Ethics and Integrity and Nsaba Buturo

This month alone has seen more than a hundred people lose their lives in grisly traffic accidents.

Nsaba Buturo, when he is not busy being Uganda's national clown, finds time to be our sovereign state's minister for Ethics and Integrity.

That has to be the most absurd ministry Uganda has ever come up with since the ministry for Disaster Preparedness.

Even more absurd was What the good minister allude such traffic accidents to.

Us being Ugandans, we swallowed his comedy and went about our daily lives. Like Leo DiCaprio said in Blood Diamond, This Is Uganda. Anything goes here {Actually, what he said was "This Is Africa." But I got my point across, didn't I?}

On a more intellectual note, let's analyse the basics of the two concepts upon which the ministry is based: Ethics and Integrity.

Ethics is a branch of philosophy, encompassing right conduct and good life. It is significantly broader than the common conception of analyzing right and wrong.
Integrity is consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles.

[Before you bagin marvelling at just how bright I am, let me confess that I copy-pasted that from Wikipedia. But I really am clever, nonetheless.]

Back to Hon Buturo.

With Temangalo, Gavi, Junk helicopters, Third term and all the not ethical stuff that has been perpetrated by his cabinet colleagues under his watch as the minister charged with maintaining ethics and integrity of society, ills which he never once criticised and sometimes even outrightly supported, does he really have the steel, competence or moral authority to lead this country's fight for lofty ideals?

Let me introduce to you another term: Hypocrisy.

OK, not the rock band.

Hypocrisy results when one part of a value system is demonstrably at odds with another and the person or group of people holding those values fails to account for the discrepancy. Hypocrisy is considered to be the opposite of integrity.

[That one too I got from Wikipedia]

Of the three concepts, Ethics, Integrity and Hypocrisy, which one best describes the minister?

Church hazard

Indongole came from church last sunday with two black eyes. "Man, what happened to you? I asked.

He said, "I was seated behind this very fat, ugly woman in church,




"When we stood for prayer, Her dress had stuck itself in the crack of her ass. It was an ugly sight, and so I bent foward and pulled it out, but all I got for my noble effort was she socked me on my right eye."

Trying really hard not to laugh, I asked, "And what happened to your left eye?"

"Oh." Indongole replied. "I figured she hadn't liked what I'd done, so I pushed the dress back in."

My favorite song.

I really love this song by Dr. Kitch

I am not a qualified physician

And I do not want to give this injection.

I am not a qualified physician

And I do not want to give this injection

Dorothy's begging for trouble

She is insisting I give her this needle

Darling one thing I want you to know

Don't blame me for where the needle goes

I push it in

She pull it out

I push it back

She start to shout

“Dr Kitch,

you’re terrible

I can’t stand the size of your needle”

She lied on in such a position

It was difficult to give this injection

She start holding on to the needle

Making me so uncomfortable

I said “Darling can’t you be steady

I’m going to have it done very shortly”

She said “Dr Kitch I am sorry

But the size of the needle frighten me”

I push it in

She pull it out

I push it back

She start to shout

“Dr Kitch,

it’s terrible

I can’t stand the size of your needle”

She still wouldn’t lie down quietly

Constantly moving her body

So I slap her in the face with vexation

And I went on giving the injection

She screamed “Doctor stop! I can’t stand the pain!

I don’t think you’re inside the right vein”

I said “It’s your own fault you wouldn’t be told

The needle must be stick in the wrong hole”

I push it in

She pull it out

I push it back

She start to shout

“Dr Kitch,

it’s terrible

I can’t stand the size of your needle”

I pull it from that hole and start again

I have the needle now in the right vein

The needle just gone in half a inch

The stupid young lady start to flinch

Suddenly she she calls 'Doc it's working!

Doc I can feel the penicillin going in

I said “You little fool, look what you do

You talk until the needle break in you”

I push it in

She pull it out

I push it back

She start to shout

“Dr Kitch,

it’s terrible

I can’t stand the size of your needle.”

And out went Mimi

Finally, Mimi shoved her huge Ghanaian ass out of the BBA3 house. What can I say except that it was long overdue!

I watched the eviction show at Allen's Hostel in Kavule together with my good friends

Chris,

Sammy

and Katumanga,

and from the way they whooped when Mimi's name was called, you would have thought Geovanni had just scored his wonder goal against Arsenal.

