Monday, November 10, 2014

The 50 Most Powerful People of the World, According to Forbes







Name
Principal Functions
Country of citizenship

1
Vladimir Putin   
President of Russia
Russia

2
Barack Obama
President of the US
USA

3
Xi Jinping
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party
China

4
Pope Francis
Head of the Roman Catholic Church 
Vatican

5
Angela Merkel
Chancellor of Germany
Germany

6
Janet Yellen
Head of the United States Federal Reserve System
USA

7
Bill Gates
Head of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
USA

8
Mario Draghi
Head of the European Central Bank
Italy

9
Sergey Brin
Cofounder of Google
Russia/USA

9
Larry Page
Cofounder of Google
USA

10
David Cameron
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
UK

11
Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud
King of Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia
12
Warren Buffett
CEO of Berkshire Hathaway
USA

13
Li Keqiang
Premier of China
China

14
Carlos Slim Helu
Head of América Móvil and other Holdings
Mexico

15
Narendra Modi
Prime Minister of India
India

16
Jeff Bezos
CEO of Amazon
USA

17
Francois Hollande
President of France
France

18
Jamie Dimon
CEO of JPMorgan Chase 
USA

19
Ali Hoseini-Khamenei
Supreme Leader (Grand Ayatollah) of Iran
Iran

20
Rex Tillerson
CEO of Exxon Mobil
USA

21
Jeffrey Immelt
CEO of General Electric
USA

22
Mark Zuckerberg
CEO of Facebook
USA

23
Michael Bloomberg
CEO of Bloomberg
USA

24
Charles Koch
Heads of Koch Industries
USA

24
David Koch
Heads of Koch Industries
USA

25
Timothy Cook
CEO of Apple
USA

26
Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister of Israel
Israel

27
Lloyd Blankfein
Head of Goldman Sachs
USA

28
Li Ka-shing
Head of Hutchison Whampoa
China

29
Doug McMillon
President and CEO of Walmart Stores, Inc
USA

30
Jack Ma
Founder and Head of Alibaba Group
China

31
Dilma Rousseff
President of Brazil
Brazil

32
Rupert Murdoch & Family
Head of News Corporation
Australia


33
Christine Lagarde
Head of the international Monetary Fund (IMF)
France

34
Akio Toyoda
Head of Toyota Motors
Japan

35
Jay Y. Lee
Business magnate and Vice Chairman of Samsung
South Korea

35
Lee Kun-Hee
Chairman of Samsung
South Korea

36
Mukesh Ambani
Head of Reliance Industries
India

37
Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan
President of the United Arab Emirates
United Arab Emirates

38
Masayoshi Son
Head of Softbank
Korea/Japan

39
Larry Fink
Chairman and CEO of BlackRock
USA

40
Ban Ki-moon
United Nations Organization
South Korea

41
Robin Li
Chairman and CEO of Baidu Inc
China

42
Igor Sechin
Rosneft
Russia

43
Ding Xuedong
Head of China International Capital Corp
China

44
Bill Clinton
Former US President and Head of Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation
USA


45
Jim Yong Kim
President of the World Bank
South Korea/USA

46
Park Geun-hye
President of South Korea
South Korea

47
Alexey Miller
Head of Gazprom
Russia

48
Haruhiko Kuroda
Head of the Bank of Japan
Japan

49
Kim Jong-un
President of North Korea
North Korea

50
Ali Al-Naimi
Saudi Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources
Saudi Arabia


     
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Sunday, November 2, 2014

The Emptied Grave―Félix-Roland Moumié

Excerpt of Triple Agent, Double Cross 








Epilogue



November 2008
Conakry, Guinea




The night before was unusually rainy for the Guinean capital. The heavy rainfall could have been considered an irritation if not a catastrophe elsewhere in the world for the flooding it caused in some of the neighborhoods in the city. But for most of the residents of Conakry still reeling from the intense heat wave that blighted the country for more than two weeks, the torrential rains came as a welcome relief. It enlivened their spirits and even brought life to the flora that had been wilting and dying from the intense heat wave from the Sahara Desert. The rain also washed the thick layers of dust off the streets, giving some originality to the color of the asphalt roads.      
      However, for a man walking the streets of Conakry that morning, the effects of the rain and the nature of the city were of no interest to him. His mind was on the Cameroun cemetery.
The man crossed the November 8 Bridge as if nothing else mattered in the world, even though he stayed conscious of the sounds and activities around him. He raised his head fully only once, just as he walked past the Donka hospital located in the city center.
       Any curious bystander watching him at that moment would likely have noticed the thoughtful expression on his face that gave him the academic demeanor of a professor grappling with a worrying phenomenon. The patches of grey hair on the man’s head made it look like he was balding prematurely, since it contrasted with his athletic gait that could only have been expected from a physically fit person in his late thirties or early forties. However, the stranger was a quinquagenarian with more life experiences than most men his age.
       An expression of sweet reminiscence spread across the stranger’s face as he walked the street of the Cameroun neighborhood and entered the cemetery. Nevertheless, this look of appreciation at the fact that a Guinean neighborhood was named after his country suddenly changed to one of extreme seriousness as he approached the grave. He knew what he would find as he steeled himself and took out the flowers from the inner pocket of his raincoat. He laid them on the empty grave deprived of its sarcophagus, and then crossed himself several times. He mumbled a short prayer after that, and then turned around and walked away, wondering whether the world would ever find the embalmed body of Félix-Roland Moumié that went missing after the death of Guinea’s first president Sékou Touré.
       The lone figure that stalked the Conakry morning that day stated in his memoirs written two decades after the assassination of Vincent Ndi, and half a century after the system killed Ruben Um Nyobé, Félix-Roland Moumié and a host of other prominent Cameroonian political figures that he visited the graves of all the martyred UPC leaders he knew while growing up. He said he did that just to pay his respects and be at peace with himself. He also stated that he visited the Cameroun Cemetery in Conakry on more than five occasions. 
     On a curious note, he stated that Vincent Ndi would have been disappointed with the character Ivan Fru became, and then went on to add that he kept his promise to Vincent Ndi by tracing and reactivating the political genius referred to as ‘The Green’, but whose actual code name was Le Rouge. He stated in one of the pages that Le Rouge gave that phase of the struggle against the Franco-Cameroonian political establishment its ideological direction, and that he too got betrayed in the end.