Kenya | Muigwithania 2.0

August 8, 2011

Travel Advisory:London Riots 08/08/11

London’s emergency services were on full-scale alert on Monday night as rioting, fires and pitched battles with police erupted around the city from late afternoon.The Metropolitan police poured hundreds of extra officers on to the streets as trouble flared in the north, south and east of the capital.In Hackney, east London, masked and hooded youths smashed up shops and threw missiles, planks of wood and wheelie bins at riot police. Several abandoned vehicles were set alight. There were also violent scenes in Lewisham, south-east London, where petrol bombs were reportedly thrown at officers, and shops looted. A bus was torched in nearby Peckham as police struggled to respond to the spread of sporadic violent incidents.Witnesses said a 100-strong mob cheered as a shop in the centre of Peckham was torched and one masked thug shouted: “The West End’s going down next.” A baker’s next door was also alight. One onlooker said: “The mob were just standing there cheering and laughing. Others were just watching on from their homes open-mouthed in horror.”The unrest had spread beyond London with West Midlands police confirming outbreaks of disorder in Birmingham city centre. Shops including a branch of Louis Vuitton had windows smashed and were looted. Extra officers were being sent into the streets of Britain’s second city.

Muigwithania 2.0 Issues Travel Advisory Against Non Essential Travel To UK

We advise against all but essential travel to low /middle income areas of London,City of Birmingham including all township or areas, which experience high crime levels. See Safety and Security - Crime.
Large public gatherings and demonstrations occur from time to time in the UK and these should be avoided. Any rally, even if advertised as peaceful, could potentially turn violent. You should check local media reports for information about any planned demonstrations.
There is a high historical threat from terrorism in London. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including places frequented by tourists and foreign travellers. Previous attacks have included a bomb attack on the London Underground(subway) & bus service, which resulted in significant loss of life.
The London Metropolitan police have encouraged extra vigilance against possible attacks by vandals and anarchists on public places as a result of current heightened conflict and riots in city.
There has been past fatal incidents involving police shootings of foreign nationals (Brazilian shot in London train), although the racial motivations and circumstances remain unclear. None of the indiscriminate police action has so affected Kenyan nationals.

We advise against all but essential travel to within 30 km of London and the city of Birmingham . There have been attacks on civilians and fires reported .
You should take out comprehensive travel and medical insurance before travelling.
No part of Britain should be considered immune from violence and the potential exists throughout the country for hostile acts.You should be vigilant and take extra care, particularly in and around landmarks and places where large public crowds can gather. Hotels, shops and restaurants used by the international community have been attacked in the past and it is likely that there will be further such attacks.

You should take out comprehensive travel and medical insurance before travelling. Medical facilities, including ambulance services, outside major cities are very limited, and your insurance should cover you for the possibility of medical repatriation;. Check any exclusions and that your policy covers you for all the activities you want to undertake. Leave your passport in the hotel safe, but carry a photocopy for ID purposes.Register with The Kenyan High Commission service to tell them when and where you are travelling or where you live abroad to allow for consular and crisis staff provision of better assistance to you in an emergency.Kenyan nationals visiting the United Kingdom for more than a month and/or travelling to riot areas are recommended to register with the High Commission using the on-line consular registration service. If you are unable to access the internet you should contact the High Commission in advance or on arrival.

In Case of Emergency Contact

The Kenya High Commission

45 Portland Place
London W1B 1AS, United Kingdom
020 7636 2371

	consular@kenyahighcommission.net
	020 7636 2371
	020 7323 6717

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London Riots -”Chrysanthemum Revolution.” …What Revolution? »

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Tags: Kenya, london riots, Muigwithania.2.0 Issues Travel advisory Against Non Essential Travel To UK, UK RIOTS

August 8, 2011

Politics In The Social Media Age

The internet has radically changed modern life in ways unimagined even a couple of years ago. Over the last few months, the world has witness these radical changes in the form of revolution and social upheaval. As a response to the recent uprisings in the Middle East, many have began to explore the role of social medial in the political sphere and how these cultures have use it for the advancement of their political agendas.Did Twitter and Facebook “cause” the Tunisian Revolution and the protests in Egypt? Not according to Malcolm Gladwell, since he and others have questioned the role of social media in social change in North Africa. But he’s not there, and neither are most other Western observers weighing in on the subject, giving their debate a whiff of the abstract and the academic.

Fortunately, the people who change the world these days get to tell their own stories, and on January 26th I was lucky enough to hear one of them. Despite a snow storm that shut down the District of Columbia, a few dozen of us made it to a presentation and discussion at NPR’s headquarters led by Rim Nour, a young Tunisian protester. Organized by social media guru Andy Carvin, Social Media & Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution: A Firsthand View provided fantastic details on how Tunisians used technology to accelerate their revolution, and in the process gave us a preview of how other people around the world might do the same.

Nour’s background in technology and public policy not only makes her uniquely qualified to speak on these questions, but she was also on the street as the revolt happened, risking the consequences of standing up for her beliefs and the rights of her people. In her eyes, social media tools didn’t CAUSE the revolution — it was a Tunisian Revolution, not a Twitter/Facebook/Wikileaks revolution — but they definitely seem to have speeded it up. Plus, they let the rest of the world watch and offer such support as we could. And as the country risked descending into chaos, digital tools also helped people organize themselves to protect their communities and the political gains they had won.

Background

Tunisia was fertile ground for an internet-enabled uprising. Despite a well educated population (with a median age of 24), the country had not created enough jobs for the vast number of young people obtaining secondary and college degrees, particularly in the interior and western parts of the country. Tunisia’s 10 million residents and two million expatriate citizens are avid users of technology, however: 85% of the population has cell phones (5% smart phones), and roughly two million of them are on Facebook. At the time of the Revolution Twitter had a far smaller footprint, with perhaps 500 active users within the country’s borders, but as we’ll see, who was tweeting mattered more than how many people were doing it. In practice, these were the only Web 2.0 tools available for activism, since other channels such as YouTube were government-censored.According to Nour, the Revolution unfolded in three basic phases. First, protests broke out in the interior of the country after a young man burned himself alive to protest his treatment at the hands of the authorities. A brutal police crackdown resulted, providing activists with shocking imagery to spread online and generate unrest. Second, as protests spread to the more affluent parts of the country, people poured into the streets of cities like Sfax and Tunis and began to organize themselves with cell phones and Facebook. Finally, as President Ben Ali fled and the country risked disorder and random violence, people across the country used social media to dispel misinformation and organize themselves to counter security forces, regime-supporters and looters alike.

The Initial Protests

Actually, the events in December and January were preceded by a spontaneous campaign against government repression in May of 2010, in which people reacted to an opposition leader’s attempt to start a protest march by posting supportive photographs on Facebook, a development that Nour believes emboldened cyberactivists. But the Revolution really began in mid-December, as civil unrest broke out in the interior of the country after a young street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire — to protest mistreatment by a government functionary, but also likely as a deep expression of helplessness in the face of a lack of opportunity.The protests started in his own city of Sidi Bouzid, far from the centers of Tunisian power, but they quickly provoked a violent response from the government’s internal security forces. As protesters marched and police beat them down, political organizers traveled to the area and started using digital video and Twitter to spread the word throughout the country. They had plenty of ammunition, from police brutality to acts of self-sacrifice inspired by Mohamed Bouazizi’s example. At this moment, the fact that only a few Tunisians twittered didn’t matter — those who did were experienced activists primed to use new media tools to make sure that the violence didn’t go unnoticed in the broader population. Within a day of Bouazizi’s immolation, they were already organizing around a common Twitter hashtag.

The Uprising Goes Viral

Within two weeks, and ominously for the government, protests began to spread to the more prosperous parts of the country, including the cities of Sfax and Tunis. It was then that the movement became almost a viral phenomenon, and as it drew more and more people, the center of online action moved to Facebook. A much more popular medium in Tunisia than Twitter, it was also a more visual one — photos and videos posted on Facebook made the protesters’ case in a visceral way (for instance, Nour said that it was an online video that provoked “a physical response” that persuaded her to make the jump into open activism) as they spread through people’s online social circles.At this stage, the outside world began to play more of a part. The Tunisian expat community was heavily wired, for instance, and Nour descibed it as having an echo effect — when in-country Tunisians slept, the outside world took over the role of sharing information and persuading. For instance, the Netherlands-based organization Nawaat.org (whose founder had created a Google Map of secret Tunisian prisons a couple of years ago) would post videos originating on Facebook (and no doubt mostly shot with cell phones) to its posterous blog, where activists would find them and spread them through every online channel imaginable. And of course, this amplification effect went far beyond the extended Tunisian community itself, with activists in many countries and from many backgrounds helping to promote the cause.Television also came into play as the protests spread, though not the heavily-censored domestic channels. The satellite/cable channel Al Jazeera in particular began taking videos posted to the web and broadcasting them to a mass audience, something that Nour mentioned was crucial in spreading the revolution beyond a younger demographic: as long as anti-government messages were restricted to personal internet channels, the protesters’ parents and grandparents could ignore or dismiss them. But once they started showing up on television, they became real.Finally, as the government pushed back via mass media, the internet provided a way for protesters to poke holes in stories promulgated through official channels. When video of a counter-protest in favor of President Ben Ali was shown on television, for instance, activists could post their own footage of the same event that showed that very few people had actually attended — the television cameras had been carefully placed to give the illusion of a large crowd (a tactic common at political rallies in the U.S., too).

In another example, activists were able to show that cars parading in the streets in support of the government were actually rentals, not exactly a sign of a spontaneous event. More tragically, they posted videos of people killed by police only minutes after the president declared that the government would no longer respond with violence, including one of a young woman shot in the head as she came back from the market with a carton of milk — she had wrongly trusted that it was safe to go out.Throughout the last days of the street protests, social channels also helped people come to consensus quickly as the situation changed from hour to hour. When bloggers, activists and musicians were rounded up and taken into custody, protesters could switch their emphasis to arguing for their release. Every time the president spoke, people would write in mass numbers and reach an agreement that demonstrations need to continue. And when the country’s Prime Minister attempted to invoke the country’s constitution on January 14, lawyers and others were able to show that he was citing the wrong part of the document and hence was trying to act illegally, a move that backfired.

