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28, September 2021

Football: Koeman seeks extra time as Barca get set for Benfica ⁰

Ronald Koeman’s future as Barcelona coach may already be decided but the outcome of the next two games, starting with Benfica in the Champions League on Wednesday, could buy him some extra time.

Three matches without a win and a press conference in which Koeman cancelled questions and demanded support felt more like the final week of a tenure about to be brought to an end.

A goalless draw away at Cadiz ended with Gerard Pique playing up front and while Pique called for calm after the game, the club captain also shied away from backing his coach.

“The club has been on the crest of a wave for many years and we are not used to this,” Pique said. “We all need to make an effort to give stability. We can complain or pull in the right direction. Let’s not look for friction because this doesn’t help anyone.”

After drawing with Granada, Koeman seemed both to dismiss Barcelona’s possession mantra and denigrate his players in one breath. “If you look at our squad, what are you supposed to do? Play tiki-taki?” Koeman said, in a reference to tiki-taka, the name attributed to the style played under Pep Guardiola.

But a 3-0 victory over Levante on Sunday has, at least briefly, lifted the mood ahead of a week that is likely to be taken as a litmus test for whether Koeman returns from the international break still in charge.

After facing Benfica, with the pressure on in Group E after the opening defeat by Bayern Munich, Barcelona play on Saturday away at Atletico Madrid, La Liga’s reigning champions, who are enduring a rocky start themselves.

A loss in either game, even at this early stage, would represent a damaging blow to Barca’s hopes in either competition and perhaps convince the board the need for change is now.

Yet a better combination of results could also earn Koeman some breathing space, even if it appears clear the Dutchman is not the long-term choice of club president Joan Laporta.

A period of stability would suit Laporta, given he needs time not only to identify a successor but also persuade them to join a club still working off more than a billion euros of debt and too broke to make significant signings for at least another year.

And while the two-week international break might seem the preferable moment to make a change, a new coach would then be plunged into three games against Valencia, Dynamo Kiev and Real Madrid, meaning a potentially turbulent start.

The better scenario both for Koeman and the board would be that the team recovers, in a similar way to last season when an uncertain first few weeks gave way to a gradual gathering of momentum.

There were certainly reasons for optimism against Levante, who rolled over for the kind of morale-boosting victory ideally suited for the start of a testing week.

The biggest cause for enthusiasm was the return of Ansu Fati, the inheritor of Lionel Messi’s number 10 shirt, who raised the roof by coming on after 10 months out through injury and then sent the fans ballistic by scoring in the 91st minute.

Ansu’s return could be transformative, not only because of what the 18-year-old brings to Barcelona’s attack but for what he represents, now more than ever: a La Masia graduate and one of the club’s last remaining claims to belonging with Europe’s elite.

Even before Ansu’s introduction, the crowd were admiring the performances of the 19-year-old Nico Gonzalez and the 17-year-old Gavi in midfield. Luuk de Jong and Memphis Depay scored the opening goals to suggest the summer transfer window was not entirely a backward step.

Barca also scored early, which allowed the players to operate more freely and avoid the unpalatable tactics witnessed in recent weeks when the team has been searching for a goal.

Levante, though, were generous opponents and Koeman cannot expect the same from Benfica, who are unbeaten, having won 10 of their 12 games so far this season, with the scrap to join Bayern in the last 16 – which also includes Kiev – far from clear-cut.

“We are Barcelona, we are going for La Liga and the Champions League and all the competitions we are in,” said Fati on Sunday. “All the teams want to win everything but we are Barca, we have to fight.”

Source: AFP

28, September 2021

Iran’s nuclear program has crossed ‘all red lines’: Israel PM ⁰

Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said Monday Iran had breached all the “red lines” aimed at curbing its nuclear weapons program, but that Israel “will not allow” Tehran to get the bomb.

