
Social collapse attendant to dominant degenerate ethico-political leadership characteristically culminate in civil and international wars, ill-management of potential and actual natural catastrophes, including pandemics. The current Covid-19 pandemic is supposed to have given the world a wake-up call. Of course, this is an outlandish idea to many a national-global leader, and, not in the least, a segment of the new socio-cultural influencer class at the same scale. The latter extensively prevalent in the vast and ever so rapidly growing internet social media platforms sphere.
In the world today, Rocket Science knowledge is not a pre-requisite for the ability to pinpoint where on the globe the scum of society are all out to deprive people of the right to live free and happy in the abundance of survival resources existence provides for all. It’s all on Google. It’s all in the news. If you read and/ listen to conspiracy theories news publications, you are no different from the scum of the earth. Wretched souls beyond redemption. Shame.
Growing up in South Africa, I was from an early age mentally conditioned that I might at some point have to sacrifice my schooling opportunities for the benefit of my younger sister, Sisi. Prime assumption being that misfortune could somehow befall my parents. In that event, they would eventually fail to finance my siblings’ and I’s education, caught up in the doldrums of endemic Black South Africans’ poverty-stricken existence.
Seen from a global human perspective, parenting and all that it entails is what it is by default. It is not my intention to want to trivialize the challenges of parenting elsewhere. But parenting in the then inherently doomed, dysfunctional, systemically racist Apartheid South Africa was an arduous, unpredictable endeavour for Black people: unemployment, disease, violence, rampant sudden death. Other than the new faces on drivers’ seats of post-Apartheid South African socio-economic transformation state machinery, not much has changed for the masses of the underprivileged in the country, though.
It was never difficult for me to understand that in the event that some tragedy would befall my parents, especially my father, I’d have to stop schooling, go find work, and earn some money to continue where they’d have left to financially support the family. The idea that I’d defy the misfortune fate of my people had already been long engrained in my head. Therefore, it wasn’t accidental that my mother encouraged me to earn my own pocket money by selling oranges on the streets during school holidays. I was ten years old the first time. Three years later, 1973, I landed my first ever formal employment job as a junior waiter at a then Whites Only Italian Restaurant in my hometown, Welkom.
I’m still alive. With variable rates of success over the years, I have lived to fulfill my obligations as a supportive elder brother to my two surviving siblings from my mother. Owing to circumstances beyond my control, I haven’t been able to be there for my half-siblings from my father’s other procreative endeavours exterior to my mother, prior to or after their marriage.
Any fool ought to know by now that education is a historically powerful facilitatory tool to appreciable degrees of progressive participation in, and gain from socio-economic activities of our modern, digital age global society. Indeed, some guys with all the luck and some other special attributes will become economically and politically high and mighty without having gone far by way of academic education attainment. These may or may not be partners in crime vis-à-vis upliftment or destruction of society.
The unabashed manifestation and relentless growth of misogyny in the later years of my life boggle my mind. That’s because I grew up aware that upon having weighed the options in time, it was a trend in my neighbourhood that priority was given to pushing girls to acquire as much education as possible. The girls could be nurses and teachers when grown up. Costs of more specialized education in medicine, engineering, and other such related fields of academic or professional training were prohibitive. This fact, combined with generally demotivating Apartheid state policies towards Black education, created a major barrier for my people’s pursuit of higher education ambitions.
It made sense to empower girls because, ideally, they grew up to be mothers of the nation, starting with their respective family units. An educated girl subsequently getting married to a well-bred young man was worth gold to her family. In my then community’s perfect world within the context of the imperfect Apartheid world then, boys having sacrificed their own education for their sisters could always come back and continue schooling once their sisters had at least completed pre-university studies. If the plan didn’t succeed, the boys would simply continue working, get married, have children, and see the latter go through the same cycle of sacrifices with little prospects of sustainability in practice.
From my generation in my childhood neighbourhood in Thabong, Welkom, I don’t know of even a single girl that ever obtained at least full high school education level. Although possibly true in some instances, this is not necessarily mainly a result of family economic constraints nor personal cognitive inadequacies.
My only concern, if not fear, about the idea of me delaying my academic advancement for my younger sister’ sake was the potential of her getting pregnant whilst still at school. In that case, that’d be the end of dreams, for both of us, of a better life derived from well-paying jobs education aspiringly led to. Experience showed that once the boys entered the labour market, not many ever got the opportunity to continue with their educational ambitions later on as life progressed.
If anything, the boys would also soon make other girls pregnant and then get caught in the trap of lasting poverty as they get overwhelmed by economic hardships of their own. Paradoxically, once a young girl got pregnant, that was it: she was finished. No more school. Never. As a general observation, which to a large extent remains true to this day, early-age pregnancy totally destroyed girls’ lives. The situation would be worse if the impregnator refused to take responsibility for looking after or supporting the immature mother-to-be.
My mother-tongue, Sesotho, is the most disparaging, derisive language I know. In Sesotho, a young girl getting pregnant is described as ‘o senyehile’. It means that ‘she is destroyed’. And she’ll be treated as such by both her family and the community. She’s brought shame not only to the family but everyone around her. At worst, she’d be treated with much disrespect. Boys and men now seeing her as cheap, and, therefore, reduce her to a readily available sexual object moving forward. Consent not a concept adhered to by the male sex predators in this case. Many a girl’s life has been destroyed this way, culminating in suicides in the extreme.
