Yes, those guys there in uniform on one of the floats towards the end waving to the crowds were police officers – you noticed them?

Keep in mind, though, that this short clip was the teaser – so to speak – for the live broadcast of this year’s/today’s Canal Parade planned by the Dutch media organization AVRO, i.e. it shows a parade from some past year. For this year, some of you out there might be pleased to hear that festivities have been repeatedly interrupted by heavy downpours, accompanied occasionally by thunder and lightning! Make of that what you will.

Prague takes its turn at this sort of thing next weekend – meaning a Gay Pride festival, and actually for the very first time. Should be interesting! I mean, how will society there react to events like this? No canals there though – just a river, and it’s too wide for any such aquatic parade.

                          

Love that or hate it (I’m not so enthusastic, to tell you the truth), there will always be winners emerging from this situation. Among these are clearly Holland’s ice-skate sellers, as we see from an article in Het Parool (Gekkenhuis ["Crazy-House"] at ice-skate factories).

The unnamed reporter from the Dutch news agency ANP sought out for his/her story the firms “Viking” in Almere and “Zandstra” in Joure (a city in Friesland, the Dutch province especially known for its ice-skating ardor). They’re likely not the only ones in the Netherlands, but provided some good material nonetheless. Normally, says Viking director Jaap Havekotte, they sell around 20,000 pairs of skates per year; this year they are on track for 50,000 or 60,000 pairs. “Our skates are flying out the door,” says the Dutchman. (Yes, that’s really the quote: Onze schaatsen vliegen de deur uit.) Zandstra spokesman Marco Vlap doesn’t want to reveal exact numbers, but confirms that his firm is also working like mad but probably won’t be able to keep up with this year’s demand.

Actually, points out Havekotte, last winter in December (2008) we also had a bit of a cold spell that set people to skating and so brought with it elevated sales figures. He doesn’t have to explicitly say it, but in most Dutch minds it had yet another effect: raising hopes for the holding of the Elfstedentocht, an eleven-city race over the frozen streams and canals of Friesland that occupies an honored and central place in Frisian and Dutch culture and is held whenever ice conditions permit – which they last did only back in January of 1997! Think of the Super Bowl – to come up with an American cultural equivalent – but one strictly subject to the weather year after year for its happening at all! (You can check it out at the Elfstedentocht website, including the race-route, but the text is available only in Dutch or Frisian!) The cold didn’t last long enough then for that, but maybe it will this time, in which case you can expect some tenths-of-a-percentage point to be shaved from the 2010 GDP in the blizzard of sick-days taken as people flock up to Friesland and/or in front of their TV sets.

While you’re waiting to see if that happens, this article in English (“Amsterdam prepares canals for ice skating fun”) tells of our fine city’s preparations for letting people skate on certain of the historic canals, should the cold weather indeed continue. Personally, I sincerely hope that it won’t, but nonetheless those measures now being undertaken are mainly banning boat traffic on certain of the canals to protect the forming ice. You can peruse a map here showing to which stretches of which canal that ban applies, as well as the accompanying detailed list.

                          

Among the film-clips on display is one showing the only time Anne Frank was captured on video, as she watched from her family’s balcony the departure of the neighboring girl to her wedding. Naturally, this is before the Frank family had to go into hiding. In fact it is a little less than a year before they did so, and so the scene is at the apartment house elsewhere in Amsterdam where they lived a normal family life up to and a couple years into the German occupation, before moving to the famous achterhuis on the Prinsengracht to try to disappear and so evade a call-up from the occupation authorities for relocation to a “work camp” (which more often turned out to amount to transportation to a death camp in Eastern Europe; it was only Anne’s elder sister, Margot, who received this notice, but that was enough to drive the whole family into hiding).

The brief Gazet van Antwerpen article (no by-line) notes that another clip gives a video-tour of the achterhuis and was put on-line in celebration of the Anne Frank House Museum’s fiftieth anniversary, but it also seems that the entire YouTube channel was created only recently.

                          

Allow me to remind you here that the clap skate (from the Dutch klapschaats; it’s an ice-skate that allows the rear-support to temporarily separate from the skate-body so as to enable the blade to remain on the ice longer) were pioneered here in Amsterdam at one of the cities two main universities, the Vrije Universiteit. So perhaps it is also fitting that the well-respected Dutch daily Trouw has an interesting article out, by Rob Velthuis, on the impact on swimming competition of the revolutionary new speed-enhancing bathing suits, in particular the Speedo LZR Racer (The Bathing Suit Has Taken Over the Production).