During her post-eviction interview, Mimi said in an obviously bravado performance, "Thank you Africa for voting me out!"

You're more than welcome, Mimi!

To be a great writer

He came to me in a dream,

The greatest writer who ever lived.

His works,

Provocative, intrepid and vast,

Are glimpses from the very pith of life

Immortalised in ink.

Role model. Inspiration. Demi-god.

To me,

He epitomised all I ever aspired.

What would I not give

If only a tenth of his achievements

Were to be my entire eulogy?

Now, he stood before me;

A genie

Beholding Alladin of the rusty lamp.

Great sir, I cried. Ye lord of the written word,

I beg your indulgence.

Speak, he commanded. Spill forth your distress.

Teach me, kind sir, to be a great writer.

Sprinkle upon me droplets from your sea of wisdom

So that I can be like you.

He looked at me with mirth in his eyes

And laughed in a voice that was terrible.

Teach you? He laughed and then laughed some more.

What are you, a fool? An incurable idiot?

Why is God God? He suddenly asked.

Because he creates, I quickly replied.

And why is your mother so? He continued.

Because she brought me forth, said I.

Why is Erykah Badu a siren?

Because she sings, I rattled on.

And why is Dubya an imbecile?

Because he is stupid beyond compare!

You are what you do, he summed it up.

You say you desire to write great works.

Then why the hell are you still here?

Get yourself a goddamned pen and write!

I awoke

I got myself a pen and paper

And I wrote.

We have ourselves a winner.

The rhetorical distance between JohnMcCain and Barrack Obama's campaign teams is as enormous as the two candidates themselves.

This was seen after last night's debate in Hempstead, NY, when both teams summed up their respective candidates' performances.

This is what McCain's side had to say:

“While Barack Obama is measuring the drapes and campaigning against a man not even on the ballot, John McCain demonstrated that he has the experience, judgment, independence and courage to fight for every American,”

Team Obama hit back with this absolute cracker:

“We came into the debate with two-thirds of the American people convinced that John McCain is running a negative campaign... Senator McCain spent 90 minutes trying to convince the other third.”

I know I'm partisan, but does anyone still doubt who is going to win this?

Maskini akipata..

The swahili have a saying. Maskini akipata matako hulia mbwata.

What the hell goaded coach Kimanzi to blast our dear neighbours?

The various emotions of a Martian.

Happy

Anxious

Annoyed

Angry

Very Angry

What the hell was that?

I happen to be a sociology minor at Makerere University, and recently, Dr. Atyekereza, our Soc 3101 [Foundations of Sociological theory] lecturer, gave us a coursework assignment.

Dr. Atyekereza

Actually, he gave the assignment a month ago. I just finally got round to starting because the deadline for submission is monday.

Anyway, we are expected to analyse Roy Bhaskar's critical realism ramblings, specifically his assertion that "society is not the unconditioned creation of the human agency, but neither does it exist independently of it."

Lost? welcome to my world, dawg!

Obviously, such a question cannot be answered by the kind of gueswork you would apply for example in tackling Dr. Bwana's "Examine the threat posed by increased CFC use to the Ozone layer" in POS 31 05 [Environmental Management]

Dr. Bwana

or Dr. Kiiza's "Analyse the role of NEPAD and AGOA for the economic development of Africa" in POS 3107 [International Political Economy]

Dr. Kizza

Such a question requires what every average student dreads: Research. As in SERIOUS research.

Last time I checked, I was still an average student. So obviously, I was dreading this.

But a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, especially since this is the kind of paper that makes the prospect of coming back for a re-take more definite than probable. Serious research entailed first of all finding out who the hell Roy Bhaskar is, and since navigating your way through the bureaucracy of Makerere University's main library is the stuff of gladiators, I resorted to the net.

Horror of horrors. [Cue a horror-themed soundtrack. If you can't think of one, any song by Jeniffer Lopez or Ja Rule will do.]

Roy Bhaskar is the kind of guy who writes sentences such as "philosophical approach that defends the critical and emancipatory potential of rational (scientific and philosophical) enquiry against both positivist, broadly epistemological and ontological questions."

Consider this, in his dialectical works, the man actually wrote this:

"Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect of Foucaultian strategic reversal - of the unholy trinity of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms (in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms (in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source) new and old alike; of the primordial failing of western philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally, the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, replicating the fundament of positivism through its transmutation route to the super-idealism of a Baudrillard."