‘O ntshitse mpa’ translates as ‘She has taken out the stomach’. Abortion is described as ‘Ho ntsha mpa’ in Sesotho, therefore. Graphically, ‘Ho ntsha mpa’ as a process means ‘to remove the stomach’. Consequently, I’ve since my childhood days associated abortion with excruciating physical pain for the girls concerned. As I grew older in my mid-late teens, I began to be cognizant of, and think independently on ethical and moral issues. It was at this point that I concluded lastingly that regardless of the circumstances prevailing around a pregnancy, it must be an extremely tortuous decision for a woman to choose to terminate it.
As a firmly held philosophical stand-point, I concluded that it took much resolve and courage for a woman to choose to endure the physical and emotional pain that abortion necessarily entails. This is one area in which I feel and think that women manifest magnanimity deserving the highest and unreserved admiration. To force a woman to carry to the full a pregnancy that’s uncontestably detrimental to her physical and mental health, if not life-threatening, ought to be the crime.
Abortion as a medically defensible procedure to safeguard and enhance the well-being of women in the living ought to be a right understood from a woman’s perspective. Stupid old men who have no practical idea at all about what it takes and feels to be pregnant and subsequently give birth must stay out of promulgating laws that interfere with women’s sexual reproductive health rights. Anti-abortion women dancing to the tunes of stupid conservative old and young men are traitors against their own kind. These women need help. When one woman appallingly postulates that another woman can opt for abortion at the point of actual birthing, it suggests some serious mental imbalance issues. Another one is about women aborting children already born. Jeeezzuzzz!!!
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TEL.: +4792525032
July 25, 2022
ATLAS-TO-CAPE EXODUS
RAINBOW BROADBAND
Traitor Mandela
Chillax
Twenty-seven years in prison
Apartheid venom
Fails to corrode his bones
Iapartheid aithethi isiXhosa
Aiyazi ukuthi
Aigobeki le ntsimbi
Robben Island
Made the man
On the one hand
Broke the man’ soul
On the other
Threw his boxing gloves
To the sea lions
Chillax ashore
Gather no weeds
Hammer away rocks
Abound on the island
Protective gear
A remote idea
Rock chips and dust
Mess your eyes up
You can’t cry freedom
You can’t see
When you couldn’t care
About
Carving freedom out of stone
Rock chips and dust
Clog your nostrils up
You can’t smell
Misery of the people
In the air
In as much as
Post-Mandela’s death
People can’t smell Corona
That way it can’t be real
And the people continue
To die like flies
In as much as
Mandela’s
Liberation of
The people of
Mzansi is fake
Fo sho
This is the land
Mandela sold away to
White man’s burden
Legacy perpetrators
They call them
White Monopoly Capital buffoons
To whom
Gupta brothers
Came’n added
Colour’n spice
’n pocketed
Mandela’ sellout inheritors
Dazed in agarbatti smoke clouds
When you thought
Weed was bad
Eroding
Mzansi land
Left, right and centre
Fo sho
With their cupidity machines
Thinking that
Gravy train
Conspicuous consumption symbols
Ferrari and Maserati
Exhaust polenta to
The people of Mzansi for sho
Meanwhile
Maybach leverages mortuaries
Competing for corpses
Around Mzansi fo sho
Some corpses dappered in
Johann Rupert’s
Jewellery empire vanity chains
Stones upon which studded
Wouldn’t feed even
Insects and worms
As is the nature of stones
Who knows that better than
Northern deserts’ pyramids
Perhaps
We should all head south
Go detox
White man’s burden faeces
On Robben Island
For the illusive redemption of
Africa burning
In self-perpetuatory
White man’s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse
Some look up to
The Pyramids of Egypt
Findings in
The bowels of which
Only confirm
Our once upon a time grandeur
That’s all
Non-revolutionary
Static pride
In ancient times
Disconnected
With realities of our times
Just keeps us sinking
Beneath our rivers
In the age of
Global warming
Of not Mandela’s doing
The Nile shall
Swallow the pyramids
One of these days
What you gon’ do
When the pyramids’re gone
The Congo shall
Flood the belly of Africa
Someday
Who’ll be left to say anything
Whoever’ll be looking
To find Lumumba’s bones floating around
Shall be doing so in vain
The Zambezi is coming
The Kariba Dam’s already
Getting weary
Listen to your basic instincts
What you gon’ do
When Sharon Stone’s
King Solomon’s mines are gone
Wake up
Dude
Put seventy
University
Degrees
To good us for once
For goodness’ sake
It’s okay
The Greenback’s on the streets
Mzansi Rand’ still
Real money fo sho
Got Mandela’s face
On it, neh
Wathi
Pamberi ne ntontoni
Umtu
(Oh, thixo, bawo, Nkosi sikelela!)