The 2008 swimming competitions aren’t even all over yet, and already more world records have been broken (nine) than were broken in total at the Athens Olympics four years ago. But the message of Velthuis’ article, as you might be able to figure out already from its title, is that these spectacular accomplishments at the National Aquatics Center in Beijing have more to do with external factors than with Phelps and Co. themselves. One of these factors must indeed be the new Speedo, that according to the author “optimally supports, stabilizes, and streamlines the body.” But also of crucial importance is the way swimming itself over the past few years has professionalized, with considerable new imput from science on how to optimize swimming techniques.

Actually, the first sort of “professionalization” that came to swimming was that of the 1970s, practiced by East Bloc countries willing to raise their championship swimmers from cradle-to-grave on highly pharmaceutical-influenced diets. Twenty-eight world records were broken at the 1972 Games in Munich, 29 at the following 1976 Games in Montreal. Then another peak was reached at the Sydney Olympic Games of 2000, when 15 records were broken; Velthuis attributes that to the first appearance on the swimming scene of the LZR Racer’s predecessor in the realm of enhancing swimsuits, the haaienpak. (That translates to “shark suit,” but I come up with something entirely different when I try to look that up.) And then last year in Melbourne, at the World Swimming Championships, again 15 world records were broken – and this was even before the Speedo LZR Racer even came on the market, which was last February.

It’s Far Beyond Just the Racer-Suit

That LZR Racer has not been the only influence tending to boost swimming performances even more at Beijing, for their is the National Aquatics Center itself to consider. The starting blocks are designed to enable the swimmers to get going with more power, similarly to current track starting blocks; the pool itself is one meter deeper and two lanes bigger than the standard Olympic-size pool – which, Velthuis implies, also tends to promote speedy performances – and the flotation-lines marking the swimming lanes are even designed to divert water turbulence downward rather than sidewards into the next lane.

Velthuis presents the 4X100m men’s relay as the event that really crystallized where swimming is at today: the American team won, of course, and with a new world record – more than four seconds better than the old. But the second-through-sixth finishers had also finished better than the old record!

This leads to the question: “What is a record worth anymore?”, when they can be broken so often – or, perhaps more to the point, when they are broken under conditions at considerable variance to the conditions under which the records were established in the past? Where is the swimmer him- or herself left in the equation, when one can strongly suspect that it is the swimsuit, and maybe also the facilities, that are leading to these record-breaking performances? Velthuis has the rueful phrase “technological doping” issuing from the mouth of Italian swimming coach Alberto Castagnetti; and maybe it’s true that those who still take seriously pure athletic achievement (Hello? Anybody still left out there?) have something else to be concerned about in addition to the pharmacological/blood-swapping tricks that we have to hope the Olympic authorities are sufficiently on-guard against.

                          

A rough-and-ready approach to comparing those Olympics of yesterday with those of today is to treat the ways they are different and the ways that they are the same. Of course, the ways they are different predominate, but those differences are quite interesting. The most striking is the almost complete lack of support – indeed, the hostility – the 1928 Olympics received from the host-nation government. That partly was tied to one innovation which these Olympics were scheduled to (and which they did) introduce, namely participation for the first time of woman athletes, if only in the track-and-field and the gymnastics events. Unfortunately, the Netherlands at the time was quite a bit more of a Christian conservative – nay, even prudish – nation, governed by a right-wing coalition of the Protestant and Catholic religious parties. Right off the bat, the organizing committee had to promise that absolutely no Olympic activities would take place on Sunday, to desecrate the Sabbath day. But that was hardly enough of a concession to satisfy the religious critics, such as the spokesman for the Protestant party, the ARP (the “Anti-Revolutionary Party”) who maintained that the Games were fundamentally “of a heathenish character” and should not be allowed to put female athletes on display “in short skirts, thin clothing, and bobbed hair.” Other factions from the ARP (the party of the then-Minister of Finance Hendrik Colijn) expressed sincere alarm that, with all the foreigners they would attract, the Games would only increase the immorality that was already rife in Amsterdam. (Of course, that battle has long since been given up as lost.)

That Much Money – For Sports?