In his first address to the United Nations General Assembly, Bennett claimed the Islamic republic had in recent years taken “a major leap forward” in its nuclear production capacity and ability to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

“Iran’s nuclear weapon program is at a critical point, all red lines have been crossed,” said Bennett, who took office in June.

“There are those in the world who seem to see Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons as an inevitable reality, as a done deal, or they have just become tired of hearing about it,” the 49-year-old premier told the world body.

“Israel doesn’t have that privilege. We cannot tire. We will not tire. Israel will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon.”

Iran responded rapidly, with its ambassador to the UN, Majid Takht Ravanchi, saying on Twitter that Bennett’s speech was “full of lies.”

“That regime is in no position to discuss our peaceful program when it has hundreds of nuclear warheads,” he said.

Iran, which says its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, said Friday that it expected talks to resume soon on reviving a 2015 landmark agreement scaling back its program in exchange for sanctions relief.

The agreement started to fall apart in 2018 when the US withdrew from it and reinstated sanctions. Iran in turn again started to ramp up its nuclear activities.

– After Netanyahu –

Bennett’s predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in power from 2009 until June, was among the world’s fiercest critics of the accord, regularly condemning it at international forums and cheering former US president Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw.

Bennett, a foreign policy hawk who heads Israel’s ideologically disparate, eight-party coalition government, also opposes the Iran nuclear deal, but did not mention it in his UN address.

In a rare interview with a foreign media outlet, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz told Foreign Policy magazine this month that the Jewish state was not necessarily opposed to US efforts to re-enter a negotiated agreement with Iran.

“The current US approach of putting the Iran nuclear program back in a box, I’d accept that,” Gantz told the magazine, in what was perceived by some Israeli experts as a policy shift.

But Gantz made clear that Israel would expect a “viable US-led plan B” to be in place should talks fail.

Bennett has not publicly expressed openness to a revived Iran deal but has criticised Netanyahu over what he termed “the gap” between the former leader’s rhetoric on Iran and reality.

He told the UN that Iran has enriched “uranium to the level of 60 percent, which is one step short of weapons-grade material — and they’re getting away with it.”

The United States and European Union on Monday also urged Iran to allow inspectors access to a nuclear site, while Tehran argued the facility was exempt from a recent agreement with the UN watchdog.

The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said it had been denied “indispensable” access to the TESA Karaj centrifuge component manufacturing workshop near Tehran, contrary to a September 12 agreement with Iran.

Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Kazem Gharibabadi, rejected the charge, saying the IAEA statement “isn’t accurate and goes beyond the agreed terms.”

Source: AFP

28, September 2021

Sultan Mbombo Njoya dies with Covid twelve days after medical evacuation ⁰

Former minister of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and ex-leader of the Cameroon Football Federation died on Monday, September 27, 2021 at the age of 84 after tested positive for Covid-19.

The regime in Yaoundé said he complained of breathlessness and fever. When his condition continued to deteriorate, he was shifted to the so-called emergency centre in Yaoundé and later on evacuated to Europe where he succumbed to the virus.

Condolences have been pouring in with many deep within the ruling clan saying that they were saddened to learn about the death of the Sultan.

Survived by many wives, a sea of children, the late French Cameroun political elite began his political career as a student leader in Bamoun and reportedly had a meteoric rise in the Biya Francophone structure.

The appointed Senator of the ruling CPDM party became the Sultan and King of the Bamouns in 1992.

By Rita Akana

27, September 2021

Cameroon humanitarian crisis worsens ⁰

The dust has settled on the ethnic clashes that recently left at least 12 people dead in northern Cameroon but humanitarian needs are escalating.

Over a month after the land dispute featuring the Mouzgoum and Choa Arab communities in the Logone-Birni district in the Far North left another 100 people injured and an estimated 30 000 others displaced from their homes, the rainy season brings a peak in the rates of malaria and diarrheal diseases.

Recurrent floods increase the risk of cholera.

This after the looting and burning of villages led people to seek refuge in Kousseri while others acrossed the border to Chad.

Health workers have been mobilised in the central African region to respond to the consequences of the clash.

