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Post by Onyango Oloo on Apr 2, 2014 0:53:47 GMT 3
On Saturday, October 22, 2011, Onyango Oloo posted a digital essay on the Kenya Democracy Project blog. The title of the piece was The Quixotic Invasion of Somalia Will Devastate Kenya. Who remembers today, in the light of the latest terrorist bombing in Eastliegh, this excerpt from my essay of three years ago: Here is the link to the original essay:demokrasia-kenya.blogspot.com/2011/10/quixotic-invasion-of-somalia-devastate.html It was also carried by the influential global social justice newsletter, Pambazuka which reaches approximately 500,000 people around the world every week:pambazuka.org/en/category/features/77425
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Post by b6k on Apr 2, 2014 8:53:35 GMT 3
Who can forget your non-interventionist missive. I suppose it entirely depends on what one would hope is Kenya's destiny in the region. Are we striving just to be a regional economic hub or do we make a push at a militaristic arm behind our economic aspirations as per the US playbook? Are we to be a country of bold (wo)men or a country of (wo)mice?
FACT: Kenyans were already being killed & maimed by bombings attributed to or claimed by Al Shabaab prior to our military intervention (misadventure to some).
FACT: The KDF military intervention took place only after a tourist was killed & his spouse kidnapped in the coast (was she ever rescued?) by Al Shabaab.
Given that Kenyans were already dying anyway & our tourism industry was under threat will a KDF pull out from Somalia mean the bombings in KE will stop? I highly doubt it.
What have been the dividends since KDF went in? Mogadishu airport has been reopened for service, Kismayu port is being rehabilitated for business & Ke is set to re-open an embassy in Somalia. Let's not forget western oil companies have dusted off long forgotten oil concessions, that were shelved when Said Barre did a runner in the early 90's, and will put Somalia back on the grid soon enough.
In short, KDF has managed to do what Museveni with his "battle hardened" troops, Ethiopia with its huge army, & Uncle Sam (Clinton) with his downed Blackhawks failed to do, ie bring relative peace to a neighboring failed state.
So I ask again, are we a country of men or a country of mice, the meek hoping to inherit the earth?
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Post by podp on Apr 2, 2014 12:27:23 GMT 3
Who can forget your non-interventionist missive. I suppose it entirely depends on what one would hope is Kenya's destiny in the region. Are we striving just to be a regional economic hub or do we make a push at a militaristic arm behind our economic aspirations as per the US playbook? Are we to be a country of bold (wo)men or a country of (wo)mice? FACT: Kenyans were already being killed & maimed by bombings attributed to or claimed by Al Shabaab prior to our military intervention (misadventure to some). FACT: The KDF military intervention took place only after a tourist was killed & his spouse kidnapped in the coast (was she ever rescued?) by Al Shabaab. Given that Kenyans were already dying anyway & our tourism industry was under threat will a KDF pull out from Somalia mean the bombings in KE will stop? I highly doubt it. What have been the dividends since KDF went in? Mogadishu airport has been reopened for service, Kismayu port is being rehabilitated for business & Ke is set to re-open an embassy in Somalia. Let's not forget western oil companies have dusted off long forgotten oil concessions, that were shelved when Said Barre did a runner in the early 90's, and will put Somalia back on the grid soon enough. In short, KDF has managed to do what Museveni with his "battle hardened" troops, Ethiopia with its huge army, & Uncle Sam (Clinton) with his downed Blackhawks failed to do, ie bring relative peace to a neighboring failed state. So I ask again, are we a country of men or a country of mice, the meek hoping to inherit the earth? thinking of the reactions from murder of Shiekh Makaburi and below note resonates well especially 'if. Terrorism is going to sniff out tourism, maim lives, instill fear in citizenry then we are lost.' www.facebook.com/Hesbon Omollo@ said Oulu and oscar were profiling the murders of mungiki adheherents. I think mungiki grew bolder, killed thousands,maimed many, stifled economic activities, became a state on their own. They had to be sniffed. As usual the state took time and pleaded until mungiki felt they were now govt.with taxation powers as well as execution powers. The back gave way and strangely michuki was told he would never be elected . He got reelected by a huge majority. In life we fight over resources. Rarely do we fight over spiritual nourishment. That was a war of the previous century. But if. Terrorism is going to sniff out tourism, maim lives, instill fear in citizenry then we are lost.
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Post by cheshirecat on Apr 3, 2014 8:42:40 GMT 3
On Saturday, October 22, 2011, Onyango Oloo posted a digital essay on the Kenya Democracy Project blog. The title of the piece was The Quixotic Invasion of Somalia Will Devastate Kenya. Who remembers today, in the light of the latest terrorist bombing in Eastliegh, this excerpt from my essay of three years ago: Here is the link to the original essay: demokrasia-kenya.blogspot.com/2011/10/quixotic-invasion-of-somalia-devastate.html It was also carried by the influential global social justice newsletter, Pambazuka which reaches approximately 500,000 people around the world every week:pambazuka.org/en/category/features/77425There were numerous attacks long before KDF went into Somalia. Just like Mungiki, thugs need no reason to kill and maim. Heck, they even kill more of their own.
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 3, 2014 20:53:19 GMT 3
THE POPULAR BAY FOR THE MAKABURI OPTION, EEEH!
THE big story at my local yesterday, was the elaborate scheme by the CIA, to cover up the torture and other excesses –committed under the so called enhanced interrogation techniques—wrought upon terror suspects, mostly if not all, Muslim militant activists. The [CIA] company is currently engaged in a winner take all, might is right, the end justifies the means, by all means necessary frame of justification, all aimed to persuade the citizens of America into the connivance of overlooking the moral depravity, contempt for the law the people and their leaders, and the rogue psychopathology inherent in the agency.