When it came right down to it, concluded many Dutch political figures, including those from the rather less-excitable Catholic party RKSP which wasn’t so worried about what might happen to the city’s morals, the one-million-guilder subsidy that Colijn proposed to pay to the Games (spread over four years) was simply too much money to go for mere sport, at a time when economic conditions in the Netherlands had already begun to worsen and such things as education and housing needed the money more. In the end, the proposal for that subsidy was voted down in the parliament; and a previous undertaking to set up a lottery to raise the funds the local Olympic committee needed to run the games had already been firmly shot down from the Finance Minister, who wanted no competition to the already-existing State Lottery that brought the government 650,000 guilders yearly in revenue.

So the Amsterdam Olympic Committee received no money from the state: none at all. As we have seen, it faced the hostility or at least the indifference of much of the Dutch population (including the Queen herself, Wilhelmina – she wasn’t very enthusiastic about sports). At the same time, in its first few years of existence it was staffed exclusively by volunteers (definitely a difference from the way things are run today) and could not even find a new chairman for a quite a while after the old one, Baron Frits van Tuyll van Serooskerken, suddenly died in 1924. All the while, the Committee faced sniping from other cities (Rome, Los Angeles) lobbying the International Olympic Committe to try to take the 1928 Games away from that “small city” Amsterdam, that clearly was having such a hard time.

Still, this Committee did it, they succeeded in bringing the 1928 summer games to Amsterdam and in staging them there successfully. How did they get their money? you ask. They begged for it from the public, from both within and outside the Netherlands. Indeed, they cleverly used the prospect of having to go outside the country for money (which they did anyway) to get more money from people inside the country: they appealed to “the whole [Dutch] people” to contribute to keep the country from “degrading to the class of international money-cadgers [klaploopers].” And they succeeded in raising 1.5 million guilders within the space of two weeks! It sounds unbelievable, but that’s what Paauw and Visser say in their book is what happened. (One interesting note: the newspaper Het Volk, reacting to the parliament’s rejection of the subsidy for the Olympics, claimed that by that action the Dutch had shown themselves to be “the Chinese of Europe” ; Chinese were at the time reputed to be rather skin-flint. Rather ironic in the light of 2008, eh?)

A Success After All

Yes, not only did the Amsterdam 1928 organizers raise enough funds, but they staged a very good iteration of the Summer Olympic Games – so much so, that many observers agreed that the 1928 Games were “a model for the future” – in fact, that was the precise phrase used by the chairman of the US Olympic Committee (which would run the next Summer Olympics, scheduled for 1932, in Los Angeles – and which had tried to steal the 1928 Summer Olympics), one General Douglas MacArthur.

The Amsterdam Olympic Stadium still stands there today, with its distinctive Olympic tower and the five rings, in the south part of town down towards the ring-highway/beltway, although these days it is too small to be of much use for most athletic or other public events. (There’s a nightclub now built in one of the sections along the side that people say is pretty good, by the way – but it is too far away and too isolated from anything else to be worth a visit for me, though.) More significantly, those Olympics pioneered several key aspects of the Summer Olympic Games that are still in use today. There’s the participation of women, of course, but it was in 1928 in Amsterdam that the competing teams paraded for the first time before the adoring assembled crowds at the opening ceremony, with the Greek contingent coming first of course.

And the Olympic flame – did you follow along earlier this year (like I did) as the Olympic flame made its way through Europe and other parts of the world, braving protesters and outright assailants behind its phalanx of identically-dressed, grim-faced, identically-Chinese bodyguards? Well, you can thank the Amsterdam Olympics for that – that’s when that somewhat quaint Olympic customer was introduced. You might even be relieved to hear further that the current Dutch Crown Prince, Willem Alexander (a member of the International Olympic Committee) has recently spoken out against this “wandering Olympic flame” custom, advocating instead that it appear in public only in Greece, for the lighting at Mount Olympus, and then in that year’s host-country.

                          

It’s not alone, though: the Reformatorisch Dagblad, or “Reformed Daily,” is similar, although that website does stay open on Sundays. People should not confuse the allegedly “anything goes” atmosphere of cosmopolitan cities like Amsterdam (see this weblog’s recent coverage of the famous yearly Gay Pride parade there, for example) with Dutch culture as a whole, which in fact features some enclaves which can easily hold their own in the Christian piety department with any of the American Amish communities.