Revolutionary Africa
Been at war
With itself from during
Anti-colonial struggle days
Civil wars continued upon
Independence attainment
Free at last to play out
White man’s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse games
To this day
Freedom is a relative state
In all African states
Basest result of state dysfunctionality
In Africa
As elsewhere
Is a constant
Tyrants everywhere
Including America
Staying alive
Feeding on
Murder in all its execution variabilities
Survivors rot in jail
People endure suffering
In all its construction variables
People dream of life-supportive
Freedoms elsewhere
Since Mandela’s
Betrayal of
The African self-determination cause
Twenty-seven years ago
Mzansi fo sho
Has yet
To degenerate to levels
Of truly liberated
Free Mother Africa
Making a mockery of
Pan-Africanist dreams
When free Mother Africa’s people
Give up on the miseries
Of their tyrannical
Genocidal
War-torn lands
Of once upon a time
Ancient Mega Star Warrior Kings
As accessible to today
As
The horizon of history
Choose to rather not
Get roasted walking the Sahara
Drown treading the Mediterranean
There’s a rainbow broadband
Linking the poles of Africa
From the Atlas to the Cape
Making a joke of
Cecil Rhode’s Cape-to-Cairo
Highway dream
Following this rainbow
Many an African soul
Crushed under own meaning
Of true self-annihilatory African liberation
Land in awesome Gauteng
Cradle of Humankind grounds
City of gold
Mystical
Below and above
The ground
People begin to breathe here
People grow wings here
People reach all corners of Mzansi fo sho from here
People’s dreams come true here
The rest is magic
Argh, cxh
Afro-xenophobia
Comes and goes
Now and then
Mzansi fo sho
Playing out its own version of
White man’s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curses
Call it divide and rule devices
I’ve asked before
Who’s better
Who’s worse
Same difference
Same shit
The southern-most
Tip of the
Africa-long broadband rainbow
Touches Robben Island
In this lament here
Nelson Mandela legacy spirit infused
I lay my head
On the anvil
In this lament here
I proclaim that
Africa’s future’s anchored here
Prove me wrong
If you can
Hammer my brains out
If I’m wrong
Come along
Join The Rainbow Nation’s march
To go detox itself of
White man’s burden faeces
On Robben Island
For the illusive redemption of
Africa burning
In self-perpetuatory
White man’s burden
Transgenerational trauma
Self-annihilatory black curse
Singing
Africa unite
Desmond Tutu
Knew
May His Soul Rest
In Eternal Power of Love and Peace
It’s all in
The rainbow
Of humanity’s diversity vibrancy
Embrace it
As it garrisons you
In Mzansi fo sho
Desmond Tutu’s magical
Rainbow Nation
Where tyrants
Cave in under the law
Whilst
White man’s burden faeces
Detox movement goes on
Bloody messy
As it gets
As it was in the beginning
END
©Simon Chilembo 28/12-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
January 02, 2022
Tel.: +4792525032
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my 7th book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
CONSEQUENCES – A Poem
CHOICES
Akin to
Dead men walking
Free spirits
Are indifferent to pain
Suffering unbeknown
Know no barriers
Are of all times
Immortality
Is the name of their being
Akin to the wind
Dead men walking
Free spirits
Embrace space
Devoid of sentiment
Propelled by
The fair and righteous
Infused with clear conscience
Akin to that
Of saints
I made my choices
I took my chances
You made your choices
You took no chances
You the illusory chosen one
Sitter on the
Right hand of God
Centre of the universe
In your comfort zone
Delusional
You cry foul
At the world
You decry makers of you
For thorns and no roses
In your comfort zone
As if they
Your makers
Pruned the flowers
And left you in the bush
When the choice to stay was yours
Ultimately
You ought
To have seen the autumn
Cease coming your way
Aeons gone by
Grown man
You could never learn
How to harvest
Never learned
How to sow
In the first place
Akin to
Baby bird
Who never left the nest
Soundless
Mouth agape
From dusk to dawn
Season after season
Anticipating feeding time
Long gone with the elements
Catastrophe
Akin to
Destitute baby bird
Who never left the nest
Your mamma is dead
So is your dad
I could never be them
Even if I wanted to
I could never replicate
Their parental obligations to you
Much as
I long for heiresses and heirs
My progeny
Products of my loins
Carrying my blood
In their flesh and bones
Made not like bread
You could never be them
Even if I wanted you to be
Miracles of nature
Have their limits
Ancient Greece mythology
Created Oedipus
It never worked out well for the man
Poor soul crushed
He gouged out his own eyes
Tragedy
And now
You want to
Shoot my brains out
Kill me dead already
Can you take
The ricochet
Dead men walking
Free spirits
Die only once
Forget the resurrection jive, man
It isn’t I who killed promises of
The fiasco
That is the mark of the beast of
Your comfort zones
All I ever did
Was to seek to
Blow light over your life
Or did I come out too strong
Struck like lightning
When I chose not
To plunge into
A miserable life
Of men of no vision
Succumbed to wretchedness of the earth
When you’ve attuned your eyes
To seeing
Only evil spirits in the air
You could never see
The good of my intentions
Pure as silence
In the domain of
Dead men walking
Disentangled
From thorns of love nor hate
Only drawn towards
The fair and just
Amongst the living
You wanna know
How to grow
The #Midas touch
How to
Reap gold
From what you sow
Open your eyes
To the light
Be humble
Be a little grateful
Look and learn
Dead men walking
Amongst the living
Have it all
END
©Simon Chilembo 12/10-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Telephone: +4792525032
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my 7th book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories. It might save yours and your loved one’s lives.
CORONA VACCINE 1st JAB
When you have life work to do, you don’t go around with the nihilistic thought that “we’re all gonna die someday”. I, for one, have a 1000 books to write, many more stories to tell; a 1000 songs to write, to sing. And, then, there is the dance long as life ever expands.
I go around thinking longevity, immortality. If ever I die, I die. But it’ll be on my terms. Even then, I’ll die fighting. Science is my arsenal. Medicine is my weapon of choice. I kill Coronavirusdisease Covid-19 with vaccines. Works with high level of precision; call it efficacy. On a bad day, shit could hit the fan. That’s the way of the world. When we go out to war, we carry body bags too. Some of our comrades shall sure fall. Could be me. Could be another. It is what it is.
“You gonna fight, you gonna get hit!” so said a martial arts teacher once.
No, I’m NOT afraid of death. I’m not afraid of dying. Mementomori. I just don’t have time for dying. Life is just too good. I want to live it to the fullest potential. Should I in any way die before my work is done, I’ll be back! Watch this space.
