The Gene

PROLOGUE

Dear Reader, you are about to embark on a roller coaster ride of a story which has been written in a literary style like none that you have hitherto experienced … if, indeed, you are an avid reader of fiction. The exciting page-turning journey you are about to embark on is one for which the Author/Publisher has coined the term faction, a new literary genre that blends together biomedical, scientific, and historical as well as contemporary political, diplomatic, socio-anthropological and other facts, including events, occurrences, and/or knowledge, as reported or presented by others, or as known within the public domain, set against an entirely fictitious thematic plot which incorporates some thought-provoking social, political, theological, and scientific commentary, and/or propositions, as well as elements of what is popularly referred to in the motion picture industry as sci-fi – science fiction. So, please … enjoy the ride!

Doc M.K.

INTERESTING QUOTES: Business is creating something you can be proud of and, at the end of the year, you pay the bills! ∼ Sir Richard Branson, self-made British billionaire; humanitarian and ecological activist; Author and Chairman of Virgin Group.

"My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people." ∼ Steve Jobs, College drop-out American billionaire; Co-Founder and CEO, Apple Computers, Inc.; Co-Founder and CEO, Pixar; Founder and CEO, NeXT Inc.

1

10:15 A.M., Monday, April 15

The Nelson Mandela International Conference Centre

Pretoria, South Africa

‘AS YOU CAN SEE, Mr. President, this is the only way by which we can get the American government to own up and atone for the crimes that it has perpetrated against many people around the world, particularly against you Africans, for far too long,’ concluded the self-appointed "activist and crusader of the new Cold War" which he had waged against the American government … singlehandedly!

The activist had personally launched this cold war against the government of the United States of America for what he believed to be the unfair position assumed by this government regarding the current political and socio-economic order of the world, with the dawn of the new millennium now set upon the people of planet Earth.

The life threatening and, for the majority of the afflicted individuals, deadly human health-related "problem which was blamed on the poor African monkey, or chimpanzee, by the pundits who were bent on diverting world attention from the truth" had wreaked havoc on the populations of many countries around the world. And, as was always the sad case, Africa, and, particularly, the sub-Saharan region of the continent, had been disproportionately affected … for some reason or other!

It had been just a little over two decades since the cause of the problem was identified and many scientists around the world had embarked on some serious business over the same period to try and understand and elucidate its nature with a view to find a solution to it. But the effects of this unique human health-related problem on the global society, wherever it had reared its ugly head, were so pervasive that it affected and ruined everything about human life in such a manner that no other human health-related problem hitherto known to mankind had from time immemorial!

While the U.S. government considered the artificial creation of this problem to be a top secret known only to a few individuals within the high echelons of the American political and military administrative machinery, the American activist had in his possession detailed first hand information about this U.S. government’s so-called top secret. As far as the American government was concerned, any piece of information relating to this secret was still considered to be highly classified, in accordance with the U.S. federal law as promulgated under the Freedom of Information Act, which experts in American constitutional law commonly referred to simply as FOI.

Not even the European black plague of the Medieval era, or the small pox and polio epidemics of the 19th and 20th Centuries, had such a damning effect on all aspects of human life as this health-related problem had on society wherever it occurred around the world. This human health-related problem, which had quickly become global when it emerged within the human species, had ruined individual lives, damaged marriages, split families, devastated whole communities, brought down otherwise successful companies by depleting their human capital and disrupting industrial activity in virtually all the economic sectors of the most affected countries, and, ultimately, destroyed entire nations in terms of their social structure, economic performance, and, predictably , their political outlook.

For this, the American activist was determined to expose his government, the government of the United States of America, as being the real culprit of this crime against humanity, as he personally considered the action that the U.S. government of the day had taken way back when to be.

And it was for this reason that the activist had lobbied several African heads of state and government, mainly from the SADC region of sub-Saharan Africa – the Southern African Development Community – to convene an extremely important summit of the African political leaders to discuss the issue of holding those that were responsible for creating this problem accountable and to work out a legal framework for reparations, in accordance with international law … both civil as well as criminal.

This region of Africa was particularly important to the American activist’s campaign as it was the part of the world that had been affected the most by this human health-related problem on the continent and, for that matter, as compared with the entire world. And, according to the information the American activist had in his possession, this problem was created by the U.S. government back in the early 1960s as one of its covert military-related activities that were conducted in the vicinity of that region of the continent some forty or so years before. The American activist was now prepared to share this secret with the leaders of the SADC region of Africa as the basis for his international campaign aimed at lobbying the U.S. Congress to pass legislation that would compel the U.S. government to acknowledge its culpability and, accordingly, compensate these countries for the suffering they had hitherto endured as a result.

The constant attack on the incumbent South African President, Xolani Khumalo, and his Minister of Health, Dr. S’bongile Gwala-Motiane – a medical doctor by profession who was rumored to have a serious drinking problem, which she, however, publicly denied – by certain segments of both the domestic South African as well as the international news media for what was popularly viewed as their insensitivity to the seriousness of this problem in their country and the plight of those among their citizens that were affected by the problem, was effectively exploited by the American activist to convince President Khumalo to call for and host this extremely important regional summit of the African heads of state and government.

The summit was held in the scenic state capital, Pretoria, which was located in the Gauteng Province of the Republic of South Africa. As was quite common with a number of the indigenous South African languages, most words or names in that country were not pronounced as they appeared in their written Roman alphabetical form, the American activist was told. So, the G in the name of this province was actually pronounced as if it were the letter H. Therefore, in the local siTswana language – which was socio-anthropologically related to two other South African tribes, the Sotho and the Pedi – the province’s name was in effect pronounced "How-tèng." Similarly, the tribal name Sotho was actually pronounced "S -t ," as if it had the letter u in place of the letter o.

