Survival Analytics

By Vusi Moloi © 2009

Survival analytics
Mental therapeutics
To understand what's going down
To reclaim lost grounds
To lay claim like never before
To make amends with the past
In the land of the ancestors

A meticulous attention
A decisive precondition
Instinctive grasp of infinitesimal
The directive to avert the abysmal
Conveying much respect to the stochastic
A graceful acceptance despite ballistic
Without some events that inspire
We proceed like unbroken sapphire
To agitate for change that refuses to yield
To concentrate efforts that vindicate
Agitating cleanses the soul
To purify towards a goal


Contextual Commentary

Previous memories of defeat in the deadly embrace were not enough to deter the new generation of the mongoose from engaging in the analysis of the slick movements of the fearsome cobra. Although many would find it too painful to absorb the stomach-turning accounts of defeat, the mongoose detached herself from the mortality of pain in order to begin a paradigm shift in the new struggle to defeat a previously powerful opponent.

The goal of the African mongoose was to stake her claim to the rare fruits of a hard won victory resembling the unconquerable queens of Nubia like Queen Candace who caused Alexander the Great to freeze and retreat when the Nubian armies stood up to him. A painstaking reflection revealed that it was possible to overrun the cobra in a gutsy move by delivering the first decisive blow like a thunderbolt.

Endless days of rehearsing had perfected her interpretive and combative skills and thus produced the indomitable African mongoose. Attention to detail ensured a short but decisive victory against a slithering foe capable of reinventing the art of war. A new dispensation had irrevocably arrived when the mongoose became a newly crowned ruler of the shifting ground despite the cobra having a reach advantage in a treacherous terrain. Photographic memory bolstered her survival advantage because by memorizing the repertoire of an awe-inspiring cobra, she had garnered enough depth and breadth to become the architect of her own destiny.
The Indomitable Mongoose, Vusi Moloi © 2009 Canada

About the Author

A former South African Television Journalist, Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book, A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, and maintains a blog, Zulumathabo on the Internet.

The Last Rite – Film Review

By Vusi Moloi © 2009

Talking about it is not easy. Treatment of it for documentary purposes is even harder and yet the Canadian film maker Gina Valle succeeds where some have failed. Welcome to The Last Rite, a film documentary about dying, death and grieving. What makes this documentary special and worth your time to view it?

Her common folk approach as well as her ability to draw from her own personal experience of death with respect to her beloved father belie Gina Valle’s impressive scholarly background as a PhD expert in Multicultural Studies a good synthesis that enables her to comfortably navigate an uncharted path in a way that engenders a feeling of calmness and tranquility while her theatre audience is treated to what is otherwise a taboo subject. This is the kind of impression I came away with while attending the premier screening of The Last Rite at the Innis College Theatre Hall in Toronto, Canada last Tuesday. I count myself among the privileged to be invited to the screening.

Youtube Preview Video

The Last Rite - Youtube preview video by soultanis33

Hybrid of Dramatization and Factual Accounts

Using dramatization and real people’s interviews The Last Rite eases you into its subject matter while teaching important lessons about what is death, how to prepare for the inevitability of death and what positive lessons can be learned from it. At the end of the screening and while the credits were still scrolling The Last Rite was given a strong round of applause by its viewers. The director and her crew, who came to the fore, including Executive Producer Ingrid Berzin Leuzy, Director of Photography Nigel Akam, Editor Diane Akam and Nicholas Schnier and others enjoyed the admiration of an enthusiastic audience with another resounding round of applause. No doubt the documentary that took eighteen months in the making and a lot of unrelenting hardwork by the crew was well received.

Honourable Mention From Madeline Ziniak

The Vice-President of OMNI Television who received the highest civilian honour of Order of Canada in July of this year for her work in multicultural media Madeline Ziniak told the audience before the screening that The Last Rite had been funded 100% by the OMNI Television and it was a proud project for her organization as well as the emerging film maker. The highly regarded Madeline Ziniak enjoys excellent rapport with Canada’s multi-ethnic communities. An indefatigable champion of Canada’s diversity and multi-ethnic media, Madeline Ziniak along with the CEO of OMNI Television Leslie Sole once commended this writer for supporting OMNI Television’s quest for licensing with the CRTTC back in 2003. It’s gratifying to see that OMNI has blossomed greatly since those formative years and has strengthened multicultural content by enabling a great documentary project like The Last Rite to see the light of day.

What Makes This Film Attention-Grabbing?