The Nederlands Dagblad reports today, as the 2008 Olympic Games open in Beijing, that the Chinese church leader Zhang Mingxuan was recently arrested by the authorities in his hometown in the province of Henan, along with his wife and another associate, and brought to an office of the “security services” in that province’s capital, Zhengzhou. This follows Zhang’s being driven out of his Beijing by the authorities at the beginning of last month, and then out of the city itself two weeks ago.

The Stichting De Ondergrondse Kerk (a Dutch name, of course: “Foundation of the Underground Church”) has issued a call to make these opening days of the Olympic Games days of prayer on behalf of the persecuted Christians in China.

                          

It also enjoys a rather high level of public support. That was perhaps the main point of the article from Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza that I covered here on Tuesday, which noted that, for the first time, a national cabinet minister will be officially present in the parade (namely Ronald Plasterk, of Education, Culture, and Science) as well as an official boat from the police. But it turns out that Gazeta didn’t know the half of it (and probably did not want to know the half of it, in any case): this whole new politician phenomenon has mushroomed so rapidly that not only have plenty other national Dutch lawmakers scrambled to find a place for themselves for today on a Gay Pride boat, but questioning eyebrows are even being raised in the direction of politicians who will not be present.

So, at least, reports Yvonne Doorduyn of De Volkskrant (Absent Politicians Given a Problem By Gay Pride). “Today everyone is practically required to be homo-friendly” she declares in her first paragraph, and among the additional politicians slated to be on-hand to demonstrate that quality personally (besides Job Cohen, Amsterdam’s mayor, who is always there and whom I mentioned on Tuesday) are the Minister of Internal Affairs (i.e. cabinet member in charge of the police, Guusje ter Horst – a woman, by the way) and two staatssecretarissen, i.e. cabinet secretaries or the top civil service functionaries in a cabinet department. What is more, a number of Dutch political parties will be there on the water on their own sponsored boats, namely GroenLinks (i.e. the Green Party), D66, and the party (“Proud of the Netherlands”) only recently-formed as the personal vehicle for the right-wing, anti-immigrant (female) politician Rita Verdonk. It would therefore be no surprise to see Rita herself there on her “Proud of the Netherlands” boat, waving to the crowds on either bank.

So what about the other parties – what about the VVD (the leading non-extremist right-wing business-friendly party), for example? For that matter, what about Dutch premier Jan Peter Balkenende himself, or his vice-premier André Rouvoet, of the Christian party, the ChristenUnie, both of whom were specifically invited, after all, by Minister Plasterk? Frankly, of all of those one would expect at least Rouvoet to reply with some self-distancing remarks about homosexuality, given the stance and policy positions of his Christianist party. But nothing of the sort – as Doorduyn reports (in a section labeled “obstructed”) all these reluctantly reported that their schedules simply would not allow it – it’s vacation time, after all, so it’s hard to fit things like that in. Again, though, the truly remarkable thing here is how, from something that national politicians were attending this year for the first time, the Gay Pride parade has so quickly metamorphosed into something where the attendance of politicians – extending up to the highest levels of government (although not to the Royal Family – yet?!?) – has become expected.

“Thank God I’m Gay”

Anyway, all of those nice politicians whose schedules did allow it will be along for the ride as today’s Gay Pride parade pushes off from the North/West end of the Prinsengracht, floating along with other boats displaying banners with such messages (as Doorduyn records) as “Simply Gay,” “I Do Believe I’m Gay,” and “Thank God I’m Gay” (these all written in English). Meanwhile, elsewhere in town the city zoo is offering for the weekend special Gay Pride tours focusing on homosexual behavior by animals. (Dear reader, I kid thee not – although, interestingly, there’s no mention of these tours on the zoo’s website, neither its English nor its Dutch version.) It’s certainly somewhat of a different cultural we have here in Amsterdam, is it not?, if nothing else.

By the way, this year’s parade also records a “first” in that it includes boats representing commercial companies. You’ll probably agree that that is something rather less surprising to see come along. But it raises the question: Now that it seems everyone with something to sell to the public, whether it be for votes or for money, is clamoring to get involved in the Gay Pride parade, how long will it take before purists start to pine for those lost times of innocence – of pure unencumbered floating, costumed, dancing, codpiece-flaunting, buttocks-exhibiting homosexual innocence – before all the hucksters of one stripe or another started crowding in?

