The Fruitless Efforts Of Thabo Mbeki To Save Africa After Aids Pandemic

 

Thabo Mbeki, right, with Nelson Mandela

The former South African leader, Thabo Mbeki, did his best to save Africa from the state of being subject to death after Aids hits the continent but his efforts were abortive.

 

African leaders are known for dealing with home issues than external factors. They pay less attention to factors that are considered serious issues in the developed world. One of such problems is overpopulation.

 

Poverty and corruption have affected Africa, while population growth increases at a very fast rate. America and Europe are worried but not African leaders. As we can see, millions of Africans are trying to reach Europe despite the deadly consequences.

 

For example, the population of Nigeria alone is about I95.9 million people, (2018) therefore, imagine what Nigeria's population would be in the year 2050.

 

This is what is called a population explosion. It is often said that when persuasion fails, force is applied. Therefore, if African leaders are not interested to control the population growth, the developed world will do the job.

 

We must understand why Aids has taken a ruthless path in Africa than any continent. The former president of the Republic of South Africa Thabo Mbeki was a major barrier in the eyes of depopulation supporters. 

 

He knows that HIV does not lead to the development of human diseases, therefore, tuberculosis in Aids patients was artificially created. He knows that the so-called AIDS is created by the hands of pharmaceuticals to reduce the number of the population.

 

Mbeki understands that the causes of mortality in third world countries are destroying African countries. However, his efforts to seek outside help to reduce this devastating effect didn’t work. 

 

Attempts by Mbeki to form a real coalition of leaders of all countries of the African continent are to some extent held back. A weapon called ‘money’ is used against him. 

 

If all African leaders had come together to show concern about the depopulation of Africa with Aids, there wouldn’t be any Ebola today in Africa. The fact that African leaders aren’t serious people, they have invited many crimes from the developed world against Africa.

 

Surprisingly, that unconcern attitude remains the same, nothing has changed in Africa, giving rise to several predictions that Africa will suffer another depopulation biological weapon after Aids and Ebola.

 

Many biological weapon analysts argue that despite how Aids has ravaged Africa, the fast population growth still needs attention. In this case, Africa needs a biological weapon that will do the job better and quicker.

 

This is how Ebola has come to stay with us today in Africa, as the successor of Aids. This is a warning to African leaders to consider doing something about the fast population growth. Japan has already started.

THE SYSTEMATIC ABUSE OF POWER IN COLONIAL AFRICA

The image of humans used as transport was another abuse of power in the colonial era in Africa.

During the colonial era in Africa, the masters often received the respect accorded by Black people out of fear. Based on this misconception that Black people fear them, they abused their power horrifically and inhumanly without regret or remorse.

However, the myth that a Black man fears a white man is total nonsense. Europeans scrambled over Africa with sheer brutality and aggression, subduing Africans; therefore, they were too vulnerable and powerless to react. 

The same abuse and oppression of Black people exist today in many European countries and the United States of America. If not for the Black Lives Matter demonstration after George Floyd's death, there would still be statues commemorating key figures who committed horrible crimes against humanity during slavery and the colonial era.

The fathers of independence, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Patrice Lumumba of Congo, had no fear of the British and Belgian governments. 

They gained independence for their countries, but because Britain and Belgium actually feared them, Nkrumah was removed from power in a coup masterminded by the CIA, and Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in a plot conceived by the Belgian government. 

In apartheid South Africa, Steve Biko, Nelson Mandela, and his colleagues had no fear of the minority apartheid leaders. Despite the force of brutality they unleashed, maiming and opening fire on protesting, defenseless South Africans, they murdered Steve Biko and put other ANC key members, including Nelson Mandela, behind bars for twenty-seven years because they feared them. 

When it comes to crime, there are many white criminals out there, as well as Black criminals, but the Black man is always given a second look because of the color of his skin. Just being Black makes you a suspect. In the United States of America, Black drivers are more often stopped and harassed than white motorists.

In Belgium, being Africans among white workers, all eyes were on us as suspects when sandwiches had been missing every time from the dining hall. The atmosphere becomes tense when, on the fifth day of the week, one of the workers finds his food stolen again.