A meticulous Gina Valle with attention to detail delicately weaves an interest-arousing tapestry of personal and other’s real accounts with sobering perspectives of a skillfully enlisted triumvirate of the Islamic Imam Badat, the Buddhist Venerable Hoa and the Hindu Swami Atin Bhattacharya who generously impart their rich insights to show that death does not have to be an exclusively melancholy experience that exacts punishment with its cold shroud of mystery and hurtful silence in our innermost. Gina Valle underscores the value of learning from the viewpoints of others in her website "The Last Rite illustrates how Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists ritualize death. In this documentary we spend time in mosques, Buddhist temples, and ashrams to gain knowledge into the meaning of death and life."

Death can be a means of coming to terms with the core lessons of living and become instrumental in helping us to prepare for its inevitability and the aftermath while providing a cleansing experience. We see this cleansing with the bathing of the dead by the members of the mosque and family members driven by the love of their own in stark contrast to what has become legendary in a modern metropolitan society where the death of a loved one is professionally handled by strangers who take the body away and allow only a restricted and limited access in what is a quantifiable policy by a corporate enterprise driven by profit margins.

Erudite Cast

Gina Valle adds to her erudite cast some of the brightest minds like Dr. Wong an expert on death and dying and University Professor of Psychology, Rev. Michael Marshall a Hospital Chaplain with a clinical pastoral background, Registered Nurse and Palliative Care Worker Lori Ives-Bain and Kala Limbani among many who make The Last Rite documentary an instructive and stimulating experience. This is a must see for all members of the family.

Rush To Find Closure

Modern society is in a rush that we find closure and get over it despite the harsh reality that grieving, the longest stage of bereavement, may last anywhere from many months up to two years and in some cases even longer according to scholars. Having to contend with suddenness of death in my youth, I found this overwhelming experience refusing to go away at first and at the time I lacked the intellectual maturity of reasoning but thankfully with the support of a traditional African village collective the grieving took its own time to crystallize which proved to me that the process of grieving could not be boxed into some clean cut and dry process. This film presents a persuasive case that everyone has his or her own way of dealing with death.

We learn from Gina Valle’s instructive personal experience when she observes “when my father died, there was such an expedient manner in which the death was managed, almost with an eagerness to move the death out of the public eye, and rid us of our sorrow in one sweep.” While pointing out that “death is a treasure” Gina Valle provides a gateway through her fresh lenses to the extremely vital viewpoints of palliative workers, spiritual leaders and health care workers who grapple with the issues of dying and grieving from time to time effectively broadening the vistas of our understanding around this intractable subject while at the same time harnessing and enriching the coping resources which otherwise would remain outside the public view.


OMNI Television Broadcast Times

The Last Rite is produced in the languages of English and Italian. The Italian language boasts the most beautiful and comforting voice of Bertoni Bruna. The 45 minutes long The Last Rite is scheduled to be broadcast on OMNI TV in the two languages of English and Italian as follows:

English

Sunday, October 18, 2009
9:00PM

Italian
Saturday, October 24, 2009
10:00PM


The Organizers of The Last Rite Premier

The following great individuals helped put to together a successful Premier of The Last Rite:

Michelle Alfano
Tom Boreskie
Frank Giorno
Kala Limbani
Jeannie Soultanis

To Learn more about The Last Rite visit Gina Valle website:
www.ginavalle.com on the web.

About the Author

A former South African Television Journalist, Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book, A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, and maintains a blog, Zulumathabo on the Internet.

Why Obama Is a Prize Winning President

By Vusi Moloi © 2009

Congratulations are in order to President Barack Obama for winning the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. This surprise award recognizes and vindicates President Obama’s transformative role in bringing a fundamental change in global discourse with respect to detente and peaceful efforts towards world peace. President Obama is an extraordinary individual whose extraordinary achievements and approach towards world affairs require this kind of extraordinary recognition. This means the Nobel Prize Committee is in step with the new political climate in the light of the advent of the great President Obama.

Rewarded Too Early?

Some have expressed misgivings that this award is too premature since President Obama has only been in office for less than nine months. Those who hold this view walk the path of instant gratification where you get paid for what you have done and do as you please afterwards and they have never experienced the strategic advantage in picking a fruit before it’s ripe because that means it does not get eaten right away and will stay longer during the voyage and on reaching the final destination it will be fresher than the fruits that were picked when ripe. This principle of deferring self-gratification while the fruit is still green is an important concept that gives a survival advantage to those who practice it. It teaches us the maxims of self-discipline and self-restraint. For this reason the Nobel Peace Prize is well positioned to foster these values in the Obama Presidency.

This prize is intended to reward President Obama as a change agent as well as bolster his policies that favour diplomatic over military efforts in bringing about peace among the nations of the world. The Chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee Thorbjorn Jagland underscored the fact that President Obama had done more than anyone in the previous year to enhance peace on the planet. The advent of President Obama has already ushered a fundamental shift in world relations where United Nations and other world institutions have regained their central role in addressing the urgent problems of the world.