Self-Organizing Against Chaos

As the Revolution came to a head, the president prepared to flee the country and the police began to pull out of the streets, simple chaos became the greatest danger. Here again, social media channels gave people a way to organize themselves to protect their neighborhoods and stop the spread of destabilizing rumors. Some gathered on Facebook to form teams to clean up streets and shops, others organized to ration out food and bread. Meanwhile, neighborhood watch groups relayed information on snipers and armed militia groups or spread the word about looters so that they could be intercepted and thwarted.Online channels helped people fight more insidious enemies as well: rumors and disinformation. Claims might spread of massive shootings in a neighborhood, for example, but people in the area could pipe in and say what was really happening. In other cases, rumors of poisoned water or cutoffs of electrical power might threaten to spark a public panic, but again Facebook and text messages let people pass along the truth. Overall, online social tools helped activists counter those who were trying to terrorize the population, helping to calm the entire situation down — they spread the message that people were helping to keep things in control.

What’s Next

After the Revolution comes the hard part: creating a new society. And as Tunisians use social media (and the newly freed mass media channels) to communicate amongst themselves and collectively write the next chapter of their history, it seems clear the internet’s ability to make anyone a publisher played some role in what may be the first of a wave of revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East.Again, social media didn’t cause the Tunisian Revolution, but they enabled it — without the ability of a small number of activists to pass along shocking news and imagery from the first wave of protests, they might have fizzled out as so many street demonstrations in so many countries have in the past. Without the means to counter official propaganda through digital distribution channels, the government’s spin on the situation might have become conventional wisdom. And without ways for people to organize themselves and dispel rumors before and after the president’s fall from power, the entire situation could have descended into chaos — something that would have given the government an excuse to take just about any actions imaginable in the name of public order.Revolutions are risky — anyone who acted online in Tunisia was potentially trackable, which the government knew. And though officials didn’t shut down the internet, they did try to hack into the Facebook accounts of organizers and others (they were thwarted by Facebook itself, fortunately). But in 2010 and 2011, Tunisians were a people armed with the tools to fight back — including proxy accounts and other means of hiding online activity that had become common in the days of web censorship. Most importantly, they were armed with the will to speak out in public even at the cost of their own lives and livelihoods. In the end, they won their country, and let’s hope that they keep it. And let’s also hope that their example inspires despots around the world to consider other job opportunities now, not later. This world needs no more kings.

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Tags: Also published on The Huffington Post, How Social Media Accelerated Tunisia’s Revolution: An Inside View, Politics In The Social Media Age

June 29, 2011

Transformers 3 Review & Decepticons Hideout In Kenya

Disaster movies usual find their roots in some great social anxiety, and Transformers offers two: world domination by machines and an alien invasion that will enslave mankind. Perhaps you could add a third anxiety to the Transformers storyline. Late in the film, during the final epic showdown between Opitimus Prime and Sentinel Prime, Sentinel chides his opponent and former pupil, “On our planet we were gods!” He wants to be godlike again on earth, and we turn white in anticipation of the consequences: a metaphysical revolt, the return of Zeus and the citizens of Olympus, chided for millennia and unleashing their fury against the gnat-y ambition of humanity. Machines, aliens, and angry mythological beings: Transformers betrays the psychoses of a very uncomfortable humanity.

But don’t worry, theses sweeping allegorical readings only play lightly in the background of Michael Bay’s latest super-blow ‘em up, super shoot ‘em up, super-charged summer blockbuster. Transformers is derived from the Hasbro line of toys that became popular in the 1980s, garnering its own television cartoon. Coming off a dismal sequel to a well-loved reimagining of the Transformers story, with Transformers: Dark of the Moon director Michael Bay seems intent on getting the roller coaster ride back on track.

And as a kick-ass summer blockbuster, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is pretty kick-ass. Its chases are adrenaline-filled and inventive. Its explosions and crashes are massive and mesmerizing. And for the final epic showdown, which, truth be told, runs a good twenty minutes longer than it should, the entire city of Chicago becomes the setting of large scale urban/mechanical warfare, which sees skyscrapers toppling over skyscrapers, humans flying out of helicopters in winged suits, robots dancing through the constant rain of broken glass, and plenty of cheesy action dialogue: “Look out!” “Fire!” “Heads up!” “Aarrrgh!” It’s everything you want from a giant air conditioned movie theater in July.

The latest Transformers is not without its dozens of dramatic shortcomings, but it opens with a rather well-crafted sequence that took the air out of the crowded theater I was in during the preview. Intercutting historical archive footage and recreated scenes,Transformers: Dark of the Moon re-imagines the entire United States space program as a mission to find a mysterious extraterrestrial object that scientists observed crash landing into the dark side of the moon. We see Kennedy demanding a united effort to man a lunar landing. We see Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (who actually makes a real cameo later on) landing their lunar pod on the powdery moon surface. Then, when America is told that the spacecraft is on the far side of the moon and radio contact is lost, the real mission begins, and the historic figures inspect what turns out to be an alien spacecraft.

This would have been a great way to launch the entire Transformers movie series, but we’re dealing here with episode three, so the movie jumps forward to where the second film left off. Shia LeBeouf is Sam Witwicky, the wet behind the ears twenty something who first befriended the good Transformers – the Autobots – and helped them fend off the evil Decepticons in the prior movies. Now he is an unemployed loudmouth somehow dating and living with a woman far out of his league, Carly (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley), whose role in this movie seems to be 90 percent eye candy and 10 percent fueling a superfluous romantic subplot. Carly is one of only three women in the film, the others being Frances McDormand’s impossibly domineering, ball-breaking military officer and Julie White’s nagging wife and mother, Judy Witwicky, reassuring us that chauvinism is alive and well in Hollywood.

Sam is miffed because the U.S. military, which is now working with the Autobots to take care of all sorts of international problems (like blowing up nuclear sites in the Middle East), has left him out of the fun. The US government partnership with the super-powered machine race is worrysome enough, but in the movie it is brushed off, naturally, as a perfectly fine evolution in global geo-political order.

Much of the early part of the movie revolves around Sam’s lackluster attempts to find work. This churns up John Malkovich, who infuses the movie with some of its only true charm as the overbearing, obsessive compulsive boss Bruce Brazos. Bruce hires Sam for some reason, and it quickly turns out that the young man finds himself at the center of Decepticon effort to use a handful of humans as pawns in their effort to resume the task of world domination. There’s a semi-hilarious scene between Sam and a co-worker Jerry Wang (Ken Jeong), who conveniently hands him some folder papers that explain the whole thing. Then Wang is wacked by his Decepticon handler and the chase heats up. Sam digs up some old friends – Simmons (John Turturro) – and takes it on himself to save the world on behalf of the U.S. government.

As an hors d’œuvre to the main course of action, this early-film goofing around is entertaining enough to keep us involved, even if Sam and Rosie’s relationship, and the addition of her nasty boss Dylan (Patrick Dempsey) to the mix is a chore to sit through (as is the copious product placement). There are some sudden and interspersed chases, and the whole thing develops in a clunky manner until we get to the great culminating video game that is the real focus of the film. There, Transformers 3 succeeds by comparison, overcoming the visual clutter and suspense-less-ness of the second installment with some quality, if not its dragged-out showdowns. It’s good versus evil, bullets verses brawn, and as a thoughtless, no nonsense, drawn-out summer ride, it is pretty darn fun to subject yourself to it.If nothing else as a Kenyan you will not surprised the Decepticons were hiding in Amboseli at some point in the movie.Spectacular pictures of wildlife and the Kilimanjaro.(P.S Megatron probably got a Kenyan passport or work permit from our yet to be reformed and ineffective immigration department.Hiding out until it was time to strike that’s my take on how they ended up hiding in Kenya)

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Tags: Decepticons Hide Out In Kenya, excerpts from Peter Simek is arts editor for D Magazine a, kenya immigration, Megatron, Transformers 3, Transformers 3 in Kenya

May 3, 2011

Kenyan Politicians Must Increase Their Digital-Political Engagement

Digital media strategies are a crucial component of contemporary political life.Established political elites world wide use database and Internet technologies to raise money, organize volunteers, gather intelligence on voters, and do opposition research.Politics has always been heavily driven by relationships and communication. That hasn’t changed! Technology has; andwith it, the many ways in which politicians are able to stay connected with constituents anywhere,“anywhen”.The social web has shrunk the communication supply chain.

In a few years of rapid change, we’ve come to expect to be keystrokes from the people we elect.Kenyans are now logging on to websites and social networks of our elected officials looking for MP positions on specific issues (policy and development) and to locate contact information we can action in the moment. Sometimes our efforts are rewarded with an enlightening virtual visit; often they’re not. The role of search engines,social networking, and creative content is always evolving. Tools including blogs, Flickr,YouTube, Facebook and Twitter provide new and more powerful ways for politicians to connect with their constituents, share their points of view and react quickly to news in their own words — this is a real opportunity for politicians to showcase their talents, triumphs and personality.The public no longer waits for the evening newscast, the morning paper or the monthly baraza/funeral speech from their MPs.Journalists also follow online conversations.

The chatter informs (sometimes even results in) news stories. Infact, Tweets, blog posts and other digital updates are often quoted when politicians aren’t available for comment. Social media and politics. They go together like money and politics, but without all the attached strings. The Internet offers a wide variety of opportunities for educating, recruiting, and mobilizing supporters, for educating the media and policymakers, and for growing a vibrant political community. All of this requires hands on management by someone who understands the full range of possibilities.

Kenyan politicians need to increase their digital influence between elections and issue-specific campaigns. They must continue to develop their online skills, using them to create and strengthen constituencies of support which can be activated when needed. Election time is not the time to start. Our leaders need to be more methodical about their use of socialmedia, remembering that each digital outpost (Twitter,Facebook Fan Page, etc)reflects well, or poorly, on them. Each property must be maintained with relevant and current information and should serve as a beachhead for their primary digital headquarters –their website(social network sites are not a replacement for websites).It’s not necessary, nor is it always possible or practical, to establish a presence on many different social networking sites. However, doing so means making a commitment that all channels be unique rather than redundant.