This time, the management decides to do something about it. They secretly started their investigations, creating an undetected hideout, aiming to catch the person responsible for this theft red-handed.

 

The following week, about a quarter to noonday, a mysterious man emerged into the quiet dining hall, looking for a meal to steal. After tasting some meals, he found a delicious one, and he took it. As he tried to walk out, he was intercepted.  

 

Colonial power in Africa took all that it wanted and destroyed the souls of Africans.

Shockingly, out of hundreds of workers at the company, the mysterious thief appeared to be one of our colleagues from Portugal. The sandwich thief was Portuguese, not African.

The need to respect all races

 

It is absolutely wrong to take the respect someone gives as a reason to treat him very badly. Many enjoy being racist; some people like to discriminate against Black people, calling them degrading names, but the question is, what do racists get from hate? Nothing is more significant than violence and the destruction of property.

Who lives forever, and what makes you think your color is better than someone else's when there is a big difference between the color white and real black? If white people's color is white like white paper, I think everyone who sees them will run to hide somewhere in fear.

Respect doesn’t mean fear; therefore, those who have that sick mentality should begin to dismantle it from their brains because racial problems have caused too much death and violence, and without respect for other races, there will never be peace on earth.

How Overcoming Difficulties Improves The Quality Of Life - The Story Of The Ant

Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in prison, became the president of South Africa.

Life is beautiful, but the different philosophies and ideas of men that keep changing the world make things difficult for us sometimes. Many want to become rich or famous at all costs; therefore, they take the wrong turn in life and pay heavily for their crimes, while those on the right path of perseverance to success often give up because they find it too tough to handle.

I see people who give up in life very easily as weak and lazy. In the early nineties, I was among the few Africans in Rome, Italy. We only eat at the Caritas charity, but there is no place to sleep. Where to lay your head in Rome was one of the toughest issues of being an illegal immigrant in Italy.

Many of my African friends return to Africa. I refused to leave; I stayed behind, sleeping every night at the central train station in Rome. Today, here I am still in Europe and now with documents. 

Why, as a human being, do you have to give up when a small insect, an ant, never gives up in whatever it does?

Here is the story of the ant.

In reality, the intelligence of a man is above any animal or insect, but examining the effectiveness of certain insects, such as a bee and an ant, we can’t dispute the fact that the most intelligent insect can rightly be considered an ant, because it is one of the few hard-working social insects.

 

Ants gather in large groups and accept smaller colonies to be slaves. They are intelligent creatures to navigate their environment and the weather.  They go to war against each other and know how to protect and defend themselves by using tactics and strategies.

 

According to a study, the ants know how to heal themselves.  The ant, infected with the spores of the parasite fungus, transfers to the healthy ants a small number of spores, which is not enough for a full infection but strengthens their immune system.

 

The body temperature of ants changes in response to the atmospheric temperature. In winter, their body temperature falls so greatly that their movements inevitably grow sluggish. Therefore, they hibernate restlessly in relatively warm places, such as the soil or under the bark of trees.

 

The hard-working insect ant

Depending on the environmental conditions, there can be several queens in the anthill, polygamy, or monogamy. There may be several ants that act as the queen and often arrange fights among themselves, trying to hit each other with their antennae. 

 

Such fights do not cause significant damage to the females; however, the working ants watching them make their choice in favor of one of them, after which they kill the rest.  

 

Ants can communicate by explaining to each other the path to food; they can count and perform simple arithmetic operations. 

 

For example, when a scout ant finds food in a specially designed maze, they return and explain how to get to it to other ants.  If you remove the pheromone trace at this time, the relatives of the scout will still find food. 

 

In another experiment, a scout searches the labyrinth of many identical branches, and after communication, other insects immediately run to the indicated branch.  

 

Ants communicate using odors because their glands produce pheromones in different concentrations for different messages. 

 

If an ant stumbles upon its own pheromone trail, the insect will walk in a circle until it is completely exhausted; condemned to this fate, its brethren will follow its trail.  This phenomenon is called an ant-hill, the spiral of death, a carousel of death, or ant circles.

 

For the reason that ants communicate with smells, they cannot distinguish between a dead and a living ant.  They understand the difference only when the dead begin to decompose.