Since 1994, when the new multiparty democratic political dispensation was ushered in, this country had increasingly become known at home and abroad as the "Rainbow Nation, due to its ethnic multiplicity and diverse cultural backgrounds. The American activist" had been reliably informed that the term had first been used by the first democratically elected indigenous Black African Head of State of that country, Mr. Nelson Mandela.

The conference that this rainbow nation hosted was considered to be so vital by many African governments that national leaders came from as far away as Senegal, Ghana, and Nigeria, in West Africa, and Egypt, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, in the northeastern and eastern part of the continent, to participate in its deliberations. Key among them were President Yoweri Museveni of the internationally well-known East African country, Uganda, for his exemplary role in the fight against this human health-related problem in his own country, which role had been publicly acknowledged even by the incumbent American head of state himself, President Dwight G. Foxx. The latter was a Republican, well-known in both domestic as well as international political and diplomatic circles to be a womanizer and a warmonger who was an avid campaigner against global terrorism, as he saw it waged primarily against America and her Western European allies, as well as the Zionist state of Israel, by Islamic fundamentalists who were based mainly in the Middle East.

Also in attendance of this summit of the African heads of state and government were the presidents of Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Swaziland, as these countries were among the worst affected on the continent.

Extended special invitation for their elder statesmanship and wisdom were the first Black African to rule the host country, former President Nelson Rholihlahla Mandela, and the former first Republican President of Zambia, Dr. Kenneth David Kaunda, who was popularly known back in his home country with his signature white handkerchief simply as KK.

Mandela, affectionately called Tata Madiba in his Xhosa language by his fellow countrymen and women who considered him to be the father – Tata – of their new rainbow nation, was on record to have maintained a progressive view on the situation regarding this human health-related problem in his country, while KK was considered a pioneer in the fight against the problem in Africa as he was the first African head of state to reveal the fact that one of his own sons had succumbed to the same problem when most people within his own government and on the continent at large were still in denial of the health-related problem when it had affected them and their families during the early period of its recognition by Western medical experts and biomedical research scientists.

The American activist had just informed the participants of the summit that the human health-related problem which had afflicted their societies was caused by some unusual virus which, according to the information he had in his possession, happened to have been specially bioengineered by the military establishment of the U.S. government back in the early 1960s as a potential biological weapon of mass destruction to be used in conventional warfare.

≈ · ≈

Earlier on during the speeches presented by a number of the keynote speakers at the summit, President Museveni had delivered a dire account of the devastation his country had suffered as a result of this hitherto not clearly understood human health-related problem. The Ugandan head of state reported that, in his country, it appeared the problem was closely linked to people’s sexual behavior or gender-based socio-cultural practices, as entire villages had been wiped out in some of his country’s provinces where polygamy was the marital norm and men had a tendency to be highly promiscuous in the expression of their sexual appetite, as was commonly practiced among the baNyankole people in his own home region of southwestern Uganda. The Ugandan President further informed the delegates of the Pretoria summit that this human health-related problem seemed to exacerbate the incidence and severity of other commonly occurring infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, meningitis, and malaria, to mention just a few. Worse still, according to the information he had received from medical experts in his country, the Ugandan leader told the audience at the Pretoria summit that this health-related problem also diminished the ability of those suffering from these common infectious diseases to respond to medication as well as they were ordinarily expected to, thereby placing a heavy burden on the Ugandan government’s already over-stretched healthcare services delivery system in terms of its capital as well as labor input requirements.

Echoing similar sentiments, some of the leaders from the other African countries who attended the summit indicated that compounding their inability to effectively deal with this mysterious human health-related problem was the fact that donor fatigue had now become evident among their partners in the fight against the problem, who were mainly from among the member states of the European Union. Funds to pay for the various state-sponsored activities aimed at solving the problem, or, at best, mitigating its deleterious effects on their societies, were increasingly becoming a rare commodity. With private sector economic productivity dropping precipitously as companies suffered massive losses in human capital and incurred increased expenditure through replacing employees, or training newly hired unskilled labor, virtually all these African governments had to contend with eroded tax bases and the consequential reduction in tax revenue for spending on the important social sectors of health, education, housing, food production, and social security.

For the same reason, these African governments could also not afford to meet their political campaign rhetoric about subsidizing agricultural inputs, once elected into power, as a measure to boost economic activity in this sector and, thus, improve food security for their citizens, as they soon realized upon assuming political leadership of their countries that state coffers inherited from the outgoing administration were often virtually empty, and budget support by the so-called donor nations was increasingly under a squeeze by the tax payers back in their respective countries, who viewed their donation as a contribution that merely ended up in corrupt hands and which never got to the needy people of the recipient countries for whom the donation was intended in the first place to alleviate poverty. This, in turn, had a negative counter effect on the political stability of these African countries as a socio-economic environment was often created which was conducive to mass civil unrest; a political prospect that caused jitters among many of the political leaders who were in attendance at this all important African summit!

Another eminent personality who addressed the participants of the Pretoria summit was the incumbent Secretary-General of the United Nations. Originally from the former West African French colony of Senegal, and the first African ever to have been appointed Secretary-General of the United Nations – UN – Mr. Diop Omèlou also felt dutifully compelled to show his support for the objectives of the regional international African summit which was in progress in Pretoria, South Africa. The man had served the UN for more than thirty years, in the process of which he had risen through the ranks of the international civil service organization, eventually becoming one of the most experienced and highly respected international civil servants of all time.