If it’s worthdoing, it’s worth doing in a way that gives supporters and potential supporters a reason to follow MPs in multiple places. Bravo to the MPs who are experimenting with the new digital tools and culture. You are the ones willing to take risks to discover new territory. It can be scary. Progress often is.

Joe Ndungu

PS.Digital authenticity (twitter accounts particularly) .There is no point in hiring someone to run your twitter account! You are better off not being on twitter than having a paid IT person twit for you. I want to follow Uhuru Kenyatta for instance not the guy he has paid to twit for him.-(Uhuru fire that dude)

So far cheers to the following leaders on their websites

http://www.joinmarthakarua.com/

http://www.mykalonzomusyoka.com/common/home.aspx

http://www.uhuru.co.ke/

http://www.mypk.co.ke/

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Tags: *Some excepts from -Deep Democracy, 2011, Digital media and development in Kenya, Digital Political engagement, joe ndungu, kenyan politicians, martha karua, peter kenneth, published feb 2011 updated may 2, Thin Citizenship; The Impact of Digital Media in Political Campaign Strategy (2005), Uhuru kenyatta

February 18, 2011

1963 – 2011 African V.I.P

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Tags: 1963-2011, AFRICAN VIP

February 15, 2011

Editorial Endorsement Kirinyaga Central.

At this time in our history, this country needs strong, fresh and principled leadership to restore faith in our government and repair its credibility at the local and national level.To end the destructive policies advanced by old politicians that have eroded our potential as a people and increased injustice and inequality in our society.

Eng.Joseph Gitari (PNU) is just one such fresh leader. He has a history of support for youth and women’s empowerment, and his social record is a testimony to his leadership on issues important to young people and women in Kirinyaga Central . He has eloquently throughout the campaign articulated the need for full economic, political and social equality for young people & women in every sector of society, He has taken action throughout his life — as a son, husband and father towards that belief. That is why I am proud, on behalf of the majority contributing Editors of Muigwithania.Com, to announce the enthusiastic endorsement of Eng.Joseph Gitari for M.P of Kirinyaga Central.

Joe Ndungu

February 15th, 2011

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Tags: joseph gitari, joseph gitari pnu, Kirinyaga Central Endorsement, martha karua, Uhuru kenyatta

February 13, 2011

Kenyan Blogging.Why Do You Blog- Interview

What sort of routine to you follow each day to get ready for blogging?

Joe : I wake up , say my prayers and after getting ready for the day, While eating breakfast ,the first thing I do is check my daily reads; news aggregates on my phone -and when I get to work Kenyan dailies, basically headlines from all kinds of different sources, political insider tip sheets, and other blogs. I do this until something catches my eye. For me it’s important not just to be part of the “echo chamber” After assessing I do a post that is in line with my world view.Take Ivory Coast for instance,I have dedicated this month(January) to Ivory Coast ,You will find I have a different world view from what is being peddled in our press.

Speaking of world view what has shaped your views?

Joe: Well I come from a family that has always been opinionated on local and international politics. So politics for me is not a new thing.I have been an armchair pundit since I was 7 or 8 years old.It was just something we did in the car on the way to school or church.Sometimes we would almost fight for the Sunday paper just to be the first to read Sunday columns and opinions.How many children do you know who do that . One of the earliest political events for instance; I remember was crying when I heard Indira Gandhi had been assassinated .It was very sad because she was a mother figure and at that age any child would be hard hit and sad at the death of a mother even one thousands of miles away.Politics was the one thing in our home that complete freedom of opinion was encouraged.(ironically at a time when political opinion in Kenya (late 80s& early 90s) was the only freedom we did not have )Everything else seemed to have been structured . I have also lived outside Kenya for a prolonged period so that gives me a perspective some might not have.There is a Kikuyu saying that says travelling is seeing.So its everything faith,culture family,schools,professors,teachers,

So would you say most of your views are purely non academic and just personal views?

Joe:To some extent Yes and No..I know that seems like an oxymoron ,but I say…We are all products of our past and present environmental context.I do have an undergraduate degree in International Relations and a graduate degree in Public Administration specializing in public policy but to a large extent I like to think my education only gives me the formal ‘authority’ the world thinks you ought to have in order to be called an ‘expert’.When it comes to political thought if you ask me…it really doesn’t matter but it is good to have the papers to back you up(talking about policy/politics is different from policy formulation and implementation it helps to have the education to realize one needs to be realistic about a field that is idealistic)….Kids stay in school.

So do you do all the posts on the site?

Joe:No,my role is mostly that of an editor. Most of the post are actually done by other people.The blog is an open source blog .Open to anyone and everyone who has something to say.It just has to get my approval first (sic) .We have a select group of people who contribute once in a while especially on ‘hot’ issues.

What you would like the readers to know ?

Joe: Well for starters nobody has all the answers and therefore it is important for us to respect each others opinions.It is the only way we can learn from each other . Most of the time when we post something we want our readers to read and think about what it is we are saying or implying.If the post causes you to think about a given news story even though you don’t agree with our view ,Then we have done our job. We have made you think and challenged your mind.Our aim is not to spoon feed you our views but to encourage political consciousness so that we can move from a culture where we buy everything that politicians and the media serve us on a plate. Kenya would be further along if we were politically awake!Right now we are still in a fog repeating mantras spewed by others

Do you think blogs will have an impact on the 2012 presidential election?

Joe: Blogs are becoming a larger part of the political scene at an exponential rate. Blogging of/onPresidential debates and campaigns becomes an interesting and useful tool for voters who want more insight into what’s going on at the debates.Also, nowadays, when you see a blogger on the web, you have to think this isn’t just one person, but a person with their own readership as well as a network of other bloggers with whom they work regularly, so blogs also become a very useful tool for message dissembling. Also, blogs are becoming a much more significant check on the mainstream media, especially when you think that whenever any headline hits the wires there are hundreds of bloggers picking it up immediately, fact checking it, verifying the veracity of it, and weighing the overall value of it.If bloggers have made a difference in the west, I’ve no doubt in my mind we’ll make a bigger impact in next year’s contest.

So why do you blog?

Joe: Because it’s important. For one, this is, I think, the future of the nation’s debate. Anyone with a computer and an internet connection can blog (doesn’t even have to be high-speed). For far too long political discourse has been one way; what we hear on the radio, what we read in the newspaper, what we see on television.Blogs and Facebook discussions are different and interactive. They are an effective tool for dissembling massive quantities of information, and a great resource for both new and unique opinions and ideas as well as news items that you may not necessarily catch on your evening news or through a quick skimming of the local paper.As the internet becomes more and more accessible to Kenyans, more people have the option to read and write blogs, and share this information and interact and self correct each other. Even more important, and this is one of the things I’m trying to do now, is that not only do blogs give us the opportunity to participate in the national debate, but they have a vast potential to change it. We have the opportunity to look at the dynamics of old debates like ethnicity,accountability,good governance and instead of following along in the old patterns that political groups have us do, we can turn the whole paradigm on its head and say, “we refuse, we want to look at it from a different angle” …… We are the small Blog that thinks we can change the Kenyan political conscience.

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Tags: African blogs, interview kenyan blogger, joe ndungu, kenyan blogs, new media in Kenya

January 12, 2011

Only AU Summit Can Produce An Authoritative Continental Position

*January Posts dedicated to Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast is not helped by puzzling voices, puzzling decisions, attributed to the African Union. In all fairness, how does the AU appoint Raila Odinga point-man on Ivory Coast, a man whose own country and situation demands one such point-man, indeed a man whose own role in the bloody episode of electoral Kenya is itself a subject of investigation? And with the care of a rogue bull in a small china shop, he has gone about this assumed appointment with fitting care and circumspection! Things are already breaking in the Ivorian China shop and the bull marches on! But is this an AU decision or is someone flying the kite? The AU should not allow itself to be taken advantage of.(sic-AU Commission Chairman Jean Ping should be investigated)

Equally, how is Economic Community for West African States goaded into making fulsomely radical statements prematurely? The first AU Summit for 2011 is coming in Addis in mid-January. That is where an AU decision on Ivory Coast shall be taken, after a deliberate African debate. African debate, not Western wishes projected through tin-pot persons who purport to be African and leaders. As yet we have no AU position on Ivory Coast, only abundant AU worries, African worries which we all should have for one another as Africans. Not this cacophonous rash to be noticed by the West, to ingratiate one’s country with the West. Much of all we have heard is cheap saber rattling. I bet my last dollar, until after the January Summit of the AU in Addis, we will not have an AU-sanctioned way forward on Ivory Coast.

Which takes me to a myth-making falsehood which is being peddled with respect to Zimbabwe, Angola and other countries. An impression has been created that Zimbabwe, alongside Angola, has already recognized President Gbagbo. Well for the record, she has not and let that be noted by the lying press. Zimbabwe like other African nations stands to be guided by the January Summit : the Summit will produce an authoritative continental position on Ivory Coast; the AU has always proceeded on the basis of deferring to the affected sub-region for a cue, in this case ECOWAS.

Predictably, there will be a briefing from the Ivorian leadership and from ECOWAS, possibly led by the three Presidents tasked to mediate on its behalf. We may also hear from former President Mbeki. But ECOWAS will only lead the debate; it will not necessarily conclude it. Full Summit will. That is the AU way. It is highly unlikely that the AU will pick on an emissary outside of ECOWAS, let alone of lower than head of state or former head of state level. That discounts Raila, does it not? How would he relate to Gbagbo, from the stool of premiership? It simply does not make sense, which is why one cannot understand the media leaping at such planted folly.

Gbagbo ! The Whipping boy

A bit of background to what is prompting unreflective responses recorded to date. The Ivory Coast situation is being used to vindicate bilateral relations between given African countries anxious to please and impress, and their Western masters, principally France and the United States of America. The UN and its impulsive Secretary General has not yet come into the picture. It waits for a cue from the AU, never mind that much of the mess in Ivory Coast owes to its monumental operational failures. You read a destructive face-saving effort by Ban-ki Moon, an attempt to cover monumental UN ineptitude by turning Gbagbo into a whipping boy.

Fawning great tears, spittle.

Precious little that has been attributed to reacting African states is prompted by an African wish to solve a problem afflicting an African country. This is the real tragedy of the whole situation. And on this one, you see a major qualitative difference between Southern Africa and the West African sub-region. SADC does not yell to be heard, to impress, to play toughie. It solves problems quietly, effectively, well away from the West’s madding crowd. Additionally, the Ivorian situation has become a convenient dummy to many unresolved national questions in given African countries presently speaking the loudest, principally Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe.