In collaboration with the Kousseri Health District, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) intervened in the first days of the clashes.

This enabled the hospital in Kousseri to provide better care for the injured.

Ballé Diouf, head of MSF’s Kousseri emergency project, said the support MSF provided by referring injured patients with serious cases to the Chadian capital, N’djamena, relieved the patients, families and staff at the hospital.

“This has made it possible to save the lives of patients who would otherwise might not have received appropriate care in Kousseri,” he said.

When the fighting began, an MSF team comprising two doctors, two nurses, and a clinical psychologist along with a coordinating team cared for injured and displaced people in the villages of Missika, Madiak and the Logone Birni district.

Most of the people displaced were forced to leave their possessions behind when they fled their homes, walking several kilometres to reach safety.

Malaria, diarrhea and child malnutrition have been identified as the main health problems.

A total of 1 972 medical consultations were carried out in Oundouma and Gamakotoko.

Some 33 patients, including wounded people, pregnant women and severely malnourished children were assisted.

MSF has been present in Cameroon since 1984.

Source: CAJ News

26, September 2021

Football: Lewandowski wins Golden Shoe 2021 ⁰

Bayern Munich striker Robert Lewandowski has been awarded the Golden Shoe as top scorer in European football last season.

The Polish sensation scored 41 goals in 29 Bundesliga appearances for Bayern in the 2020-21 season. The 33-year-old Striker broke Gerd Mueller’s record of 40 goals in the German top flight set in 1971-72.

Lewandowski’s tally represents the highest in Europe since Cristiano Ronaldo received the prize in 2015 with Real Madrid, after bagging 48 goals. The Pole has already scored seven goals in only five games this season, as the Bavarians top the early Bundesliga Table.

Source: Presstv

26, September 2021

Bexit: Britain to issue up to 10,500 temporary visas to ease chronic staff shortages ⁰

Britain will issue up to 10,500 temporary work visas to lorry drivers and poultry workers to ease chronic staff shortages, the government announced Saturday, in a U-turn on post-Brexit immigration policy.

The short-term visas, to run from next month until late December, come as ministers grapple with a huge shortfall in drivers and some other key workers that has hit fuel supplies and additional industries.

A tanker drivers shortage has caused large queues at petrol stations in recent days, as people ignore government pleas not to panic-buy fuel after some garages closed due to the lack of deliveries.

The decision to expand the critical worker visa scheme is a reversal by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose government had tightened post-Brexit immigration rules insisting that Britain’s reliance on foreign labour must end.

It had resisted the move for months, despite an estimated shortage of around 100,000 heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers and warnings from various sectors that supplies would run short.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps nevertheless insisted he was taking action “at the earliest opportunity” and that a broader package of measures announced would ensure pre-Christmas preparations “remain on track”.

“The industries must also play their part with working conditions continuing to improve and the deserved salary increases continuing to be maintained in order for companies to retain new drivers,” he added.

But one business leader dismissed the new measures as inadequate.

Millions of pounds for ‘skills bootcamps’

“This announcement is the equivalent of throwing a thimble of water on a bonfire,” said Ruby McGregor-Smith, president of the British Chambers of Commerce.

The additional testing would take time to impact while new visa numbers were “insufficient” and not “enough to address the scale of the problem”, she added.

The new measures will focus on rapidly expanding the number of new domestic drivers, and include deploying Ministry of Defence driving examiners to help provide thousands of extra tests over the next 12 weeks.

Meanwhile the education ministry and partner agencies will spend millions of pounds training 4,000 people to become HGV drivers, creating new so-called “skills bootcamps” to speed up the process.

Nearly 1 million letters will also be sent to all drivers who currently hold an HGV licence, asking any not currently driving to come back to work.

Johnson has been under increasing pressure to act, after the pandemic and Brexit combined to worsen the haulier shortage and other crises emerged, including escalating energy prices.

