₦airaland Forum

*Bump*

Awesome thread, Odumchi.

odumchi: Africans, and Nigerians specifically, are very proud people. In Naija, we value our cultures and histories and more importantly, the significant people in our families. So my question to you guys is how far back can you trace your ancestry?

I can trace my ancestry back to the 17th century leading to oba of Eko monarchy. I haven't tried to research beyond that, but will. . . soon. And of course, that's just one side.

-

They both look like LovePeddler$. The one with the pompadour looks like a callgirl from the 70s, the one smelling her pits looks like a crackhead streetwalker.

[quote author=Brand_new]Will he honour such an invitation? Seems governor Akpabio doesn't realise that Mark Zuckerberg is a very busy young man.[/quote]Not sure how busy he is, but he seems like an introvert.

https://img.gawkerassets.com/img/189jxcoupqiajjpg/original.jpg

Katsumoto: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

That seems like a test for women.

Why don't I insist the women in the Camp Nou, who are there to watch Barca v Real Madrid, be allowed to join in the derby?

Seriously, cake baking, receiving compliments, inspiring gals ! ! !

Isale, Abeg address your quiz appropriately next time?

Begging your forgiveness, Senor Katsumoto.

This is better. Thank you, kind sir.

http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?obj_id=223761

Tgirl4real: @ Isale,

I'm on d depression quiz. This new one sounds interesting. I wish I was on my lappy.

You mean the "Maker" quiz? I think it's pretty short - like 5 questions. If you can post here, you should be able to do it. Unless PBS has restrictions on access.

What Kind of Maker Are You? A Maker is someone who fights for what they believe in and changes lives as a result. Take the quiz to see what kind of Maker you could be.

1) You pass a field where a group of boys are playing soccer and a group of girls are standing on the sideline. You:
-Explain to the captain of the boys team that not allowing the girls to play on the field is a violation of their rights.
-Join in the game with the boys.
-Invite the girls to join an all-girls soccer league that you're starting.
-Rally the girls together and demand that they be allowed to play on the field, too.

2) Your child's school is holding a bake sale to raise money, and you're not the best baker. You:
-Convince a local bakery to donate baked goods to the cause in exchange for promotion at the event.
-Offer to market the bake sale and generate interest in the community.
-Pull out your grandma's recipe for chocolate peanut butter cookies and keep trying until the results are delicious.
-Offer to coordinate logistics for the bake sale.

3) What do you think is the best way to inspire girls today?
-Encourage them to join with their peers to fight for what they believe in.
-Educate them about their rights and how to defend them.
-Teach them to confront problems head on and look for creative solutions.
-Encourage them to work hard and be the best at what they're passionate about.

4) Your ideal work day consists mostly of:
-Hard work.
-A protest that inspires millions.
-Productive meetings that incite change.
-Coming up with new ideas and testing their potential.

5) What's the best compliment someone could give you?
-"You're the best _______ I've ever seen!"
-"You inspire so many people!"
-"It's amazing how much you've accomplished!"
-"You're the smartest person I know!"


The Depression quiz was a good great one for me. Hahahahaha. I'm happy to say. I may not have gotten such good results 3 or even 2 years ago. But I won't post my result cos I don't want to give NB or Kats anyone the sads.

[quote author=ndu_chucks]I think we all agree that bigotry should not be tolerated and we should support all moderators who are working towards its reduction.

The most effective moderator will take actions without making things worse by indirectly implying that he will overturn rules announced by fellow moderators, threatening or bullying forumites.

Moderators need the help and assistance of forumites to be successful and in this regard, Ikenna352 has failed because he has managed to p.iss off some of the very people whose help he needs. He can redeem himself if he so chooses.[/quote]Ndu_Chucks will make a great moderator. let's go ahead and complete the Quadrumvirate. Three won't do for this section!

QUIZ: What Kind of Maker Are You?
A Maker is someone who fights for what they believe in and changes lives as a result. Take the quiz to see what kind of Maker you could be.

Your Result:
Lawyer

https://pangeamedia-eeprod.s3.amazonaws.com/4e3aa2954da21eaf24040000/512cfff2d8e6ed806b000014/lawyer_sm.jpg

You're not afraid to talk to people in high places. You've done your homework and are ready to convince them that your way is the best way for everyone.

Makers who might interest you: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Joan Sullivan, Catharine MacKinnon

https://pangeamedia-eeprod.s3.amazonaws.com/4e3aa2954da21eaf24040000/512cfff2d8e6ed806b000014/pr_hm_k_20copy_54x100.jpg

http://app.snapapp.com/pbsmakers?utm_source=Prosper_List&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Newsletter_T4&utm_content=BestOf_Apr-13_more_quizzes_quiz_4_textlink&utm_campaign=04.11.13_Engagement_Email_Best_of_Apr-13_T4


Hmmm. Interesting. Anyway, I am even more interested in a lawyer like Althea Buafo. The first time I saw her on TV, I was taken aback by her appearance; she had mohawk-like hair Typically the legal profession has the most conservative mode of dressing, followed by Accountants, and not that closely either. Many law firms and judges still expect female attorneys to wear skirt suits only when appearing in court - no trousers. And this is true for USA and Nigeria.

[img]http://3.bp..com/_DFED16SGzxE/R4etBKhZS0I/AAAAAAAAA1I/I421zznUWpk/s400/0527trial1.jpg[/img]

So, I kept watching, though a little repulsed - initially. Attorney Buafo was so respected, she had been retained by the state to prosecute the case of a corrupt judge whom the State Bar of Georgia was attempting to remove from the Bench. I wanted to post clips from the trial - to show why this woman was so compelling and superior in litigation - but couldn't find it on Youtube, and the old Court TV network is defunct anyway. pfft!

Years later, I went to do some research on her, and was disappointed to read that she had passed away. But, one mystery was cleared up - that last name is due to her father being African. Go sis! RIP.

http://www.macon.com/2009/10/20/886510/macon-attorney-althea-buafo-loses.html


More quizzes:
How Much Do You Know About The Year 1963 (in US Civil Rights)?
http://www.pbs.org/black-culture/connect/quizzes/1963-civil-rights-movement-events/?utm_source=Prosper_List&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=Newsletter_T4&utm_content=BestOf_Apr-13_more_quizzes_quiz_3_textlink&utm_campaign=04.11.13_Engagement_Email_Best_of_Apr-13_T4

Onlytruth: @Topic

I never think it useful anyway to call any tribe by an name than the official one. It is useless, and doesn't achieve anything.
HOWEVER, I think it is a total waste of time to try to censor or ban people because of name calling. It is what Hausa would call "aikim banza" (wasted effort, or futile works).
Having been in Nairaland now for about 4 years, I can say that the site is only unique because it allows people to say their minds -be themselves so to say. It is why I come here, and it is why I chose the name ONLYTRUTH. Other sites would try to muzzle and suppress TRUTH.
Any attempt to change that would make Nairaland irrelevant and prosaic.