Raila Odinga and Tsvangirai’s stridency on the Ivorian situation project their lingering wish for what they could not get in their own home situations. Both are using the Ivorian situation to address their home situations long after the door has been closed. In both instances, it is a bit of vicarious action, real compensatory conduct by two men who feel deficient by hindsight, who still dream for some associational miracle in the future. Both are in a marriage they won’t wish for Gbagbo and Ouattara, well thriving in it. It’s a bit of a triggered self-mourning, self-pitying, conveyed with great tears and spittle of fawned bitterness by two men who daily pray to their good lords in Europe for so wonderful a day that must never see sunset. The only trouble is when the world takes them too seriously

Excerpts from zimpapers.

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Tags: gbagbo, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Kenyan blog tears into Raila Ivory Coast, Only AU Summit Can Produce An Authoritative Continental Position

December 28, 2010

Guest Editorial:What’s Behind the Calls for Military Intervention in the Ivory Coast

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire

A dispute over a recent national election in the West African state of Ivory Coast has prompted calls by the United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for the incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo to step down. According to the UN head, the electoral commission has determined without a doubt that opposition leader Alassane Ouattara had won the elections.This position has been echoed by the United States State Department which has also taken the position that the Gbagbo administration must resign and that Alsanne Ouattara is the legitimate leader. The regional organization, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has been reported to have threatened military intervention in Ivory Coast if Gbagbo does not leave office.

These pronouncements and other actions such as leveling sanctions against the Gbagbo administration by freezing credit and bank accounts through the international banking system, has emboldened the supporters of Ouattara inside the country. Earlier in December a group of Ouattara supporters attempted to seize control of the television station in Abidjan, an action that was repelled by the security forces of the government leaving at least 18 people dead.

Why has the UN Secretary General and the Obama administration taken such an interest in developments in Ivory Coast, a former French colony of 30 million people which underwent civil unrest, a military coup and a civil war over the last decade or more? Why should the Ivory Coast be viewed as a test case for Africa, the African Union and ECOWAS and not similar developments that have occured in Mauritania, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger, Madagascar and Kenya over the last several years?

These economic sanctions, public villifications and threats of military invasion are taking place absent of any serious efforts by the U.S. and France to reach a diplomatic solution to the crisis. What is happening in Ivory Coast cannot be viewed in isolation from the overall U.S. and French policy of increasing military involvement in West Africa under the guise of the so-called “war on terrorism.”

The Ivorian crisis and the breakdown of neo-colonial rule

During the period of French colonialism and the first three decades of independence (1960-1990),Ivory Coast was promoted to the public as a model for imperialist rule that worked. Even under colonialism where there was militant mass organizing by the Rassemblement Democratique Africain (RDA) and its trade union counterpart, in 1958 the de Gualle regime in Paris offered its colonies in West Africa to either formally accept a subservient political role under France or to strike out independently.
Only Guinea under the leadership of the Democratic Party headed by Ahmed Sekou Toure voted overwhelmingly to become an independent state. Guinea would pay a severe price for its challenge to French imperialism and the Ivory Coast under Felix Houphouet-Boigny was rewarded with capitalist investment and tourism.

Ivory Coast continued as an outpost of France albeit with a facade of independence in 1960. The RDA and the Union Generale des Travailleurs de l’Afrique Noire (UGTAN) split into pro-French and militant factions that were aligned with the PDG in Guinea under Sekou Toure.Guy De Lusignan in his book entitled “French-Speaking Africa Since Indpendence”, said in reference to the 1960s, that “The Ivory Coast could not be what it is today without the presence of a large body of Frenchmen, both in administration and in private business. Houphouet-Boigny and his team have been policymakers of undeniable worth.” (De Lusignan, 1969, p. 142)

The author continues by noting that “They staked their all on big business and foreign capital. The brilliant potentialities of the country are a challenge and their answer to that challenge is undoubtedly ‘neo-colonialist’ in spirit.”(De Lusignan, p. 142) During the first decade of independence the Ivory Coast by 1964 “was the largest African producer of bananas (114,000 tons), of raw timber (1,450,000 tons), and of coffee (261,000), making it the third largest producer of coffee in the world; in that year its output of cocoa reached 98,000 tons, making it the fourth largest cocoa producer in the world. Between 1960 and 1964, the credit margin of its trade balance doubled.” (De Lusignan, p. 142)

Yet in 1965 there was a sharp decline in cocoa prices and other agricultural commodities on the western markets. The country shifted to a more diversified economy with production projects in palm oil, rubber, cotton, tropical timber (that could be trans-shipped in much larger quantities through the-then new harbor at San Pedro in the west of the country), tropical fruit and fisheries.” (De Lusignan, p. 144)In addition, the exploitation of manganese deposits began in earnest during this period when production grew from 105,000 tons in 1964 to 171,000 in 1965. By the late 1960s, industrial production in the Ivory Coast expanded with the establishement of light electrical plants, chemicals and oils, timber, textiles, building materials and shoe factories.

This state of affairs continued through the 1970s and 1980s and served as an ideological challenge to revolutionary armed struggles in other parts of Africa as well as the socialist experiments that occured in Guinea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, Congo-Brazzaville and other states. The western imperialist states maintain that capitalism was the best model for development in post-independence Africa.

However, during the early 1990s, severe problems arose within the French CFA currency zones and these developments had a tremendous impact on the Ivory Coast as well as other states aligned with Paris on the continent. Unrest arose again after it was thought to have been crushed in early 1960s. In 1993 Houphouet-Boigny died and Konan Bedie took over as the leader of the Democratic Party of the Ivory Coast. Bedie was overthrown in a military coup at the end of 1999, bringing Gen. Robert Guei to power.By the end of the 1990s, the economic crisis in Ivory Coast had contributed to the political instability and to a coup as well as the division of the country politically between the north and the south. An election in 2000 led to the presidency of Laurent Gbagbo while the northern politician Alasanne Ouattara was disqualified over claims that he was not of Ivorian origin.

The increasing regional divisions in Ivory Coast became a factor under the rule of Konan Bedie during the mid-1990s where the presence of a large immigrant population as well as the country’s national diversity were deliberately politicized. Such divisions helped to create the conditions for a civil war which erupted in 2002.The civil war further enhanced national divisions in Ivory Coast. France, which deployed its military forces during the civil war was accused of supporting both sides in the conflict. In 1995, under Gbagbo, Ivorian military forces bombed areas in the rebel stronghold city of Bouake and killed nine French troops.

France claimed that the attacks were deliberate and has held the deaths of their soldiers against Gbagbo over the years. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) did intervene in the Ivory Coast in 2002 but were later replaced by forces under United Nations control.UN forces still remain in Ivory Coast but claim that their role is strictly to monitor the movement of military units of both the central government and the rebel troops in the north. The threat of the resumption of military conflict could lead to greater involvement of France and the United States in the internal affairs of Ivory Coast.

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Tags: Ivory Coast, What's Behind the Calls for Military Intervention in the Ivory Coast

December 24, 2010

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !

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Tags: Merry Christmas & Happy New Year !

December 15, 2010

Ocampo-Odinga-Obama

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”

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Tags: Kenya ICC Case, moreno ocampo kenya, ocampo names kenyan

December 12, 2010

The End Of The American Empire?

Nouriel Roubini, in a post entitled Decline of the American Empire, outlines four developments, marking the beginning of the end of the American Empire. The unique position of the U.S. as the sole “unipolar” power, he asserts, has been lost; America may now be in irretrievable decline.Before I review Nouriel’s observations, let me give two of my own. First, though America may yet pull its bacon out of the fire, any post mortem of its decline will, in all likelihood, lay the causes at the feet of U.S. policy, economic and military.Second, America has–through its multinationals and managerial talent, its economic power, its science and universities–seeded the world, made possible the success of its rivals. As one of the prime architects and movers of globalization, America has inadvertently laid the foundation for the torch to be passed. Nouriel makes a good case for American decline. Consider:

First, the US squandered its power by relying excessively on its hard military power in the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan and in its unilateralist foreign policy – including economic issues such as global warming – rather than relying more on its soft power of diplomacy and multilateralist approaches to global policy issues Second, regardless of mistaken US policies the rise of other economic and financial powers…that the relative economic, financial and geopolitical power of the US will be reduced over time.Third, and more important, the US squandered its economic and financial power by running reckless economic policies, especially its twin fiscal and current account deficits.

Fourth, Nouriel notes that:the economic powers financing the US twin deficits are the strategic rivals of the US – China and Russia – and unstable petro-states, i.e., Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and other shaky petro-states. This system of vendor financing – with these US creditors providing both the goods being imported and the financing of such deficits – has led to a balance of financial terror: if these creditors were to pull the plug on the financing of the US twin deficits the dollar would collapse and US interest rates would go through the roof.As the U.S. goes deeper and deeper in debt, it is transferring enormous wealth its rivals. I would include the “unstable petro-states” as rivals as well. There is certainly significant tension between Islamic states and America. Though some may seem to be friendly, even the friendly ones have harbored and ecouraged elements that are anything but friendly to the U.S. It is hard to forget, for example, the madrassas in Saudi Arabia that spawned many of the Taliban and the 911 bombers.

Furthermore,… foreign creditors of the US are getting tired of financing the US in the form of low-yielding US Treasuries. Thus the switch of such reserve holdings to SWFs that are planning to make large equity investments possibly with actual control of corporate firms and financial institutions that are desperate for capital to recapitalize themselves

As many have noted, there is a price the U.S. must pay for its growing debt: Its assets. Sovereign Wealth Funds in the Middle East, China, and elsewhere will invest heavily in or outright buy American corporations financial institutions. They have the cash. While America may get desperately needed tax dollars in such purchases or investments, those purchases will not significantly lower our debt. We will lose the assets and keep the debt–a real spiraling down. The twin deficits will remain. Furthermore, those companies–and all their assets and know-how–may now serve new masters, masters whose goals we may well not share.