Done got my first vaccine shot yesterday, Friday: practice what you preach. Can’t wait for second shot in six weeks’ time. Excellent service at my neighbourhood health centre, Frogner helsestasjon: systemic efficiency, warm human effectiveness, reassuring. Were it up to me, I’d take all available vaccines all at once, once and for all and continue with my good life.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
May 01, 2021
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
LOCKDOWN – A Poem
FREE YOUR MIND
Prophet of doom
In gloom
High on a broom
Possessed by the moon
You bemoan
You aren’t enslaved goon
Neither 5G’d buffoon
You rave
You own a cave
For free will
Thy will
Shall be done as you will
You might as well
Write your will
Dig your grave
It’s a time game
Your thoughts aren’t the same
Your feelings aren’t tame
Take your time
Your freedom is prime
For crime
Warning bells chime
Could save you a dime
It’s a no-end-game
Your logic is lame
Driving in the wrong lane
Is a death game
For the infame
Ignorance unframed
Self-destruction uncaged
Soul encased
Burial to erase
You from the race
For collective survival grace
There’s no grief
Your mind is grave
No peace in the grave
Your demons are brave
Your dark side can’t behave
In the horror that’s your head on a stave
For your face
In a trance
Everyone is a nutcase
Everything is a disgrace
You persist that the system in place
Seeks to replace
People liberties with acquiescence
In dissonance
With your sense
Of egotistical existence
Your disappearance
Equals good riddance
For once
Shut your mouth
Declare your
Four-square-metres of safety
Around you
Close your eyes
Form your
Space of solitude
Inside eight cubic metres of
Six mirror’ surfaces
Open your eyes
See the many facets of
You
Your potential
And that is only
The-visible-to
The naked eye
Inside of you
Is the power
That made God
To say the least
Fear not thyself
Fear ye not the unknown
No need for anger
No need for confusion
No need for despair
No need for panic
No need for prejudice
No trepidation
No end of the world imminent
Cleanse your hands
Create similar spaces
For your loved ones
Your neighbours
Your fellow beings
Merge the best
Of your reflections
See how larger than life
You all are together as one
Against
Devious intentions
By the contentious
They call it solidarity
You have a future to groom
No need to abuse
No need to bully
No need for conspiracies
No need for estrangements
No need to hate
No need to lie
No need for suspicion
No need for others’ blood in your hands
Mirror reflections are science
It’s called physics
In times of uncertainty
Chaos reigning high
Broken mirrors pieces
Reflect
Lights of possibilities
By their numbers
In all directions
Angles and curves
Have no fear
There’s always an answer
Lockdown
Open your mind
Do right things right
Reflect on your life
Reflect on your place on earth
There is always an answer
It’s only a matter of time
Polish mirrors in your head
Let science work
Like it took man
To the moon
And back
Alive
Mars is next
Lockdown
Unleash your fantasy
Cure your myopia
Pandemize your phobia
Vandalize claustrophobia
Vitalize your inertia
Recall your Utopia
To your euphoria
Today
END
©Simon Chilembo 14/04-2021
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Telephone: +4792525032
RECOMMENDATION: Do you want to start writing own blog or website? Try WordPress!
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
DOCTORS OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES
KNOW THY DOCTOR
From a societal existential, functional, and progress contributary perspective, we become what we become and do what we do out of an interplay of various constant and vicissitudinous factors. Listed not in order of significance, the latter may include:
- Planetary geographical location. That in consideration of the impact the diversity of planetary ecologies has on us in our survival endeavours over time and space. For example, people living in tundra regions of the north organize themselves and relate to nature differently from those living in the Equatorial zones. And those living in the desert as well.
- Inherent personal attributes. These form the basis for our ability, or lack of, to make choices towards the attainment of certain pre-determined or chance outcomes. The quality and impact of the outcomes may be understood regarding the individual’s attributes as manifest through, amongst others:
• Overall state of health.
• Cognitive capabilities.
• Stated, or perceived wants and needs: ambition.
• Communication skills at various levels: day-to-day verbal interaction with others; creative expressions through a variety of mediums according to personal proclivities – multimedia, art and design, literature, artistic performance, athleticism. - The station in life. This determines access to resources necessary for sustainable holistic existence. Access to resources being, in turn, a function of privileges attendant to the hierarchy of social relations giving rise to stations in life, or status: the food chain.
Those in the highest echelons of the food chain, often a minority relative to the general populace, have the greatest access to all kinds of resources across the board. They sustain their positions’ privileges by deliberately limiting the lowly stationed access to, if not total exclusion from access to even the most basic of survival imperatives resources – landed property and derivative productive and mineral resources thereof, health services, education, defence from enemies, and protection from natural or man-made catastrophes.
The above explains historical and contemporary societal inequities the world over, giving rise to classes: privileged upper classes contra subjugated lower classes. Depending on analytical perspectives taken, this societal class stratification can be viewed in terms of wealth or poverty owing to land ownership or land disenfranchisement; the former enabling political domination backed by superior military capabilities.
Brute military and economic might are ever applied to tilt societal inequities in favour of the privileged upper classes, also referred to as the ruling elite. This is consolidated in the land-grabbing phenomenon of imperialism. Colonialism is the settling in of imperialist subjects and agents to secure and further the interests of the imperialist foreign powers.
Short of needing lower classes for labour exploitation as slaves and performers of menial chores, as well as subjecting them to other abuses such as rape of children and adults of both sexes, privileged classes would rather see the former eliminated from the face of the earth: genocide. To justify and defend their dominance and its resultant privileges, the ruling elite develops and propagates manipulatory social control methods through religion and philosophy.