Also speaking earlier via live satellite-relayed video link from his office at the United Nations headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S.A., with an unmistakable deep French accent, the UN Secretary-General addressed the delegates at the Pretoria conference by saying, ‘Your Èxcèllencés, distinguished guests, lèdíes and gèntlemèn, it is wiz zè deepèst sense of sòrrów and dísmày about zè conséequèncès of zè problém for which you seek to find a lasting sòlutión at zis cònferénce, zat I wóod like to pledge, on my own béehàf and, índèed, on béehàf of my cóllèagues here at zè United Natións, my unwavering súppòrt, in whatever form shall be deemed appròpriéte, for zè cause zat you are championíng at zis noble summít being held in Pretòriá, tódày. I wish to personàllý sènk Prèsidént Khúmalò for gràciouslý ágreeing to host zis cònferénce, zè convèníng of which has been long ovèrrdue, I must cónfèss. Allow me to also sènk our good friend, zè "activíst," for being coùràgeóus énòuf to cónvìnce Prèsidént Khúmalò to cónvène zis internationál summít, which I cònsidérr to be extremely impòrtánt, not only for zè pèoplé of sub-Saharan Africà and, in partìculár, zè SÀDC règión of Sàuzén Africá, but for all humanitè.’

Continuing with his imposition of French on the English language in his manner of speaking, notwithstanding the length of time he had spent living in New York City, the UN chief concluded by saying, ‘I, zèrefóre, wish ýou súccèss in your dèliberàtións and I look forward to working wiz ýou all in zis èndèvórr as time prógrèssès. Sènk ýou for allowing me to address ýou and please be assùwárd zat, àlzóugh I am absènt physicàllý, I am zère wiz ýou in spírìt. May God bless ýou and zè contìnént of Africà,’ and, in an instant, the screen went blank as the satellite signal from New York was terminated.

Turning to face his guests, President Khumalo said, ‘Your Excellencies , distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen, it is now my pleasure to introduce to you a man whom most of you may know very little about, as he rarely seeks media attention in his activities, but whose contribution we will all find to be extremely useful in our efforts aimed at trying to find a permanent solution to the vexing problem for which, at our special guest’s encouragement, I decided to convene this crucial meeting of the heads of state and government of the countries represented here today.’

Continuing with his introduction of the special guest to the assembly of distinguished African politicians and diplomats, the South African head of state further said, ‘Please, bear with me for the manner in which I present our guest to you here. It is purely for reasons of personal security that our comrade’s physical identity is deliberately kept a secret, given the highly sensitive nature of his crusade.’

‘So, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen, here is our special guest of honor,’ announced President Khumalo, without mentioning the special guest’s name.

Emerging from behind the maroon-colored, rich velvet curtains festooned with aristocratic royal gold motifs and trimming, that hung from floor to ceiling and were automatically parted in a smooth and quiet manner by some high-tech modern electromechanical mechanism to either side of the stage occupied by the keynote speakers as soon as President Khumalo concluded his announcement, was a hooded male character clad in military camouflage, who was identified by the audience as being a White man only by the color of the skin around his eyes and lips, which were barely exposed through the slits in the black woolen ski mask that covered his head and neck. The man’s hands were hidden in black leather gloves similar to those traditionally won by the Hell’s Angels bikers. The man was also wearing standard calf muscle-high black leather military boots with straps and all. In his general outlook, he might as well have been brandishing a Kalashnikov in readiness for a bank robbery!

But, instead, on his upper right arm the special guest sported a black cloth band and pinned onto the flap of the left breast pocket of his long-sleeved military shirt was the usual half-twisted red-colored badge which was now popularly used as the international symbol for one’s identification with people living with the "HIV and AIDS" scourge.

President Khumalo’s special guest had no papers in his hands for his speech.

When he stepped up to the podium to address his audience, total silence engulfed the conference hall, as the distinguished dignitaries eagerly awaited the mysterious character’s opening remarks.

2

9:00 A.M., Monday, April 15

The Oval Office

The White House

Washington, D.C.

U.S.A.

THE INCUMBENT PRESIDENT OF the United States of America, Dwight G. Foxx, currently the most powerful political figure on earth, was about to call to order one of the most trying cabinet level meetings of the second and, in accordance with the American democratic political system, last term of his administration.

With the demise of the Soviet Empire and the end of the Cold War era in the early 1990s, America found herself squarely placed at the center stage of world politics as the sole leader of the free democracies of the so-called First World countries. With this reality came the unprecedented need for the political leadership of the United States of America to take stock of some of the most horrendous things that virtually all past U.S. administrations had done, both within and outside this great democratic country. These were horrendous acts which were executed all in the name of protecting the interests of the American people … whatever that meant!

Now the chickens had come home to roost and, in the process, haunt the current U.S. leadership as well as the innocent American citizenry at large!

Thus, the incumbent U.S. President had a number of domestic as well as international political and socio-economic issues on his table that unfolded in the twilight of the 20th Century, right through the dawn of the 21st Century, which he considered to be rather distasteful as they had serious sociopolitical implications on the domestic front for his grand old party, or GOP, as the Republican Party was popularly known in America.

An avid campaigner against global terrorism as he saw it waged primarily against America, her Western European allies, and the Zionist state of Israel by Islamic fundamentalists, who viewed Westerners as infidels, the incumbent U.S. President was not thrilled about having to contend with such problems as the unsuccessful global hunt for Osama bin Laden … dead or alive … that perceived or real nemesis of the American people, as their government would have them believe. Then there was the problem of the protracted but hitherto equally unsuccessful wars against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq, as well as the uncertainty of the political stability of the post-Saddam Hussein era of that country following the imminent withdrawal of U.S. troops from it, due to the ever present internal hostilities between the majority Shi’a and the minority Sunni Muslims.