 

However, not all ants have a permanent residence.  There are roving ants.  They live in the tropics of Africa, as well as in Central and South America.  Sometimes African roving ants come together in huge colonies of up to twenty million, and usually, they move very fast. 

 

It is very interesting to observe how roving nomadic ants move.  They look like a living river flowing in a direction known only to them. When they meet a large pool, they stick to each other to form a bridge and cross over.

 

Such a column of nomads stretches on average up to one or two meters.  When staying for the night, the queen, together with the larvae, remains in the center, and the remaining ants, clinging to each other with their paws, form a large ball, approximately one meter in diameter.

If such a tiny insect as an ant can work so hard to survive both summer and winter, why would you call it quits if you encounter problems in your life? 

It is not how many times you fall in life but how many times you make efforts to stand on your feet. Never give up as a human being in whatever good thing you want to achieve in your life until the bones are rotten.

WHY FIDEL CASTRO AND KWAME NKRUMAH REJECTED DEMOCRACY

 Fidel Castro and Kwame Nkrumah

African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, to mention but a few, weren’t only intelligent but also had a vision of how the state of Africa would be if the US government imposed that type of lunatic Democracy on Africa.

As a matter of fact, this is one of the reasons why, even though Nkrumah studied in America, he had no interest in democracy than communism. Instead of Nkrumah seeking help from America to build his country, Ghana, Nkrumah collaborated with communist leaders in Russia, China, and Cuba.

Like Nkrumah, Fidel Castro also wasn’t interested in democracy, but the US government doesn’t leave leaders who aren’t interested in democracy alone. The CIA will work hard to eliminate you. Both Kwame Nkrumah and Fidel Castro survived several assassination attempts.

Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro

The significance of this article is to ask why the US government wants countries globally to follow democracy. And why do countries that aren’t interested in democracy instantly become enemies? As the story goes, America’s deadly hand of democracy got all African countries under its control.

The American government can’t stop preaching about democracy, telling the world that “a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives,” is the best government for humanity, persuading all the Third World to also follow the 'almighty' democracy.

However, America has a different opinion or agenda when soliciting democracy in Africa. To carry out clandestine crimes against humanity, to kill every powerful Third World leader they consider a threat, and to test drugs and biological weapons, such as Aids and Ebola, in poor African countries to support their global depopulation schemes.

The oppression of Africans will never come to an end, firstly, because our leaders have no vision, and secondly, they are corrupt, lazy, and inefficient in utilizing their own resources; instead, they have become a new generation of slaves to advanced countries, such as Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and the United States of America.

Fidel Castro and Julius Nyerere

No matter how hard African leaders try, the continent will never move forward because that’s part of a hidden definition of America’s democracy: to set a military base throughout Africa and manipulate African leaders’ efforts. Why didn't the US government didn't call out to the rich Libya under Gaddafi to build a military base in America?

After the manipulation of African leaders' efforts and the destabilization of our economy, African leaders would lay red carpets for the foreign criminals when on a visit. Yet Africans are always insulting their leaders without commenting on the criminal activities of the US government in Africa. However, African leaders deserve it.

African leaders can’t speak against Aids and Ebola, well-known African pastors also can’t speak against the crime the US government commits in Africa because the US embassies will deny them a visa to enter the US, thus America has been successful with its clandestine crimes in Africa.

Fidel Castro and Thabo Mbeki

The experience of past African political history should have been bona fide events to teach African leaders the best way to handle affairs in Africa. Unfortunately, past events don’t mean anything to our modern African leaders because they are only interested in power and corruption.

If Africa is in this turbulent state or my beloved Ghana is in such an acute economic crisis, how will Ghana be in the next ten years? It’s frightening indeed. I have said and I will repeat once again, “Both NPP and NDC can’t save Ghana, despite all the noise both parties are making over who is the best and the failure.

African countries, including my beloved Ghana, will crawl out from the coma when they stop depending on those Ghanaians called “Kumfudumfo.” (They claim they are helping you, yet they are killing you.)