In the press release issued by the Nobel Prize Committee, President Obama was praised for his ability and achievement in creating a favourable mood of peace and diplomacy in the direction that agrees with the majority of the world citizens:

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future. His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population.

For 108 years, the Norwegian Nobel Committee has sought to stimulate precisely that international policy and those attitudes for which Obama is now the world's leading spokesman. The Committee endorses Obama's appeal that "Now is the time for all of us to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges.” The Nobel Peace Prize 2009

Unilateralism vs. Multilateralism

Unlike President George Bush who trashed the United Nations as “irrelevant” in his September 12, 2002 speech to the United Nations “Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?”, President Obama embraced the world body when addressing the same United Nations last month on September 23 “The time has come to realize that the old habits; the old arguments are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people.”

We can see that the Former President George Bush view of the world is like night and day compared to President Obama. President Obama understands the urgent need for peace and his outside the box approach to world events is a tribute to the great Americans like Cordell Hull who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the founding of the United Nations which earned him the title The Father of the United Nations from President Franklin Roosevelt.

President Obama who became the President of the United States on January 20th of this year would have been nominated to the Nobel Prize Committee 10 just days after taking office to meet the deadline of February 1st. The manner in which Mr. Obama was able to navigate and transcend the political thrashings of the hotly contested presidential campaign and still manage to embrace his archrival Hilary Clinton was nothing short of amazing. Obama’s political grace even put a smile in great female politicians like Nancy Pelosi whom I respect greatly. All this was a Nobel Prize material.

As a Nobel Prize Laureate, President Obama joins the ranks of other great individuals like his fellow African sister Dr. Wangari Mathai who fully supports and rejoices with him in the same spirit expressed by other great Africans like Nelson Mandela, Mohammed ElBaradei, Desmond Tutu as well as his fellow Americans like former President Jimmy Carter, former Vice-President Al Gore and many others in the world who wish President Obama well in his audacious quest to bring about world peace via the regime of diplomacy with less emphasis on armed confrontation.

What About the Three Wars i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan?

These wars are not the creation of President Obama but rather the legacy of the unilateralist policies of the former President Bush. In this fashion, President Obama was dealt a bad hand but like any wise strategist he must work with the cards that he was dealt until such time that he can deal the cards. The main thrust of his efforts is geared towards ending these wars beginning with Iraq.

It’s the viewpoint of this writer that General Stanely McChrystal may not see his wish of 40000-50000 troop surge realized. The Soviets tried this troop surge strategy by pouring all their fighting resources in the hope of defeating the Mugahedeen and the consequence of that saw their own economy depleted in the process. President Obama is adept at learning from others’ mistakes and not repeating them. He seemingly has an instinctive grasp of how the jungle works which requires that he must be guided by a sense of foretaste and not a sense of bitter aftertaste.

The Americans are going to withdraw from parts of Afghanistan in order to concentrate and position themselves where they can reach a favourable political settlement with the unconquerable Taliban fighters. We have already seen this with the recent retreat of American soldiers from Nuristan a very important piece of strategic ground given the ability of the Talibans to crisscross with Pakistant at will. The withdrawal follows one of the deadliest attacks where the Americans where overrun by the insurgents resulting in a great loss of American life in the hands of the Talibans.

The withdrawal is officially referred to as a “repositioning” of forces and there is no shame in that. The Talibans are a natural gravity of Afghanistan and no one has ever won a war against gravity on the long term. Part of the reason is that the Talibans know the terrain like the back of their hands and unlike the forces of foreign occupation they are committed to their motherland which enables them to fight with unmatched determination while the foreign forces fight with unmatched technology. The Americans realize this immutable fact of antagonistic contradiction and for this reason they are headed for a political settlement at some point in the future.

Impact of the Nobel Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize has important implications for the Obama Presidency. It alters the dynamics of strategizing and goes a long way to bolster his quest for a diplomatic settlement in Afghanistan which will allow him to narrow the conflict to counter-terrorism. Some think such a redefined war is easier to win than fighting the Talibans. Given that Vice-President Joe Biden leans towards deescalating and avoiding a Vietnam-like bottomless quagmire in Afghanistan vis-à-vis the Secretary of State Hilary Clinton who supports increased confrontation via a troop surge President Obama will only have to solve a trivial case of opposing viewpoints.

About the Author

A former South African Television Journalist, Vusi Moloi is a published author of a contextual poetry book, A Goodbye To My Little Troubles, and maintains a blog, Zulumathabo on the Internet.