Religion presents ideas of a God that has designated power to the chosen elite. According to the doctrines of God, as in Christianity, those that are oppressed are enduring suffering because of their inherent sins against God. Their salvation lies in serving the elite in the name of God. They shall be rewarded in heaven if God forgives them after death. Unforgiven sinners shall burn in the eternal fire of hell upon their demise. Theories of some racial or ethnic groups being superior over others, that being proof of their enjoying God’s favours, are more often than not rooted in religion.
However, as history shows across the epochs, the oppressed shall at some point rise to claim their freedom and right to live on equal terms with or depose those of the dominant classes on their lands. Also, historical and current civil and international wars across the world are fundamentally about competing forces seeking either to maintain their hegemony one over the other or the oppressed seeking to overturn the status quo.
In their efforts to sustain morale amongst their own and to garner support locally and abroad, the antagonistic forces will each device their unique information strategies: propaganda, PR (Public Relations). This is Communication Skills in action as highlighted in item no. 2 above. It can make or break a cause. - Fate: luck, misfortune. Things just happen or just don’t happen.
Therefore, anybody can be anything, including a doctor, in the world today. It’s a function of where we are at any one time, and the choices we make as to our personal cognitive abilities. It’s also about how empowered we are from the point of view of access to relevant resources in response to available, or in search of opportunities; and sheer luck. The latter relating to one being at the right place at the right time when opportunities present themselves as if from nowhere.
Doctors in any field of study are only human like everyone else. The only difference is that they’ll have endured long study careers; spanning at least seven years in many cases. In their research endeavours, doctors will read more books and write more texts than few unlearned people can ever fathom. Medical (MDs) and veterinary doctors (DVMs) will have dissected scores of human corpses and animal carcasses during their studies.
In subsequent professional work, doctors will continue to cut and put together bodies in connection with surgical procedures required for the treatment of certain illnesses and injuries. There is a socially constructed mystical aura about doctors arising from their perceived power to act as if they are extensions of God in so far as, in some situations, they can decide whether or not people shall live or die. We are all at the mercy of doctors’ goodwill, thanks for the presence of professional ethics and the law when we require medical attention. A humbling reality.
Doctors command much admiration in society. And, by extension, they are extremely influential as role models and trendsetters. This entails far above-average levels of responsibility, integrity, ethical and moral awareness.
To stay relevant, doctors read and write all the time; constantly honing their intellectual knowledge and professional skills. As such, doctors are fountains, curators, and purveyors of knowledge. Attainment of a professional doctor title (MD, PhD) is no mean achievement. It denotes ownership of superior knowledge in a given field of study.
Regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, race, religion, colour or creed, a doctor is a doctor when so officially qualified and recognized. The unsolicited address “Doctor So-and-So” is as legitimate and as deserved to Jill, James, Mohamed, Aisha, Wang Yu, or Qaqambile. The world needs more doctors.
On the other hand, doctors do not have a monopoly over knowledge, even in their particular fields of study, or professional work. Hence the imperative of constant reading and research, publications, lectures, public appearances across as many platforms as possible, and collaboration with peers within their and across other disciplines. The human knowledge database and its potential are infinitely vast. Outstripping the walls of all libraries of the world put together, it grows exponentially every day. This is especially true in the 21st Century, the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The unfortunate reality, though, is that human capacity to acquire knowledge, to learn, is only so much. Much as is the capacity to integrate the knowledge, see and explore the interconnectedness of the wider and stupendously diverse planetary knowledge bases. The ability to apply specific knowledge acquired as a foundation for understanding other branches of knowledge is a mark of a sophisticated doctor-title-holder, if not any other individual that has attained higher level academic education, for that matter.
Things get even better and more exciting to the extent that the highly educated individual with the fancy “Dr” title can synthesise new exploratory and explanatory models to contribute not only to the growth of knowledge, but to its curation, as well as conveyance for the universal betterment of society, ever enhancing the overall quality of life for all on earth.
There are holders of multiple PhD degrees the only value of which is in their hanging in golden frames on the wall as if they were acquired solely for decorative purposes in the home or places of work. Bad taste. Useless knowledge acquisition. That to the extent that their owners are lacking in the capacity to apply the knowledge that the degrees symbolize in the development of their immediate and distant world communities.
- Dr McBrain Stalebreadpride, “You know, I am a very much highly educated man. I have more PhDs than all your tribesmen put together.”
Mr Simpleton MacHumblepie, “What does that mean?”
- Dr Stalebreadpride, “I am the cleverest man this country has ever produced. All my degrees are first-class from UK and America, not Russia, by the way.”
Mr MacHumblepie, “Is that it?”
- Dr Stalebreadpride, “Oh, yes, I am the chosen one. Praise God Almighty. Amen!”
Mr MacHumblepie, “O-oooo…, I see. Bless you! You are lucky, heey?” - Dr Stalebreadpride, “Sure thing. When you’re hot, you’re hot. Come, I buy you beers, you poor peasant. I can buy you and sell you at a loss. Doctors make money, my friend!”
Enhanced quality of life necessarily implies saving human lives ever threatened by disease, crime, wars, and natural or man-made disasters. Thus, fulfilling mankind’s apparent innate aspiration for longevity, if not immortality, and the creation of a paradise on earth. In this paradise on earth, all shall live equitably happily ever after. All shall optimally enjoy the abundance of the bounty of the earth without fear and hindrances from any source. In these conditions, human knowledge base potential can only thrive on and on in an infinite loop of self-perpetuation. This is where the value of doctor level education lies. It differentiates socially intelligent, cultured higher education graduates from the mediocre.
