Of Fake News And Real News

K1: Ei Koo, have you noticed the arrival of something extraordinary in the news world?

K2: You don't mean “fake news”?

• any Facebook, and TwitterHow did you know? That's precisely what I mean. These days, because of god-dam fool can post “any item” on the web and claim that it is “news”!

• I've just come across one this very day, actually. It claims that the South African Minister of Health, Mr Aaron Motsoaledi, has said that he proposes to allow workers to take a “sex-break” of one hour, each day! With full pay!

• http://www.hinnews.com/za/health-advice/sa-minister-renews-proposal-for-paid-hour-sex-breaks-during-workfor-only-workers/

• “Sex-break?”

• Yes! They'd be invited to go out of their offices for one hour each day, go home and have a poke!And then come back to work. The report claims that the Minister told the French News Agency AFP, that such regular sex-breaks would empower workers to perform better! [Pun intended!]

• Absurd! The guy has no real knowledge of sex! How does he know, for instance, that his staff would appreciate such a “sex-break”? After all, is it everyone that welcomes an opportunity to engage in sex, even during non-working hours?I can see a certain friend of mine, who is always anxious because his libido is in a pretty low state, going home and having lunch and then being invited by his partner to come and “follow the Minister's instructions!” Sheer anxiety would give him a heart attack!

• Hahahahahaha! You think some people might be so tense that even their ability to give a satisfactory performance might run involuntarily in a southern direction?

• excuse themselves from their matrimonial duties, don't they? Don't some women suddenly develop unexplained “doWell, I mean, a lot of people headaches” when advances are made to them? Don't some men claim to be afflicted with “arthritic pains” in the waist, or what have you, when you know what?I don't think any Minister would be so crass as to make such a suggestion. It would indicate that he's projecting his own fantasies onto his staff! No, it's probably an April Fool's joke that has been outed prematurely. I mean, suppose a guy's sexual partner had been putting up with his premature-you-know-what-I-mean? Wouldn't the prospect of enduring that mishap every lunch-time test the woman's stoicism or even drive her crazy?

• Is testosterone easy to purchase in South Africa – without a prescription – if a man's body has stopped producing it spontaneously?

• Well, what I hear is done is that a man can nip off to Zimbabwe and buy vuka-vuka medicine!

• There's something in South Africa itself that can be tried by those too poor to travel to Zimbabwe. It's called iqawe!

• Oh, there are plenty there! Another one is called

• ubhucu in Zulu. Its popularity is unquestioned for it also has an Afrikaans name, rooiwortel. Maybe the Minister has set up a company to market such aphrodisiacs commercially?

• If so, there's also one in Central Africa called yohimbe that he could import to augment his stock!

• Hahahahaha. There's another in Kenya called mkombelo!

• Charlie, you're travelling too far. Can't we help the Minister by exporting to him, one of our own money-spinners from Kumasi Zongo – k*te denden aduro?

• Great idea! Do you think we could persuade the Minister to subsidise our product since he believes it will enhance the performance of his workforce? Because our product may have to compete with a cheaper preparation, from South Sudan, called entengo...!

• Hahahahahahaha! Cheapness is not all that matters. I am sure

• single-sourcing is not unknown in South Africa? He could very easily conceal the subsidy in his Ministry's budget. Tell me, have you ever been able to unravel the mystery behind every single head of expenditure that's presented in a Government's budget?

• Okay; I get the point. Well, let's wait and see. The report claimed that the Minister would be taking a Bill to Parliament on the issue. If that happens, then we'd know that it's a serious proposition. We might not even need to export anything at all in order to make money from the proposition. We can evolve a Plan B as follows:

  the debate on that Bill would become a best-seller in the world, wouldn't it? People liken to read about sex, right? So you and I could put a few Cedis together to buy Rands right now, and wait for the debate to occur. Then we could make a single-sourced bid to the South African Parliament to give us

• exclusive rights regarding the publication of the full text of the debate.

• We could become millionaires overnight.

• That's the second time you've said that! So it can work! Unless, of course, the peddlers of fake news invent their own debate and publish it first – before we could publish the authentic version!

• *****oooo-oooo *****

• Hey, what do you think of President Donald Trump's Tweets?