I personally credit Nairaland with making me politically streetwise in the Nigerian context. There is nothing I don't understand about Nigeria now, thanks to Nairaland. I never knew the Yoruba like I do now, thanks again to Nairaland.

I have Yoruba friends and professional colleagues. Before Nairaland, I could trust them with my life. I'm not saying that I cannot trust them today. All I'm saying is that I would not do so flippantly or glibly like before.

I had two CLOSE friends in my undergrad uni days. One was from Ogun state, the other from Imo state. The Imo state one kept warning me repeatedly that I trust the Ogun guy too much. We were only three when I was present. If I wasn't there, they would not hang together.
I did not understand what the Imo guy was talking about until I hit Nairaland.

It has nothing to do with education or enlightenment, but an average Yoruba here (at least 90% of them here) do not share in the pains of other people, and they even gloat with the pains of the most vulnerable humans on this earth -CHILDREN.

I know that Igbo are not happy with the Northern minorities for the roles they played during the war; but since the Fulani/Berom "war" started, teeming BRUTAL AND HORRIBLE pictures have surfaced in Nairaland, but you would HARDLY see an Igbo poster posting pictures of dead Berom children. HARDLY if EVER.
But Yoruba posters would almost always post pictures of starving and dying Biafran children, as if the children were soldiers!
To me, (and I suspect to most Igbo), that is a level of wickedness far and beyond a normal Igbo person's conscience and natural tolerance.

So, here is where I came to know and accept the Yoruba for what most of them are. Notice I did not say ALL, but MOST are like that, going by my Nairaland experience of their posts here.

@New Mod, please know your fights. IMHO you may be picking the wrong one! lol

Nairaland is not reflective nor representative of Nigeria or their ethnic/tribal attitudes.

Your post actually serves as a warning of the damage that is being done here.

Or maybe, such extreme prejudice was already inside of you all along, no offense. I don't personally believe that however; only you know.

Ikenna351: When Jesus Christ was on Earth carrying out his mission, the Scribbes, Pharisseas and Sadduccees were shouting and attacking him "Who is this thing? The son of a Carpenter to come and tell us about the good and bad? Who is he to come to tell us the trained priest, lawyers, etc, what is wrong or right? " Of course, Jesus knew what he would face in their hands before he came for the mission. At the end, did he succeed or not? Why is the whole world celebrating him, both Christians and non-christians, after he had finished what He came for and left? Answer that yourself. Yes, am not Jesus Christ, but i do know what it would take to cleanse a system. Guys, trust me, i knew what i would face. My point is, Am Well Prepared!

Tribalism! Hmm! State of being loyal to ones tribe. Isnt it?

A school of thought would argue that the root cause of underdevelopment of most African countries, including Nigeria, is Tribalism. When looked it in all ramifications, the truth in that thought is so glaring. Some had gone far to blame the colonial masters for laying the foundation of tribalism in African countries, that had crippled the economy of the continent. But then, for how should we blame someone that left your house and you keep blaming him causing trouble between you and your wife, after decades?

Tribalism! What led to the first massacre or slaughter of human beings in Nigeria? Isnt it tribalism? When a certain tribe felt that the first coupe in Nigeria was lopsided, and the perpetuators of the "crime" were left unpurnished by one of the accused tribe that killed their tribal spokesmen. The massacre of Igbos in the north began, which led to the civil war. Did it stop there? No. Even after the way, the hatred has been eaten deep into everyone, such that a small issue would lead to another slaughtering of Igbos in the North, even before Boko haram saga started. Triablism! Hmm!

When one becomes so loyal to his tribe that he is willing to inflick pain another fellow human being to prove his loyalty to his tribe. Yes, thats Tribalism we have in Nigeria. When one is so loyal to his tribe that he can go any lentgh to defend his tribe by instigating hatred in the minds of the young ones that " He is your enemy, hate him with passion and insult him in a manner that he would hate you back and keep his distance". Yes, thats Tribalism we propagate in Nairaland. To loyal to ones tribe to do anything, no matter how evil it is, to defend or prove loyalty to ones tribe. Yes, there is nothing with tribalism, after all, its institutionalised in Nigerian constitution or law. Thats how we rationalize the promotion of Tribalism in Nairaland.

If you could intimidate my co-mods, sorry guys, you have met the wrong person. Dont worry, you guys are just starting to know me.

If Mr. Seun wakes up in the morning and decides Ikenna351 will no longer mod this section. Guess what i would do? I will find a quite place, kneel down, look up and say "Thank you for giving me that little opportunity to do a good thing for the public for free". Yes, i owe humanity something. This is one of them, no matter how long it lasts. But as long as i still see myself as a co-mod here, i will carryout my method of sanitizing this section to the later. I will say it again, Bring It On!

I remembered when the Igbos were starting various threads in this section, everyone was shouting why should tribal topics meant for the ethnic section be allowed in the Politcs section. They were all later moved to the ethnic section, where ethnicity should be discussed. Now, extreme tribalism should not be discorouged in this section, so that we will see more people to instigate and haul tribal slurs to. Good to know.

Freedom of expression! It means i have the right to insult and curse an unborn child in your wife's belly and wish her dead. Yes, thats freedom of expression. It also means i have the right to curse your child to sleep tonight and not wake up in the morning. Yes, thats freedom of expression. Of course, you would say abomination. Whoever say such a thing should be stoned to death. Well, it will make sense. But when it comes to insulting another tribe with offensive names that would pain the other tribes insulted, then it should be allowed because "thats freedom of expression".

When you approach a lady you want to toast and found out she is from Yoruba and you are an Igbo, if you call her a Yoruba and she frowns her face, would you call her Yoruba again? Knowing what your mission is? Of course, you wouldnt, but them its ok to call everyone them here the name, because you dont care how he or she would feel. Rather, it will make you more happy if she feels bad. Isnt it. Of course, you would rationalize it by siting a book where a prominent man used the word Yoruba, but you wont dare say it that chick you want to date for obvious fear of rejection. Good to know.

Finally, you are pouring water on a rock if you think you can intimidate me, no matter how you guys gang up. Lets see how it goes.

Ikenna.

Gimme a moment to catch my breath, y'all.

P.S.
The Book of Ike II: The 2nd Epistle of Saint Ikenna to the Nairalanders, a most unruly and warlike sect on the southern tip of the Worldwide Web.

Mercyraheem: Ogun-medicine
Ogun-charm
Ogun-state
Ogun-sweat
Ogun-Name of a state
Ogun-war
Ogun-20
Ogun-inheritance

Ògún - God of Iron and of War

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5020/5469268414_5689d7b827_z.jpg

JeSoul:
Mehn...these our ancestors are not playing oh... okay, make I correct...