Quickly popping up on his mental cyber screen also was the intractable problem of the Middle East between Israel and the Palestinian people and their long-lasting quest for independent statehood; the latter being further complicated by the ideological differences between the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization – PLO – in the West Bank territory, which was largely Sunni and believed in a secular form of government, and the Hamas faction of the PLO in the Gaza Strip, which was Shi’a in outlook and was intent on establishing an Islamic Palestinian state with direct links to the fundamentalist Islamic groups, Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Muslim Brothers in both Egypt and Lebanon, the latter of which was viewed by some Western sociopolitical observers as being less radical than the former group, and the fundamentalist Islamic states of Syria and Iran, for financial and material support in its stance against Israel and her official policy of proactively carrying out preemptive strikes at and assassinating the leaders of the various disjointed factions of the Palestinian body politic whom the Israeli government viewed as terrorists bent on annihilating the Zionist Jewish state.

Compounding the latter problem which the U.S. President had to deal with was the uncertain role that Iran seemed to increasingly play in the whole saga between the Palestinians and the Israelis vis-à-vis her highly suspicious interest in developing nuclear power stations for domestic use, on the one hand, and, on the other, the never ending and extremely vexing problem concerning the radical Shiite Islamic political group, Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon, and Syria’s continuous destabilization of that country through her support of this fundamentalist Muslim faction, in collaboration with Iran, in their unrelenting expression of hostility towards Israel, as the Foxx administration saw it.

President Foxx even wondered whether or not some of the deadly earthquakes that occurred in recent times with increased frequency and strength in Iran were not a symptom of the Iranian government’s underground testing of the nuclear devices it was strongly suspected by the West and the state of Israel to be busy developing for its nuclear armament program. Not to mention the threat now seriously posed by the North Korean regime with its persistent refusal to become a signatory to the global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament treaty and that Asian country’s insatiable desire to reshape the world sociopolitical order through its inexorable efforts aimed at becoming one of the world’s military nuclear powerhouses.

Even the endless squabbling between Pakistan and India over Indian-controlled Kashmir was worrisome to the incumbent U.S. President, more so given the fact that both the Islamabad as well as the New Delhi authorities were busy with their nuclear weapons building capabilities, which Washington considered a serious destabilizing factor for the region, but had a tough time dealing with as the Foxx administration had to juggle its diplomatic ties with both parties in such a way as not to alienate either one of them as one of its most important allies in the region and around the world. Furthermore, India’s persistent refusal, like North Korea, to append its signature to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty among the nations that had nuclear weapons capability was extremely bothersome to the incumbent U.S. President … for obvious reasons!

However, the incumbent U.S. President sometimes considered Pakistan to be a pariah state due to its ambivalence when dealing with his government on the subject of terrorism and the U.S. government’s foreign policy on the fight against this threat in relation to the Taliban in Afghanistan, as this group of Islamic fundamentalists also had a firm foothold on Pakistani soil, with the full knowledge – and, probably, sympathy, if not full support, thought the U.S. President – of the Pakistani authorities. President Foxx strongly believed that Pakistan was playing the game of double agent when it came to dealing with the issue concerning the Taliban and their jihadist stance against the United States of America and her Western European allies. Compounding the political-cum-diplomatic problem that these Islamic fundamentalists posed for the Foxx administration were the continued internal hostilities that frequently flared up between the minority Afghan Shi’a Muslims, who constituted the majority of the ruling class, and the majority Sunni Muslims who believed they were having a raw deal in the governance of their country in a secular fashion by the Shi’ites, and were intent on establishing a nation-state based on the principles of fundamentalist Islamic sharia law.

The quagmire that President Foxx found himself in concerning Afghanistan was one which was further compounded by the involvement of some of the NATO member states – that is, nation-states that were members of an international association known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – a multinational Western military alliance led by the United States of America, Britain, France, and Germany, whose mandate was to protect the territorial integrity as well as extra-territorial interests of one or more of the organization’s members. The citizens of some of these states had begun to lobby their government’s not to commit their boys and girls in the military to fight, what they believed to be by proxy, foreign wars on behalf of the United States of America, which they saw as having been engineered by the latter for her own national interests.

Then there was the equally intractable political problem in Northern Ireland between Gerry Adams’ Catholic nationalist Sinn Féin Party and its terrorist military wing, the Irish Republican Army – popularly known around the world as the IRA – which was fighting for total independence from the United Kingdom, and the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party led by Tom Elliott, which chose to remain united with Great Britain under the rule of the British Royal Monarch. The diametrically opposed political situations in Northern Ireland put the Foxx administration in a quandary as to how to handle the two entities without alienating either of the two Irish political parties or upsetting America’s diplomatic relations with Britain.

On the domestic front, the incumbent U.S. President was also faced with the equally seemingly insurmountable problem of drug trafficking into continental U.S.A. from Latin American states, particularly Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Honduras, and Bolivia, as well as from Afghanistan and the Indian Himalayas in Near East Asia. The smuggling of illicit psychotropic drugs into the United States of America had now reached such high levels in terms of the quantity that was smuggled into the continental U.S. territory, and the tactics used in smuggling into the country the illegal narcotics, such as cocaine, heroin, opium, methamphetamine, and hashish, had become so viciously dangerous that the United States Drug Enforcement Administration – DEA – had began referring to the problem as narcoterrorism.

The American President was tremendously bothered even by the manic brutality and hideousness with which illicit drug-related murders were committed by criminal gangs outside as well as inside prisons in some Central American countries – notably Mexico, Colombia, and Honduras – where the murder victims were not only butchered in the most vicious manner humanly conceivable, but were further dismembered, their headless bodies hung under highway bridges or left piled up in trucks that were driven to and deliberately abandoned in public places, such as in front of major supermarkets or shopping malls, for all to see, with their lifeless heads being dropped off in boxes on the doorsteps of police precincts, which was all done by the culprits with a remarkable degree of impunity!