Talking about saving human lives brings to mind the fallibility of doctors. As I have put forth above, doctors are only human just like everyone else. Moreover, doctors are not absolute wells of knowledge. Doctors are not gods. Through active learning of natural and social sciences, they have worked to acquire superior knowledge about what life implies and how it thrives and ceases on planet earth. Comprehension of how life on earth relates to the wider universe and beyond is an important content of the higher learning encapsulated “Dr” title superstardom.
Needless to say, therefore, that, like ordinary mortals, doctors will have the same fears, insecurities, idiosyncrasies, health and wellness issues that we all have in variable degrees of manifestations at various stages of life; also, in different circumstances. Some will be passive, some will be moderate, some will be extreme. Doctors will be as narcissistic, vain, and attention-seeking as everyone else.
Outside of, but can also happen within the protection of the bubble of the intellectual superstar mystic bubble, doctors can be just as shockingly superstitious, paranoid, controversial, irrational, shallow-minded, myopic, vulnerable, manipulative, corrupt, injurious, treacherous, obstinate, and arrogant as everyone else. It is in this category that Doctors of Conspiracy Theories are found.
Doctors of Conspiracy Theories are the most dangerous of conspiracy theories, truth falsification peddlers. That is due to the high regard society affords doctors and other influential, highly educated individuals. They come from all corners of the world. Therefore, in the current Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic debacle with countless denialists and anti-vaxxers* doing the rounds on the internet and other fora, it is of utmost importance to know how to identify and discard factual falsehoods against verifiable scientific information**. I address this matter in my newest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
February 05, 2021
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FURTHER READING: “List of unproven methods against COVID-19” on Wikipedia.
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
*JANUARY 21, 2021: BREAKING NEWS – Responding to reports that African and Eastern European immigrants in Norway are sceptical to vaccines; and have the highest rates of Coronavirusdisease (Covid-19) infections in the country, particularly Oslo, the capital city. Video response introducing the book and my thinking behind it:
**MARCH 09, 2021: BREAKING NEWS – The Covid Vaccines Work, Which Means… | A Doctor Explains: Latest YouTube talk from ZDoggMD
ON ABORTION
TO HAVE OR NOT TO HAVE A CHILD:
WOMAN’S RIGHT TO CHOOSE
I wouldn’t hesitate to have the pregnancy terminated were I a woman and I found that I was expecting a child that my being was not ready to have and subsequently raise. Reasons for my decision being mine, and mine alone; coming from the deepest recesses of my being, where no one but me alone will ever reach, feel and know.
It’s a natural eventuality that the human race, as with numerous other species, shall propagate itself. But it’s not a given that absolutely all women shall, or must fall pregnant and be perpetual baby-making machines. Furthermore, it’s not a given that all pregnancies shall complete the normal nine-month cycle of foetal development to birth of a wholesome child: stillbirths. Neither is it a given that all children shall be born with perfect physical symmetry and neurophysiological functionality. Pure science.
To begin with, it’s not a given that sexual encounters resulting in pregnancies would have all occurred under ideal conditions. The latter being, amongst others, mutual consent, healthy woman and man, as well as a myriad of other biological and sociological factors. It has to be a woman’s prerogative to choose whether or not she shall carry will-be children in her body. That regardless of her civil status as an adult. Morality.
Especially decisions around minors’ pregnancies need to be attended to with absolute care under the guidance of relevant professional personnel across the board. It goes without saying that the same shall be made available to adult women as a matter of course. It’s only that minors’ and adults’ realities are non-identical, non-comparable. Ethics.
Child bearing is not an obligation. Child rearing is. The latter is primarily an obligatory venture between the parents of the child. The parents’ micro and macro villages shall render their assistance according to their abilities and prevailing social norms and values. It’s worth noting that modern society’s parental constellations are more than just about female-male/ same-sex in all sorts of cohabitation arrangements as married, single-living-together-apart; female or male single parenting. Also, artificial insemination enables pregnancy without direct sexual intercourse. Surrogate parenting and surrogacy options add more complexities to the dynamics of modern society’s parental constellations. Changing times. Inevitable.
A woman’s choice to abort a pregnancy does not have to be independent of the existence of the child-to-be’s father. That assuming earlier or current relationship of one kind or another between the two. Rape and other forms of abuse upon the expectant mother ought to preclude the rapist’s right to claim or seek to influence the sexually abused pregnant victim’s decision to terminate the condition. It’s bad enough for a woman to have to endure the trauma of rape in the first place. Compassion.
I hold the view that, having weighed her options, when of own volition a pregnant woman of normal faculties settles for abortion, she needs all the support and love from the sperm donor above all other relations. That to the extent that there is some form of functional relationship between the two, of course. Rapists and abusers need not have any part in this. Empathy.
Normal birthing is an ever so excruciatingly painful and precarious exercise. In fact, the entire pregnancy-to-birth journey is a high potential death affair. In non-ideal conditions of inadequate or non-existent, if not deliberately instituted limited access to, public or private health services infrastructure, the rate of maternal mortality rises exponentially. As such, it’s one monumental deal for a woman to decide to make the drastic choice of abortion despite the risks and actual attendant physical and mental torment arising. This leaves me in even greater awe of women as bearers of untold physical, emotional, and mental suffering. In this together. Solidarity.
I maintain that for a child-bearing woman to lose a child under any circumstance has to be an all-round tortuous experience no man can ever come close to comprehending. Then, who is any man, or another woman for that matter, to want to get in the way of a woman’s right to choose to keep a pregnancy or not? Justice.