                          

Granted, there are many in this cosmopolitan town for whom the very idea of homosexuals cavorting in a rather exhibitionist manner on boats floating through town poses something of a cultural shock. For one thing, there are the various Muslim immigrants from Morocco, Turkey, and elsewhere – more about them later. But Gay Pride Amsterdam must also seem rather disconcerting to European immigrants hailing from more conservative countries on the continent. Like the Netherlands’ Polish population, for example, which has been steadily growing here just as it has in the UK and Ireland and elsewhere in Western Europe since the entry of Poland into the EU in on 1 May 2004.

Those Poles already in the Netherlands may have to come to terms with the Gay Pride festival on their own, but in the meantime the spectacle surely has the potential to sell newspapers in the old country to good Polish citizens attracted to the phenomenon with the same “I-can’t-look-but-I-must” fascination that normally applies to car accident scenes on the highway. Reporter Jacek Pawlicki obliges readers of Poland’s top national daily Gazeta Wyborcza with an account entitled All of Amsterdam Sails with the Gays.

Not Everyone Here Is Involved

First of all, it’s hardly true at all that all of Amsterdam is having something to do with this weekend’s festivities – many of us are confident that we will be able to avoid it – but still, in all, the article succeeds in being a fairly factual account of the phenomenon. What you have to assume is Pawlicki’s basic distaste for the whole affair only strains up against the warp and woof of his text in a couple of places. He has a problem, for instance, with the use of the word “pride” in the context of the parade, twice adding “or so it is called” after the use of that noun. And he points out that, among the 70 boats sailing along, there will be one representing gay teenagers “which prompts a response in all of Europe.”

Finally, his article takes pains to point out the extent of official support among municipal and political leaders for the festival. As with the above-mentioned reference to gay teenagers, you get the feeling that this is not just a recitation of relevant facts but rather something with an implied “and can you believe this?!” hovering behind it. This year, for the first time, the parade will feature an actual member of the Dutch cabinet, Ronald Plasterk of the Education Ministry, no less. (Pawlicki gets Plasterk’s first name wrong, calling him “Roland.”) Also for the first time there will be official police representation in the parade – no, not the sort of crowd-control that you would expect the police to routinely perform at such events, but an actual boat in the parade representing the police, together with another, unofficial one from “Pink in Blue” – the organization of homosexuals working in the police ranks. (The article’s one illustration is of an overcrowded boat labeled “Pink Police” – probably yet another unofficial organization along the lines of “Pink in Blue.”)

Oh, and Amsterdam mayor Job Cohen will also take part, but that is nothing new. Of more interest is that, prior to the parade, he will be meeting with representatives of city organizations representing homosexuals from among the Turkish and North African communities in the city. Of course, these people have a particularly tough time with their lifestyle choice, especially back in their native countries, as they find themselves living within a native culture that attaches a great stigma to homosexuality. This fact enables Pawlicki to mention that, in fact, public attacks against homosexuals – verbal, but now increasingly with physical violence – have increased over the last few years, with most of the perpetrators indeed being of Muslim origin, and with a particularly brutal assault occurring last Queen’s Day (30 April, the Dutch national holiday) against a “male model” famous within homosexual circles, Mike Du Pree. That could well be the behind-the-scenes motivation for why the Gay Pride celebrations get so brazen and frenetic, and why there are all these official gestures of support: that Amsterdam is actually afraid of losing its status as a leading tolerant international city for homosexuals, despite itself.

Correction: From further investigation it seems that “Pink in Blue” is actually the Amsterdam Police’s special program devoted to the reporting and investigation of anti-homosexual offenses in the city.

                          

The museum’s sister-institution, installed in its eastern wing, is the Tropentheater (English version unfortunately not yet available), which offers a platform for the staging of usually non-Western-related musical and drama productions. And coming up this week at the Tropentheater (starting tomorrow) we had an interesting affair called the “Zanzibara Festival”: a festival of music and films about the Swahili culture of East Africa, predominately in Kenya, Tanzania, and yes, Zanzibar. At the center of the festivities was the Kilimani Qusida Group from that Indian Ocean island, a group of Islamic musicians specializing in Sufi music (Sufism is essentially Islamic mysticism), scheduled to travel out of Zanzibar for the first time in their lives to come play in Amsterdam. I’ve seen posters for this Zanzibara festival all over town – I even saw them on a visit to Antwerp a few weeks ago.