As well as threatening timely fuel supplies, the lack of lorry drivers has hit British factories, restaurants and supermarkets in recent weeks and months.

US burger chain McDonald’s ran out of milkshakes and bottled drinks last month, fast-food giant KFC was forced to remove some items from its menu, while restaurant chain Nando’s temporarily shut dozens of outlets due to a lack of chicken.

Supermarkets are also feeling the heat, with frozen-food group Iceland and retail king Tesco warning of Christmas product shortages.

‘It’s ridiculous’

This week it was the turn of the fuel sector, with growing lines of cars clogging the approaches to petrol stations following some closures and panic-buying, particularly in southeast England.

Drivers appeared less than reassured Saturday, as queues again formed for fuel.

Mike Davey, 56, had been waiting more than half an hour to fill up at a petrol station run by the supermarket chain Tesco in Kent, southeast of London.

“I just want to get some fuel to get to work. People are just like filling up jerry cans – it’s ridiculous,” he told AFP.

“Maybe they need to bring some army drivers in,” Davey added.

The government has so far resisted calls to deploy soldiers to help deliver petrol directly.

As part of the measures announced, taxpayers will also help pay for some adult HGV license applications in the next academic year – which can cost thousands of pounds – through an adult education budget fund.

Source: AFP

26, September 2021

Biya regime arrests five policemen over torture video ⁰

Five Cameroonian policemen have been arrested on suspicion of torture after a video was made public showing police officers torturing a detainee, according to a senior police officer.

Cameroon’s police chief, Martin Mbarga Nguele said the five police officers were taken into custody and appeared before a judge over the alleged torture, which took place in the capital, Yaounde last week.

The video, which went viral in the Central African nation on Wednesday, showed the policemen interrogating, assaulting and then severely beating the detainee suspected of theft.

Nguele said in a statement made public on Saturday that the treatment was “inhuman”.

“The measures applied (against the policemen) are only the continuity of the permanent action in progress for a citizen police force, truly at the service of everyone because the daily act of the police officer must tend today only toward the well-being of the citizen,” Nguele said in the statement.

“For more than a decade, the national security has embarked on the path of professionalism, modernization and change of mentality and morality,” he added while stressing that the population must also respect and collaborate with the police.

Source: Xinhuanet

25, September 2021

Unmasking Barrister Emmanuel Agbor Ashu ⁰

In The Art of War, Sun Tzu said, “know the enemy and know yourself in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.” Although there is a huge appetite among Ambazonians for a muscular approach on French Cameroun airwaves when talking about the atrocities committed in the Southern Cameroons, many have the impression that some who claim to be with them and speak for them in their quest for freedom are dishonest and are enemies within. Historic and current trajectories have inspired this Cameroon Concord News review of Barrister Agbor Ashu, the so-called Ambazonia spokesman in Ground Zero, as a person of interest in relation to Sun’s philosophy and dogma of war.

Over three months ago, Cameroon Concord News Group was dependably informed that prominent Southern Cameroons leaders invited Barrister Agbor Ashu to assume the leadership of the Southern Cameroons struggle in Ground Zero. However, he responded saying, “I am the National President of a legalized political party and will never get myself mixed up in your Ambazonian issues”.

Emmanuel Agbor Ashu (to use his three names) is implicitly a typical “bite and blow” and a serial killer that is deadlier than his onetime acolyte Ni John Fru Ndi the CPDM historical mistake who in utmost naivety, greed and disregard for inalienable rights of a people, openly rejected the Ambazonian ideology and legitimate right to self-determination.

Following the barrister’s refusal to take over leadership of Ground Zero affairs, Cameroon Concord News developed interest in the man of law including his genuine position on the Ambazonia struggle. Our investigation has uncovered a worrying trail of duplicity in the man seen by many as liberator.