Life to the living first. It’s the living thriving in environments and times of abundant love, wellbeing, liberty, equality, and solidarity that will create conditions for higher standards of living for the yet to be born children when their time, place, and opportunity to be part of humanity present themselves. Realism.
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
November 17, 2020
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
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THE UNTHINKABLE – PT1: A Poem
THE UNTHINKABLE – 1
The unthinkable happens
When it happens
And we pay the price
It’s simple
To kill
One hundred thousand people
In a spring of
One year
Move slow
Like a ship
Sinking in icy waters
Be Stupid:
No, the ship won’t perish
Water shall freeze
It shall keep the vessel together
Iced machines don’t move, see
We’re doing great
Great job
We won’t drown
Maybe summer will come
Maybe it won’t
We’ll see what happens
You never know
And, yes,
Maybe ice shall turn into water again
Maybe it won’t
Who knows
We see what happens
All we got to do is
Move on with our sailing
We were made to sail
The world over as we want
We are the greatest people ever
In the history of mankind
It’s our right
We deserve it
I won the election
It was perfect
Perfect like
The letter
The call to Ukraine
You know
Perfect like never before
Don’t be sorry:
When
The unthinkable happens
The sea thaws in silence
Ferocious as a tornado
In a silent movie
It swallows down the ship
A hundred thousand people die
Right in front of your eyes
But this is fake reality to you
For each dead person
A hundred thousand pairs of eyes cry
They shed tears
Enough to raise the sea level by
A hundred thousand millimeters
A hundred thousand more
People are going to die
We are all going to perish
Your eyes are dry
You are so stupid
Your brains are so dry-iced
You don’t know
How to cry
Your brains cannot see
That
The solution is
Noah’s ark
The drawings are here
So are the engineers
There is a bit of time yet
Teach people how to swim
Build boats
Train sailors
Your brains are so dry-iced
Your hearing capacity
Is impaired
You cannot listen to reason
When you speak
Your speech spews
Sounds of cracking
Contaminated
Dry-ice that forms your brain …
(Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)
END
©Simon Chilembo, 01/ 05- 2020
Simon Chilembo
Oslo
Norway
Telephone: +4792525032
NB: Deadliest day, USA – https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/02/who-us-just-reported-deadliest-day-for-coronavirus.html (Total, 02/ 05- 2020: 65,173)
See also: “US coronavirus death toll surpasses 100,000,” https://youtu.be/CVLpAMlaoM8
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
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SHOULD I DIE
In 1998, my father died solitary in a bachelor quarters in Tshwane, South Africa. My mother followed twenty years later. Pneumonia related complications in both cases.
©Simon Chilembo, 2020 Author, President, ChilemboStoryTelling™
There were about eleven other fellow patients in my mother’s ward at the hospital in Thabong, Welkom. She had kept everyone awake all night with her moaning in pain, crying out an unknown name all along. Nevertheless, she managed to eat her 0700RS breakfast that fateful Sunday morning; much to everyone’s delight since she hadn’t had much appetite the two previous days. After eating she fell asleep.
When my nephew, Kgosi, and I went to check on her during the morning visit hour between 1000-1100HRS, we found her sleeping peacefully. Apparently. After hearing the report by fellow patients about my mother’s restless night, we thought it wise not to immediately awaken her. She could have her full sleep during the course of the morning, and we’d come back to see her again in the afternoon as per routine.
Fifteen minutes into our arrival in the ward, an impatient family friend found that my mother was cold and lifeless. A few minutes later, a doctor declared her officially dead. She had probably died two hours earlier. No one had taken notice. It was one of those cases of “She died peacefully in her sleep”, I guess. Perhaps the same may be said about my father. He had been dead for about two days by the time his corpse was found in his residence.
I opt to convince myself that, indeed, both my parents died peacefully in their sleep when their respective times to go arrived. Neither was surrounded by their loved ones upon breathing their respective lasts.
The thought of whether or not my own death will pounce on me in solitude has been on my mind since February, 1991. I had for the first time ever gotten ill with what I later understood to have been an acute attack of the flu. Bedridden with high fever and profuse sweating for three days in my single student room, I was so weak that I was unable to lift a telephone sitting beside me on my bed to call my school or doctor in Oslo.
One week later I had recovered without having had received any medical attention. An older, more knowledgeable friend told me that I had actually had a close brush with death. Perhaps I should consider getting myself a wife, he suggested. He argued that many people who live alone tend to die unnecessarily because there is often nobody there to render immediate assistance in times of emergencies.
In the northern hemisphere spring of 1995, I had a first-time mean attack of hay fever. I didn’t know what it was at first. For many days I kept sneezing like what I thought was like a mad man. Then I began to cough as inexplicably madly. What I thought sounded like a small cat soon started mewing in my chest. This made breathing painfully difficult even at the mildest physical exertion. Then I knew I was in trouble.
At great financial cost to me that I could afford regardless, a former lover at that time then finally hastily made it possible for me to acquire an emergency cocktail of various tablets, capsules, and an assortment of asthma medicines. Had I been alone at that critical time, I could have died from pneumonia, the former lover said later.
Today, the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, moving at a frighteningly fast pace is threatening human life across the globe. The United Nations and national governments are taking drastic and, in some cases, Human Rights defying draconian measures in individual and concerted efforts to isolate, treat, control, and eventually effectively manage the disease. The ideal situation would be to eliminate the disease, of course. But it’ll take time to develop necessary relevant curative and preventive medicine. Researchers the world over are currently working at break-neck speeds to achieve the latter.