Sir, Elder, Chief, His Excellency KATSUMOTO! more layers to your agbada, sir!

This looks like Agbada to you? Jesuit, Your shuku braid must be too tight. Did I do it?

https://factsanddetails.com/media/2/20090730-samurai%20warrior.jpg

Hmmmm

Interesting: Life and Culture in the Edo Period (Japan 1603-1867)
http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=502

(Finis)

OBITUARY

[size=14pt]Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013
‘Iron Lady’ Who Set Britain on a New Course[/size]
By JOSEPH R. GREGORY
Published: April 8, 2013 881 Comments

The Cold War’s End

“Some of these diplomatic minuets you have to go through I cannot stand,” Mrs. Thatcher once said, by way of paying a compliment to Mr. Gorbachev. He forsook rhetoric for blunt realism, she said, and “that suits me better.”

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was rife with political disillusion and economic chaos. The Reagan administration sought to add pressure by moving ahead with high-tech weapons, including plans for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the space-based defense system known as Star Wars, which would in theory enable the United States to intercept incoming nuclear missiles.

Mr. Gorbachev was unalterably opposed to Star Wars, as were many in the West. Mrs. Thatcher was also against it, though she publicly supported it. At a White House meeting she warned that the project was a costly pipe dream. “I am a chemist,” she is said to have told the president. “I know it won’t work.”

But she changed her mind after being assured that Britain would receive a goodly share of the business in researching and developing the system. At a meeting in Washington in December 1984, she helped draft a position on Star Wars, later adopted by Mr. Reagan, that assured the Soviets that the program would enhance nuclear deterrence, not undercut it, and that it would not get in the way of arms control talks.

Nevertheless, it did. During a summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986, Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev came close to an agreement to ban nuclear weapons altogether. But when Mr. Gorbachev insisted first on an American promise to drop the Strategic Defense Initiative, Mr. Reagan refused, and the negotiations fell apart.

The president’s position infuriated his critics. But many people in NATO and the Pentagon were relieved. “The fact is that nuclear weapons have prevented not only nuclear war but conventional war in Europe for 40 years,” Mrs. Thatcher said in a speech. “That is why we depend and will continue to depend on nuclear weapons for our defense.”

Mrs. Thatcher did not fare so well in other battles. In the face of popular opposition, she retreated from plans to privatize the water industry and the National Health Service, replace college grants with a student loan program, cut back pensions and revamp the social security system. Many predicted she would not win a third term. But the economy continued to work in her favor. When she called an election for June 1987, the Tories were returned to power.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/projects/2013/thatcher/images/thatcher_obit.jpg

Third Term

That October, Wall Street crashed. In the following months, disagreements among the Tories over Britain’s future in the European Community and a series of other events forced Mrs. Thatcher to surrender hard-fought gains.

She believed that linking the pound to other currencies would erode Britain’s political independence. Mr. Lawson, her chancellor of the Exchequer, argued that it would be better to lay the groundwork for joining the European monetary system by tying the pound to the more stable German mark. Without telling the prime minister, Mr. Lawson, in January 1987, had informally begun to peg the pound to the mark.

Meanwhile, the government’s tax-cutting and easy-credit policies fed an investment and housing boom, again fueling inflation. Mr. Lawson, reluctant to allow the value of the pound to rise above the ceiling he had imposed to keep it in range with the mark, ignored calls for higher interest rates. As his actions became apparent, the prime minister accused him of misleading her and warned that the practice had to stop.

But Mr. Lawson and his supporters saw the European monetary system not only as a step toward European integration but also as a safeguard against the kind of wide swings in the pound’s value that had so disrupted Britain’s economic health in the past. On this fundamental issue the Tories were split, the two sides set on a collision course.

As inflation rose, Mr. Lawson reversed himself and raised interest rates. The sudden effort to stanch the money flow threw Britain into recession. In October 1989, Mr. Lawson resigned, but many devoted Thatcherites admitted that she bore much of the blame.

Other misjudgments were laid at her door. In an effort to make the local authorities more accountable for the way they spent tax money, Mrs. Thatcher pushed through a measure that replaced property taxes with a “poll tax” on all adult residents of a community. The tax was intended to make everyone, not just property owners, pay for local government services. In practice, the measure was manifestly unfair and deeply unpopular. In March 1990, protests flared into riots. Within her own party, there was a growing feeling that the Iron Lady had become a liability.

The Fall

That November, tensions among the Tories exploded. The deputy prime minister, Geoffrey Howe, the last survivor of the original Thatcher cabinet of 1979, was known for his loyalty, though he disagreed with the prime minister’s policy toward Europe. Now their differences came to a boil. At a cabinet meeting, “Margaret was incredibly rude to Geoffrey,” Kenneth Baker, another minister, recalled. “It was the last straw for Geoffrey, and he resigned that night.”

The next day Michael Heseltine, a former defense minister who favored greater links with Europe, announced that he would challenge Mrs. Thatcher for the party leadership. On Nov. 20, as the prime minister was attending a summit meeting in Paris, the Tories took a vote. For Mrs. Thatcher, whose approval ratings in the polls were falling, the outcome was bleak: though she beat Mr. Heseltine, 204 votes to 152, under party rules her majority was not strong enough for her to keep her place.

The race, now wide open, took an unexpected turn. Mrs. Thatcher was awaiting results of the party ballot with her family and friends at 10 Downing Street when she learned that Mr. Heseltine had lost to the soft-spoken chancellor of the Exchequer, John Major, a protégé of hers. When someone said that her colleagues had done an awful turn, she replied, “We’re in politics, dear.”

Though vowing at first to “fight on and fight to win” the second ballot, she was persuaded to withdraw. After speaking to the queen, calling world leaders and making a final speech to the House of Commons, she resigned on Nov. 28, 1990, leaving 10 Downing Street in tears and feeling betrayed.

After leaving office, Mrs. Thatcher traveled widely and drew huge crowds on the lecture circuit. She sat in the House of Lords as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, wrote her memoir and devoted herself to the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, to further her values.

She remained forthright in expressing her opinions. During her final months in office, she had bolstered President George Bush in his efforts to build a United Nations coalition to oppose Iraq after it invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990. At the time of the invasion, Mrs. Thatcher was meeting with Mr. Bush and other world leaders at the Aspen Institute in Colorado. “Remember, George,” she is said to have told him, “this is no time to go wobbly.”

In retirement, she continued to call for firmness in the face of aggression, advocating Western intervention to stop the ethnic bloodshed in the Balkans in the early 1990s. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she endorsed President George W. Bush’s policy of sanctioning pre-emptive strikes against governments that sponsored terrorism. She also backed the war to oust the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein.