Please pray for me. I beg you.

Am I still blocked?

Yeah. Just that. Am I still blocked?

Well, I just pleasantly found out that I can still blog. This happenned after I came in yesterday, brimming with stuff to write about, only to be coldly informed that

"This blog has been locked and unpublished due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations. You may not publish new posts until your blog is reviewed and unlocked."

I almost died, I tell you.

OK, I didn't almost die. Me? Die for a blog? What am I, nuts? Well, maybe I am nuts. But not nuts enough to die for a blog!

But I did experience a hefty smack of dissappointment, and went ahead to follow the instructions I was given in order to prove myself worthy of continued blogging. The notice is still there, but at least I"ve posted this and it has been published. [I haven't posted it yet coz I'm still writing it, dummy! But if you're reading it it means that I've already posted it and it has been published, so right now...I think I need to stop deviating.]

Anyway, what I wanted to ramble about was Obama Vs. McCain,

Obama Vs. McCain

untill I read in the new vision that the Kenyan government yesterday deported a guy who wanted to launch an anti-Obama book.

It gave me lotsa food for thought. And when you get lots of food, you of course need to digest it. And digestion takes time.

So, I'll be back in a few hours. Hopefully the notice will be gone then.

Can many people be wrong?

Like half of everyone in Uganda who has an e-mail address, I subscribe to Yahoo for this vital service. Like the other half of everyone in Uganda who has an e-mail address, I also subscribe to Gmail for this vital service.

But unlike any other Ugandan I know with or without an e-mail address, I have an e-mail account with an obscure website called Gawab.

Actually, it's not that obscure. As a matter of fact, last time I checked it had 5,488,804 users. How did I know that? because I own the website, stupid!

I'm kidding! I don't own it. I don't know who fucking owns it. [I also apologise for calling you stupid. I really think you are very clever.] As a matter of fact, I gathered the exact number of subscribers from the website's header, which is '5,488,804 users can't be wrong!'

Which brings me to the point I wanted to discuss all along. Just because an overwhelming number of people, say a whole 5,488,804 of discerning-age adults or even a more impressive 62,040,610, think that something is right, does that necessarily make it right?

I have no beef with Gawab. They are a great service and apart from sometimes sending very important messages to the spam bin, they are way better than both Yahoo and Gmail.

But I think a huge number of people can sometimes be wrong. Like the 62,040,610 American idiots who cast their ballot for Dubya on Tuesday, November 2 2004.

Morning coffee

Arcadius Castrolcallistus Nathaniel Indongole is otherwise known as Archie the dream, Man Castro, King Callisto or simply Indongole, [but the priviledge of calling him that last name is reserved only for three categories of people, the very brave, the very stupid and his birth parents]


But enough with nomenclature. Indongole [I belong to a category that is a cross between extremely brave and incredibly stupid,soI qualify to call him that] is having breakfast when I come downstairs after the superhuman effort it took to coax my head from the pillow. Man,the coffee sure does smell good!

I grab the thermos flask, but it is empty. Not a very perfect way to start the day.

"Man! You only made coffee for yourself!" I grumble.

He looks at me, a quizzical expression on his face. "So?"

"You know, if it were me who woke up before you, I would make sure you have a ready cup of coffee when you come downstairs." I say

"But I am downstairs, and I have a ready cup of coffee." He replies. "Where is the problem?"

Not a very perfect conversation to start the day with.

"Why didn't you just make coffee for both of us? I ask in exesperation.

He looks at me strangely and for a moment, I am tempted to confirm whether seaweed has sprouted on my head. It hasn't, and so I stare right back at him. "Do you have your birth certificate? He suddenly asks. "Please give it to me."

I have absolutely no idea where this is leading, but I do have my birth certificate and he did ask for it, so I find it and give it to him. He scans his eyes over it, finds something and points at it. "I assume this is a true record of your birth?" He asks and I agree. "Then please read this."
It is the part with my mother's name, and I read it out for him.

"Now." He continues. "Does the name you have just read resemble the name 'Arcadius Castrolcallistus Nathaniel Indongole' in any way?

I reply that if my my mother had such a name, I most definitely would have considered a stint in an Iraqi prison before I introduced her by name to anyone, and then I ask him where all this is leading to.

"Do not assign me your mother's duties!" Indongole barks. "And that includes making coffee!"

Now why did he have to use such long route to get tothe point?