In these countries, there were also political organizations which the incumbent U.S. President and his administration considered to be terrorist organizations, such the left-wing paramilitary rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – FARC – in Colombia, and the right-wing militia group in Peru, the so-called Shining Path, which were invariably linked to some drug trafficking rings in these Latin American countries, and were thus viewed as a threat to the stability of that region and the member states of the Organization of American States – OAS – of which the United States of America was a highly active member. Some of the Latin American member states of the latter organization were also ex-officio members of the regional economic organization known as the North Atlantic Free Trade Association – NAFTA – with Mexico being a key observer of and one of the prominent participants in the trade-related activities that this association administered on behalf of its members within the region and beyond.

The U.S. President was further disturbed by reports of frequent kidnappings for ransom, which had become the order of the day in countries like Venezuela, notwithstanding his negative views about the incumbent ruler of that South American country who was a socialist and a staunch ally of the communist island nation-state of Cuba in the Caribbean. This was another country which the American President considered to be governed by yet another pariah regime. The kidnappings that were carried out in this country often involved the murder of the kidnapped victims by their captors when the ransom the latter demanded was not paid by either the victim’s relatives or the state.

Then there was the contentious issue of the U.S. government being pushed by certain domestic social networks as well as some politicians on Capitol Hill to invest in renewable and sustainable forms of energy, including biofuel, in order to minimize the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels which were now scientifically known to be the major contributors to the global warming phenomenon known as the greenhouse effect. In tandem with this challenge was the potential threat, as perceived by others, that the generation of biofuels, such as from cereal cash crops, had on global food security; a politically highly sensitive and emotive subject, particularly for the developing nations of the world!

The practice by some of the major industrialized First World countries whereby they diverted a sizeable quantity of their excess cereal, or grain, harvest to biofuel production had caused an increase in the volatility of global food prices, and this had, in turn, called for demands from the countries that constituted what was referred to as the "G20," the group of twenty leading developing nations on the planet, for more transparency in the sharing of information on cereal or grain stocks, or inventories, that were being hoarded by the major governments of the world, such as the United States of America, Great Britain, Canada, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, China, and Australia, as well as the leading privately owned multinational food companies of the West, such as the gigantic, family-owned multinational American grain corporation, Cargill, which was based in an exclusive, uppity suburb of the wealthy residents of the city of Minneapolis in Minnesota, U.S.A., known as Minnetonka, which were traditionally reluctant to reveal how much grain they had stockpiled in their silos, or granaries, for the proverbial rainy day.

The Foxx administration was also faced with the serious problem on the international scene regarding the issue of global warming and its effect on climate change, which had largely resulted – as the pundits of the phenomenon contended – from the increased industrialization of the world. The refusal by the United States of America and other industrialized Western nations to sign onto the Kyoto Protocol, which sought to force the most industrialized nations of the world, as well as the emerging industrial nations – that is, Brazil, India, China, and, to a lesser degree, South Africa, which constituted what was referred to as BRICS, and were the leading members of the G20 – to drastically reduce their levels of greenhouse gas emissions or face penalties, had engendered much hostility from the developing nations of the world toward the U.S. and the other member states of the United Nations which had sided with the U.S. on its position regarding this internationally highly contentious issue. The so-called Third World nations felt they were unfairly disadvantaged by the development of this global phenomenon, as they did not contribute significantly to the generation of greenhouse gases – also known as carbon emissions – on the planet, given their industrially underdeveloped status and, thus, their suboptimal capacity to significantly contribute to the manifestation of this atmospheric problem confronting planet Earth.

The incumbent U.S. President was even concerned about the observed increase in the resurgence of xenophobia among some youth in some European countries – such as Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia – as was exhibited through anti-Semitic acts that were carried out against people of Jewish heritage, or anti-Islamic acts that were perpetrated against what he considered as the good Muslims of the world who were genuine followers of the noble teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, as well as street racist attacks on individuals of Asian origin, the displaying of Nazi signs by neo-Nazis, and the making of racist remarks, including monkey cat-calls, directed at Black soccer players in football stadiums in some of these countries during inter-club domestic football games or international soccer matches that were scheduled for play in the cited countries by the world football governing body, the International Federation of Football Associations – FIFA.

To crown it all was the recent terrorist attack on New York City, which was clearly embarrassing to the Foxx administration. This was a naked adulteration of the American people’s pride in their government’s prowess and capability to provide them with complete safety and security on their home turf, which had resulted in the total destruction of one of the greatest symbols of America’s socio-economic superiority over all other nations on planet Earth, the architecturally magnificent and seemingly indestructible twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City’s Manhattan District, and the untimely death of nearly three thousand innocent citizens of both the U.S. as well as numerous other nations around the world who had been working there at the time of the disaster. Indeed, a bold aggression and a clear violation of America’s territorial integrity, perpetrated by the enemies of the American people, which had happened on the incumbent U.S. President’s watch … and which he could not stomach!

Thus, the issue to be discussed at this cabinet level meeting being held in the Oval Office of the American White House this morning was just another thorn in his foot that the President of the United States of America wanted so badly to be rid of. And he was determined to see to it that his team of confidants gathered here today delivered on this one … and that they better be fast!

Notwithstanding the fact that this was his last term in office, the incumbent Republican U.S. President, nevertheless, did not wish to leave behind the legacy of being the one leader of the greatest democracy on earth who had conspired to condemn entire generations of various nations around the globe, and more so in Africa, to eternal damnation. Besides, he had been popularly elected to two terms in office mainly because of his Southern Methodist evangelical roots and the political support he enjoyed among the conservative Protestant Christian Right of the American electorate. It would simply not sit well with these folks, who lived by Judeo-Christian values, if it were even remotely sensed that he had not been compassionate enough about the suffering of those poor Africans, not through their own undoing, but all because of the American government’s desire to forever dominate the world!