Back in September 2018, when Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides who were abducted in Abuja, Nigeria in January 2018, surfaced in SED Yaoundé, the Interim Government of Ambazonia (IG) was eager to commission team of lawyers to defend them in any potential legal proceedings. When contacted to head the legal team of the NERA10, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu requested that the IG pay him FCFA 2.5 billion, buy him a new car, and furnish an office in Douala for him. Sako Ikome was stunned, Chris Anu was speechless, and Elvis Kumeta was astonishingly shocked by the Manyu Barrister’s low sense of judgment.

When the Interim Government informed him that his financial demands were bizarre and outlandishly unaffordable, the man of law replied, “then they can take them to the gallows”. Consequently, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu is one of the few high profile lawyers who elected not to defend the NERA10 in their court appearances in Yaoundé. Genuine revolutionaries and agents of justice and freedom do not abandon their own to the “gallows”. They often graciously embrace any opportunity to rescue those they claim are their comrades from the claws of a brutal oppressor.

Correspondingly, when the SDF was the only political show in town in the early 90s, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu, Larry Eyong Echaw, and TT Tabenyang reportedly took Chairman John Fru Ndi to Manyu on a political tour. Fru Ndi could not spend an hour in Ewelle village because Barrister Ashu had nowhere to host the visiting SDF delegation.

People are genuinely suspicious of a man who has prostituted from the CPDM to SDF and to his comical Reform Political Party. He has now appointed himself spokesman for the Ambazonia resistance on French Cameroun television networks. Barrister Emmanuel Ashu is now appearing on national television claiming to have a bright insight and deep understanding of the Ambazonia crisis when his true motive is being a surrogate for the disgraced Sako Ikome, who stole USD 2 million of Ambazonian money.

The Man of Law has pseudo academic intelligence, lacks composure, integrity and is emotionally too erratic. He has a relentless appetite for attention and is only a decent man where money is not involved. Those who happen to know him personally have increasingly defined him as a loose cannon devoid of trustworthiness. His recent defense of the failed two weeks lockdown of Ambazonia with a concealed agenda to increase the pain and sufferings of the people and subsequently spur them to revolt against the movement for the restoration of statehood by alluding to the UN General assembly proceedings in America also reveals Barrister Agbonde (to use his pet name) is out of touch with reality or not intellectually grounded with UN processes and public actions that exert positive influence on UN activities. A lockdown of a street in Maryland led by Ikome Sako would have been more impactful and would have saved Barrister Ashu from embarrassing himself with tantrums on TV just to defend a lie.

Our investigation uncovered that the Barrister has a propensity for asking the right questions and then precisely giving dishonest answers. To put it charitably, the gap between what he says and the truth is alarmingly wide, and this is a trait that has plagued him all his life. His last appearance on a French Cameroun TV claiming that the disgraced Sako Ikome, had control over Ambazonia self-defense forces was an inaccurate stereotype and the Barrister knows that. His numerous appearances on TV have given the barrister the false impression that he speaks for genuine Ambazonians.

Barrister Emmanuel Ashu “owns” a political party in French Cameroun called Reforme Party. The head office of this contraption of a political party is on his poorly conceived social media page. On the party’s Facebook page, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu published that “candidates who wish to be sponsored by the Reforme Party in the municipal and parliamentary elections 2020 in Cameroon, can contact the National President through the following numbers: 699989279, 675005043, 678511482,695969343”

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that over the last twenty years, Barrister Ashu has campaigned during every election in French Cameroun but never ended up on the ballot paper as he constantly sells out to the CPDM. He stood for elections in French Cameroun as recently as 2020 and the same man wants Southern Cameroonians to think that he is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them.

For Barrister Ashu Agbonde, the Ambazonia struggle represents an opportunity to line his pockets, especially, as, in his view, there’s an irreconcilable mismatch between the money that the Ambazonia Diaspora has and what is being sent to people like him in Ground Zero. The barrister draws comfort from the fact that the disgraced Sako Ikome and other members of the Maryland cabal have taken radically different paths to reality and integrity. The Southern Cameroons uprising has also presented an opportunity for the Barrister to escape poverty even if it means chasing winds and shadows.

