Personal musings of the New Year

The year 2011 is here. If one were to believe the makers of the apocalyptic movie ‘2012’, we have but one year before mother earth decides to re-format her geological make-up and wipe out most of the human race. I suspect that, like in the year 2000, the human race will still be thriving in 2013. Of course, Hollywood will not produce a movie about people still being around in 2013. Fewer opportunities for dramatic special effects and all. Leaving aside personal musings on the beginning of yet another year, I enjoyed watching the fireworks displays all around the world welcoming 2011. As usual, the African in me was disappointed that not a single African city had its pyrotechnics highlighted by the BBC. The weekend of the New Year brought news that the Russians had opened an oil pipeline to China. The largest country in the world appears to be positioning itself as the energy giant of the Eurasian land mass with pipelines of gas and oil to Europe and now a pipeline to China with one to Japan under construction. If the advocates of the catastrophes of climate change were depressed by the news of the uncommonly cold winter of the Christmas week in the northern hemisphere, this current expansion of distribution systems for fossil fuels must be causing them no small amount of heartburn. On that note, it will be interesting to see what the dear people at REMA would say if the oil prospectors in the western province discovered commercial quantities of oil. One can already predict the fit some may throw when they hear about oil industry practices like oil flaring not to mention increased carbondioxide emissions due to the availability of cheap petroleum products. The New Times ran an interesting bit of investigative writing on the strange goings on at the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. A man named Mathias Nyagasaza has been playing the part of the late Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, pleading illness as grounds for compassionate release from detention. The story is not in the man’s ruses to get out of custody and delay trial these are to be expected from any defendant -but rather the actions of the Gacaca National Service. The Service granted his release on these grounds in the face of current practice of treatment being undertaken at the cost and supervision of the National Prisons Service. Even more interestingly, the release was signed by the Head of the Service who was reportedly on vacation. The reader may draw their own conclusions from this story but in this writer’s mind none of the possible conclusions are good. The article became ever more damning as it pointed at an inexplicable change of jurisdiction and order of retrial. On top of inciting, Nyagasaza is believed to have used his wealth in the execution of the Genocide against the Tutsi, and was consequently placed in category One of suspects. The readers have not heard the side of the esteemed people at the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions as they declined to comment to the reporter. I for one will be interested in hearing what they have to say. Ends