This Proteus –Old Man of the Sea act, is not making much headway, even the docile members of Congress who are never wont to criticise the agency, are now up in arms, questioning, after finding themselves on the receiving end of the intrusive, all pervasive nosiness of the agency, all to hide its tracks ---tracks squarely on the other side of the American law they are sworn to protect. Edward Snowden is coming through, by and by. {Proteus s/o Poseidon, the legend goes, when nabbed, would change into all things thinkable to escape the grasp. The god could even change into wind and evaporate from a captor’s grip!)
Now, because in Europe, when we do historical classes, we are under the imperative to inculcate into our students, that the Shoa or Holocaust was the lowest point in humanity, I always look around the globe to see the other [contemporary] sh!t civilised humans are doing to others –the others defined as the enemy. When one come across Nobel Peace Price winners like Barrack Obama running inherited torture camps like Guantanamo offside Cuba, unblinkingly giving terrorists a dose of their own medicine of course, and --shucks! thinks abit about it in some measure, it makes one wonder whether the construction of the Shoa, and the NAZIS as the summit of human evil, is merely the easy way out to whitewash ourselves. --By keeping on pointing at the past evil as the absolute, the unsurpassable, we escape scrutiny of our own ongoing depravity. We can then delude ourselves with success, that we are better humans. Looney yes, but not that looney!
It is with this in mind that I chew the commentary of my fellow citizens, freely available in the open media, applauding the gangland extra-judicial slaying of the radical Mombasa sheikh Makaburi. He goes the same way the cleric Aboud Rogo and a few others went.
The number one suspect is ATPU (the anti terrorist police unit) which is suspected to be running death squads targeting that ‘sector’. The universal tone of popular feeling in Kenya, is that of the famous ‘’enemy combatants’’ are creatures outside the law, excluded from the protocols of civilisation (like innocent until proven guilty, committed to trial, subjected to due process … all defined to specific standards). Nay, these terrorists and their sympathisers are sub-human species best gunned down on sight like mad, marauding beasts of this world. Even the once leading light of scholarly renaissance in these matters, Ogayi Willy Mutunga, has maintained a studious silence, no doubt citing the clause of official impartiality, that imposes a gag on his his otherwise slick tongue. Good for him, may his tongue stay as dead as his once scholarly mind!
These terrorists are at a glance, all Muslims. When I re-read Oloo about the international context, it seems to fit into the fault-line Crusaders versus Jihadists. To be caught in this reli-war context, would be comparable to the fix in which we were caught during the Cold War, when Kenya was recruited to cheer one side against the other, while our own political system at home run aground in endless KANU totalitarianism.
A few days ago, I read, over 500 youths were swooped in Eastleigh, in a joint FBI-Kenya police operation. That security request President Kenyatta sent to the Americans, has been honoured, vehemently it seems.
It makes me feel uneasy.
Even if the honourable explanation should be, it is for my own good (and if I do not leave in Nairobi, it is for the good of the large extended family of mine who are permanent city inhabitants.) … Public safety is now paramount, the government must act decisively to arrest the alarm and discord now gripping the citizens!
Why does these massive dragnets a la pogroms in the name of public safety make me uneasy? Why am I being –mice- squeamish?
It is because the Americans like us Kenyans, have an institutional history of torture, and now their president, uncannily of Kenyan blood, runs a ruthless extermination regime, complete with a KILL-LIST. President Obama has turned extra-judicial death into a drone-sport. This alliance of moral bankruptcy unsettles me. I consider it the loss of our inheritance. We are warriors, my dad taught me. However fierce and ruthless the combat, however pure and crystal the hate for the enemy, there is a conduct of cruelty which is that of the insane. These things the Americans advise us on, from the Gitmo institute, belong to insane minds. Let us wish the Yankees well in their insanity, but decline their invite.
Also, as far as the rule of the law is concerned, these American security agencies are now in the eye of the storm in their own country; they have broken into the computers of their law-makers and God knows who else’s, all to the purpose of erasing incriminating evidence collected against them, too, to see how they can derail or completely thwart the due process of law IN THEIR OWN COUNTRY, the Holy You S of A!
Then there are the safe houses the CIA has been running in Somalia. Torture centers. It means the tough Christian Sheriff Uhuru wa Kenyatta has decided to hand over youths of Islamic faith to the custody of the torture-experienced Americans, to indulge their psychopathology to excess in the various –enhanced-- interrogation stations in Mogadishu and beyond. There was a time the traffic was heavy from Wilson Airport, flights which were part of the reason for the fall-out which led to the premature departure of an American ambassador from Nairobi. The guy reportedly developed cold feet, aka moral qualms, ach, about these dark flights with their dark cargo.
Ticking bomb scenario requires a trip to the realms of moral debasement by interrogators, goes the pitch.
But what is the difference in the moral derangement of a NAZI busy shoving Jews into the Oven, and an American slicing off the balls of an Arab? Or the difference of this NAZI from Opiyo the Luo going through his specialities at Old Nyati House? Or the difference [of that Nazi] from BOSS barbarian Decock [former South African white Apartheid torturer] full at work defending public safety from ANC communism?
These guys are being tortured for my own good, huh? The NAZIS were doing it for their own bad, Huh!? I need the sharpest of Solomons to guide me out of this conundrum, this moral maze. OF MORAL QUAGMIRES ---Oh Ariadne of the winding thread! Descend unto this darkness with a way! For demons of the labyrinth crowd me thick And no light at the end of the tunnel do I see!
Yet from what I gather from popular commentary, including that from my countless relatives in Eastlands, not least in the neighbourhood of Eastleigh (also known as Little Mogadishu), the popular verdict is: the Somalis are a cyst best uprooted from our urban centers; they are like infectious lepers best quarantined in a Kenyan version of an extermination concentration camp. Their spiritual handlers, the merchants of death like Aboud Rogo, Makaburi and the rest of the vile ‘’Sheikh Yassins’’ of Kenya, should exactly be shot on sight or executed otherwise by any means available. ---Bravo the ATPU for collecting the skulls already collected, Makaburi alale salama kaburini
It has been a shocking few days for me, coming to terms with the blood-thirst of my fellow Kenyans. ---Fwack innocence until proved guilty! Terrorism can not be dealt with such naïve concepts as reading a suicide bomber his Miranda rights! (Is now the near ubiquitous public wisdom)
And there is your newly promulgated constitution lying prostrate, aborted at the most fundamental of issues.