In 2015 our Douala city reporter met Barrister Ashu dressed with an unpardonably tattered shoe, a pair of trousers with countless patches, a dreadful body odour, and looked desperately hungry. The barrister is undoubtedly another product of the unending poverty culture in the Cameroons, which is a result of Paul Biya’s dreadful pattern of governance. Being a product of this poverty culture, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu belongs to an unenviable club of Manyu citizens in their 60s who have not contributed an iota of development to the villages.

As a man who courts popularity at every turn, the Ambazonia struggle offers him a platform to present his outdated law credentials. With Fru John Nsoh now full of sorrow, harboring multiple illnesses and extremely lacking in financial finesse in Maryland, USA, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu has now replaced him in the French Cameroun city of Douala as Southern Cameroons leading legal embarrassment.

The barrister possesses neither character nor direction, and in terms of personality, he is deemed inadequate by his peers. Barrister Emmanuel Ashu’s pretence of hammering the Yaoundé regime on French Cameroun airwaves has been exposed as a scam. He is skilled at joining any bandwagon with evil plans. His legacy is one of political and personal failure, intellectual recklessness, and dismal poverty.

Ambazonians should be wary of this man, given his history and penchant for political prostitution and deception. He is attracted to political games, dirty and cheap money. To be sure, Barrister Emmanuel Ashu is a Southern Cameroons political disaster and a successful failure.

By Isong Asu in London and Dr Patrick Ayuk in Johannesburg

24, September 2021

R. Kelly: Jury weighs singer’s fate after grim sex crimes testimony ⁰

Following 21 days of evidence including 50 witnesses and hours of searing testimony, jurors on Friday began considering whether internationally famous singer R. Kelly orchestrated a sex crimes ring for nearly three decades.

The case, delayed over a year by the pandemic, is seen as landmark for the #MeToo movement as it is the first major sex abuse trial where the majority of accusers are Black women.

The prosecution painstakingly wove the threads of alleged wrongdoing into an intricate pattern of crimes they say the artist born Robert Sylvester Kelly perpetrated with impunity, capitalizing on his fame to prey on young women and teenagers for his own sexual gratification.

The state was tasked with proving the 54-year-old singer is guilty of racketeering, a serious charge commonly associated with the mafia that casts Kelly as the boss of an enterprise of associates who facilitated his abuse.

He is also charged with eight counts under the Mann Act, a law prohibiting transportation of people across state lines for sex.

To convict Kelly on racketeering, jurors must find him guilty of at least two of 14 “predicate acts” — the crimes elemental to the wider pattern of illegal wrongdoing.

Disturbing testimony intended to prove those acts included accusations of rape, druggings, imprisonment and child pornography.

Accusers’ stories ran in parallel: many of the alleged victims described meeting the singer at concerts or mall performances, and being handed slips of paper with Kelly’s contact by his entourage.

Several said they were told he could bolster their music industry aspirations.

But all were instead “indoctrinated” into Kelly’s world, according to prosecutors, groomed for sex at hiss whim and kept in line by “coercive means of control” including isolation and cruel disciplinarily measures.

“He’s not a genius. He’s a criminal. He’s a predator,” said Nadia Shihata, the assistant US attorney told jurors.

“Writing hit songs and performing for audiences onstage doesn’t give you license to commit crimes.”

The defense painted a drastically different portrait of the superstar, arguing he was a “sex symbol” and “playboy” who was being attacked by scorned exes and money-hungry superfans.

“They’re all working on these paydays,” said attorney Deveraux Cannick.

Shihata attacked that argument in her rebuttal, telling jurors that witnesses — nine women and two men detailed devastating abuse on the stand — “relived some of the worst periods of their lives for you.”

– Criminal pattern? –

The indictment centers around six women: Jerhonda, Stephanie, Faith, Sonja and a woman who testified under a pseudonym, along with the R&B star Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001.