How America’s Global Power Has Shaped Its Democratic Image and Controversies

It sounds like a fairy tale, but most of the children stolen from Africa by Belgium were indeed put on show in a human zoo

Barack Obama

Any developed country that has the power to dominate and is capable of influencing international events on less powerful nations is a superpower country.. That’s what America stands for, with leaders democratically elected by the people.

Unfortunately, because of abuse of power, grave crimes committed against humanity, and bad policies, American leaders have generated scores of hatred towards American citizens, even though they didn’t play any role in the crimes they committed against countries in Africa and Latin America.

Below is a glance at crimes committed against humanity under the umbrella of America, a so-called superpower and democratic country.

Slaves from Africa to America as African-Americans working in the cotton fields

African Americans were deliberately infected with diseases and used for experiments.

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells—taken without her knowledge in 1951—became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, and more.

Nelson Mandela

Under the system of Apartheid, in an effort to free his country, America and Britain put Nelson Mandela behind bars for 27 years.

Human Zoo

A small black girl is being fed a banana in a zoo. This photograph is from Brussels.

Man-Made Diseases

Aids, Ebola, Lassa Fever, and Zika Viruses were man-made diseases created by America as bio-weapons, to see how effective they are on people, to generate money through pharmaceutical companies, to gain control over a country's natural resources, and to reduce the population of a country.

Dr. Jeff Bradstreet

Dr. Jeff Bradstreet: The killing of doctors who oppose medicines not good for human consumption

The American government depends heavily on revenue generated from pharmaceutical companies, leading to the creation of many man-made diseases, including Aids, Ebola, Lassa Fever, Zika virus, etc. The reason cancer is on the rise in the country is. 

Anti-vaccine Dr. Jeff Bradstreet was therefore killed for opposing the vaccine against autism, and the biased government media reported it as an apparent suicide, making America one of the most dangerous countries in the world, followed by Mexico and Colombia.

Opinion and conclusion

The call for every black man, including African-Americans and Africans in the Diaspora, to pray without ceasing is necessary because the use of black people for experiments and drug tests isn’t over yet.

In fact, revealing AIDS, Ebola, Zika, etc, as man-made diseases and exposing the American government using Black people for drug tests, wouldn’t let them give up or reduce the crime. They will definitely increase it because medical crimes sustain the American economy.

The medicines they send to Africa for Aids victims don’t work; they rather kill them fast, yet many HIV/AIDS patients in America who got the disease in the ’80s are still living. 

This is a warning to Africans or the Black man that: He is the least recognized person among the human race; thus, he should be extremely careful wherever he steps on the surface of this earth.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NELSON MANDELA

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela celebrated his 94th birthday on July 18, 2012, as his country stood behind him by participating in good deeds nationwide, to honor this great man, who history will always recognize as one of the heroes, to liberate South Africans who were under the brutal regime of Apartheid.

In South Africa, the nationals performed at least sixty-seven minutes of public service on his birthday, a reference to his number of years he devoted to helping others. Besides the various activities of honor, about fourteen million students sang "Happy Birthday" to him before they started their lessons.

In Qunu, his hometown, where he grew up, members of his family, including children and grandchildren, gathered to mark his birthday and perform community service at the local health centers. World leaders, including President Barack Obama, also paid tribute to Mandela. 

"Nelson Mandela's personal story is one of unbreakable will, unwavering integrity, and abiding humility. By measure, he has changed the arc of history, transforming his country, continent, and the world, said Barack Obama. Mandela's last public appearance was at the 2010 World Cup, held in his country.

He is reported to be doing well at his age. The biography of Nelson Mandela is available at Amazon.com.

F.W. De Klerk should have faced justice in the Hague like Charles Taylor

An image of F.W. De Klerk

In the political reality of our world, justice has never been equal. It bends, it selects, and it protects those who benefit from its fragility. Frankly speaking, there has never been anything called “justice” for the Black man or the South African under apartheid. 

 

If true justice existed, F.W. de Klerk, former president of South Africa during the apartheid era, should have faced trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague for the crimes committed under his leadership, including the killing of defenseless children.

 

Like a bird freed from its cage, de Klerk moved on with life, conveniently forgetting the brutal actions, racist philosophies, and oppressive regime he presided over. 