It gives me the creeps. We have been blown off our moral rockers so to speak! We risk becoming but equivalent beasts!
NB:# It is a thrilling moment in Kenya’s history of constitutional reform, and evolving judicial consciousness. Hardly a year into the promulgation of the flower of the second liberation, we are contemplating, tempted to go back to square one in lawlessness!
2. Perhaps today I should join you all, standing behind sheriff Uhuru Kenyatta and our KILL THEM ALL ATPU! --Subhuman scumbag enemy combatants of Somali Muslim lineage do not deserve arrest, prosecution and sentence! No, let us take the short-cut, KILL THEM ALL!
Together with my countrymen I descend into this pit of moral depravity! Our Gitmo! Here I come!
THE MORNING AFTER:
I slept on it, and woke up with a tortured conscience. I am therefore taking the morning-after pill, to abort the moral depravity whose seed I conceived yesterday in my drunken one-night stand with a cocktail of Christian populism and insecure Kenyan nationalism!
I dissent. No extra-judicial killings in Kenya. No concentration camps for Somalis ---Test-tube politician Aden Duale has a story to tell on what happens when the KDF do not know which Somali you are!]
Do not get me wrong. I am no moral abstentionist from executions. You see, those who have and continue to loot the national treasury, those who have reduced the nation to her knees, begging food-aid for starving countryside kids; those who use the street kids of the cities as an international poster advertising a paedophiliac tourist’s paradise called Kenya, O yeah, do not get me wrong, I would definitely not write a poem bemoaning their ‘promotion to glory’ if some tough cop with a true patriotic heart gave them a Makaburi (treatment)!
Just that we know, we do the tango, the tango does us too!
If the law can protect a scumbag like a terrorist, then it sure can protect you all –(I paraphrase the proprietor of the Playboy mag in a famous court case). And that is the essence of civilisation. If the law need not protect a terrorist from summary execution, why should it protect a corrupt politician from mob lynching?
O season of anomy! Did I sow the wind, and reap the whirl-storm?
Next, TIME willing: on the dangers of permanent concentration camps: the historical experience of Palestinians in Lebanon, and the Gaza strip.
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Post by b6k on Apr 3, 2014 22:58:48 GMT 3
FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!Jakaswanga, the Company aside, it seems we have to thank even the Feds (FBI) for saving us from our own ineptitude. A couple of weeks ago, 4 Al Shabaab suspects were arrested in Mombasa and their car was duly impounded at a police station. It was parked there for 6 days before our allies came and said they was something fishy about the said vehicle. After a thorough search, bombs, guns, & ammunition were found within the vehicle. The explosives were later detonated in full view of the public at some undisclosed quarry. Fast forward to April Fool's day and two other major events took place. First, Makaburi walked into a hail of bullets www.nairobiexposed.com/2014/04/02/photos-muslim-cleric-sheikh-abubakar-alias-makaburi-shot-dead/...& we had our local version of The Hurt Locker at Juja Road... Note the two jokers behind the wall who take cover AFTER the IED is detonated at 0:03! Considering the Mombasa cops kept a vehicle with TNT in their impound for 6 days before they were alerted that something was amiss with the car, then I must concede to Njakip that on some matters we are better off letting our allies lead us by the nose. I hope you caught how the reporter claimed that TNT is used to make atomic bombs and the senior cop stated that the Mythbusters type IED they found in the car could've killed "millions of Kenyans". REALLY??? Are we being played like a harp? Obviously. Let me take this opportunity to extend a full quenelle over to you as any history buff can appreciate that the Shoa sure does enjoy an an inordinate amount of airtime as a crime against humanity at the expense of numerous others. That said I see nothing wrong in a little nationalism in small healthy doses. If you are looking for Miranda rights in these here parts, the closest you will get from b6k is a cold Mirinda. I fall in with Colonel Jessup (A Few Good Men) when it comes to the Al Shabaab question. A lousy job, but someone's gotta do it. At the end of the day I see it as a case of damned if you do, & damned if you don't. So like Nike you might as well go ahead and JUST DO IT (lest it be done to you)...
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Post by mank on Apr 4, 2014 23:30:23 GMT 3
FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!:... Considering the Mombasa cops kept a vehicle with TNT in their impound for 6 days before they were alerted that something was amiss with the car... Cops have clearly forgotten what their job is. They have gotten so used to bribery expeditions in place of work that they don't even recognize duty any more. Just how does a vehicle get impounded by police and be parked without a check up?
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 5, 2014 9:12:17 GMT 3
FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!...& we had our local version of The Hurt Locker at Juja Road... Note the two jokers behind the wall who take cover AFTER the IED is detonated at 0:03! Considering the Mombasa cops kept a vehicle with TNT in their impound for 6 days before they were alerted that something was amiss with the car, then I must concede to Njakip that on some matters we are better off letting our allies lead us by the nose. I hope you caught how the reporter claimed that TNT is used to make atomic bombs and the senior cop stated that the Mythbusters type IED they found in the car could've killed "millions of Kenyans". REALLY??? Are we being played like a harp? Obviously. Let me take this opportunity to extend a full quenelle over to you as any history buff can appreciate that the Shoa sure does enjoy an an inordinate amount of airtime as a crime against humanity at the expense of numerous others. That said I see nothing wrong in a little nationalism in small healthy doses. If you are looking for Miranda rights in these here parts, the closest you will get from b6k is a cold Mirinda. I fall in with Colonel Jessup (A Few Good Men) when it comes to the Al Shabaab question. A lousy job, but someone's gotta do it. At the end of the day I see it as a case of damned if you do, & damned if you don't. So like Nike you might as well go ahead and JUST DO IT (lest it be done to you)... B6k, this our Hurt-Locker walks so fast, his suit of armour looks light! But then, later elsewhere in the city, his other mates spoilt the ‘’shock and awe’’ bravoure, when they were photographed carrying away an explosive device in a plastic jerrican ---you know the ones with round lids one encounters being used to sell wares beside the roads on the Narok Bomet Kaplong stretch Making a mock of ‘hurt locker’ heroics An aside, when patriotism starts to go this way, my nerves are not helped! Special detention centers? Well, those who were not born yesterday, know we used to have them, albeit limited in scale. Nyati and Nyayo House in the center of Nairobi city. Haha, the old specialists of torture from the SPECIAL BRANCH, can be rehabilitated and re-apply. So these experts want a Guantanamo in Kenya? A special torture camp for Muslim youths in a country 20% Muslim, and neighbouring a wholly Muslim state where her army is active? Go for it, Christian sheriff Kenyatta, go for it! You finally found a mission! 80% public support! War on Terror! Forget Industrialisation and laptops! Now it is wanted dead or alive, any alshabagoon ! --That was Kamalet in a locked thread, when Oloo had problems with a ''b'' somewhere in that word!
