And tthat is an end he shares with other ancient Emperors Caligula and Nero just across the sea.

On sunday, the 27th day of February 2011, I predicted here that Emperor Qaddafi of Libya would eventually fall very hard. He has, revoltingly and savagely.

Experience teaches us that things that cannot bend tend to break, eventually. I wonder how he felt, in the hands of people he long despised. I wonder what he told them, whether he tried negotiations with them, as injured as he was, I wonder whether he cried for mercy.

What goes through the mind, if he still has it, of a man, already violent sodomised with the crudest of instruments, and who knows that the crudest of ends is near? Any normal-functioning human being watching a man in that description must sympathize with him. That is why I sympathise with the injured and sodomised Qaddafi. But again, those are some of the dangers of denying others their freedoms, just because of who you think you are.

We are once again, sternly reminded, of the dangers of rule without the mandate of the ruled. Silenced people are not mute forever. Soonner or later, they will raise their voices and when they do, there will be so much noise the world will think we have returned to the barbarity of the ancients.

Talking of the ancients, the events in Libya remind me of the fate of Roman Emperors Caligula and Nero. Caligula both were so evil. When Caligula's body was examined after his assassination, they found not less than 30 knife wounds on it. Nero's barbarity, by the way, would lead to the concept of 'the anti christ' in the book of revelation in the new testament. The evil life of these two people is a topic we will cover in our next edition.

Turning back to the topic at hand; there has been a rising chorus, and rightly so, of vilification of the way Qaddafi met his end. But the bigger question in my mind is to invesigate why a people would turn so violently on their leader. It is not the first time a brutal dictator has been savagely murdered; and, by far, not the last.

Well some even disapprove of calling Qaddafi a leader. He ruled with an iron fist without the mandate, let alone the informed mandate, of the ruled. He used vile words to refer to the segments of his subjects who, for lack of what to do, voiced their disagreement with him. He jailed them in their thousands, murdered them, promoted violent overthrow of foreign governments etc etc.

Allegations have been made in support of Qaddafi that he developed Libya to unimaginable levels in the region. Well, look, that is what one must do who rules a nation, I thought. It is not a favour to the people that the President or King does what a President or King ordinarily must do anyway.

Happy life

In say thirty years time, if I should live that long, I will be about sixty years old. It seems a far place away a long time away but we will get there, unless ofcourse, we die earlier. Some are already there and looking back can see what choices in life they made that have, directly or indirectly placed them in the circumstances they find themselves in.

The choices might have to do with education, lifeskills they acquired or did not, career, food they ate, lifestyle they lived, whether they married, persons they married, if they married,the number of children they have or had, if they have children etc etc.

But can we really plan to detail. You know things just happen in life. They's no plan to our conception. Well who who is alive today really knows the time and date of which day he was conceived? But we know when we were born.

Not so with death, some deaths are predictable. First, there are a thousand ways to die. There are those whose deaths have been told in advance, perhaps because of some rare terminal condition. There those who die accidentally. There are those who die incidentally. There sudden deaths. There are deaths from ilnsses bravely borne. There are many kinds of deaths each day.

If that is the case that we, eventually, will all, at different times of the day/night, die; what's the big deal? Why do we waste so much time not enjoying this only life. Why do we unlawfully accumulate so much wealth at the expense of many others who also need food and other basics to enjoy the very one and only thing we have in common; LIFE.

Wangari Maathai was cremated yesterday. She loved trees to death. She, in life, even found it reprehensible that people should be buried in wooden coffins. That was how strong her love affair with trees was and she won a nobel peace prize for it.

Well she's simply gone and in due course will fade away, from our memory, whether we like it or not. Yes there will be this University Insitution named after her. Yes there will be this school or park and the like named after her and rightly so; but sooner or later, as we ourselves progress slowly through the years to that decade when people are known to abruptly die, we will have to come to terms with the fact that DEATH IS A NATURAL NECESSITY. No one is spared.

Death is necessary for the evolution of mankind. It retires the old to create space for the new. There should be nothing mournful about that. And perhaps more importantly, death is an event meant to warn us as well as to remind us that, in the end, not many things that we are insanely crazy about, unless they make our lives more fulfilling without having a deleterious effect on those of others, are not that important in life.

S what is important in life, one needs to ask! LIFE ITSELF. That's what we forget. Whatever you are doing, do it for life. Have a happy life! Join me!