 

Today, he even dares to label Nelson Mandela, a global icon of peace, as a “brutal and unfair” political opponent. He speaks boldly because he knows the European-centered justice system has always favored leaders who carry bloodstains on their hands.

 

De Klerk never deserved to share the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Mandela. He released Mandela from prison only because the apartheid system was collapsing under global pressure. Yet he claimed Mandela was “not faultless.” That accusation is absurd. 

 

If Mandela was not faultless, what about de Klerk, whose regime murdered schoolchildren in cold blood? Mandela fought for his people’s freedom; they killed Steve Biko, but they could not silence Mandela.

 

Charles Taylor deserved to face justice for supporting Foday Sankoh and fueling atrocities in Sierra Leone. No one disputes that. However, when we consider the scale of crimes committed by apartheid leaders, decades of torture, massacres, racial segregation, and state-sponsored violence, none of them should have escaped judgment.

 

 Yet every one of them walked away with impunity because they were “white vampires sucking the blood of innocent Black people.” If the situation were reversed, the International Court in The Hague would have lined up every Black leader for trial.

 

The world cannot pretend that justice is blind. It sees color. It sees power. It sees political alliances. Charles Taylor’s imprisonment cannot be used as proof that the International Court is doing a good job. Partiality rules in The Hague, and history has shown this repeatedly.

 

If Nazi leaders are still hunted today for the killing of six million Jews, as they should be, then any surviving apartheid leader, and every foreign leader who supported that evil regime, including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, must also face justice. 

 

Only then will the world believe that the International Court in The Hague is truly committed to fairness. Justice must not be selective. Justice must not be racial. Justice must not protect one group while punishing another. 

 

Until the crimes of apartheid are treated with the same seriousness as other crimes against humanity, the world will continue to witness a justice system that favors the powerful and abandons the oppressed.

ALBERTINA SISULU: LEGEND OF A POLITICAL HEROINE

Albertina Sisulu

Albertina Sisulu, one of the political icons of the Apartheid era, who sacrificed her life and fought against the evil-Apartheid alongside her husband, Albert Sisulu, has died at the age of 92 on Thursday 2/06/201.  

               

The death of struggle veteran Albertina Sisulu has left the ANC in shock, disbelief, and devastated at the loss of a mother, says ruling party spokesman Jackson Mthembu.

Albertina Sisulu was the widow of Walter Sisulu, the first secretary-general of the ANC, a Robben Island prisoner, and a friend of Nelson Mandela. 

Her extraordinary personal sacrifices were to let ordinary Africans lead a dignified life, free of the daily discriminations and humiliations that constituted the Apartheid system.

She endured a lot so that each person, regardless of race or creed or gender, could enjoy the full range of pleasures and sorrows, challenges and accomplishments that define the daily essence of an ordinary person. 

Born in 1918, in the village of Camama in the Transkei region of South Africa, Albertina chose to study nursing. She married Albert Sisulu in 1947.

Albertina was the only woman present at the birth of the African National Congress Youth League. She became more of an activist, leading the ANC Women's League in the famous 1952 Defiance Campaign and boycotts, protests, and sit-ins of the 1950s. 

In the 60s, she endured several banning orders by the Apartheid government.

Her husband was sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island, one of the notorious prisons in South Africa, forcing her to raise a family on her own. Like Winnie Mandela, Adelaide Thambo, wife of Oliver Thambo, and Ma Mbeki, she bore the burden with quiet and defiant dignity.

How much could a woman take in those dark, anguished days? At one time, Albertina had three of her children in jail with her husband over the anti-Apartheid struggle. 

Yet not once did her suffering diminish her attentiveness to the travails of others. Albertina Sisulu belongs to a breed of dying giants, the giants who liberated Africa of all its inhabitants.

She belongs to the giants who had fought to see the fall of Apartheid. Her selfless sacrifice can never be erased from the political history of South Africa. May her soul rest in perfect peace.

STEVE BIKO: LEGEND OF A POLITICAL HERO

The great Steve Biko: He sacrificed his life to make what South Africa is today.

 

In the political history of South Africa, many are those who fought against the evil apartheid, oppression, mass arrests, detention without trial, etc. 