Nouriel notes that although it is unlikely that any of our creditors will suddenly “pull” the financial rug from beneath our feet; nonetheless, America isvulnerable to such rivals using the financial terror weapon – dumping US assets and or reducing their financing of the US twin deficits – in situations of geostrategic tension.

Suppose Russia flexes further its muscle in its backyard – under the pretense of defending abused Russian minorities in Ukraine, the Baltics and other former Soviet Union or Iron Curtain countries. Then Russia could use its financial power – the ability to dump hundreds of billions of dollar assets – to exert both financial and military influence. So could China over time if trouble in Taiwan or other disputed Asian territories become big geopolitical issues. Russia and China are already winning the new war for the control of commodities and ressources through their investments in Africa and Latin America – in the case of China – and its domestic and foreign control of energy and pipelines in Central Asia in the case of Russia. China and Russia are indeed winning the new Scramble for Resources.

Nouriel expects the dollar as the main reserve currency to be challenged.

Already Russia is flexing its muscle and pushing for an international role of the ruble; the euro is rising as a major reserve currency; central banks and SWFs will slowly but surely start to diversify away from dollar assets especially as the Bretton Woods 2 regime starts to unravel…

If Nouriel is correct, how did all of this come to pass?

Certainly, the Iraq War has been a disaster in terms of cost, goodwill, lives, and attention. By “attention” I mean America’s obsession with it. That American raw power cannot tame two third-world states in less time than it took the allies to defeat the axis powers in WWII says it all. Perhaps it did not have “will” to do so. Whatever the causes, it has failed miserably. Caesar would have been stunned.

As I said, Iraq has been America’s obsession; meanwhile it pursued policies concerning energy, regulation, consumerism and trade that have proven disastrous. Its lack of its decades long coherent energy policy is obvious. That it espoused a freewheeling marketplace with minimum oversight is also obvious.

The centerpieces of its failure lie, I think, in its relentless consumerism, encourage by incessant and ubiquitous advertising, easy credit, and its disastrous trade policy. Bush stuck the tone of the decade when he urged America to shop after 911. A good trip to the mall will cure anything, including, I guess, fear of Saddam sending over nukes or the twin towers falling.

As one of the most significant forces in the last decade, globalization must be playing a role in America’s decline. America was one of its prime movers–and America’s fate must be tied inexorably to is development.

Certainly, America would not knowingly create the engine of its own decline. Certainly, its economists would have warned it. Many economists were quite happy with America’s future in a global marketplace. Are they surprised at the latest turn of events? Staggering twin deficits, a burgeoning trade deficit, loss of manufacturing….

Was it mismanaged or was it happenstance that America’s decline coincided with its rise?
For a moment, let us grant that Nouriel is correct that America is in decline and continue with the post mortem, speaking as if we were future historians that saw a connection between globalization and America’s decline.

On the one hand, Americans were encouraged to be consumers, even as its trade deficit increased, even as its companies, one after another set up shop in countries with cheap and unprotected labor, low taxation, and weak environmental regulations. Walmart, which used to brag about “Made in America,” was the iconic symbol of what happened.

American manufacturing slowly wilted; its trade deficit increased. It outsourced goods and services in order to feed the consumerism encouraged at home. American corporations and financial institutions were all too happy to usher China into the WTO, along with other ripe export platforms. Bucks were to be made; goods were to be sold. The American consumer would keep the party going.

Globalization from the start was disjointed. One country, America, became the consumer of last resort. Emerging economies became producers of first resort. Emerging economies were not “emerging markets”; they were export platforms. America sent its production skills to these countries.

(Now, China may well become a future marketplace, but companies initially did not go there with that in mind.) How China played the game of globalization was intelligent and direct. Feeding off the American consumer and the foreign corporations it attracted, keeping its currency pegged for as long as possible, and keeping its labor force as unprotected and as cheap as possible for as long as possible, China gathered the cash to build its infrastructure and buy the resources for the long century ahead.

Foreign corporations in China liked the pegged yuan. Mismatched currencies added even more profits. Indeed, for a while the stock market soared, even as American wages stagnated. Similarly, foreign companies in China enjoyed unprotected and cheap labor. Similarly, those companies enjoyed the weak environmental regulations. Even if those companies claimed that they or their Chinese associates did not pollute, they did profit from the cheaper energy, a direct result of weak or non-existent environmental regulations.

Nouriel ends with one observation:

the brief period of unipolar power of the American hyperpower is now over and a new age of balance of great powers is starting in the world. Also, the rise of non governmental actors – multinational corporations, NGOs, terrorist groups, non-nation state powers, failed and unstable states, non-traditional global players – will radically change the traditional balance of power as the power of nation states will shrink relative to that of other global players.

China will not shrink; neither will Russia; neither will, for example, Brazil. Terrorist groups may set up shop in places like Afghanistan, but unless they get nukes (Pakistan), they will not be much of a threat. No, countries are still the fruit de jour. It was always a mercantilist pipedream that it could be otherwise. Wealth and power has shifted back to command economies: Russia, China, Saudi Arabia.

These countries do and will continue to own the important corporations, corporations that control resources and important means of production: Aluminum Corporation of China and China Offshore Oil Corporation, for example. China may relax its grip on companies that deal in consumer goods, such as Lenovo (old IBM) or other companies such as Haier. They insist that corporations serve China’s purposes. Whether China will encourage rampant American-style consumerism remains to be seen.

In short, on every front, American craftily engineered its own downfall…from foolish wars to economic policy. All for what? (Certainly not any interest in America.) Greed is the word that comes to mind. Privatization was to be the dream, private ownership of resources and production. Yet, now we see the rise of powerful Soverign Wealth Funds ready to buy or invest in American corporations and financial institutions. What America has created will be on the auction block. For sale will be its managerial expertise, its production and investment facilities, its R&D…anything movable and much that is not movable.

If Nouriel is correct, those creations will move to new owners, owners that do not share America’s vision of the individual or its sense of democracy. In that sense, America has seeded the world. What flowers may bloom, we do not know.

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Tags: the american empire

December 9, 2010

Prayer For Kenya Before Hague-Bound Suspects Are Named

O God of all Creation: You have cared for the earth, and have filled it with your riches. Abundance flows in your valleys , through the pastures and wilderness. You provide for our land, softening it with showers, bathing it in light, and blessing it with growth.The hills sing with joy; the hills are covered with flocks; the fields deck themselves with grain; and together they glorify your name!

Dear God, May we as nation be guided by you to rediscover the sacred flame of our national heritage, which so many have given their lives to safeguard;Let the wounds of separation and division be healed by opening our hearts to listen to the truth on all sides, allowing us to find a higher truth that includes us all;May we learn to honor and enjoy our diversity and differences as a people, even as we more deeply touch our fundamental unity;

May we, as a people, undergo a transformation that will draw forth individuals to lead our nation who embody courage, compassion and a higher vision;May our leaders inspire us, and we so inspire each other with our potential as individuals and as a nation, that a new spirit of forgiveness, caring and honesty be born in our nation;May we, as a united people, move with clear, directed purpose to take our place within the community of nations to help build a better future for all humankind;May we as a nation rededicate ourselves to truly living as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all;And may your will Father God be done for Kenya, as we, the people, align with that Will.

In Jesus Name we Pray AMEN

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December 8, 2010

The Future of Africa

The Rise of Thomas Sankara’s Children-

Julius Sello Malema (South Africa) (born 3 March 1981, in Seshego) is a South African politician, and the president of the African National Congress Youth League.Malema was elected a chairman of the Youth League branch in Seshego and the regional chairman in 1995. In 1997 he became the chairman of the Congress of South African Students (Cosas) for theLimpopo province, and was elected as the national president of that organisation in 2001.Malema was elected as the president of the ANC Youth League in April 2008, in a close race at a national conference held in Bloemfontein.

Charles Blé Goudé (Ivory Coast) is an Ivoirien political leader, born in 1972 at Guibéroua, in the center west of the country.Blé Goudé studied English at the University of Cocody (Cocody is a section of Abidjan), where he began his political career leading strikes and violent demonstrations of the Student Federation of Cote d’Ivoire (FESCI), allied with the FPI during the 1990s. He succeeded Guillaume Soro as the Secretary General of FESCI from 1998 to 2000.He later founded the Coordination des jeunes patriotes in 2001, and the Congrès Panafricaine des Jeunes Patriotes (COJEP) in the same year. He had completed a university degree in English by this time, and later began a masters degree in Conflict Resolution Studies from Manchester University. Having gotten news of the coup d’État on 19 September 2002, he left England for Côte d’Ivoire, where he founded the Alliance des jeunes patriotes pour le sursaut national, which he directed with Serge Kuyo, an organization which he described as a mouvement de combat. Blé Goudé has said that he models himself on Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and Thomas Sankara

Munyaradzi Chidzonga (Zimbabwe).Born in 1985, Harare,A former student of the prestigious International School in Zurich, in the canton of Zurich, Switzerland, Munya Chidzonga is a Film maker. A holder of a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Motion Picture Medium, majoring in Live Performance, Acting and Script-writing, from The South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (commonly known as AFDA) in Cape Town South Africa, where he was nominated for the best Actor Award, an accomplishment equivalent to graduating Magna Cum Laude in the American educational system.Though Munya is not actively involved in Zimbabwe politics his star is one to watch and will most likely end up in politics as a ZANU-PF candidate sometime in the future.

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Tags: african leaders, Charles Blé Goudé, Future leaders of Africa, Julius Sello Malema, Munyaradzi Chidzonga, new generation of visionary african leaders, The Rise of Thomas Sankara's Children-The Future of Africa, Thomas Sankara

December 7, 2010

Editorial:`The truth will always win’ – Julian Assange Writes

Political Prisoner

IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: “In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.”His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch’s expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.

Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly publishing facts that need to be made public.I grew up in a Queensland country town where people spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.

These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia , was to use internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism: scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on. That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?

Democratic societies need a strong media and WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest. WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and broken stories about corporate corruption.People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will decide whether to support it.

If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs, any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report these things freely.WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain ‘s The Guardian, The New York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same redacted cables.

Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be “taken out” by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be “hunted down like Osama bin Laden”, a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a “transnational threat” and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister’s office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.And Australians should observe with no pride the disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.