And he damn well knew how important it was for many of those self-righteous and bigoted right- wingers to be seen in the eyes of the world to be true followers of the Lord Jesus Christ and his teachings about loving thy neighbor as thy love thyself and doing unto others as thy would have them do unto thee!

President Foxx even secretly wondered in his mind as to how, in God’s name, the likes of Pat Robertson of the 700 Club, or Jerry Falwell, founder of the so-called Moral Majority in America, could face themselves in the mirror each morning and earnestly believe they were headed for heaven in their hereafter life, given their well-publicized extreme negative views about people of certain ethnic backgrounds who were evidently God’s children, whom He had created also in His image, with whom these anointed men of God had to share space on this planet … whether they liked it or not!

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Urgently summoned to this – perhaps his last – most crucial and highly secretive foreign policy meeting, the proceedings of which were also highly classified, were the top seven key members of the incumbent U.S. President’s cabinet and White House staff: Secretary of State, Gwendolyn Mayfield, Defense Secretary, Richard – Dick – Riley, Secretary of the recently established Department of Homeland Security, H. William – Bill – Clifford III, National Security Adviser, Edward – Ted – McDonald, and U.S. Central Intelligence Agency – CIA – Director, Mark O’Donnell.

Also in attendance were White House Chief of Staff, Jack Witherspoon, who also served as legal advisor to the President, and Presidential Press Aide, Ann-Marie Langford.

Vice President Sean Fitzgerald was not in attendance of the meeting as he was away in China representing the American President at a marathon, fourteen-day Sino-U.S. economic summit held in Beijing, the capital of the People’s Republic of China. At this all important international summit, the U.S. government sought to express its dissatisfaction with China’s unfair trade practices with the rest of the world, particularly with respect to the textile and steel industries, as well as its monetary policy, both of which the U.S. government and its allies, mainly among the member states of the European Union, viewed as having a negative impact on the global economy. Also included on the U.S. Vice President’s agenda was the never-ending question of the desire by the Chinese government to have Taiwan recognized internationally as a crucial geopolitical part of mainland China, to which the United States and its closest allies around the world were vehemently opposed, and about which the incumbent U.S. President had instructed his deputy to make clear to the Chinese authorities … in no uncertain terms!

In the same vein as the sensitive issue concerning the sovereignty of Taiwan, the incumbent U.S. President was very much concerned about the equally contentious question of Tibet and its people’s yearning for political independence from China as a free and sovereign state, as well as the Chinese authorities’ vehement refusal to recognize the exiled Dalai Lama as the spiritual and de facto secular leader of the Tibetan people, just as the rest of the world had.

In a rather uncharacteristic manner for a Republican U.S. President, most of whom were generally perceived not to care about Africa and the problems with which the continent was confronted, President Foxx was also very much concerned about the political influence that China was increasingly exerting on some of the African countries, long after the post-Second World War liberation wars of independence against Western European colonialism, with her aggressive involvement in foreign direct investment in these countries. The incumbent U.S. President had serious doubts about the sincerity of the Chinese authorities with their so-called support for the socio-economic development of the continent.

Curiously, as if the learning of lessons was something that was – anthropologically speaking – naturally alien to the indigenous African, some of the African leaders were now busy blindly luring the Chinese to jump onto the old bandwagon of exploitation that the continent had suffered for centuries at the hands of foreigners, including those from his own country, the United States of America, the incumbent U.S. President had noted, with a deep sense of trepidation.

Was this a classical case of political déjà vu or myopia? … he wondered, thoughtfully!

Were these African leaders not aware of what the Chinese were doing to the Black African through their actions in the United Nations Security Council vis-à-vis their economic interests in Sudan, as was typified by the genocidal Darfur conflict that raged in the western region of that country between the indigenous Africans and the ruling Arabs based in Khartoum, whose fore-bearers from Arabia had taken illegal refuge of that land when slave trading on the continent was universally banned at the end of the 19th Century?

The American President even recalled reading about a horrific and extremely sad incident which was witnessed by a Western European photojournalist in the Western Darfur region of Sudan, which had led the journalist to commit suicide a few months after he had returned to his home country back in Europe, following his encounter with the truly unfortunate incident involving an indigenous Black African Sudanese girl, who had since been conveniently forgotten by the authorities of that country, and, apparently, or so it seemed, by all the other sub-Saharan leaders on the continent!

What this European photojournalist had witnessed was an incident in which a Black Sudanese teenage girl – who most likely was a Nubian whose parents had emigrated from the Nuba mountains in the southern part of the country to the western part of the Darfur region of that country – was feasted upon by a humongous African vulture while she was still alive, as he helplessly watched the poignant spectacle before him. As the story which the photojournalist had written about his encounter went, the poor Sudanese girl had walked for several days, if not weeks, from her village in one part of the Western Darfur region of Sudan, which had been ran down by government-backed and sponsored Sudanese Arab militia, known as the Janjaweed, who had killed the girl’s entire family along with other members of her village, which they had completely burned down to the ground, after they had besieged several villages in the area, including the one the girl lived in, for months on end and had nearly starved the villagers to death. Miraculously, the girl had escaped the deadly assault on her family and her village and had thus survived, and she had decided to seek shelter at a refugee camp located in an area far removed from the region that was under siege by the Janjaweed.