By then, according to her daughter, Mrs. Thatcher had begun to show signs of the dementia that would overtake her and become, to much criticism, the focus of “Iron Lady,” a 2011 film about her with Meryl Streep in the title role.

But while she was of sound mind, Mrs. Thatcher never let up on her anti-Europe views. “In my lifetime, all the problems have come from mainland Europe, and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world,” she told the Conservative Party conference in 1999. Her words drew predictable outrage, but few doubted that Mrs. Thatcher, as usual, had meant exactly what she said.

She also did not shy from criticizing her successors’ actions, including Mr. Major’s handling of the economy. Her frankness often embarrassed the Tories. It seemed to many that Mrs. Thatcher preferred Labour’s new leader, Tony Blair, to Mr. Major.

That perception was not surprising, since Mr. Blair’s victory over Mr. Major in 1997 seemed in a curious way to emphasize the success of Mrs. Thatcher’s policies. Mr. Blair led his “New Labour” party to victory on a platform that promised to liberate business from government restrictions, end taxes that discouraged investment and reduce dependence on the state.

Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy, “in most respects, is uncontested by the Blair government,” Mr. Young, her biographer, said in a 1999 interview. “It made rather concrete something she once said: ‘My task will not be completed until the Labour Party has become like the Conservative Party, a party of capitalism.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/europe/former-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher-of-britain-has-died.html?ref=opinion

anonimi: Thanks I sale gan2 for the above post that highlights a key element of her philosophy:

Give education to the poor so they are skilled to work but nothing more.

It must have been fueled by the scholarship she received for her studies as a young girl from a working class family.

Unlike Nigeria's elite generally and those in the South West particularly whom having received Awo & UPN's free education with textbooks could only think of raising LASU fees by 1,000%.
Yet we wonder why we have more Area boys in Lagos with criminal consequencies and our best brains are leaving for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia etc even if it means going through the Sahara desert at the risk of losing our lives.
Shameful! Indeed shameful!!!

You're welcome.

To set the record straight, I am not a fan, admirer, or supporter of Margaret Thatcher; I simply posted the obituary from a reputable journal.

Glad you enjoyed it.

(Cont.)

OBITUARY

[size=14pt]Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013
‘Iron Lady’ Who Set Britain on a New Course[/size]
By JOSEPH R. GREGORY
Published: April 8, 2013 881 Comments

For the next four years, as Labour ran the country, she fought to reshape her party. The conservatism she espoused was guided by the tenets of classic liberalism: faith in the individual, in economic freedom and in limited government power. But she had to contend with conservatism’s basic reluctance to change with the times.

As the party of tradition, the Tories had little place for women in its upper echelons. All party leaders, for example, joined the Carlton Club, which excluded women. The club would not change its rules for Mrs. Thatcher, but she was accorded an honorary membership. Still, resentment lingered. At a party conference Mr. Heath studiously ignored her.

Mrs. Thatcher’s prescription for change was based on the ideas of the conservative economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. Hayek believed that political and economic freedom were inseparable; Friedman argued that economic productivity and inflation were determined by the amount of money the government put into the economy, and that the heavy government spending advocated by Keynesian economics distorted the natural strength of the marketplace.

Mrs. Thatcher and her allies asserted that the Tory policy of consensus had allowed the country to lurch leftward as each successive leader, seeking the middle of the road, was forced to compromise with a leftist agenda. For her part, she cared little for theories. She called for an all-out attack on inflation, pledged to denationalize basic industry and promised to curb union power.

By the mid-1970s, Britain was the sick man of Europe. Nearly half of the average taxpayer’s income went to the state, which now determined compensation for a third of the nation’s work force: those employed by nationalized industries. In late 1978 and early ’79, strikes paralyzed Britain. As the “winter of discontent” dragged on, Prime Minister James Callaghan, of the Labour Party, failed to survive a no-confidence vote and called an election for May 3.

Callaghan, who was known as Sunny Jim, drew higher personal ratings in opinion polls than Mrs. Thatcher. But on election day the Tories walked away with 43.9 percent of the vote. Labour received 37 percent and the Liberals 13.8 percent. It was the largest swing to the right in postwar history.

First Term

Mrs. Thatcher moved swiftly. “I came to office with one deliberate intent,” she later said. “To change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society, from a give-it-to-me to a do-it-yourself nation.”

It was a painful beginning. Income tax cuts balanced by rising gasoline duties and sales taxes fueled inflation. Unemployment spread as she slashed subsidies to faltering industries. Tight money policies drove up interest rates to as high as 22 percent, strengthening the pound, hobbling investment at home and hurting competitiveness overseas. A record 10,000 businesses went bankrupt. Saying it would take years to cure Britain of the havoc wrought by socialism, Mrs. Thatcher warned, “Things will get worse before they get better.”

In the summer of 1981 — the same one in which Charles, the Prince of Wales, married Lady Diana Spencer — discontent boiled over into days of rioting in the London district of Brixton; the inner cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Bristol; and many other areas. Televised reports of rioting, arson and looting shocked the nation. The prime minister, resisting advisers who counseled more social spending and jobs programs, called for greater police powers. Yet, in the face of national shame over the violence, she was forced to give way.

There were other compromises. Retreating from its declaration that state industries must sink or swim in the free market, the government came to the aid of British Airways and British Steel.

Mrs. Thatcher later said that 1981 was her worst year in office. But by the spring of 1982, things were looking up. Inflation was falling; so was the value of the pound, which gave a boost to Britain’s exports and, along with tax cuts, began to feed economic growth.

In foreign affairs, she won some small victories. Standing up to the European Community, she argued that her country paid out much more to the organization than it got back in benefits, and won a significant reduction in contributions. Though her rhetoric and style had caught the world’s eye, she had yet to stake a position as a world leader. Then, on April 2, 1982, Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.

British settlers had lived on those remote islands in the South Atlantic, long claimed by Argentina, since the 1820s, and negotiations over their future had been dragging on for years. The Argentine military junta under Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, eager to divert attention from economic and social unrest, moved to take the Falklands by force, gambling that once the islands were occupied, Argentine forces would never be ousted.

As the United States and other allies pushed for talks to avoid bloodshed, Mrs. Thatcher ordered a Royal Navy fleet to the South Atlantic. In a 10-week war, the British retook the islands in fighting that left some 250 British servicemen and more than 1,000 Argentines dead. The victory doomed Argentina’s military government and cemented Mrs. Thatcher’s reputation as a leader to be reckoned with.

Second Term

Her political fortunes were enhanced by squabbling among her opponents. Far-left factions and militant union leaders were gaining strength in the Labour Party as economic discontent and tensions with the Soviet Union grew.