We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn’t want the truth revealed, including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.Has there been any response from the Australian government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false chorus with the State Department: “You’ll risk lives! National security! You’ll endanger troops!” Then they say there is nothing of importance in what WikiLeaks publishes. It can’t be both. Which is it?

It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US , with Australian government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in Afghanistan . NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn’t find a single person who needed protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.But our publications have been far from unimportant. The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:

The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos, in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may be targeted, too.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran ‘s nuclear program stopped by any means available.

Britain’s Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect “US interests”.

Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept from parliament.

The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed detainees from Guantanamo Bay . Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court said “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government”. The swirling storm around WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal the truth.

Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks and an Australian citizen.

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December 2, 2010

Raila In Trouble:Opinion Poll On The Way

Raila Odinga is on the ropes again! So what are the odds that we will soon see a fake opinion poll conducted in Kibera but touted as a Kenyan poll . A poll saying the man is still the man to beat .Every likely-There is a trend to Raila Polls. Its actually a smart strategy most Kenyans have not noticed, but it is a bankrupt strategy from a campaign with no new ideas. Every time Raila is in trouble his people unleash a fake poll claiming he is still the man to beat…..Watch this space( dated December 2nd 2010)

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December 1, 2010

WikiLeaks reveals unflattering view of Kenya. Can US retain its influence?

Drain the Swamp

The Obama administration has urged Kenya, a supposed island of democratic stability in East Africa, to meet its obligations on political reform. Any progress made could be undone by Wikileaks cables that reveal US disdain for Kenyan officials.

Since 2009, Obama administration officials have used harsh language and diplomatic pressure in an attempt to promote political reform in Kenya. The pattern continued this week with a new demand from Ambassador Michael Ranneberger that the Kenyan government “step up the fight against corruption, and replace Chief Justice Evan Gicheru and Attorney General Amos Wako.”Ranneberger’s call allows for a partial test of US influence in Kenya: how will the government respond? If the officials step down early, the US will have successfully flexed diplomatic muscle in one of Africa’s most important countries. If they do not, US prestige could take a hit on the continent.

The Daily Nation has more of Ranneberger‘s remarks:

Mr Ranneberger said two major issues threaten the future stability of development: “The culture of impunity and negative ethnicity.”

“We have seen in recent weeks a great deal of focus on corruption. Several officials have ‘stepped aside’. But we have seen before that ministers have temporarily stepped aside for alleged wrongdoing only to return in new incarnations. To demonstrate seriousness, actual prosecutions are essential and then imprisonment of those found guilty,” he said.

He called for corrupt ministers to be jailed.

According to the new Constitution, the CJ must be replaced by February and the AG by August of 2011. Mr Ranneberger said speedy action must be taken to find suitable replacements who can marshall a purge against corruption in government.“We therefore urge the appointment of a new Attorney General and a new Chief Justice of the highest repute, and we urge that the Kenya Anti Corruption Commission be strengthened with additional resources,” he said.
He said President Obama is watching Kenya’s reform agenda “with a sense of urgency,” adding that the US is Kenya’s largest development partner contributing over $1 billion annually.

Although Gicheru is out within four months, and Wako within a year, no matter what, Ranneberger seems to want them to leave early and perhaps to face trial as well. That posture represents an escalation over his earlier public pronouncements: “While Ambassador Ranneberger has previously called for strict vetting for future Justice and Attorney General appointments, this is the first time he has called for the two officials to step down.”

Ranneberger’s speech comes at a potentially awkward moment in US-Kenyan relations, as the latest WikiLeaks revelations include documents from the US Embassy in Nairobi that are unflattering to Kenya:Leaked reports from the US embassy in Nairobi depict Kenya as “a swamp of flourishing corruption,” the German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Sunday.
“Almost every single sentence in the embassy reports speaks with disdain of the government of President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga,” adds Der Spiegel.

These documents will not necessarily damage the relationship between Washington and Nairobi, and some high Kenyan officials are sympathetic to Washington’s perspective. The head of Kenya’s Anti-Corruption Authority, PLO Lumumba, indicated some agreement with Ranneberger’s perspective in an interview with VOA. But I wonder whether other Kenyan officials, including the president and prime minister, might find offensive the idea that Washington views Kenya with contempt, and I wonder whether they might feel that the US ambassador overstepped his role by calling for the ouster of specific government officials.

In any case, Washington’s views on Kenya are becoming clear both through officials’ own remarks and through leaks. Now Kenyan authorities will have to decide how to respond.

[UPDATE]:

Now we’re seeing some fallout from Wikileaks in Kenya.

VOA:

Kenya says it is surprised and shocked by reported comments about the country contained in leaked US diplomatic memos.The German magazine Der Spiegel says the cables depict Kenya as a “swamp of corruption.”Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua says that if the report is true, the comments are malicious and a total misrepresentation of Kenya and its leaders.Mutua says the top U.S. diplomat for Africa, Johnnie Carson, called Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga on Monday to apologize for what is expected to come out. Mutua adds, however, that the US has not detailed what the cables say or for what it is apologizing.If you tell someone what to do, and then they start to think that you hold them in contempt, are they more or less likely to do what you wanted?

– Alex Thurston is a PhD student of Islam in Africa at Northwestern University and blogs at Sahelblog.

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November 29, 2010

Raila Call For Kenyan Gay Arrests- Diversionary Tactic From Grand Corruption

Nairobi — Prime Minister Raila Odinga was on Wednesday put to task in Parliament over corruption in the Cabinet and why some ministers implicated in graft were still holding on to their positions.Mr Odinga, the ODM party leader, was also accused of applying double standards when it came to dealing with MPs from his side of the coalition.
Mr Odinga, the ODM party leader, was also accused of applying double standards when it came to dealing with MPs from his side of the coalition.”Mr Prime Minister, we would like to know your definition of political responsibility because when it is ministers from your party, you defend them, but when they are from the other side you remain silent,” Ms Amina Abdalla, a PNU nominated MP, said on Wednesday.

Gichugu MP Martha Karua challenged the PM to give his position on Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang’, who despite being struck off the lawyers’ roll several times by the Law Society of Kenya over accountability issues was still appointed to the Cabinet.Mr George Nyamweya (MP, Nominated) accused Mr Odinga of applying double standards.

He challenged the PM over why he had suspended then Agriculture minister William Ruto and Education minister Sam Ongeri over alleged fraud in their ministries, while urging patience in the current cases.Mr Njoroge Baiya said Industrialisation minister Henry Kosgey should have resigned over alleged abuse of office and corruption relating to importation of old vehicles.But Mr Odinga said he was not aware of any tainted ministers in the Cabinet. He also said that no one would be spared in the war on graft.

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November 18, 2010

Kenya:Creating & Institutionalizing New Historic Injustices

The Interim Independent Boundary Review Commission (IIBRC) tried to manipulate population statistics as per the 2009 Kenya Population and Housing Census released by Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) on August 31, 2010, to fit into a political matrix.A close scrutiny of the proposed additional 80 constituencies reveals some bias, some of which look too obvious and deliberate. Indeed, blatant.

In Western Province, the most observable one is with regard to creating three additional constituencies in Vihiga County where small constituencies such as Vihiga and Sabatia are proposed for split.Vihiga constituency, where Andrew Ligale the Chairman of IIBRC lost in ODM primaries in the 2007 General Election, has only a population of 91,616 which deviate from the population quota of 133,139 by 66 percent. Secondly, in the same county of Vihiga, why split Sabatia constituency with a total population of 129,678 into two and yet it fall short the population quota? The two constituencies are also not so big geographically as Vihiga is only 90 square kilometres while Sabatia is only 110 square kilometres.In the same province, populous constituencies such as Lugari with 292,151, and area of 568 square kilometres, Webuye (230,253) and area of 404 square kilometres and Kanduyi (229,701) and 318.5 square kilometres were left out. The chairman, Mr Ligale should explain to Kenyans why part of his team made such a decision.

In Eastern Province, particularly Kitui County, why the IIBRC has proposed to split Kitui Central constituency with a population of 175,633 and an area in square kilometres of 1,028.3 is any body’s guess. In this county, the constituency that should have been given first priority is Mwingi North which has a population of 204,932 and covers a land mass of 5,777.8 square kilometres.Still in lower Eastern, nobody knows why populous constituencies such as Kangundo with a population of 219,103 and Makueni (243,219) were not considered for curving out new constituencies and in particular Makueni with a land mass of 2,010.1 square kilometres.In Central Eastern region particularly in Meru Country, nobody knows why the IIBRC did not consider for split a constituency like Ntonyiri with a population of 229,871 and a land mass of 1,313.8 square kilometres and yet constituencies with less than 200,000 population such as Alego (187,243), Kisumu Town West (139,933), Rangwe (194,408), Emuhaya (185,069), Migori (191,248), Tinderet (199,514) have been proposed for creation of new constituencies. Moreover, none of the aforementioned constituencies has bigger land mass than Ntonyiri.Kaloleni constituency of Kilifi County in Coast Province seems to have suffered the same fate as Ntonyiri. The constituency has a total population of 252,924 and an area of 892.1 square kilometres. In fact, Kaloleni constituency is the largest rural constituency in terms of population that is not proposed for split.

While in Kwale County, Kinango constituency with a population of 209,560, and an area 4,011.7 square kilometres has not been proposed for a split. In Central Province at least, Ol Kalou constituency in Nyandarua County should have been proposed for split as it has a total of 215,925 people and covering an area of 1,108.1 square kilometres. According to the Ligale team, only Kiambu County deserves additional constituencies.It is not clear why the IIBRC did not consider caving new constituencies in Kericho and Bomet counties. At least Bomet with a population of 233,271, Belgut (202,591), and Kipkelion (206,590) should have been considered for split.Other notable cases are for example why should IIBRC create two more constituencies in Langata, and Kasarani whereby the latter’s population is more than the former by 170,436. Langata has a population of 355,188 while Kasarani has 525,624.Still in the City of Nairobi, Dagoretti constituency has a population of 329,577 and it not among the constituencies earmarked for split and yet Westlands, with a population of 247,102 has been proposed for a split into two. Another question… why create two additional constituencies in Langata which has almost the same population size with Dagoretti and leave the latter intact?