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 5, 2014 9:33:41 GMT 3
This [military siege Rambo-ism] is what it takes to keep the peace in a Mombasa slum of idle youths? What a pity they are not Christian youths. For Christian youth, you saturate the area with disco-infested drugs --cocaine, hash, marijuana, porn-cafes, ... and politics will be out of their minds as they waste away in drug addiction, prostitution and inter-community murder. ---That, as de-classified papers tell us researching urban sociology, is what a right-wing think-tank adviced Ronald Reagan to deal with black ghettos in the USA, to prevent Louis Farrakhan turning them anti American. And yeah, take a look at Spike Lees Clockers, or the legendary Boys N'Hood! --whatever those may be! Now, tough cop Marwa, forget your shoot to kill stupidity, just allow drugs in, and sit baaaaaack and watch! be sophisticated, silly copper! (Decent jobs actually work best in pacification politics, but now that we are not going industrialisation, that path is closed) GSU officers standby near Salvation Army Centre, Friday. Muslim youths who wanted to protest the killing of Abubakar Shariff after Friday’s prayers were stopped by the police. [PHOTO: GIDEON MAUNDU/STANDARD]
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 5, 2014 19:38:13 GMT 3
THE POPULAR BAY FOR THE MAKABURI OPTION, EEEH! ..... THE MORNING AFTER:I slept on it, and woke up with a tortured conscience. I am therefore taking the morning-after pill, to abort the moral depravity whose seed I conceived yesterday in my drunken one-night stand with a cocktail of Christian populism and insecure Kenyan nationalism! I dissent. No extra-judicial killings in Kenya. No concentration camps for Somalis ---Test-tube politician Aden Duale has a story to tell on what happens when the KDF do not know which Somali you are!] Do not get me wrong. I am no moral abstentionist from executions. You see, those who have and continue to loot the national treasury, those who have reduced the nation to her knees, begging food-aid for starving countryside kids; those who use the street kids of the cities as an international poster advertising a paedophiliac tourist’s paradise called Kenya, O yeah, do not get me wrong, I would definitely not write a poem bemoaning their ‘promotion to glory’ if some tough cop with a true patriotic heart gave them a Makaburi (treatment)!Just that we know, we do the tango, the tango does us too! If the law can protect a scumbag like a terrorist, then it sure can protect you all –(I paraphrase the proprietor of the Playboy mag in a famous court case). And that is the essence of civilisation. If the law need not protect a terrorist from summary execution, why should it protect a corrupt politician from mob lynching? O season of anomy! Did I sow the wind, and reap the whirl-storm?. Aden Duale: you always knew it was coming, man! Bear it like a man, man, or are you not circumcised, man? Take it on the chin, man up and let us MOVE ON, man! ----That is a lot of man, and with reason man! www.nation.co.ke/news/politics/Duale-threatens-to-ditch-Jubilee-over-crackdown-/-/1064/2271014/-/btg3i5/-/index.html Of course the operation must continue! Stop raping entertaining surplus women in Kenyan police stations? are you out of your mind? They do like young Somali chicks in those places; word is they tend to be virgin, and Christians too want to be the first in. But that is not the whole story: some of you may have noticed the going rates for virginity auctions on the net. Some of you may know the going rates for the same at the local market! The Kenya police being good businessmen, may just be running a few safe-houses for special interrogations in the city and its environs, where the rich [‘’non christian ’’ –get a life guys!] top class pay handsomely for going first, in. Those swoops netting countless Somali youths, with lots of tight damsels as collateral, is a hot cakes market I tell youl!? We are a business country guys, we go with the market. It is not for nothing we are the biggest economy in the neighbourhood! We are resourceful, creative and of course cold-blooded. ---But you already knew that! That is why I am saying Test-Tube politician Aden Duale has a story he is not telling us! Good he is not the only guy who knows it anyway… but still .. even AhmedNassir the Grandmullah did not get cocky when a red-eyed copper called him Al-shabaab and spat on him. The Somali elite is beginning to feel the heat of a +95% conformity to the ETHNIC profile ‘’Al-shabagoon sympathiser!’’But this is the war on terror, right? And our educated elite is calling for Guantanamos on Kenyan soil, right? And ATPU is going shoot-to-kill as we applaud, right? And now you cry babies turn jelly, when the Kenyan Police get a bit of fun entertaining themselves interrogating select Somali ladies at the appropriate places, and make a bit of pocket money auctioning their well-worn virginity on the side? You loose me guys! Methinks you wanna make an omelette, the egg must go broke! Let us just do it! Reward our policemen with Viagra! They gotta rise to the occasion round the clock! And tough cops who order the closet terrorist sympathisers like Ahmednassir and Duale and Keynan and Kerrow and [Westgate Hero] Haji to produce their IDs while jamming guns down their throats? More of that please. Zero tolerance, every Somali is a security risk! Told you it was a ransom racket, the judiciary and law enforcement, but then, you were a member of the JSC scamming sitting allowance and deaf! Wait until you hear quotations on your own ransom price! ---smart alec city lawyer with huge clients from Kismayo! (Was that the ATPU clearing house, in the Nairobi Mombasa road execution of a so-called son of a terrorist financier?] It is not only the top of the judiciary, the JSC, that can run a scam you know. Nor only top engineers with their SGR scam! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdulmalik_Mohammed ---SOLD! Former head of ATPU, Nicholas Kamwende, has boasted of his role in the apprehension and extradition of Kenyans, among them Kenyan Guantanamo intern Abdulmalik Mohammed, to foreign interrogation centers for torture. It is good to travel around the world. Then you know, in some countries, a man who hands over his fellow citizens to a foreign power, whatever crimes the fellow citizen is accused of, is referred to as slime. It is also the reason the Americans are not signed to the ICC. Those were the days we thought they would never end, when fellow nigg-ahs hunted down fellow Africans at the behest of slave traders, and for some half a piece of silver, sold them to merchant boats in chains. Those were the days, O those were the days! Oh those were the days we thought they would never end!