In 1980, Mrs. Thatcher and President Jimmy Carter had agreed to deploy American intermediate-range cruise missiles in Britain in response to a Soviet buildup in Eastern Europe. Under Mr. Reagan, who succeeded Mr. Carter the next year, the United States, with Mrs. Thatcher’s support, persuaded other European allies to deploy the missiles. The arms buildups ignited demonstrations across Western Europe.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/pixel.gif

When Mrs. Thatcher called an election in June 1983, Labour’s new chief, Michael Foot, campaigned for a unilateral ban on nuclear weapons, withdrawal from the European Community, further nationalization of industry and a huge jobs program.

Mr. Foot’s turn to the left alienated Labour’s center and right wing, and this time the bookmakers put the odds heavily in Mrs. Thatcher’s favor, and they had no regrets. The conservatives won 397 of the 650 seats in Parliament, the biggest swing in voting since Labour’s landslide victory against Churchill in 1945. The working class voted heavily for the Conservatives.

It was an axiom of British politics that one never picked a quarrel with the pope or the National Union of Mineworkers. Mrs. Thatcher flouted it. The coal mines, nationalized in 1947, were widely seen as unprofitable, overstaffed and obsolescent, and in 1984 the government announced plans to shut down several mines and to eliminate 20,000 of the industry’s 180,000 jobs.

In response, Arthur Scargill, the Marxist president of the union, used union rules to elude a rank-and-file vote and, on March 6, 1984, called a walkout.

It was a violent strike. Night after night, the television news broadcast images of hundreds of miners battling the police. On Nov. 30, at a mine in South Wales, a taxi driver taking a miner to work was fatally injured when a concrete slab was dropped on his cab.

Though the episode shocked the Labour Party and many miners, Mr. Scargill refused to condemn it, alienating Neil Kinnock, the new Labour leader, and other supporters. As members of his own union sought to have the strike declared illegal, newspaper cartoons pictured Mr. Scargill flinching under Mrs. Thatcher’s flailing handbag. The strike finally ended in March 1985, after 362 days, without a settlement.

‘Popular Capitalism’

Mrs. Thatcher now pushed harder to fulfill her vision of “popular capitalism.” The sale of state-owned industries shifted some 900,000 jobs into the private sector. More than one million public housing units were sold to their occupants. And the chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, announced in 1985 that for the first time since the 1960s, the Treasury would not require deficit spending in its next fiscal budget.

Across the Atlantic, Mr. Reagan cheered Britain’s turnaround. He and Mrs. Thatcher did not always agree; he thought she was too reluctant on cutting taxes, while she was wary of his insouciance over rising federal deficits. When Mr. Reagan, without warning the British, ordered troops to invade the Caribbean nation of Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, in the wake of a Communist coup, Mrs. Thatcher gave him a dressing down. Nevertheless, the Reagan-Thatcher axis was, in the words of Hugo Young, “the most enduring personal alliance in the Western world throughout the 1980s.”

The prime minister supported Mr. Reagan’s stand against Communism, echoing White House assertions that Fidel Castro’s Cuba was exporting revolution to Nicaragua and other Latin American states. She was equally vigorous in supporting the United States’ fight against terrorism. In April 1986, after terrorist attacks in Western Europe, the United States sought permission to launch American warplanes from bases in Britain for attacks on Libya. Mrs. Thatcher granted it. The bombing destroyed the living quarters of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and killed one of his children. Mrs. Thatcher’s support for the mission outraged many Britons. But she said that terrorism demanded a united response.

Mrs. Thatcher had shown similar resolve at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton in 1984. On the evening of Oct. 12, as she worked on a speech in her hotel room, a bomb exploded on the floor below, killing four people and wounding more than 30. Among the dead was the wife of the Tories’ chief whip, John Wakeham. A cabinet minister, Norman Tebbit, and his wife were wounded. The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility. The next day Mrs. Thatcher addressed the party as planned, declaring, “All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail.”

Despite the sectarian violence, Northern Ireland was not high on her agenda. Mrs. Thatcher saw the troubles there as intractable and her policies as simply preserving the status quo.

She was more flexible over South Africa, where the struggle against institutionalized racism was growing more violent. Though she regarded apartheid as repugnant, she initially refused to impose economic sanctions on South Africa, arguing that apartheid would ultimately be undone by greater trade and the prosperity and yearnings for democracy that come with it. But pressured by other Commonwealth countries, she grudgingly reversed herself.

On another problem involving the British Empire’s complex legacy, Mrs. Thatcher had more success, at least at first. In 1984, Britain reached an agreement with China over the fate of Hong Kong, which was to revert to China in 1997. Under a formula of “one country, two systems,” the political freedoms and economic structure of Britain’s wealthiest colony would stand for 50 years, preserving Hong Kong’s capitalist economy under a Communist state.

But in the turmoil after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, China, fearing a democratic Hong Kong’s influence on the mainland, was far less amenable to granting the territory representative government. When the British governor, Chris Patten, handed over the colony to China in 1997, Hong Kong’s political future remained uncertain.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/europe/former-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher-of-britain-has-died.html?ref=opinion

OBITUARY

[size=14pt]Margaret Thatcher, 1925-2013
‘Iron Lady’ Who Set Britain on a New Course[/size]
By JOSEPH R. GREGORY
Published: April 8, 2013 881 Comments

Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of British politics, who set her country on a rightward economic course, led it to victory in the Falklands war and helped guide the United States and the Soviet Union through the cold war’s difficult last years, died on Monday in London. She was 87.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/09/world/europe/THATCHER/THATCHER-articleLarge.jpg

Her spokesman, Tim Bell, said she died of a stroke at the Ritz Hotel. She had been in poor health for months and had suffered from dementia.

Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a visit to Continental Europe to return to Britain after receiving the news, and Queen Elizabeth II authorized a ceremonial funeral with military honors — a notch below a state funeral — at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. A statement from the White House said that “the world has lost one of the great champions of freedom and liberty, and America has lost a true friend.”

Mrs. Thatcher was the first woman to become prime minister of Britain and the first to lead a major Western power in modern times. Hard-driving and hardheaded, she led her Conservative Party to three straight election wins and held office for 11 years — May 1979 to November 1990 — longer than any other British politician in the 20th century.

The strong economic medicine she administered to a country sickened by inflation, budget deficits and industrial unrest brought her wide swings in popularity, culminating with a revolt among her own cabinet ministers in her final year and her shout of “No! No! No!” in the House of Commons to any further integration with Europe.

But by the time she left office, the principles known as Thatcherism — the belief that economic freedom and individual liberty are interdependent, that personal responsibility and hard work are the only ways to national prosperity, and that the free-market democracies must stand firm against aggression — had won many disciples. Even some of her strongest critics accorded her a grudging respect.