Furthermore, Eldoret North Constituency has 391,655 people, more than that of Prime Minister Right Hon Raila Odinga’s Langata, only one constituency is being curved out of it and same applies to Kisauni constituency in Mombasa Country has a population of 405,930.One thing is clear; any constituency in parts of Nyanza and parts of Western with over 200,000 people has been proposed for split which is not the case for other regions particularly in Eastern, Central, Coast, Kipsigis, and Bukusuland.While some constituencies such as Emuhaya, Vihiga, Sabatia, Alego, Kisumu Town West, Rangwe and Migori have less than 200,000 yet they are proposed for split. In essence, any constituency in parts of Nyanza with over 185,000 has been proposed for a split. If Bomachoge, which is in Kisii County with a population of 200,729, was in those other parts for Nyanza, it would have been considered for a split.

In terms of counties, Vihiga is the county with the largest number of constituencies compared to its population as it has seven and a total population of 554,622 while Bomet has three with slightly more population of 585,072. Machakos County with over one million people has seven constituencies compared with Kisumu with less a million people but with eight constituencies.Although the IIBRC can vainly claim that it used population quota to delimitate the proposed 80 constituencies, it seems there was an invisible hand which influenced creation of additional constituencies in some regions which do not deserve given their population sizes and land mass. Since the IIBRC is an independent body, it should not be seen to leaning towards any political divide. Already, its proposal has sparked emotive reactions from Members of Parliament from Coast, Central and Eastern provinces and this tended to divide the country right in the middle.Another critical issue emerging from the above analysis is that since there is no fairness in the distribution of the proposed new 80 constituencies across all the counties, this should not be viewed as partisan or ethnic affair. All regions, particularly Eastern, Coast, Bukusuland, Nairobi, Gusiiland and some parts of Rift Valley were treated unfairly by the Ligale team.

Gone are the days of gerrymandering. Gone are the days when the despotic split-and-control Kanu regime would create electoral units for its charlatans and sycophants.If we make a mistake at this stage in delimitation of electoral areas, this will haunt us for the next eight-12 years as Section 89 (2) of the New Constitutions stipulates that names and boundaries of constituencies and wards shall be reviewed at an interval of not less than eight years but not more than twelve years.Andrew Ligale and his cahoots are in breach of the constitution. Specifically, Ligale has violated Chapter 6 (73) of Katiba. By claiming he “consulted” the Prime Minister for approval to execute his mandate, he had not demonstrated respect for the people of Kenya, has not brought honour to the nation or to his office. He has openly failed to promote confidence in the integrity of the office. Therefore, he is posturing to “rule” the people of Kenya!

Chapter 7 (88) of Katiba bars a member of a Governing body of a political party from being appointed to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. In retrospect, Parliament made a huge mistake to allow Ligale as Chairman of the ODM Council of Elders to chair such a historic task.We should have perhaps picked young non-old regime-braided professional. Isn’t it a shame that Ligale’s work can’t measure to that of his sons – Issack Hassan and Mohammed Abdikadir who have executed their responsibilities with unique, shining exemplary dignity and diligence, in the Electoral Commission and the Constitutional Select Committee respectively. Viva young professionals!The IIBRC should be surcharged for waste of public resources, and for subverting the letter and spirit of the Katiba. Now we know why Ligale has been defiant to the instructions of Constitutional and Justice Affairs Minister. Ligale’s actions undermine national cohesion. The Impunity of yesteryears must be fought, crashed, trashed. Boldly, we must terminate the old ways

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Tags: Boundaries Review, IIBRC, Kenya, Ligale Commission, The Interim Independent Boundary Review Commission, The Interim Independent Boundary Review Commission (IIBRC)

October 26, 2010

PDF Report On The Procurement, Disposal & Construction Of Properties Of Kenya’s Diplomatic Missions

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September 29, 2010

Ma3theband

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September 22, 2010

Book Review-Africa:Altered States, Ordinary Miracles

Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles
By Richard Dowden
592 pages; Public Affairs

Review: Mention Africa in polite company, and those around you may grimace, shake their heads sadly and profess sympathy. Oh, all those wars! Those diseases! Those dictators!Naturally, that sympathy infuriates Africans themselves, for the conventional view of Africa as a genocide inside a failed state inside a dictatorship is, in fact, wrong. In the last few years, Africa over all has enjoyed economic growth rates of approximately 5 percent, better than in the United States (although population growth is also higher). Africa has even produced some “tiger cub” economies, like Botswana and Rwanda, that show what the continent is capable of. (A new Web site, See Africa Differently, specifically aims to present a more positive image of the continent.)The bane of Africa is war, but the number of conflicts tearing apart the continent has dwindled. The murderous old buffoons like Idi Amin are gone, and we’re steadily seeing the rise of highly skilled technocrats, who accept checks on their power and don’t regard the treasury as their private piggy bank. The Rwandan cabinet room is far more high-tech than the White House cabinet room, and when you talk to new leaders like Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia you can’t help wondering about investing your 401(k) in Liberian stocks.

Richard Dowden’s “Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles” aims in part to correct the negative stereotypes. Dowden, a veteran British journalist who now heads the Royal African Society, has been bouncing around the continent since 1971 and covers a great deal of ground. Much of the text is travelogue that I found a yawn. But Dowden is at his best when looking at grand themes — like the degree to which Africa is more promising than journalists or aid workers often acknowledge.

“The media’s problem is that, by covering only disasters and wars, it gives us only that image of the continent,” Dowden writes — and 90 percent of the Africans reading this are now nodding at that line. “Persistent images of starving children and men with guns have accumulated into our narrative of the continent.”“The aid industry too has an interest in maintaining the image of Africans as hopeless victims of endless wars and persistent famines,” Dowden continues. “However well intentioned their motives may once have been, aid agencies have helped create the single, distressing image of Africa. They and journalists feed off each other.”In particular, Dowden lets loose at celebrities like Bob Geldof and politicians like Tony Blair with their “messianic mission to save Africa.” As Dowden writes: “That set teeth on edge. It sounded like saving Africa from the Africans.”

I’ve thought a good deal about these issues, partly because I’m often a purveyor of columns about war and disaster in Africa, from Darfur to Congo to AIDS in southern Africa. And frankly, it’s discomfiting to feel that I’m helping Africa by exposing such catastrophes, and then have African leaders complain — as they do — that such reporting undermines their access to foreign investment and their ability to expand their economies and overcome poverty.My own take is that we in the news media and in the aid world can and should do a much better job providing context and acknowledging successes. Yet the problem surely isn’t that the news media have overdone coverage of the disasters. Congo is the most lethal conflict since World War II, costing about five million lives since 1998, and it has dragged on partly because journalists haven’t done a better job propelling it onto the international agenda. You’ll never persuade me that we’ve overcovered the slaughter in Congo — our sin is that we didn’t scream enough, not that we screamed too much.

I agree more with Dowden’s point that Africans must be more central to the narrative. As he writes: “Aid agencies, Western celebrities, rock stars and politicians cannot save Africa. Only Africans can develop Africa. Outsiders can help, but only if they understand it, work with it.” It’s true that the most successful and cost-effective interventions are typically not those started by a grand conference in a capital; rather, they are the grass-roots efforts started by local people with local knowledge addressing local needs. We could do much more to support such efforts, with us Westerners serving as aides and financiers to African social entrepreneurs.

After discussing these themes in the opening of his book, Dowden takes us on a wearisome sight-seeing excursion through Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. But then the journey abruptly livens up when, hidden in a chapter on Senegal, there is a thoughtful discussion of why Africa is poor. Dowden chronicles the problems of colonialism and geography, but he also bluntly points the finger at wretched leadership. He quotes Jerry Rawlings, the former Ghanaian ruler, as acknowledging that outsiders were not to blame and adding, “We broke the pot.”One of Africa’s problems to this day is that there is very little manufacturing of the kind that is powering Asia’s industrial revolution. The sweatshops of Asia look unpalatable to Westerners, but it’s sometimes said that in a poor country the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited. Employment opportunities in Africa are meager and rarely involve wealth creation.

“Many African friends who tried to get a business enterprise going,” Dowden writes, “all reported the same problems: workers did not turn up on time, they had no urgency and they delivered sloppy work. Often they found themselves blocked by rivals. The elites who made money out of importing and exporting had an interest in preventing the development of local manufacturing or processing.”One of the best American aid programs is almost unknown but addresses this problem. It’s called AGOA — the African Growth and Opportunity Act — and it offers duty-free import of African manufactured goods into America, to encourage the rise of a vibrant business sector in Africa.

Dowden tends to be skeptical about the benefits of aid. “It is significant that none of the most passionate advocates of aid for Africa are African,” he says. He acknowledges that aid can help with vaccination programs and emergency relief and in some kinds of development but adds that “aid from the outside cannot transform whole societies.” This is also the argument of a controversial new book by an Oxford-educated Zambian, Dambisa Moyo, called Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $24).Dowden would like to see Western countries help in ways other than simply offering aid. Ending agricultural subsidies in the West, for example, would be a huge benefit to the many African farmers who have to compete. West African cotton farmers suffer not only from droughts, corruption and wretched roads, but also from America’s cotton subsidies.

I’m more sympathetic to aid (while acknowledging its myriad shortcomings) than Dowden is, but he’s on target in most areas. In particular, I think his basic optimism is well founded, with the caveat that climate change may wreak particular havoc in Africa.We journalists tend to cover Africa in stark and simple contrasts, but countries live and grow and falter in grays. So it’s refreshing to encounter not only Dowden’s hopefulness, but also his reliance on shading and nuance, on the recognition that the world does not have to feel sorry for Africa to care about it.

*Review by Nicholas Kristof is a Times columnist and the co-author, with Sheryl WuDunn, of the forthcoming “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression Into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.”

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September 16, 2010

Liza Mucheru On The Apprentice: NBC 9PM EST Tonight

Liza Mucheru-Wisner, 30 (Corpus Christi, Texas), was born in Kenya and was part of the Kenyan National Golf team and was recruited to play golf at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. She completed her education and received her Masters degree while simultaneously starting an educational technology company. However, her business venture fell victim to the recession and she is struggling to make it a success. Mucheru-Wisner, now a wife and mother of two, works hard to stay connected with her family in Kenya and Ireland and is looking for opportunities to grow and expand her business. She is an avid fan of golf and is a belly dancer and aerobics instructor on the side.