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Apr 6, 2014 2:51:05 GMT 3
Jakaswanga:
By the way, I recently met a young community radio producer from Mfangano, not on Mfangano Street in downtown Nairobi, but rather in Riruta on the outskirts of Dagoretti, who told me how members of the Suba minority from places like Kaswanga are doing to preserve their cultural identity from the stultifying Luo assimilation agenda.
What I wanted to say to you was this:
You are brilliant!
I admire your Renaissance polytechnic polyglot of a mind; your acerbic wit; your diction and the depth of your analysis.
When you transcend your often cruel and cheap sideswipes at some well known Jukwaa targets of yours, you really are an invaluable asset to this forum.
Kudos!
Keep it up!
Onyango Oloo
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Post by OtishOtish on Apr 6, 2014 5:33:37 GMT 3
Jakaswanga: (* Response to the first comments on this thread. I see you have been busy!)
You are a historian. You know that these things always start small-small … And for some reason something made me think of Wagalla ...
You are quite right to be concerned. Before I go further, I note that there has indeed been a request for American help and that they have agreed to help. Presumably that means USAID is no longer trying to overthrow the Kenyan government and is sticking to do-good stuff? (No need to comment on "turning East" or "declining imperial powers" ...)
I will have to re-read Comrade OO "digital" again, but I would be wary of an immediate blanket connection to Somalia. Not that OO would fall for it, but we have already seen absurd demands being made of Somalian refugees. Still, in the bit reproduced above, one statement caught my eye:
'Tactically it might not be very wise to unleash all this machismo and braggadocio with reckless talk of "bring it on".'
Right now the social media seems to have been overrun by a lot that has been enjoying movies showing sharp satellite images of "terrorists" being tracked before a "special forces" team, or a drone missile, gets in to finish the job. In the popular imagination, it seems Kenya will be and will have everything the USA and the Israelis etc. are and have got .. and then some. Sadly, the African versions tend to be messier:
* Take, for example, Boko Haram in Nigeria. The group routinely slaughters people there, and in turn the government (which forever claims it is winning) routinely slaughters people on the other side. On and on, seemingly without end. The popular image is that the group is no more than a bunch of crazed "jihadists", but the reality is that there are some quite legitimate grievances at the root of their violence, as there always are in most such cases. (And that is not intended to be "justification".)
I choose this example for three reasons:
First, the "coastal" people have long had legitimate grievances that nobody else (in Kenya) has had the slightest interest in sorting out. So, those have not gone away, and the manner in which they are expressed can only get more unfriendly. That is also the case with the “Somali problem” in the NE. In fact, the two have now been neatly conflated into a bizarre “terrorist-Muslim problem”. Clobber all at once, I suppose. Two targets for the same amount if stupidity.
and so, directly to ...
Second, as you and OO have already alluded to, it has become convenient in many parts to simply equate Islam and Muslims with terrorism. The reason for that is that it saves the time and effort required to make fine distinctions and facilitates "carpet bombing". 657 arrested! And the crowd goes wild. (This sort of thing always works particularly well when dealing with minority groups; all one needs is the right amount of propaganda.)
Third, the case shows the difficulty in winning such "battles". The end-result of the "tough" Nigerian approach is routine round of slaughter, in increasingly larger numbers. This week, 70 on this side; next week 100 on the other side. The Nigerian numbers hardly make "big news" anymore.
Getting back to the (apparently) extra-judicial killings, the last of which has generated much excitement in some Kenyans ....
There is a great deal that must be condemned when it comes to torture, extra-judicial killings, but we need not dwell on the morality and legality; those who engage in, or support, such activities, will easily find slippery paths on such points. Instead, let us briefly consider what the proponents consider the "practical" aspects.
To start with, such tactics rarely work in the long run. Yes, one can come up with cases, but those would be the exceptions. Those who imagine the Kenyan GSU (or whatever) as some sort of super-Israeli commandos should consider at least two things. One is that the Israelis keep fighting a never-ending battle. The other, which is perhaps more significant, is that they have and have always had the kind of super-power support that Kenya will never have in a zillion years. And they still haven't won.
Also instructive is what happens at the "high end" of such business: with the Americans pretty much calling it quits in Afghanistan, both the Pakistanis and the Afghan government seem to think that there has been enough fighting and now is the time to talk to the Taliban. How long have they been at it? In the North-East, at the Coast, ... it is the standard mistake that is too often made with minority groups with grievances: "there's just a handful of them, a good beating and they will be done for". In the case of Kenya, there are additional reasons to believe that such a "battle" cannot be won:
The first is Westgate. Start with the "operational" aspects, in which people showed up for a mall-fight will all sorts of funny vehicles and equipment, members of one "security force" shot at members of another "security force", and then all proceeded to the looting. Perhaps the Americans/Israelis/etc. can instill discipline, but that will take some time. In any case, discipline can only partially compensate for boneheaded-ness. (This is not the time to ask about the "Westgate Commission", or how many Kenyans know exactly what happened and what lessons have been learned.)