Millions of people are under various levels of quarantine throughout the world, depending on suspected or actual infections and severity. Much of the industrialized world is under lockdowns. People whose immune systems are compromised from before are dying rapidly. Some people are quarantined in their private homes with their near family units. I am alone in my abode.
I am feeling well and strong. I can’t help, though, but think about my mortality in the event that my health should take a sudden, COVID-19 related downturn. Some other shit could happen too. One never knows when shit will hit the fan. I can’t help but think that were I to die now, I sure would do so peacefully. I’d die with no beloveds of mine surrounding me. If it happened to my parents it might as well be the same with me. Family solidarity. Family tradition. I’m their eldest child after all.
Like my parents, I leave no great fortunes behind. It’s just as well for me that, unlike my parents, I leave no children behind. As to whether or not it’s a good thing to die as my corpse shall be in a cremation oven, I shall find out upon arrival on the other side.
In the meantime, I can’t help thinking about one of my all-time favourite songs: If I Should Die Tonight, by Marvin Gaye … (Continued in the book Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories)
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
Tel.: +4792525032
March 15-16, 2020
PS
Order, read, and be inspired by my latest book, Covid-19 and I: Killing Conspiracy Theories.
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LOVE AS A NEUROLOGICAL FIX
Scientifically speaking, at the moment of human conception, there is no telling what perfections or imperfections shall take place as the to-be-human-being develops until birth. Not in the least as the new human being steadily grows up into adulthood and advanced old age, if so destined. There never is any guarantee that the new to-be-human-being shall in fact be born, to begin with.
©Mona Karlsen, 2019
Depending on the genetic material quality of the sperm and the egg of the respective parents, children born can turn out to have and to be anything. Life is by default a game of chance from the start. Consideration of infinite other internal and exterior variables prior to, during the mother’s pregnancy and actual eventual birthing is crucial in this regard as well. Children can be born still. They can be born healthy and strong, weak and ever fragile, with or without arms or ears. They can be born with all kinds of everything and/ or nothing, including sexuality.
Sexuality is a manifestation of a neurological state of being; biologically determined, needless to say. Therefore, sexual orientation is not a choice, it is an intrinsic aspect of being human as naturally programmed in our genetical construct as living organisms.
To strive to change or work against human sexual orientation is as good as working against God’s work and wonders of her infinite creative potential and its expressions, both for the relative good and bad of human existence on earth. This has to hold true if indeed all born and unborn human beings are made by God in her own image. God cannot be God only for socially constructed “normal” people.
Discrimination and loathing of people whose expression of being goes contra man-made social norms essentially invalidate the existence and relevance of God. A God who “so loved the world that [she] gave [her] one and only Son, that whoever believes in [her] shall not perish but have eternal life.” It is clear that God is aware that there shall be those that shall not believe in her because of the imperfect, non-predictable nature of being human, whether made after her image or not.
Amongst other things, assuming that we are indeed manifestations of God’s creation, she imparted in us the power of will. Therefore, people can as per their natural prerogative choose or not to choose to believe in God and take the consequences. Some people will, vis-à-vis artificial social precepts, be defined or judged to be anti-God only because they cannot do otherwise but live according to the essence of their being what or who they are. That as nature, or God, designed and subsequently brought them out to life on earth.
A really genuine and benevolent God simply cannot intentionally design and give life to sexual orientation “abnormal” people to, then, punish them upon their expression and living of life according to their inherent compulsions.
In a perfect world, it can be predicted that the act of human sexual intercourse shall under “normal circumstances” take place only between males and females only. But normalcy in nature is a fluid reality that is scientifically verifiable.
To, in the name of God, deny people of the same sex the privilege to love one another and enjoy free, mutually satisfactory sexual intercourse in a free world is fundamentally an outrageously spiritually vain, anti-God endeavour. Even worse when it’s expressed in the form of parochial, archaic “it is not our culture!” utterance.
And then there is “Even animals don’t do it! Why should we allow it in our society?”
This takes the cake of ludicrous logic founded on misguided understanding, if any, of how nature really works: human neurological wiring and hormonal propulsion influencing behavioural manifestations have no direct correlation with that of non-human animals, that emanating from mutually incongruent genetical constructs and preconditions. Basic science.
Humans and non-human animals need to have a common genome in order to be socially and, by extension, sexually comparable, if not compatible. In the same vein, for example, lions and buffaloes naturally don’t socially or sexually mix because they are inherently driven by different genetic factors. On the other hand, be they straight or gay, humans of all races, colours, religions, and creed will always be socially and sexually attracted to one another as a matter of course. That as a given attribute of sharing a common and invariable human genome. Elemental science.
“Green people and magenta people simply cannot mix! Ever seen hyenas and giraffes mix together out in nature? It’s not racism. No, not at all. It’s just the way things are. It’s God’s plan, you know, my friend!”
Baloney!
If I really am made by God in her image, then, everything I do and stand for in my life is but a small manifestation of her stupendous wonders in the universe. If she made me a Human Rights driven heterosexual with passion for fairness and justice for all, including homosexuals, then I’m a happy, humble, and obedient servant. This resonates 100% with my innate being as scientifically and/ or Godly constructed man. What I preach here is the word of God, therefore.
Conversely, should God punish me for performing my instinctual human or social obligations as per her design of me, she can go to hell. Hell ought to be yet another one of her self-defeatist masochistic creations. It’s absolutely preposterous that God can create me, send me to propagate her words and deeds in the world, and then shoot me for carrying out her commands exactly according to her designs. Amen!
SIMON CHILEMBO
OSLO
NORWAY
TELEPHONE: +4792525032
DECEMBER 05, 2019
Simon Chilembo 