Having walked for so long without food or water to drink in the suffocating heat of the scorching Sudanese tropical sun in her effort to try and get to the refugee camp, the totally malnourished girl got so fatigued that she decided to rest by squatting down on the ground at a spot she had picked on the path she was following, that led to the said refugee camp. By this time, the teenage girl appeared more like a little boy, as she was nothing to look at but bare skin on bone, exhibiting a ghostly image of hollow eye sockets that were stuck above prominent cheek bones, and an equally prominent skin-covered rib cage out of which emerged a pair of spindly skeletal legs, all of which created the impression that one was looking at an emaciated cadaver which had inadvertently walked out of a human anatomy laboratory at some African university before first year medical students were done studying it!

Completely exhausted and too weak to continue with her journey by the time she got to the spot where the European photojournalist had stumbled upon her and the stalking vulture, the girl was seen squatting, with her head, which looked more like a hairless skin-covered skull, rested on her folded bony arms which she had placed on her equally bony knees, in a hopeless posture of resignation to fate. Her heaving rib cage could barely be noticed rising and falling ever so slowly in sync with her distressed breathing. A few meters away from where the girl was squatting, a huge African vulture had just landed on the ground and was intently watching the girl. As soon as the girl fell to the ground when she could no longer maintain her posture in the squatting position, with whatever little energy that she had left in her completely sapped from her nutritionally depraved body, the carnivorous avian species pounced on her and began feasting on the little that was fleshly left of the girl while she was still alive … in full view of the photojournalist, who captured the entire episode on his still camera!

If the poor Black African Sudanese girl had called out for help, the European photojournalist could not have possibly heard the girl’s feeble cries as she succumbed to the fatal attack by the humungous carnivorous vulture. Upon returning to his home country – France, was it?, the incumbent U.S. President could not recall for sure which Western European country the article he had read had cited as the journalist’s home country – the photojournalist made it a point to publish only the snapshot showing the vulture waiting for the girl to fall to the ground before it attacked her. Out of respect for the poor Black African girl he could not help at the time he had witnessed the horrendous incident, which he must have considered to be totally hopeless, the journalist decided not to publish the other pictures he had taken of the vulture feasting on its live human prey. The incident shocked the journalist so much that, upon returning to his home country, he had soon developed a severe case of manic depression, having lost all faith in humanity for allowing things like that to happen to fellow human beings – for socio-economic and political reasons! – without any sense of remorse on the part of the perpetrators. His manic depressive condition eventually resulted in the photojournalist committing suicide three months after he had published the highly moving photograph of the helpless and hopeless young female Black African being stalked and eventually feasted on by the hungry carnivorous avian beast.

Did the Chinese authorities who supplied military weapons to the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in exchange for Sudanese oil care about the poor Black African girl?

President Foxx very much doubted that!

As far as the Chinese were concerned, the end justified their means! As long as they got what they wanted from those – for the majority of the citizens – impoverished African countries, the Chinese authorities could care less about what happened to the indigenous citizens of the Western Darfur region of Sudan … or the citizens of any other country on the continent where they conducted their business as usual, for that matter … as this was just another one of their many starting single steps that had yet to be taken on their journey of a thousand exploitative miles across the African continent, which was under the rule of many inept and gullible leaders!

This Chinese tradition was further demonstrated by the Chinese government’s blind but vehement and open support of regimes that were oppressive, repressive, and blatantly authoritarian in countries like North Korea, Burma, or Myanmar, Iran, and Syria, to mention but a handful of such countries around the world that were under despotic rulers with whom the Chinese authorities never minded to hop into bed, as long as they got what they wanted from those countries, to the total disregard of the concerns and welfare of the citizens of the countries in question who yearned for democracy and freedom.

The incumbent U.S. President further wondered if the Chinese authorities were not merely strategically positioning their country in readiness for the future economic stability and sustainability of their nation’s economy for Chinese posterity, considering the fact that some of their country’s natural resources were limited and fast diminishing, as measured against the projected socio-economic demand for the same, based on their alarming population growth rate, in spite of the cruel single-child domestic policy that the Chinese communist regime had imposed on married couples in that country. And, so, in order to forestall this imminent danger, the Chinese authorities were now busy flexing their economic and financial biceps around the world and, more so, on the African continent, under the guise of the so-called foreign direct capital investment!

President Foxx was also highly skeptical about China’s intentions for Africa with her observed increase in exports to the continent of all manner of cheap Chinese made products, which had effectively stifled the development of a home-grown manufacturing industrial base in many of the underdeveloped African countries, in addition to its negative effect on competition in the local African markets, where the local traders were now not able to compete favorably, price-wise, against Chinese products, with their merchandize which was imported from other countries outside the continent, such as Western Europe, the U.S.A., Canada, or even the nearby African economic powerhouse, South Africa. The U.S. President further wondered why most of the African leaders who were seen busy signing all kinds of bilateral economic as well as trade agreements daily with China did not seem to realize this glaring fact!

And this was a country whose communist leadership still did not subscribe to the principles of a democratic system of governance, and the ethos of fair play, notwithstanding the emergence of more than two hundred billionaires in that country as an indication of the Chinese leadership’s tolerance of the "capitalist free-market laissez faire economic system of the West in their country, which had inevitably been embraced by some of the capitalist-minded" Chinese citizens as the 21st Century approached and rapidly inched forward!

The American President justified his suspicious observations about the sincerity of the Chinese with their investment plans for Africa in relation to the socio-economic development and empowerment of the ordinary folks of that continent by wondering in his mind, as per international news media reports he had read, why all the Chinese companies that had struck long-term investment deals with African governments, such as that of the copper-rich Southern African country, Zambia – which investments were obviously bankrolled by the Chinese government itself through the Bank of China and not necessarily by Chinese private sector investors – made it a point, as one of the non-negotiable conditionalities for their foreign direct investment, that they be allowed to fill certain positions, even those of a lowly nature, with their own employees brought in all the way from China, even when the Chinese workers – the majority of whom could not even express themselves in English, Zambia’s official national language – were less qualified than the indigenous nationals who could be recruited from the local pool of highly skilled labor.