Which brings us to the second.
The level of corruption in Kenya is such that anybody can buy their way into doing anything in the country. Citizenship is for sale at the right price. Is it possible that some of the “terrorists” being rounded up today were just yesterday, after opening wallets, warmly welcomed as citizens? Police, at all levels, are for sale. What person with money and willing to part with some of it can ever be “disadvantaged” by Kenyan police? You name, you can buy it in Kenya. All that ultimately kills just about any big plans anyone might have to do anything that would improve the country.
Perhaps the best the citizens can expect is one warning after another, with the odd ultimatum thrown in. But one hopes that all will see the dangers in the human-rights abuses that are now starting to take place.
Are you folks still on track for industrialised, middle-income, etc. by 2030? (I ask because from the outside one gets the impression of a country that is very slowly coming apart at the seems but whose leadership ... well, you have been warned. Or something.)
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Post by b6k on Apr 6, 2014 10:59:17 GMT 3
FIRE IN THE HOLE!!!!:... Considering the Mombasa cops kept a vehicle with TNT in their impound for 6 days before they were alerted that something was amiss with the car... Cops have clearly forgotten what their job is. They have gotten so used to bribery expeditions in place of work that they don't even recognize duty any more. Just how does a vehicle get impounded by police and be parked without a check up? Strolling past Bruce House recently I observed a watchman screening a car with a bomb sniffing hand-held device. It looked something like this The KDF have received drones from Uncle Sam in our effort for the GWOT. I wonder why Kimaiyo can't lobby for such bomb sniffers for his mboys as well. Every urban police station should have at least one of these but I suppose the Alcoblow fleece force is a lot more lucrative as a racket than bomb detection...
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Post by b6k on Apr 6, 2014 11:07:10 GMT 3
B6k, this our Hurt-Locker walks so fast, his suit of armour looks light! But then, later elsewhere in the city, his other mates spoilt the ‘’shock and awe’’ bravoure, when they were photographed carrying away an explosive device in a plastic jerrican ---you know the ones with round lids one encounters being used to sell wares beside the roads on the Narok Bomet Kaplong stretch Making a mock of ‘hurt locker’ heroics An aside, when patriotism starts to go this way, my nerves are not helped! Special detention centers? Well, those who were not born yesterday, know we used to have them, albeit limited in scale. Nyati and Nyayo House in the center of Nairobi city. Haha, the old specialists of torture from the SPECIAL BRANCH, can be rehabilitated and re-apply. So these experts want a Guantanamo in Kenya? A special torture camp for Muslim youths in a country 20% Muslim, and neighbouring a wholly Muslim state where her army is active? Go for it, Christian sheriff Kenyatta, go for it! You finally found a mission! 80% public support! War on Terror! Forget Industrialisation and laptops! Now it is wanted dead or alive, any alshabagoon ! --That was Kamalet in a locked thread, when Oloo had problems with a ''b'' somewhere in that word! Jakaswanga, those cops with the ndoo can be carrying just about anything . It might not even be an explosive, improvised or otherwise. Now on the detention centers I wonder whether this really is about a clash of civilizations in the Christian vs Muslim mould. We were told by Dubyah "you're either with us, or against us". So who are we to ask why...
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Post by mank on Apr 6, 2014 23:02:28 GMT 3
Cops have clearly forgotten what their job is. They have gotten so used to bribery expeditions in place of work that they don't even recognize duty any more. Just how does a vehicle get impounded by police and be parked without a check up? Strolling past Bruce House recently I observed a watchman screening a car with a bomb sniffing hand-held device. It looked something like this The KDF have received drones from Uncle Sam in our effort for the GWOT. I wonder why Kimaiyo can't lobby for such bomb sniffers for his mboys as well. Every urban police station should have at least one of these but I suppose the Alcoblow fleece force is a lot more lucrative as a racket than bomb detection... Amigo B6K, I would advocate for attitude adjustment before our 'in'security personnel are handed any more toys. Have you noticed how they use the ones they have? in many cases it is disgusting to see them at work. I remember complaining about one check up I observed, where a guy was holding a visual detector under the car, walking all around the car, but his face was clearly elevated above and across the car through out the exercise. It as if the detector was going to call him when something suspicions reflected on it. They have lots of detectors already, but given their work ethic those detectors cannot stop anything ... except where the enemy is also not up to his game.
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Post by Onyango Oloo on Apr 7, 2014 0:30:27 GMT 3
This is courtesy of a posting by Kenyan poet-activist Shailja Patel on another mailing list: Journalist Mohammed Yusuf was arrested and beaten up by police last night, despite showing his ID and press card. He live-tweeted the police operation of snatching random people off the streets, brutalizing them, extorting bribes, then releasing them.
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Post by kamalet on Apr 7, 2014 10:55:51 GMT 3
If we can put aside the propaganda of religious targeting and police brutality, the current security operation in Nairobi and elsewhere is something that has been long overdue.Specifically targeting people of the somali community that are not Kenyans and who are not in refugee camps takes care of one problem - ensuring if any of these have links with the alshabaab they get restricted to a particular area.
But this will only deal with the part of foreign terror suspects. The war on Kenyan jihadists will be a tougher one and this is where the numba kumi initiative can play a real part as people would know whose child went to Somalia for training or elsewhere and also those planning terror. Kenyans simply have to play their role in dealing with terror.