• Hahaha! The guy has turned “fake news” into an art form, based on the deft sleight-of-hand. When genuine news is published about him and his administration that he doesn't like, he Tweets that the news is “fake”. And because the main-stream media in America and elsewhere make a fetish of every presidential pronouncement and treat it as genuine news that must be dutifully reported and commented upon (Google Huffington Post+Trump's punctuation) they widely disseminate the “fake news” that Trump has Tweeted! Next, when they begin to demand the evidence for the Trump Tweets, Trump's Press Secretary, or one of his advisers, turns on the media and aggressively accuses them of not understanding, or even deliberately distorting what Trump had meant in his Tweet. One lady Trump adviser actually came up – unblushingly – with the novel notion that what Trump had done in a false Tweet was to provide “alternative facts!”

• “Alternative facts”? So it means that Trump always “wins”. If he lies – by Tweeting something false (like ”Obama wiretapped me” ) – and is contradicted by the heads of the FBI and the National Security Agency, his staff can always claim that Trump got his information, not from official sources like the FBI or any of the recognised sources of governmental information, but from “alternative sources.” But what are these alternative sources? Trump does not specify them, but nevertheless, his supporters fervently believe that these “sources” do exist and that they are either Russian hackers or any of the other hackers who provide information to Wikileaks. After all, (Trump's side implicitly suggests) the mainstream media also habitually use leaks provided by what they term as “anonymous sources that asked not to be identified because blah-blah-blah” – when it suits them to do so! Trump is only following their own practice.

• My goodness! So, heads we lose, tails Trump wins! That's a most unhealthy situation for the word to be in, isn't it? The President of the most powerful nation on earth cannot be using facts as a mere plaything like figures on a chessboard?

• Yep! Trump even described three of the world's most reliable news organisations – the BBC, NBC and CNN – as the purveyors of “fake news”, at his first news conference as President of the United States! And he refused to take questions from their representatives.

• But the man is crazy? The NBC and CNN might have an axe to grind because they are American

• media organisations. But the BBC? What would the BBC gain from publishing fake news about the President of a country (the US) on whose behalf the BBC used to broadcast more propaganda against the Soviet Union, than America itself did, during the Cold War?

• Ask me oh, Koo!

• The Trump people have even spread a rumour that it was one of Britain's secret intelligence agencies – the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) – that did the alleged anti-Trump wiretapping, on behalf of Obama!The British say that this allegation is “crazy”. And I think they are right, for why would the UK take the risk of angering a potential President(which Trump was, at the time of the alleged wiretapping) on behalf of Obama, a “lame-duck” President that the UK knew was about to leave office in a matter of weeks?

• Koo, the world is in trouble oh! The Trump people don't do logic. Otherwise, they would ponder that if you have a President of the United States who can manufacture his own news....

• Who discredits such creditable news sources as the NBC, the BBC and CNN ….

• Then when this President says he's going to bomb North Korea or Iran with nuclear weapons because those countries have launched an attack against United States military installations abroad....?

• Or when he says he'd sent a drone to kill the President of Mexico because the Mexican President was planning to incite mass rioting in the US against Trump, using Latinos already in the United States....

• Then, who would believe Trump?

• Right you are!

• And if members of the US armed forces were among those who refused to believe what Trump was saying, then who would they obey his orders?

• Koo, that is a trillion-dollar question. It's more loaded than you think. Remember that elements of the Soviet Army once tried to carry out a coup d'etat against the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev? At that time, the Soviet Army was just as powerful as the US Army!

• Hmmmm! And Gorbachev hadn't even created the sort of credibility gap that Trump is busy crafting for himself!

• OK Koo, let's leave America and come back home. Have you noticed the number of very damaging statements that former NDC officials have been making against their own leadership regarding why they lost the election?

• Koo, it's unbelievable. It's as if they have gone to the Tigare fetish based at Ipala, in Burkina Faso, and been given pieces of dried, red kola nuts to eat that loosen their tongues to such an extent that they can't help engaging in what the media are already calling “verbal diarrhoea”!

• Red kola nuts that act as a “truth drug”?

• Absolutely! For it isn't “fake news” they are revealing but the real McCoy!

• Wonders will never end, Koo!

• No, not in our dear old Ghana! Where media stars are accused of trying to steal official vehicles through their political connections!

• And former Ministers can glibly “second-guess” the wisdom of the very President who was kind enough to give them ministerial appointments!

• Yieee! What an ungrateful people!

• Such a pack of ingrates!

• Such a lack of discretion!

• Such a deficiency of ordinary decency!

• No wonder the corruption they practised is too mega to be easily unravelled!

• Mmmmmmmmm!

• MMMMMMMM! Indeed!