Oh, how the incumbent Republican U.S. President detested those meaningless terms that the so-called donor nations and the World Bank and its financial operating arm, the International Monetary Fund – IMF – had introduced and imposed on the so-called Third World countries!

Weren’t these the same countries that one notable 20th Century political scientist by the name of Frantz Fanon had once referred to in the title of his book as The Wretched of the Earth?, wondered President Foxx mentally.

Terms such as conditionality, policy framework, operational or working modalities, capacity building, downsizing, working structures, enabling environment, infrastructure development, stakeholders, co-operating partners, public-private partnership, sustainable development, gender equity, good governance, transparency and accountability, zero tolerance for corruption, poverty alleviation, et cetera, et cetera, amounted to nothing but mere euphemistic political rhetoric for most of, if not all, the countries on the African continent and beyond that fell under the "Third World country" label, as far as the incumbent U.S. President was concerned!

President Foxx thought, based on his observations as an outsider looking in from a distance, these terms were as hollow as the mindset of most of the Third World leaders and their technocrats who routinely uttered them, for the benefit of the ears of the impoverished majority who continued to wallow in abject poverty, squalor, hunger, and disease … twenty-four-seven-fifty-two!

The American President had been informed that in most, if not all, of these developing countries, the terms capacity building and creating the so-called enabling environment, to pick an exemplary two, meant the endless holding of seminars, workshops, and symposia about poverty reduction, which were, invariably, often held at exclusive tourist resorts or in executive class conference halls at international hotels that were situated on scenic ocean, lake, or riverside locations, or at high class expensive inner city or countryside lodges that were owned by the wives or some other relatives of, or by individuals with connections to, the same government officials who organized such seminars and workshops. These official get-togethers, reportedly, yielded piles and piles of reports that were word-processed using donor-funded desk top computers which were installed in the various offices of the line ministries, or departments, of the developing countries in question, in addition to personal-to-holder laptops which were purchased using the same donor aid funds. Sadly, the reports that were so generated, reportedly ended up collecting dust on numerous shelves in the said government offices, with no demonstrable practical follow-up action by the civil servants and their so-called consultants – the latter being mostly retired technocrats who still had a foot in the running of the civil service in their respective countries, but who themselves had not successfully contributed to any tangible progress in the socio-economic development of their country whilst they were in active public duty – following their preparation of the reports, with nothing tangible to show for the series of seminars and workshops that were held year-in-year-out by the government officials in these developing countries, over which millions, if not billions, of the local currency were spent in attendance allowances paid out to the participants who attended such largely time- and money-wasting official gatherings!

The only term that seemed to live by its true meaning, which was introduced in the collectively deceptive official lingo of some of these developing countries, the American President had been reliably informed, was the term "personal-to-holder."

As the terminology of the expression clearly indicated, this was one of the self-serving schemes by which politicians – including members of the opposition in the legislature … surprise, surprise! – as well as civil servants in positions of authority guaranteed themselves ownership of expensive vehicles, laptop computers, and mobile phones, which were paid for by the government using tax payers’ money supplemented with diverted or re-allocated donor funds. As far as these African public officials were concerned, the so-called diversion or re-allocation of the funds that were so donated by foreign governments was not considered to be a misappropriation or squandering of the said monies … never!

And, after a specified period of time during, or at the end of their tenure in office, these public officials bought the vehicles assigned to them from the government at the depreciated, or amortized, book value … essentially a dime on the dollar! … and this was over and above the perks they enjoyed that were attached to the use of the said vehicles while the officials were still in office, such as gas, or petrol, allowance, free comprehensive motor vehicle insurance, and free service and maintenance of the vehicle.

President Foxx even nursed the view about the inappropriateness of the term donor nation, as he thought that what all these countries were doing – most of them, anyway, including his own, the United States of America! – was to pay restitution for the looting of the recipient countries’ raw material, using cheap local labor, which they had carried out on the continent from the era of the African slave trade right through the period of colonialism, and, in most cases, which they had continued to do to the present day due to the gullibility of the continent’s political leadership at the hands of the so-called economic hit men from the West.

The incumbent U.S. President was, nonetheless, aware of the fact a number of the so-called donor nations were not former colonizers of African territories, and this included some that were members as well as non-members of the European Union, with others coming from places such as Southeast Asia, notably Japan, although the latter nation-state had its own history of being a colonial master within the Southeast Asian region, notably some parts of China as well as the Korean peninsula, which it had once colonized before the end of World War II.

The incumbent U.S. President also thought, judging by the number of failures that the World Bank and the IMF had registered in these wretched African countries with their prescribed social reforms that included unsuccessful socio-economic policies, such as the infamous structural adjustment policy, from which the majority of the poverty-stricken citizens of the countries for which such reforms were prescribed never benefited, the Third World countries were better advised to re-label these Bretton Woods institutions as "The International Bank for Third World Deconstruction and Perpetual Underdevelopment and The International Manipulation Fund," respectively.

With much curiosity and peculiar intrigue, the American President noted that the parent institution of the two Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank, was constituted as what was known as the International Development Association – IDA – which was officially defined as "an international financial institution which offers concessional loans and grants to the world’s poorest developing countries. The IDA was further said to be a member of the World Bank Group which was established in 1960 to complement the existing International Bank for Reconstruction and Development" – the original official name of the World Bank – "by lending to developing countries which suffer from the lowest gross national income, from troubled creditworthiness, or from the lowest per capita income. However, looking at the progress, if any, that these developing African nations that suffered from troubled creditworthiness and had the lowest gross national incomes as well as the lowest per capita incomes, and the interesting observation that the loans and grants that were earmarked for offering to the recipient" underdeveloped countries