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Post by b6k on Apr 7, 2014 16:45:18 GMT 3
Strolling past Bruce House recently I observed a watchman screening a car with a bomb sniffing hand-held device. It looked something like this The KDF have received drones from Uncle Sam in our effort for the GWOT. I wonder why Kimaiyo can't lobby for such bomb sniffers for his mboys as well. Every urban police station should have at least one of these but I suppose the Alcoblow fleece force is a lot more lucrative as a racket than bomb detection... Amigo B6K, I would advocate for attitude adjustment before our 'in'security personnel are handed any more toys. Have you noticed how they use the ones they have? in many cases it is disgusting to see them at work. I remember complaining about one check up I observed, where a guy was holding a visual detector under the car, walking all around the car, but his face was clearly elevated above and across the car through out the exercise. It as if the detector was going to call him when something suspicions reflected on it. They have lots of detectors already, but given their work ethic those detectors cannot stop anything ... except where the enemy is also not up to his game. Mank, the security personnel you're talking about are the private security firms guards. I have in mind the national Kenya Police when it comes to their more investigative duties than the prevention kind of duties the guards perform. As a frontline state in the GWOT I'd be lobbying for such kind of tools if I were in government if only to show that terror is taken seriously in this outpost...
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Post by podp on Apr 7, 2014 21:26:13 GMT 3
'red herring' that we have to get away from include such... The 15th prosecution witness in the case against Deputy President William Ruto told trial judges that the chief of Kimumu area made countless back and forth trips in a pick up before hell broke loose. She told the judges that ordinarily the drums are used to carry water, oil and “things of the sort.” She said the vehicle belonged to the chief whom he only named as “Chief Sang”. She said before that the demonstrations had been low-key and peaceful. She said the Kalenjins in the area had told them that ODM leaders Raila Odinga and William Ruto had been arrested. They also promised that they were going to demonstrate peacefully. www.the-star.co.ke/news/article-161910/chief-fuelled-arson-icc-witnessPresident Uhuru Kenyatta has nominated a chairman and four members of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, bringing closer to an end to a long wait for the replacement of the institution’s leadership. In a letter to the National Assembly, President Kenyatta nominated Kagwiria Mbogori as chairperson and Susan Shatikha Sivusia, George Morara Monyoncho, Vincent Suiyanka Lempaa and Jedidah Wakonyo Waruhiu as members. National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi forwarded the names to the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee, which will vet the nominees and then recommend to the rest of the House whether to approve or reject them. mobile.nation.co.ke/news/Uhuru-nominates-KNCHR-team-after-court-order/-/1950946/2203964/-/format/xhtml/-/upa2jq/-/index.htmlher first day in office she quotes the Hon Attorney General Ohuru's name sake whose main job is to protect Ohuru. she has no take as she is not seized of all info. the 'shot to kill order' she says her Commission takes it seriously but feels it is a difficult situation and since all these are competing interests Constitution guaranteed rights should not be suspended. the police should do better to observe human rights using resources at their disposal top being intelligence but everyone is avoiding the elephant in the room! what are our KDF forces doing in Somali? When it became clear that the Security Council would not lift the charcoal export ban, the "the KDF (Kenyan forces), Madobe and his Ras Kamboni forces took the unilateral decision to begin the export of charcoal from Kismayu port," the report said. uk.reuters.com/article/2013/07/14/uk-somalia-charcoal-un-idUKBRE96D01C20130714
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Post by b6k on Apr 9, 2014 20:38:28 GMT 3
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Post by OtishOtish on Apr 10, 2014 17:28:25 GMT 3
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 10, 2014 21:14:52 GMT 3
ISSUES TOUCHING ON THE SOMALI PROBLEM, A WIDER NET. 1. The once lucrative pirate industry off Somali’s coast, smart alec Nairobi lawyers, corrupt immigration officials in Nairobi, and political brokers of the Kibaki I and II [GCG] governments, in a laundering scheme of the proceeds. Any takers on the above subject, or is this a good moment to be in denial? 2. The EU and the USA and an assortment of Naval powers, pawed on by the shipping/insurance industry which was loosing billions and watching the cost of insurance for voyages passing the dreaded but amust sea-lanes hitting the sky, launched operation clean seas, which managed to reduced the ship-jacks off the Somali coast to a trickle. The industry collapsed, but not before 'Somali pirates' are distributed all-over jails across the globe ---From South Korea to Brazil, to Norway to the Netherlands to Malaysia, to Denmark to the USA. With Kenya paid handsomely to keep several hundred in jail. [see Kenya and the pirate trade: a study]. Few mourn the plight of these alleged ‘’Somali Pirates’’, --until you listen to modern Somali poetry, and rap, from the West.[Lazy fellows are allowed to think all Somali suicide bomber volunteers from the West are Koran fanatics! Beware, now that our army is out there kicking Somali butt, and our police at home chewing Somali c-unt, Somali nationalism may be a deadlier force than Quranic inspired Jihadism]. here is a Somali rap I caught on symposium. -- What International law?They take a Somali fisherman off his waters where his ancestors fished of old; Them pirate navies shoot his boat and dump him in every jail across the globe A Somali fisherman protests the toxins they dump on his shore Them pirate navies shoot to kill and watch him amuse the sharks! Ha Somali pirate they say! Viva Somali patriot we chant! For them a criminal you die in a jail far from home For us a martyr you die in combat defending our shore [---Somaliland collections, Africa Critical library] [See Tom Hanks disgracing himself in Captain Philips, for another version of events] 3. The new arrangement in Somalia –the stability brought about by the massive military intervention from Western powers and the local hired armies of Kenya, Uganda, Burundi and the rest of the mercenaries: the prime movers are reported to be Energy sectors in the West. One of the most powerful lobbies. This means one of the most contentious issues of the civil war, is facing a kind of forced resolution: PROPERTIES IN SOMALI... Like ownership of real estate in Mogadishu, Kismayu and other key economic sectors. Ever since Siad Barre [under IMF oversight] used the privatisation campaign to reward his cronies with choice beef-blocks of the economy, successive warlordism has presided over one of the most debated ''property lawlessness'' in an any country. Some plots have 20 valid owners from different clans, each claimant with a ‘’war paper’’ of ownership. ----Some of them, if not all copies of them, filed away in the diaspora, including the real Mogadishu, in Eastleigh Nairobi. You may want to cross-examine some of your cops on what other things they were looking for in their Eastleigh siege, apart from Otieno Kajwang’ proof papers! ---On a light touch ... The joke goes in DHOLUO:--Yes, trust popular culture to take a hit in step! Back to Somalia political economy. 