At home, Mrs. Thatcher’s political successes were decisive. She broke the power of the labor unions and forced the Labour Party to abandon its commitment to nationalized industry, redefine the role of the welfare state and accept the importance of the free market.

Abroad, she won new esteem for a country that had been in decline since its costly victory in World War II. After leaving office, she was honored as Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven. But during her first years in power, even many Tories feared that her election might prove a terrible mistake.

In October 1980, 17 months into her first term, Mrs. Thatcher faced disaster. More businesses were failing and more people were out of work than at any time since the Great Depression. Racial and class tensions smoldered. Even her close advisers worried that her push to stanch inflation, sell off nationalized industry and deregulate the economy was devastating the poor, undermining the middle class and courting chaos.

At the Conservative Party conference that month, the moderates grumbled that they were being led by a free-market ideologue oblivious to life on the street and the exigencies of realpolitik. With electoral defeat staring them in the face, cabinet members warned, now was surely a time for compromise.

To Mrs. Thatcher, they could not be more wrong. “I am not a consensus politician,” she said. “I am a conviction politician.”

In an address to the party, she played on the title of Christopher Fry’s popular play “The Lady’s Not for Burning” in insisting that she would press forward with her policies. “You turn if you want to,” she told the faltering assembly. “The lady’s not for turning.”

Her resolve did the trick. A party revolt was thwarted, the Tories hunkered down, and Mrs. Thatcher went on to achieve great victories. She turned the Conservatives, long associated with the status quo, into the party of reform. Her policies revitalized British business, spurred industrial growth and swelled the middle class.

But her third term was riddled with setbacks. Dissension over monetary policy, taxes and Britain’s place in the European Community caused her government to give up hard-won gains against inflation and unemployment. By the time she was ousted in another Tory revolt — this one over her resistance to expanding Britain’s role in a European Union — the economy was in a recession and her reputation tarnished.

To her enemies she was — as Denis Healey, chancellor of the Exchequer in Harold Wilson’s government, called her — “La Pasionaria of Privilege,” a woman who railed against the evils of poverty but who was callous and unsympathetic to the plight of the have-nots. Her policies, her opponents said, were cruel and shortsighted, widened the gap between rich and poor and worsened the plight of the poorest.

Mrs. Thatcher’s relentless hostility to the Soviet Union and her persistent call to modernize Britain’s nuclear forces fed fears of nuclear war and even worried moderates in her own party. It also caught the Kremlin’s attention. After she gave a hard-line speech in 1976, the Soviet press gave her a sobriquet of which she was proud: the Iron Lady.

Yet when she saw an opening, Mrs. Thatcher proved willing to bend. She was one of the first Western leaders to recognize that the Soviets would soon be led by a member of a new generation, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and invited him to Britain in December 1984, three months before he came to power. “I like Mr. Gorbachev,” she said. “We can do business together.”

Her rapport with the new Soviet leader and her friendship with President Ronald Reagan made Mrs. Thatcher a vital link between the White House and the Kremlin in their tense negotiations to halt the arms race of the 1980s.

Brisk and argumentative, she was rarely willing to concede a point and loath to compromise. Colleagues who disagreed with her were often deluged in a sea of facts, or what many referred to as being “handbagged.”

“She had high standards, and she expected everyone to do their work,” John O’Sullivan, a special adviser to the prime minister, recalled in 1999. “But there was a distinction. She was tougher on her ministers than she was on her personal staff. The more humble the position, the nicer she was.”

Though she was the first woman to lead a major political party in the West, she rubbed many feminists the wrong way. “The battle for women’s rights has largely been won,” she declared. “I hate those strident tones we hear from some women’s libbers.” She relished being impolitic. “You don’t follow the crowd,” she said. “You make up your own mind.”

The arts and academic establishments loathed her for cutting their financing and called her tastes provincial, her values narrow-minded. In 1985, two years into her second term, she was proposed for an honorary doctorate at Oxford, a laurel traditionally offered prime ministers who had attended the university, as she had. The proposal, after a faculty debate, was rejected.

Yet her popularity remained high.

“Margaret Thatcher evoked extreme feelings,” wrote Ronald Millar, a playwright and speechwriter for the prime minister. “To some she could do no right, to others no wrong. Indifference was not an option. She could stir almost physical hostility in normally rational people, while she inspired deathless devotion in others.”

The Grocer’s Daughter

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born on Oct. 13, 1925, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, 100 miles north of London. Her family lived in a cold-water flat above a grocery store owned by her father, Alfred, the son of a shoemaker. Alfred Roberts was also a Methodist preacher and local politician, and he and his wife, Beatrice, reared Margaret and her older sister, Muriel, to follow the tenets of Methodism: personal responsibility, hard work and traditional moral values.

Margaret learned politics at her father’s knee, joining him as he campaigned for alderman and borough councilman as an independent. “Politics was in my bloodstream,” she said.

She won a scholarship to Kesteven and Grantham Girls School. In 1943, at 17, she was admitted to Somerville College, Oxford, to study chemistry. Barred from joining the Oxford Union debating society — it did not admit women until 1963 — she became a member of the Oxford University Conservative Association and its president in 1946. She graduated in 1947 and earned a master’s degree in chemistry, then worked as a chemical researcher and studied law.

Entering politics, she was selected at 23 to be a Conservative candidate for Parliament, and in 1949 she met Denis Thatcher, a well-to-do businessman and former artillery officer who had been decorated for bravery during World War II. They married in December 1951. In August 1953, Mrs. Thatcher gave birth to twins, Mark and Carol, who survive her, along with grandchildren. (Sir Denis died in 2003.) That December, she was admitted to the bar and came to specialize in patent and tax law.

As the couple prospered, Mrs. Thatcher gained the financial independence to devote herself to politics. “Being prime minister is a lonely job,” she wrote in her memoir, “The Downing Street Years” (1993). “It has to be; you cannot lead from the crowd. But with Denis there, I was never alone.”

In 1950 she campaigned to be a member of Parliament from Dartford, a Labour Party preserve. She was the youngest woman to run for a seat that year, a time when Prime Minister Clement Attlee, who had ousted Winston Churchill in an upset on July 5, 1945, was seeking re-election. Mr. Attlee had gone on to create a welfare state that promised full employment, state ownership of industry, public housing and a national health service. As expected, Mrs. Thatcher was defeated. She ran again the next year, and lost, but she did better than expected in both races.

In 1951 the Tories began a 13-year run as the party in power, first under the aging Churchill and then under Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home. But in exchange for support on foreign affairs, the Tories compromised with the unions and accepted the government’s growing role in the marketplace. This “policy of consensus” was successful. Mr. Macmillan, seeking re-election in 1959, said, “Most people have never had it so good.”