Q) Why did you want to be on the show, and why did you think you’d make a good competitor? A) There are certain opportunities in one’s life that are life-changing and can’t be ignored. The Apprentice provided a pathway to brighten the future for me and my family. From playing golf to coordinating projects and businesses, I always try to do my best and have been lucky enough to have always been surrounded by great minds and competitive individuals who inspired my passion, and ultimately made me strive to be the best I can be.
Q) What was your reaction when you found out you’d been picked to be on the show? How did your friends and family react?A) “Good glory hallelujah! My prayers have been answered.” My family and close friends were ecstatic and fully supportive in taking care of any needs that were necessary for my leave of absence.
Q) With cameras rolling, how does it feel to know you’re under America’s microscope? What surprised you about the experience? A) At first I was very conscious about the overwhelming ambiance that the producers and cameras created, but eventually I was able to adjust and perform as if they didn’t exist. I was surprised at how much the cameras hindered me initially, as I felt there was always someone watching over my shoulder, waiting for me to make a mistake so they can entertain the world, spotlighting my weaknesses. Upon self-reflection, it challenged me to perform better even when time and resources were against me.
Q) What about the competition was harder than you might have expected? A) I had preconceived notions of the team dynamic and rivalry, but I was surprised at how people were always plotting for my demise. Watching my own back proved to be more difficult than I expected.
Q) Do you have a favorite past winner or contestant from either the original Apprentice, or from Celebrity Apprentice? A) Even though she didn’t win, Celebrity Apprentice finalist Annie Duke gave a stellar performance, and she inspired me with her goal-driven tenacity and will for success.
Q) Beyond The Apprentice, what’s your dream job? Where do you see yourself in 10 years? A) My dream job is yet undefined. My entrepreneurial spirit leads me in the direction of providing services and management to businesses and communities using cutting-edge technology and innovative human resources. In 10 years, I envision myself as part of the success of a multi-national company, which would establish global connections and utilize human potential and resources producing progressive exponential results. After ensuring my family’s financial security, it would be great to spend some time traveling the world, and playing every single golf course possible, from sand greens to the Xtreme 19th.

Follow her on twitter :http://twitter.com/lizawisner

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August 18, 2010

Decision For Immigration Zeituni Obama PDF (Muigwithania.com)

*The decision was released through the Freedom of Information Act.(Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 383; Amended 1996, 2002, 2007).Document contains sensitive blacked out information not released to protect Ms Obama & other individuals(both in Kenya & The United States).

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August 17, 2010

New Online Solutions at Nairobi E-Tourism Conference

A wave of new online travel solutions especially relating to e-commerce will be unveiled for the first time at the upcoming E Tourism East Africa Conference in Nairobi on 2 and 3 September 2010. The conference, which is being sponsored by Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB), Safaricom and the Crowne Plaza Hotel, will feature leading global players such as Trip Advisor, Expedia and WAYN.com, the world’s largest travel focused social media site. The international experts will be giving presentations at the two-day conference on how East Africa’s tourism sector can harness the potential of the web, especially following the enormous interest generated in Africa from the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

“The tourism sector is hugely important to the growth and development of the region’s economies. The introduction of e-commerce in Kenya is an added opportunity for KCB to develop an innovative online booking solution”, said KCB Divisional Director Treasury, David Thuo. “The online booking solution allows for online transactions and reservations that are vital ingredients needed for the future of tourism across East Africa. The tourism sector will have an easy and affordable solution that will give access to reservations and management of online payments. With so many products and services being purchased online today, we want to ensure that the tourism sector knows the value and benefits of accepting online payments.”

Safaricom, through the Easy Travel portal, is also a key sponsor. Safaricom CEO Michael Joseph said: “We are a key service provider to the tourism sector and we have the right infrastructure in place to help promote this industry through an integrated service that incorporates both booking and payment functions. We will be improving the online reservation system that will allow for hotels to be included on our Easy Travel site. We are especially focused on the domestic market, buoyed by growing awareness about how easy it is to book and pay online in real time using M-PESA, our globally-acclaimed mobile money transfer service. Our eventual aim is to increase the utility of the mobile phone to our subscribers and position our data services as a solution to everyday challenges. We hope that the E Tourism East Africa Conference will help deepen awareness within the sector on the need to conduct business online for greater efficiency and customer satisfaction.”

Damian Cook, the CEO of E Tourism Frontiers, said that alongside the international speakers at this year’s summit, there will also be an impressive number of Africa based companies and projects presenting new and innovative ways of promoting and selling Africa online.

“We have some amazing projects in our line up this year- including some exciting local products and projects from Kenya, South Africa and Uganda. We will be presenting a case study of the ‘Friend a Gorilla’ project that made Uganda’s gorillas individual members of Facebook and their updates and followers made them a social media success story- with increased bookings and massive global media coverage”, said Cook.

The E-Tourism Frontiers CEO summed up, “African Travel companies have seen the success of tourist produced online viral videos such as the Battle of Kruger, which has been viewed by over 50m people, and they are now creating platforms for user generated content, reviews and discussions of their products. More companies are also using Twitter and Facebook to develop strong networks of supporters and consumers. The web has really made it easy for small players to use technology, creativity and innovation to make a big connection with global markets.” said Damian Cook.

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March 15, 2010

Destiny

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July 15, 2009

MV-Fina:T72s Sent to Sudan

The ceremony last Feb. 12 at the commercial seaport in Mombasa, Kenya, was a surprising one. When the Ukrainian-owned merchant ship Faina sailed into port, five months after its capture by Somali pirates and a week after its release, the Kenyan government rolled out the red carpet. Civilian officials and military officers lined the pier, and armed guards patrolled, as Faina’s weary seafarers debarked. There were speeches and reluctant testimonies by Faina’s senior crew before the strange gathering came to a halting end. Hundreds of vessels had been seized by Somali pirates over the previous decade, and their releases had rarely prompted an official celebration such as this.

The ceremony might have been inspired by the intensive media coverage that had surrounded the Faina’s capture and the subsequent stand-off, pitting U.S. Navy warships against the merchant ship’s ragtag captors. Faina’s captain died of natural causes in the early days of the crisis. Ultimately, the vessel’s owners paid a $3.2 million ransom, which itself is not unusual. Faina had stood out, among captured vessels, owing to her cargo: 33 Soviet-designed T-72 main battle tanks, plus other arms and ammunition — all of murky provenance and ownership. To cynical observers, the June ceremony was seen as an opportunity for Nairobi to voice its official position regarding the weapons’ origins and destination.

Nairobi waged a clumsy campaign to first cover up, then deny, its alleged South Sudan connection. In October, Kenyan authorities briefly arrested Andrew Mwangura, a prominent Mombasa seafarers’ advocate who had corroborated the U.S. Navy’s claim regarding the weapons’ destination. Faina’s welcoming party was the capstone event in this apparent disinformation strategy.

“We are very happy that our military equipment, purchased by the government from the Ukrainian government, has arrived safely — and we cannot wait to take possession,” spokesman Alfred Mutua said. In the following days, the tanks rolled from Faina’s holds and apparently headed to Kahawa Barracks, outside Nairobi. Commercial satellite imagery confirmed the presence of 33 tanks at Kahawa in March, according to Jane’s Defence Weekly, a British trade publication.

But subsequent investigation by Jane’s appeared to show the tanks migrating elsewhere. The magazine’s probe, combining satellite imagery with other photographic evidence and eyewitness reports, showed “a pattern of tanks making their way north” to neighboring South Sudan. The semi-autonomous, predominantly Christian region has in the past waged a bloody separatist campaign against Khartoum and the North’s majority Muslim population.

The Faina shipment apparently represented the third and final installment of a large batch of heavy weaponry for South Sudan, sourced from Ukraine and brokered by Nairobi. In November, the German magazine Der Spiegel claimed it had records proving an earlier shipment of 42 tanks that had largely escaped international scrutiny. Khartoum has more than equaled South Sudan’s apparent arms program, with large-scale purchases of fighter jets, helicopters and other weapons, sourced mostly from Russia and China.

The mutual re-armament, in violation of a U.N. arms embargo, bodes poorly for reconciliation efforts aimed at forestalling a continuation of the 20-year, North-South civil war. The fighting ended in 2005, and in 2007 former Kenyan President Daniel Moi traveled to Sudan to smooth out the implementation of a formal peace deal. According to the so-called “Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” in 2011, South Sudan will vote whether to remain a part of Sudan, or formally secede.

But “the implementation of the CPA has been hampered by the lack of good faith and the absence of political will,” according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group. Ongoing tension might tilt the referendum toward sovereignty, resulting in a fresh round of fighting — a contingency both the North and South seem to be preparing for, and one to which Kenya seems resigned. Since the CPA’s implementation, Kenya has aligned itself closely with South Sudan. Kenya gets discounts on South Sudanese oil. In return, Kenyan banks have financed massive construction projects in South Sudan. Nairobi’s apparent military assistance to South Sudan underscores Kenya’s investment in the region’s eventual, full independence.

The U.S. military’s “outing” of the Kenya-South Sudan relationship reflects Washington’s delicate stance on regional security. Washington works closely with the Kenyan government to prevent pirate attacks and prosecute captured pirates. But the U.S. seems willing to somewhat jeopardize that relationship in order to prevent arms flowing to South Sudan.

Still, the U.S. State Department is arguably South Sudan’s second-most-important supporter. Last year, the State Department awarded a contract to Virginia-based consultancy USIS, to help train up the South Sudanese army — a deal that does not include arms transfers. The goal, an unnamed State Department source told Wired magazine’s Danger Room blog , is to take the South’s army “out of the bush, basically, within the construct of the CPA — as a force that can come together in a unity government. Or if in 2011, the South secedes, that force could become the element of a South Sudan that’s sovereign.”

Despite the clear risk of massive bloodshed, sovereignty for South Sudan is a prospect both Kenya and the U.S. seem to be preparing for. The difference is in the tactics used. Washington’s support for South Sudan is subtle and non-material. Nairobi’s alleged support, by contrast, is the stuff of pirate tales and techno-thrillers — and apparently too obvious to escape major scrutiny

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Tags: kenyan army, MV fINA, tanks

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