Several more victims alleging abuse were allowed to testify as part of the prosecution’s bid to detail a criminal pattern, though there testimony is not part of the charges.

Six of the alleged victims were underage when Kelly initiated sex with them. Many victims also said the singer routinely filmed the encounters, which in several of the cases would constitute child pornography.

Sonja traveled from Utah to Kelly’s Chicago studio believing he would give her an interview for the radio show she was interning for.

Instead, she said his associates trapped her in a windowless room for days, before giving her food and drink that caused her to quickly fall asleep. She awoke with her underwear mysteriously removed, and saw Kelly putting his pants back on.

Another woman said Kelly coerced her into getting an abortion because he had impregnated her while she was underage. Four said they contracted herpes after sexual contact with the singer, who did not disclose that he carried the incurable venereal disease.

Core to the government’s case has been Kelly’s relationship with Aaliyah.

Kelly wrote and produced her first album — “Age Ain’t Nothin’ But A Number” — before illegally marrying her when she was just 15 because he feared he had impregnated her.

His former manager admitted in court to bribing a worker to obtain fake identification allowing the union, which was later annulled.

Prosecutors also showed the jury video recordings that were not viewable to the public but which they described as containing chilling footage of Kelly threatening, hitting and humiliating women and children.

Kelly, a major R&B star of the 1990s and early 2000s known for hits including “I Believe I Can Fly,” denies all charges.

He remained largely stoic during the proceedings, though during the prosecution’s marathon closing arguments he appeared to grow agitated, shaking his head.

Abuse accusations have long trailed the wildly successful recording artist but he evaded them for decades. He faces prosecutions in three additional jurisdictions, including Illinois federal court.

Source: AFP

24, September 2021

Cameroon: What happened to wisdom? ⁰

Insanity is when we do things using the same methods and equipment which only deliver the same results which cause us to go around blaming external factors without seeking to know if new and innovative ways and tools can deliver better and more dependable results.

This is exactly what the Yaoundé government has been doing over the last five years. Despite expert advice that there will never be a military victory in the conflict that has pitted Cameroon’s English-speaking minority against the Yaoundé government which erroneously thinks that everything is a nail because it holds a hammer.

The Yaoundé government has an outdated mentality that does not provide for dialogue or negotiations. It strongly holds that only military violence can bring about peace in the country even when experts around the world have clearly demonstrated that going to the negotiating table can silence the guns and hold the country together.

Its poorly planned war has already killed more than 15,000 Cameroonians with soldiers accounting for almost 30% of those who have been sent to an early grave by a war that could have been avoided through talks.

There is nothing wrong complaining and it usually behoves the leadership of a country to prove that the complainant is not necessarily right through sound development actions and cogent, but humbling logic.

In Cameroon, you get persecuted for complaining. You get killed for pointing out that something is hurting you. You get vilified for underscoring that things can be done in a different way.

Five years after this grievous mistake was made by the Yaoundé government, it is still promoting a strategy and logic that will never stand the test of time.

Over the last two weeks, the military has taken a beaten from Southern Cameroonian fighters who have become more sophisticated and are determined to prove that they can achieve their independence through military means.

The country’s English-speaking minority has been marginalized for decades to the point where young men and women are no longer scared of death. They now hold that theirs is a spiritual and religious obligation to save their country and people through the barrel of the gun and when young men reach such levels of thinking, they are bound to hold that laying down their lives is a national and religious duty.

With such a mentality, it is hard to beat them on the battlefield. Strangely, the government which is blinded by arrogance does not think that trying something new could be the relief and, even the cure, for this problem which is only festering as more people die.

This explains why yesterday, the country’s defense minister, Joseph Beti Assomo, declared in Bamenda that the military will change its strategy in order to minimize the casualties the military has taken over the years.

As soon as he made his pompous statement, military trucks started rolling into the Northwest region of the country where poorly trained Cameroon soldiers have been dropping down like flies. The pressure on these young soldiers is mounting and many of them are looking forward to the day the government and the various factions in the conflict can sink their pride and see the negotiating table as a lesser evil to the battlefield.