Few Tories dared voice misgivings as inflation spread, productivity dropped and deficits grew. Mrs. Thatcher, elected to the House of Commons that year from the largely middle-class Finchley district in north London, was among those who swallowed their doubts.

In 1964, the Tories, exhausted by scandal, a souring economy and internal divisions, lost power to Harold Wilson’s Labour Party. But as the economy grew more feeble and the unions more militant, Mr. Wilson was ousted in 1970 by the Conservative leader, Edward Heath. He appointed Mrs. Thatcher secretary for education.

As a Conservative cabinet minister, she fought budget cuts in the university system and pushed to rebuild schools in poor areas with a zeal, as Hugo Young wrote in his critical 1989 biography, “The Iron Lady,” that “would have done credit to the best of the socialists.”

But it was her effort to restrict a free-milk program for schoolchildren that made her a national figure. Though poor children were exempt from the cutbacks, and the previous Labour government had also reduced free milk in schools, the opposition leapt to the attack. When Mrs. Thatcher argued in Parliament that the cuts would help finance more worthwhile programs, she was jeered. The tabloids labeled her “Thatcher the Milk Snatcher.” Her children were taunted at school. Her husband, worried, suggested that perhaps she should quit politics.

The government stood firm on the milk issue. But as the economy worsened, Mr. Heath retreated, imposing wage and price controls as inflation surged and igniting strikes. His U-turn angered the Tory right. Moreover, it proved futile. In the wake of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, the oil-producing nations of OPEC imposed huge price increases that stoked inflation. By winter 1974 Mr. Wilson was back in power.

The following December, the Conservative Party revised its rules for choosing a leader and opened a series of votes to the rank and file. Mrs. Thatcher, in what many regarded as an act of political gall, declared her candidacy. One British bookmaker, Ladbrokes, put the odds against her at 50 to 1.

Mrs. Thatcher finished ahead of Mr. Heath on the first ballot, 130 to 119. It was not enough for victory, but Mr. Heath was forced to drop out. In the second ballot, on Feb. 11, 1975, Mrs. Thatcher defeated the other contenders, all of them men.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/world/europe/former-prime-minister-margaret-thatcher-of-britain-has-died.html?ref=opinion

(OPINION/EDITORIAL)

[size=14pt]Thatcher’s Divided Isle[/size]
Op-Ed Contributor: A. C. GRAYLING
NEW YORK TIMES
Published: April 8, 2013 40 Comments

LONDON

IT is hard to think of a more divisive figure in British politics than Margaret Thatcher — at least since the days of the predecessor whom she most admired, the early 19th-century prime minister Lord Liverpool.

The high point of Liverpool’s term (1812 to 1827) was the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo; its low point was quickly dubbed Peterloo, the occasion on which British soldiers used their sabers and muskets to disperse workers rallying for better wages, labor conditions and suffrage at St. Peter’s Fields in Manchester in 1819.

Mrs. Thatcher’s 11-year tenure had much in common with Liverpool’s, both in its length and its attitudes toward organized labor.

Her admirers laud her for breaking Britain’s once-powerful trade unions, and liberalizing the City of London’s financial services industry; these acts, they say, halted the country’s economic decline. Her detractors blame her for destroying much of the country’s manufacturing base by refusing to aid struggling industries, and effectively annihilating the mining sector by emasculating the National Union of Miners. Her premiership will always be remembered for the bloody battles between workers and the police, and the high unemployment and sudden appearance of industrial wastelands that followed.

If Argentina hadn’t invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, she might not have even won the 1983 election. National pride raised her approval ratings, and the implosion of the opposition Labour Party sustained her party at the polls for nearly another decade.

Mrs. Thatcher’s own downfall was the so-called Poll Tax, a highly unpopular flat-rate levy on every adult, officially known as the Community Charge. The law was passed in 1988 and caused violence in many cities, including the London riot of March 31, 1990, before it was scheduled to take effect. The tax eventually helped precipitate her resignation from the premiership.

Mrs. Thatcher left behind a changed and divided Britain. She dismantled local government structures, leaving London without a unitary authority to manage its affairs, which meant that urban decay and the effects of unemployment were not adequately countered.

Her attitude on how people should live could be described as either Samuel Smiles (“Self-Help”) or Gordon Gekko (“greed... is good”). Despite being a woman who had shattered the political glass ceiling by becoming leader of her party and then prime minister, she did little to advance the cause of women generally, and would not publicly support the feminist movement. She was also unfriendly toward homosexuals, suggesting in her 1987 speech at the Conservative Party Conference that no one had a “right” to be gay.

By the time the Tories were defeated by Tony Blair’s re-branded centrist “new” Labour Party in 1997, she had become a highly toxic liability for Conservatives. The strain of politics she imposed on her own party effectively disabled it for a generation. The Tories now govern again, after more than a decade of Labour Party rule, but only in coalition with a minority party, the Liberal Democrats.

The Conservatives are unlikely to remain in power after the next election, to be held in 2015 or earlier, because the internal party divisions Mrs. Thatcher bequeathed still exist, especially when it comes to further European centralization and integration — a policy she famously denounced with the words “No. No. No.”

Today, Euroskeptics in Parliament are holding the party leadership hostage; they have extracted a pledge from the prime minister to hold a referendum on continued British membership in the European Union, despite the risk that leaving the union could have disastrous economic consequences.

The curious feature of Mrs. Thatcher’s legacy is that although she struck an ax-blow deep into the heart of Britain, it is society, not the political sphere, that remains deeply divided by a widening gap between rich and poor.

By contrast, the country’s politics have almost ceased to be ideological, as if exhausted by the Thatcher era. All the main British political parties now strive for the center ground, and the differences between them are about managerial style, not questions of principle.

The loss of ideology in British politics is neither good nor bad. It was inevitable when Britain became part of the larger political entity of Europe — a political entity Mrs. Thatcher vehemently disliked — which imposes constraints on how far the ideology of any national party can go.

With her contempt for softhearted liberalism, her hatred of trade unions, and her doctrinaire free-market principles, Mrs. Thatcher’s impact in her own day was huge. And its effects remain.

She began the deregulation of banking that led ultimately to Britain’s contribution to the global financial crisis of 2008. She reversed the trend of greater social integration and diminishing of the wealth gap that had characterized Britain in the three decades after 1945. Postwar convergences in class and wealth disappeared and former divisions resurfaced as consumerism and social incivility followed quickly on her brusque reorganization of British society.

In Britain, that is the chief memory of her that will most likely linger once the obsequies are done.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/09/opinion/thatchers-divided-isle.html?hp&_r=0

March Madness is over. Louisville beat Michigan 82-76 to win the NCAA Basketball thingy.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/08/sports/ncaabasketball/20130408ncaa-slide-D9T5/20130408ncaa-slide-D9T5-hpMedium.jpg

Michigan are wearing yellow.