American readers will probably already be hearing the alarm bells over all these plans, why I’ve been describing this festival in the past tense (“we had”) rather than in the present. A bunch of Muslims out of East Africa: they would never get permission to visit the US in today’s climate, would they? – not without about at least a year’s worth of screening, investigation, and passing-on to the Department of Homeland Security’s massive banks of computers of all the personal data that could possibly be sucked out of them. You just can’t be too careful; a bongo drum offers plenty of space for the smuggling of some Semtex explosive, say.

Well, I’m sorry to have to pass on today’s report in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool that the Kilimani Qusida Group has failed to gain the required visas from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Ministry refuses to comment; we’re left to our own speculations why this has happened. (“Kilimani” – too close to “kill a man”? “Qusida” – too close to “Qaeda”?) The one thing that is not in doubt is that there will be no Zanzibara Festival, at least for now: the Tropentheater has had to call it off.

                          

I am fine today, and how are you? I hope this weblog entry finds you in the best of health. I am Prince MAO Kawanza, chairman of the West African Expatriate Legal Defence Fund, an institution established under the late Nigerian Head of State, General Sani Abacha, for the provision of legal assistance to travellers from West African states ensnared in difficulties with foreign criminal justice systems. General Abacha chose to fund our laudable institution by means of a special tax on revenues from the Nigerian petroleum sector, which revenues are estimated to total more than USD 45 billion yearly.

It is now clear that this defence fund disposes of several billion dollars of superfluous monies, appropriated for use in legal proceedings which have been unexpectedly and prematurely terminated. This we can see from a recent report in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool (E-Mail Fraud Cannot Be Prosecuted), which brings us the glad tidings that cases in Amsterdam criminal court against thirteen of our Nigerian compatriots, for the alleged sending-out of tens of thousands of e-mails seeking to defraud their recipients, have been thrown out for lack of evidence.

These thirteen were among fifty-two gentlemen arrested last January in police raids in Amsterdam and the Amsterdam suburb of Diemen in apartments where illegal (i.e. unpaid-for) broadband Internet connections were being used to send out these massive quantities of electronic communication. Police found computers containing special programs for the efficient despatch of such huge quantities of e-mails, as well as charts detailing fictitious companies and organizations, plus multiple telephone-lines complete with instructions as to which name should be used to answer each telephone. Prosecutors had requested fifteen months’ detention for these, my fellow countrymen, but fortunately the court released them instead, citing a lack of evidence that the accused had actually engaged in these fraudulent activities, even though they had been present in the said apartments at the time of said police raids.

This is happy news, my friend – not only for my unjustly accused countrymen, but also happy news for you! For this joyous outcome has freed those aforementioned several billion dollars of what are now unneeded funds for the payment of legal professionals – if a way can be found to release them from the escrow account established for that sole purpose.

Unfortunately, financial safeguards erected at the time of the West African Expatriate Legal Defence Fund’s origin deny us the flexibility of extraction of these funds from escrow for any other purpose than European legal expenses, even when these have proved to be unnecessary. But payment to the Fund from “outside” is of course always authorized. What is needed is an intermediate bank account, to act as this conduit for the return of these monies back to our Fund’s general pool of financial resources.

I have word on good authority that your own long-standing support for the cause of justice for Africa makes you an excellent candidate to ask to offer us this assistance. Your help shall by no means go unrewarded. Rather, we are glad to offer you a 5% “facilitator’s fee” on all the monies moved via your own bank account back to aid the general cause of West African expatriate legal defence. This provides you with USD 50 million for every USD billion that we are able to restore via your kind support – and we have many such billions that now sit needlessly in that European escrow account!

Procuring justice for West African citizens unfairly harassed by legal authorities elsewhere in the world is an arduous and thankless task. It takes a truly enlightened man- or woman-of-the-world to recognize that as the worthwhile cause that it is. Please, show your engagement to this cause by e-mailing to this weblog the necessary bank account details: your bank’s name, account number(s), image file of your signature, any passwords, mother’s maiden name, as well as your credit card numbers and their associated three-digit security codes. Or feel free to demonstrate your support for justice for West Africans proudly, in a public forum, by committing that above-named information to the comments section of this weblog entry!

Africa, the land of human-kind’s origin, has given so much to the world both before and throughout recorded history. Now, Africa requires some small assistance back – and you are there to help!

God bless you, honoured brother/sister!

Prince MAO Kawanza