4. There is the internal dynamic of the Kenyan comprador class. I opined earlier that their successful and unbroken primitive accumulation using the state over the past half a century, necessitates an investment expansion and diversification of portfolios. That expansion, also called investment of excess cash, can only be done in the shadows of international capital which they continue to be subservient to. Nevertheless they are aggressive in the region --- Rwanda, Uganda, South Sudan, picking up the crumbs the big boys can not be bothered with. For instance Banking in South Sudan is a Kenyan affair. So are supermarkets in Rwanda. Somali here we come then. But the Kenyan comprador fears the dynamism and business sophistication of the Somalis with their deadly diaspora networks, so a bit of market fixing should be considered to compensate. That is, it is not just terrorism in Eastleigh, but Eastleigh too, is the nucleus of a Somali operation to snatch commercial victory in Somalia from the Kenyan comprador and their ilks. The insecure Kenyans are disrupting things. It is our army did the fighting after all, we think! --- Mention three star commanders of the KDF from the LINDA NCHI IN SOMOLIA campaign! A great war won without ;)heros? ai yawa! iT looks like the guys taking Eastleigh apart are the one doing the ULINZI!5. When one puts a figure to the proceeds of piracy laundered in Nairobi over the past decade and a half, one gets an idea that the shillings stability and real-estate bubble in Nairobi may have other causes than the genius of Ndung’u of CBK ---the professor has since been revealed as a petty thief anyway, so he is not worth mentioning, except for the sake of formality: Professor Thief Thief!5b. That old [pirate] money was in alliance, or under the protection of the gone Kibaki mandarins, and the new boys in town, have their own agenda which need not coincide with that of the Kibaki-Raila era protectionism. All these factors must be considered at detail, when one looks at the theatrical Ole-Lenku brutal excision of the abcess at the center of Nairobi called Eastleigh. Terrorism? That is a red herring. Road carnage is a greater problem to Kenyans. But the truth be told. Terrorism is a godsend to any government struggling in office. 96% popular support for extra-legal measures, blind chauvinism running amok, base instincts unleashed, and the nation together as one against one! pRESIDENT on a mission! Uhuru Kenyatta would better milk this godsend to the last drop. This is likely to be the peak of his popularity, like George Bush after his great war speech: this is a crusade! We will smoke them out and kill them all. Now poor Obama has to clear the mess! And two terms aint enough, just aint enough for ...
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 10, 2014 23:14:30 GMT 3
Jakaswanga:By the way, I recently met a young community radio producer from Mfangano, not on Mfangano Street in downtown Nairobi, but rather in Riruta on the outskirts of Dagoretti, who told me how members of the Suba minority from places like Kaswanga are doing to preserve their cultural identity from the stultifying Luo assimilation agenda. You would be surprised at what twists these revivals can turn up. You know the Super Nyamolo troupe --made famous by artistic thinkers like Daudi Jamigori? This was the creative collective which would throw up a radical re-think of the concept of ''AHANGLA''. A genius called Odongo Mayaka had, within a space of one year, identified key [musical notes] combinations on the synthesiser, mouth organ and ajejegejege, then, with powerful voice and lyrics, the modern Luo electronic ahangla beat was up in the market, a leader. But the original idea songbirds like Osogo Winj Suba [later an Ahangla super star aka Osogo Winyo] were working on, had been, well, Suba cultural revival! I will settle for fusion. [Come on Mr. Adminstrator! You fail to protect me, and freely let the rogue Otishotish and family to log in specifically to hurl grenades at my loins, and I should not defend myself!? Then there is my in-law Mank, the Gringo who calls me Amigo, but is an undercover extortionist who wants to auction his sister at a rate even the Kenyan police wont get in Arabia for a queenly Somali virgin! Again you do not protect me from this marauding gringo whose temper is as fearful as that of a hellfire missile fired by an Obama drone over Pakistan! Sometimes it is just necessary to have a good old fashioned bar brawl with rogues like OtishO and their progeny! I trawled the vintage threads to find how cheap and cruel I was as you say. I blame it all on Otishotish! Mank, and of course b6k! HAHAHAA!
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Post by OtishOtish on Apr 11, 2014 20:28:19 GMT 3
Jakaswanga: If you have earned a beating from Comrade OO, and I suspect that you have, then take it without getting OtishOtish involved! OtishOtish is known, far and wide, as a person of love, peace, and unity. In the meantime, some words from Rasna Warah: " Let’s get one thing straight. We are not experiencing increasing terrorist attacks because Somali refugees live among us. We are experiencing terrorist attacks because terrorists can pay as little as Sh500 to a police officer to cross our border.
We are becoming victims of terrorism because of easily corruptible security forces and the fact that our intelligence apparatus is uncoordinated and unmotivated. There seems to be no chain of command or accountability." www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-slippery-path-to-lawlessness-and-anarchy--/-/440808/2275548/-/gkx0xxz/-/index.htmlIt is certainly interesting to see the "war on terror" being fought in a country where a would-be terrorist can purchase his "tools" from the police or military, buy "proper identification", buy his way out of an arrest, etc. Any comments?
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 11, 2014 23:26:24 GMT 3
Jakaswanga: If you have earned a beating from Comrade OO, and I suspect that you have, then take it without getting OtishOtish involved! OtishOtish is known, far and wide, as a person of love, peace, and unity. Otishotish indeed would appear to have invested heavily on a spindoctor to polish up his public image! it's been a long time since I heard OO rattle his metalic sharps in your direction!Leet us not spoil the name of terrorists! what kind of self-respecting terrorist would pay ksh. 500 bribe? Imagine the contempt that would arise in the heart of a man paying your security officer $6 to let him ferry grenades to your city to hurt the citizens paying him to guard them! I rather think we are victims of a specific kind of terrorism because our army is in another man's land, fighting a proxy war under a false pretext. We have antagonised certain sectors of Somali nationalism. Action, and reaction.
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