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/08/sports/ncaabasketball/20130408ncaa-slide-FFHW/20130408ncaa-slide-FFHW-hpMedium-v2.jpg

https://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/08/sports/ncaabasketball/20130408ncaa-slide-12OP/20130408ncaa-slide-12OP-hpMedium.jpg

http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/live-analysis-of-mens-n-c-a-a-final-louisville-michigan/?hp

not sure why my previous post was hidden.

cap28: I knew it would be just a matter of time before ignorant sycophantic nigerian lap dogs would jump to this woman's defence - from your utterances i can see you do not understand anything about the UK - the miners that lost their jobs in northern england were they lazy loafers? the neutering of the unions, the mass unemployment, the deregulation and privatisation of the public sector which has led to off shoring of jobs and mass unemployment which we are still battling with in this country today - please do not speak about things you know nothing about.

Don't mind them, bros. It's the same sort of uncleTom Nigger mentality that's forever on display on NL for all the world to laugh at us. Self-loathing ignorant B.S.
https://www.nairaland.com/1250160/photo-queen-elizabeth-ii-oba/3

[quote author=ekt_bear]Yes. Or at least, they are correlated. In general, being good at English/Math/etc is positively correlated with intelligence.[/quote]That's 'cos it's the only language you speak satisfactorily.

It is too bad the Omo N'Oba bowed, but what do we expect; those racist colonial bastards tried to do away with that kingdom and many others.

But there is nothing wrong with his traditional kingly attire when you see it upclose. It is regal and resplendent.

Have some pride in your culture for God sakes!

nwando: Looks like he must also stink under all those rags

Osisi/Babymama/Nwando,

You not only hate Yorubas and Muslims with virulent passion, you also hate all African cultural heritage.

You are hands down the sickest poster on this site.

If you really are a woman, I pity your children.

And if you are indeed in the health care profession, I pity your patients.

Seek help. You are mentally and emotionally damaged.

AjanleKoko: Me na level 2.
I need to repent ASAP

You're awesome the way you are.

naijababe: . Ni ordinary limbo.

Level 2 of H E dash dash is not Limbo oh.

I don't know how to repent o because i took the test twice and got the same result

https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif

Don't mind them; you're a very honest person o jare.

You too Idowu? You wey i know say u spoil pass me, God dey

naijababe: I protest Isale, this test is skewed jo! Na because I no dey go church or read the scripture

If the "knacking and giggling" girl is claiming to be holier than thou, do you really need any other proof the test it b.o.g.u.s? (Purgatory koo, missionary nii.) hmmph!

It's like when you go to hospital to get treated, and they give you this giant pills and tell you they're potassium pills. . .then you get home and still not better and then you realise they frigging gave you placebos! I'm sorry, what did you ask me?

Idowuogbo: yayyyy!!!! purgatory all d way....

iya ibadan, e pele o! u need to repent!

Yup! See another Purgatorian, already proper lit so early in the morning.

What's NB's connection with Ibadan?

She's claimed Lagos. . .Ijebu. . . Awori. . . Scottish . . . British. . .

Doggone it, someone is so proud of himself! I wish somebody else would wipe that smirk of that someone's face.

I imagine these are the red-flags:
-Have you been attending religious worship lately? Yes No
-Do you believe in astrology, tarot cards, and fortune-telling? Yes No
-Do you believe in God? Yes No
-Are you good at telling lies? Yes No
-Do you think science and logic represent the pinnacle of human understanding? Yes No
-Do you use God's name in vain (ex. "God damn it," "Oh my God" )? Yes No
-Do you read scripture? Yes No
-Do you believe in an afterlife? Yes No
-Do you have any pagan religious beliefs? Yes No
and many more

And you can bet, the only way to get Purgatory after OAM4J and Kats most men and NB https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif answered these honestly:
-Do you look at Indecency? Yes No
-Have you been to a strip club? Yes No
is to answer YES to this:
Do you repent for your sins? Yes No

Katsumoto being Catholic (yes?) knows to do the deed and confess right afterwards.https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/63.gif

BTW, I answered YES to this and got a score of Moderate on Gluttony.
-Do you consider food to be one of life's finer pleasures? Yes No
Am I not supposed to cook for my family again?

Tgirl4real: I'm in Purgatory. Should I be excited?

Blessed child, you're only in Purgatory because heaven was not an option in this BOGUS test. You don't deserve to be in company with us these heathens, heavenly girl.
https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/25.gif

naijababe: . You are roflmaoing while my ar.se is roasting? Surely that's enough reason to be promoted level 2 or summat

I think it is terribly unfair when perfectly honest Deists have to be deeper than accused atheists.

Katsumoto, shey emi ni Godless Communist. I didn't forget sha. You will see!

I bet you there is a flaw in the test somewhere. You could be perfectly holy but one or two wrong answers could spell your doom. Ask Kats and especially OAMK4flirt how they beat the system.

Katsumoto:

You love eating, drinking, and - - -. That's why. You love all the bad things in excess sis.

Look at that language, Scottish Awori. Do you think that test is genuine? SMH. He sounds like he's well lit already.

You two should get along great sha. I'm just saying.

hahahahahaha. https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif https://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif

Katsumoto: See serious hating. E wa wo el yi o.

I don't believe there were questions on partying. So nothing wrong with that.

You don't want to know the word "Partying" replaced.

Katsumoto: Very funny

I am not the one who has all the fine NL gals on speed dial. And chasing gals is my only sin.

Chasing girls is not a sin. I think the sin is coveting your neighbour's wife and other things you may do with the afore-mentioned running girls and neighbourly wives. But, I wouldn't know anything about that sha. Ask Naijababe other sinful creatures.

I kid I jest.

Once again, this is all Dante's fault.

naijababe: Just go and do the test and report back jo.

I took the test last night. Do you think I would post a Quiz that I haven't already subjected myself to? I am the guinea pig, the canary bird.

BTW, I also answered in the affirmative that some mofos do indeed deserve to die die die! Am I supposed to vote NO to capital punishment for a serial murderer? Come on! Off with his head! So, cough cough, that is not why you are chilling and roasting in . . .


Fuggedaboutit, Awori princess! Eff Dante and his makebelieve hell!

Any test that adjudges some hard-drinking partying Spanish-Japanese as worthy of Purgatory while I am consigned to Limbo is BOGUS!

Bada bing bada boom!

Dante's Inferno Test - You Have Been Judged
Your fate has been decided....
You are one of the lucky ones! Because of your virtue and beliefs, you have escaped eternal punishment. You are sent to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!

First Level of Hell - Limbo

Charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief's abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad.

http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test2.mv


edited to remove privileged info.