Along the line with Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Chief Buthelezi, etc, in the struggle to emancipate blacks from hardships was Steve Bantu Biko, who died in detention before he could see the fall of apartheid years ago, in South Africa.

Although Steve Biko is gone, his great achievement and his part in the struggle to free South Africa, under the previous white minority rule, will always be remembered. 

Steve Biko, the man popularly known as the "Father of Black Consciousness Movement," was born in King William's Town, Cape Province in South Africa, on December 18, 1946. He lost his father at the tender age of four.

After his primary and secondary school education in South Africa, he left for the Lovedale institution in Alice. He received his higher education at the Roman Catholic Marianhill in Natal and entered the medical school of the University of Natal in 1965. 

As an active member of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS), his heart was increasingly in politics. He left NUSAS and formed the South African Students Organization (SASO).

Regarded as one of the fearless critics in South Africa, along the line with Nelson Mandela, despite both having different views and options, Biko faced the white regime squarely. 

Not by violence, but through his writings, which he named "I write what I like." The white regime found his writings as nothing but the simple truth and thought his letters posed a threat to national security. He writes:

Black consciousness seeks to talk to the Black man in a language of his own. It is only by making familiar the basic setup in the Black world that one will be aware of the urgent need for the reawakening of the sleeping masses. 

He stressed, "It urges black people to judge themselves as human beings and not to be fooled by the white society, which has white-washed itself to enjoy privileges at the expense of blacks; Biko pointed out that the logic behind white domination is to prepare the Blackman to serve and give him respect. 

Even in sports, Whitman wants to do everything for themselves, all by themselves, by keeping Blacks to stand at touchlines to witness the game they are playing.

In his writings, he always stressed and talked openly against whites, saying that "there is no doubt that the color question in South African politics was originally introduced for economic reasons. 

Because the selfish white leaders installed a barrier between blacks and whites so that they could enjoy what belonged to Blacks. 

To avoid influencing the various Black groups in South Africa, which gave him much support and recognition, Steve Biko was arrested and detained many times under Section 6 of the Terrorism Act in South Africa.

In many cases, he was always released. But on August 18, 1977, when Steve Biko was arrested and detained under the same offense of terrorism, little did everybody know that he would not be seen again. 

He was taken to Port Elizabeth, stripped naked, and tortured to death. His autopsy stated that he died of brain damage. Those responsible for his death lied that he died on a hunger strike in detention.

Unfortunately, Steve Biko wasn't alive to see what he sacrificed his life for: the fall of apartheid. However, on the eve of the 33rd anniversary of his death, it is worthwhile to say that "September 12 of every year should be declared as a public holiday in the Republic of South Africa, in honor of that great man.

If a day in America is observed as a holiday for the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., then the late Steve Biko should be given that recognition, too, in South Africa. Steve Biko died at the age of 31. He left behind a widow and two boys aged seven and three.

SOUTH AFRICA: WHAT IS NEXT AFTER THE WORLD CUP?

Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa after 27 years in prison, but he didn't have a magic wand to solve all the problems created by Apartheid leaders.


As a matter of fact, South Africans have suffered a great deal from grim terrorism, segregation, mass killings, and imprisonment without trial under the minority white rule, before the fall of Apartheid. 


The coming of Nelson Mandela as the first elected president of the Republic of South Africa gave hope to many South Africans, with the idea that poverty is over and everyone will have the chance for better education and job opportunities.

Unfortunately, their thoughts are what one could call wishful thinking. Nelson Mandela doesn't have the magic wand to heal a nation that has been crippled for ages with the Apartheid virus, which has created a big difference between "white rich and black poor." 

Unemployment soared, coupled with a high rate of crime. The suffering escalated when the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome started taking its toll on them.

Under the administration of Jacob Zuma, South Africa hosted the just-concluded World Cup. Before the match, South Africans thought the tournament would help to create job opportunities for them. Unfortunately, the game has ended with South Africans facing another bleak future.

The World Cup has certainly put South Africa more firmly in a global perspective as the first African country to host a World Cup tournament. The question now is "what is next after all the money made in this World Cup? 

Would that create more jobs to improve the welfare of the people? Time will tell, or God only knows.