Unfortunately, the government has not yet realized that military tanks will not be the real game changers in this war that has already created many rivers of blood in the two English-speaking regions of the country. Southern Cameroonian fighters have found a way to counter the military’s superior fire power. The war, which in the beginning looked like a conventional war, has morphed into a guerrilla warfare where Southern Cameroonian fighters are making the most of their mastery of the terrain to inflict a lot of pain on the country’s sex-starved and alcohol-inflamed soldiers.

The old and outdated military tanks that were grudgingly making their way to the Northwest region will surely not be a march to the sophisticated IEDs which Southern Cameroonian fighters have been using over the last year to make mincemeat of the military’s strategy.

The Yaoundé government wants to win the war to prove a point, but it is permanently resorting to old military strategies that have been retired by countries with massive military experience.

It is hard to beat a determined minority, especially when such a minority develops a military of its own that is capable of striking fear in the minds of regular army soldiers.

The examples of Eritrea, South Sudan and Timor Leste should be great lessons to those who really want to look into the mirror of history. The latest example is that of Tigray which has clearly demonstrated to the Ethiopian army that being small is not necessarily a disadvantage.

In modern times, holding a country together, especially a country with multiple linguistic groups, implies talking all the time. Switzerland has had its fair share of trouble with the various linguistic groups and the battle was won at the negotiating table.

Canada too has walked down that dangerous path when Quebecers felt they could walk the path to independence. English Canada felt a heavy hand could address the issue, but to its greatest dismay, the harder Quebecers were treated, the more radicalized they became.

Mass demonstrations on the streets of Montreal were their weapons of choice and these crowds gave the country a very bad name and Canada’s economy took real tough blows to the liver as protesters blocked roads and made it hard for foreign investors to come in to help the country’s economy grow.

Examples of minority disgruntlement are legion and it is up to the Cameroon government to learn the lessons of history. Even France, which is supporting the Yaounde government in its genocidal mission in Cameroon, did not address its problems with its minorities by investing in arms.

France chose the negotiating table and its various minorities are comfortably at home in a united and indivisible France. Why can Cameroonian authorities not learn from those who are willing to bankroll their irresponsible and genocidal mission?

Talking and negotiating are as old as man. Humans, who are supposed to be higher animals, are supposed to resort to arms only if and when all other means of conflict resolution have failed.

In the Southern Cameroons’ case, the government never employed any known conflict management and resolution tools to address the legitimate and genuine concerns of the English-speaking minority.

Right from the beginning, the government thought trickery could address the problems. Its pseudo-talks with teachers and lawyers when the conflict started five years ago only made things worse. Union leaders – Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Niba – were hastily arrested in Buea and hauled to Yaounde, ending the pseudo-talks, something that resulted in the escalation of the conflict.

Despite the numerous deaths and the massive destruction to the two English-speaking regions of the country and the national economy, there is still room for talks. The government must come down its high horse to meet the various Southern Cameroonian factions in the war halfway so that some degree of calm can return to the country.

After five years, the government should realize that things will play out but not the way it wants. The time for change has come and it is time to consider other views. Insisting on killing the insurgency may only result in the balkanization of Cameroon.

Mistakes have already been made. Many young lives have been cut short. Does it make any sense to send more young men to an early grave just because the government finds it hard to come back on the statement the country’s president, Paul Biya, made in 2016 to the effect that the form of the state was non-negotiable?

Don’t wise people understand that only fools never have a change of heart? If the country’s president has to be classified as a wise man, he must, at this juncture, understand that Cameroon’s integrity and unity cannot be guaranteed under the current political dispensation.

A brighter and more peaceful future for Cameroon will only be guaranteed if and only if a new way is charted and this will require a change of mind on the president’s part and a change of the democratic system which is spreading more pain and chaos in the country; a system that will be marked by a devolution of power and the empowerment of grassroots communities.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai