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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 2, 2014 17:17:45 GMT 3
Using as reference Kwendo Opanga's powerful public plea for another bout of state intervention to change the fortunes of the Sugar factories and cane growers in Western Kenya, I will argue the opposite case. Why the state should stay put, not waste any more public resources on subsidy, and let the competitive COMESA production costs decimate the deliberately in-efficent and poorly-run cane sector of Western Kenya. My reasons are ideological, since for practical reasons, the very fact that a business is loss-making and can not compete, is enough coup de grace. That looks self-evident to me. So lets revv! Are other COMESA countries SUBSIDISING their cane industries,such that, like the EU, they artificially keep the price of their sugar low at the export markets? They do not, so there is no such thing as UNFAIR competition here. There is only a retarded, uncompetitive Kenyan sector here. I remember many years ago, a running argument we used to have with my sparring partner Dr. Kotieno. (He is a Thatcherite market fundamentalist who likes to dismiss me off as a A Stalinist prototype of European planned-economy nanny states). On this sugary point we agreed: Brazil and the EU, and even little Cuba, could project per/kilo prices of sugar on the world market which sentenced the Kenyan sugar sector had to be a baby in a couveuse --a totally sterile, artificial environment. That was when Kotieno first told me of COMESA statistics, and used them to trash the managerial acumen of Dr. Kidero, then a super CEO at Miwani- Mumias or something. Now Opanga says: Per tonne, Malawi does it ksh. 28,000, and Kenya @ ksh. 80,000. --Ululu Mayie! Fellows, in real life, in real markets, in the real economy, such a price difference is a death sentence. Too uncompetitive is Kenya, even within the COMESA, leave alone Brazil, the EU. What Opanga is not saying, is that Mauritius can still come in lower than Malawi! In other words, Kenya can produce a tonne at ksh. 80G, and Maurtius the same @ ksh. 20G! (I think we better quit !] With VAT and all, a kg of sugar should be going at no more than ksh. 50! Obviously then, Western Kenya have to find something else to grow or do; --import cheap COMESA molasses for instance for ethano-chemicals; or reduce our costs of production to competitive COMESA levels. The other option is state subsidy as Opanga is calling for, to sustain the unsustainable: A continuation of protectionism as has been the case ---with high tariffs on imports which make Kenya a smuggling paradise with, yes, the political elite the main importers!In this respect, I go with Dr. Otieno and his purification rituals forced by an open market. Let the inefficient sugar industry be killed off by market forces. Or let it, privatised, re-organise itself to achieve competitive production costs and retail prices at par with other COMESA compatriots. We learn to swim or sink. Be a shark to swim with the sharks, or find another niche and be like omena. {Omena is small fish, but evolutionarily a spectacularly successful species] I have seen a model which indicates curtailing looting of factory accounts would be the single most powerful costs-reduction step in the short term. That is why it need shock therapy. Hatukufundishwa na mama, wacha tufundishwe na ulimwengu. Throw open the market. It is like the collapse of the manual textile industry in Europe would lead to the new replacements, dynamism borne of dire straits, rapid mechanisation then computerisation. The collapse of the sugar industry in western Kenya, due to the onslaught of the COMESA, will lead to an economic crisis, then a forced radical rethink for survival, as people come to terms with competition as a take no prisoners phenomenon. In the long term we would be better off with competitive industries that hold their own without subsidies and protectionist tariffs, than obsolete carcasses used by a corrupt political elite to loot taxpayers and skin consumers alive. The old factories, having a monopoly, have precipitated a regime of misusing cane growers. Sometimes letting the cane rot at the farm, sometimes leaving them in the sun, to dry so that the price [payed/tonne] is ground down. The cane-growers, have been a bride waiting to elope for long. No, and it will not. And by the way, this Mumias which was totted as a crown in the jewel, was still producing sugar/kg at a laughably high price compared to COMESA averages, and Brazillian averages on the world market. Correct in reading the gut as an execution warrant. But we have had our time, the axe must fall some day. Better today than tomorrow. Chuth ber. The faster we can pick ourselves up. what happened to the faith in the ingenuity of mankind? We shall survive, and necessity is the mother of all creativity! But more importantly, in economics, do what you can do best, and what we have failed to do in the last 20 years, we wont do in the next five grace years of COMESA exemptions. It is called serfdom in the technical sense. And like the system of slavery in the Southern states, the Northern industrialised system, more efficient and value conscious states, would smash the slavery mode to the ash heap of history (leaving millions of slaves unemployed no doubt!) The COMESA deadline, is a death knell. The ostrich Western Kenya, must lift its head out of the ground some day. Or perish. Like the Detroit of Man Mank!And we all know who is smuggling the sugar. And who is buying the sugar in the moonlight supermarket!? Me and you perhaps? As an interested party, I choose the other route. Throw open the windows for COMESA, and may the toughest survive. Is it not amazing that the molasses plant in Kisumu is dying because it can not afford the raw material which is in abundance in western Kenya? That it can not compete other plants elsewhere which get molasses for a dump price!? No, something has to give! even if it is the wasteful corruption of their excellency's the Governors. The central government must not subsidise cane industry, let the local governments, the Counties, do so if it is worth their while! ---that is how I read devolution as a responsibility if the governors have to behave like presidents as they now do! If Nairobi does it, subsidy, it must first treat their excellency the governors as DCs and PCs! or the local sub chief! NB:The game is up! Run, when you still can!
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 12, 2014 21:52:47 GMT 3
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hk
New Member
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Post by hk on Mar 13, 2014 9:04:19 GMT 3
The other bigger threat to kenya sugar industry is the galana irrigation scheme in tana river county. If the irrigation scheme takes off and 2m acres of land is irrigated to grow sugar cane, farmers in Nyanza and western Kenya will have to to switch to another crop. Apparently sugar cane grown in the coast area will mature after only 6 months compared to 18 months in western Kenya. The factories efficiencies aside, the actual cost of growing sugar cane is too high. Once the sugar cane production takes off in the coast region the sugar cane industry in Nyanza and western will be forced to change drastically. The same thing applies to maize production in rift valley. The irrigation scheme will have the same effect on maize production. In Nyandarua for example maize growing takes all 9 months to mature and harvest, coast 4 months. As such Nyandarua maize farmers have to shift to potatoes, wheat,dairy,vegetables etc to survive . Otherwise the price we were enjoying of selling ksh. 2500 per 90kg of maize will be long gone.
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Post by kamalet on Mar 13, 2014 14:54:37 GMT 3
Sugar growing in Western Kenya is simply not sustainable and is too expensive. The Galana project is intended to produce higher yielding sugar cane that also grows faster making it competitive. How else do you explain sugar from Brazil being cheaper than that produced at Mumias? Several years ago I saw a proposal which actually suggested that Kenya should import all its sugar needs and should use locally produced sugar for supplementing fuel - gasohol.
We should allow people to import sugar cheaply as this translates to cheap sugar for the consumer and use the locally produced sugar for industrial purposes.
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Post by podp on Mar 13, 2014 19:09:59 GMT 3
Sugar growing in Western Kenya is simply not sustainable and is too expensive. The Galana project is intended to produce higher yielding sugar cane that also grows faster making it competitive. How else do you explain sugar from Brazil being cheaper than that produced at Mumias? Several years ago I saw a proposal which actually suggested that Kenya should import all its sugar needs and should use locally produced sugar for supplementing fuel - gasohol. We should allow people to import sugar cheaply as this translates to cheap sugar for the consumer and use the locally produced sugar for industrial purposes. 1st red high light what has occurred in Nyanza and Western sugar belts is mismanagement of the sector. the best performing i.e. Mumias Sugar was run down by the current Governor of Nairobi who made terrible (but lucrative for his personal finances)decisions (e.g. advance procurement and payment of services to be rendered in both outgrower and supply of molasses to Kisumu Molasses Plant) before leaving and they are yet to recover. the government owned factories i.e. Nzoia, Sony, Muhoroni etc. have always had cronies of whatever regime was in power and management wise they run down and cannibalize the companies while serving local elites and whipping up local ethnic emotions e.g. in Nzoia you will find too many Bukusus from gate-man to Managing Director. if you ever go there you will find equipment bought from Germany which were delivered but never installed as the MD at that time was keen on his kickback and the next one wanted an own tender. when Mumias stopped supplying Kisumu Molasses Plant with ingredients for its products due to non payments the Nyanza factories stepped in ....and with the same result they also stopped. now Kisumu Molasses Plant sources its raw materials from Uganda since no Kenyan sugar factory is willing to supply them credit anymore. Mumias has started making products Kisumu Molasses Plant was supposed and can produce but the management at KMP is so bad that it has not paid its workers and is not able to retain the best and grow production....it should never have been handed by Mo1 to RAO family and associates. the Tana Delta and Ramisi if left on market forces with minimal political interference can give the Sudan produced sugar a run for its money. in Sudan they developed their sugar in units of 100,000 hectares each. the 1,000,000 acre irrigation scheme talked about by the Jubilants can give Sudan a run for their money if it does not lapse to Mo1 days....are the Jubilants not a mutant of Kanu? 2nd red high light in Mobutu's Congo they were known as the Big Vegetables. they are the most arrogant people one ever has to deal with. also condescending unless they want something, and they are obsequious. wily adversaries who tend to personalize confrontations. they cajole, bully, threaten and browbeat. their loyalty cannot be taken for granted. they steal, casually pocketing money from deals and laundering ill gotten wealth...do you really think they know how to do business normally? sit back and wait for current PORK to start giving impressions of movement, reform and change with a series of government reshuffles, cabinet secretary sackings and central bank appointments. the non kitchen cabinet i.e. outsiders would assume that lessons had been learnt, tyranny of numbers sycophants would deny any wrong doings and proclaim that reforms are underway....and the figure at the centre of the spider's web...PORK and family will not change. we never really have solid data, because no one is willing to provide it. it is a fact that nobody, not even PORK and/or the Governors, know the actual size of either the Kenyan population, or the army, or the civil servants, or the teachers....this is what makes cooking books that much easier as Old Jomo and now his son as PORK have a hay day focusing on the main task...appropriating the presidential endowment. it may be accounting 15 to 20 per cent of the government's operating budget.
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 15, 2014 10:30:41 GMT 3
The other bigger threat to kenya sugar industry is the galana irrigation scheme in tana river county. If the irrigation scheme takes off and 2m acres of land is irrigated to grow sugar cane, farmers in Nyanza and western Kenya will have to to switch to another crop. Apparently sugar cane grown in the coast area will mature after only 6 months compared to 18 months in western Kenya. The factories efficiencies aside, the actual cost of growing sugar cane is too high. Once the sugar cane production takes off in the coast region the sugar cane industry in Nyanza and western will be forced to change drastically. The same thing applies to maize production in rift valley. The irrigation scheme will have the same effect on maize production. In Nyandarua for example maize growing takes all 9 months to mature and harvest, coast 4 months. As such Nyandarua maize farmers have to shift to potatoes, wheat,dairy,vegetables etc to survive . Otherwise the price we were enjoying of selling ksh. 2500 per 90kg of maize will be long gone. HK, from this tale of doom you sketch, obviously the sugarcane-plant is a dead end in Nyanza and Western. But there are other crops/plants which mature faster and could yield more sugar per tonne, if the climate and soil of the area is suitable. It should be investigated. Not all massive sugar-producing countries are on to sugarcane as the basic! It is a big think-time for the traditional sugarcane areas!
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 15, 2014 10:45:19 GMT 3
Sugar growing in Western Kenya is simply not sustainable and is too expensive. The Galana project is intended to produce higher yielding sugar cane that also grows faster making it competitive. That pretty much seals the case. Massive [export] subsidies to cane growers as is the usual case to beet-root farmers in the EU? ---No, Brazil just got scale, limitless land and limitless cheap labour, coupled to a scientific program in the industry. They have this too with coffee ---Coffee research institutes abound. (You know like, if sugar and fish were economically that important to the area, Masinde and Maseno universities would have several leading genetics research institutes on Cane and Fish! Instead, the Luo university runs brothels in Kisumu and its environs!] Even for the fuel [gasohol/power alcohol], the supplementary role would still only make economic sense if the rates were competitive. Because if Brazil can still ship super-tankers of cheap molasses to Dar-es-Salaam, and the payloads arrive at the plant in Kisumu still cheaper per tonne than molasses from nearby Mumias, Chemelil and SONY, that is still a dead cane end! Correct. But countries usually put up tariffs, import levies, to protect the local industries from the ravages of the open market. Trust me, you do not just import wine into France because elsewhere others brew it cheaper and beter. No, there would be a national riot and the government collapse --for squandering a national heritage. ---PROTECTIONISM against dumping! Even in the free-market USA, they have import quarters on many products. Or it is a China wipe-out of every industry! So, brother Kamalet, it is not an open and shut case!
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Post by podp on Mar 26, 2014 21:58:51 GMT 3
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 28, 2014 21:21:19 GMT 3
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Post by podp on Mar 31, 2014 18:42:22 GMT 3
“Most of these State-owned sugar milling firms have no capacity to modernise their operations or replace their age old machinery as required by the conditions imposed before safeguards can be lifted,” Peter Kebati, Managing Director of Mumias Sugar Company, told The Standard on Sunday in a past interview. Mumias is the most profitable and only listed sugar miller in Kenya. One of the conditions put to the Government is that it must offload its interests in these sugar mills and allow them to diversify their operations into producing other products such as ethanol. “State owned firms are also required to encourage their farmers and supply estates to plant early maturing cane varieties as well as seek for strategic partnerships with other investors,” said Kebati. www.standardmedia.co.ke/business/article/2000108165/no-sugar-coating-as-ailing-industry-faces-competitionon a slightly different note, we have oil Sheikhs, milk Sheikhs (the Kenyatta family Brookside has been swallowing other milk companies in Kenya). there was a time when a litre of petrol was Kshs 103 while a packet (half a litre) of milk was Kshs 55 implying a litre of milk was more expensive than petrol! that time the family made a killing as more people consume milk directly as opposed to petrol. that is why from now I will refer to them as milk barons
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Post by jakaswanga on Jun 5, 2014 19:11:20 GMT 3
MUHORONI SUGAR AS GOOD AS DEAD… But the import and repackaging of subsidised ‘’confectionary’’ sugar for the REGULAR local market is a national secret. Self-sabotage therefore it has been. One of the many own goals scored by corruption, and thoroughly defeating the economic purpose of the country. Bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Fishing behind the net. But here is an alternative view thinkafricapress.com/kenya/problem-import-smuggling-secrecy-tax-haven-shell-company-mis-invoicing
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 12, 2015 20:43:16 GMT 3
I remembered this from long ago So I have been telling myself, patience, Otieno is an American not subscribed to caliphate mediocrity. Some report will surface one day, why Mumias can not deliver molasses to the Kisumu plant at a worthwile rate. HERE:Pure character assassination! the story continues That easy!? and then this Considering the economic importance of the sugar industry and the Mumias factory, let me be serious and put it this way. This was pure economic sabotage. The deliberate ruinging of the livelihood of hundreds of thousands calls for a death sentence. Cold, chilling, merciless, like Ol' John Michuki's take on the Mungiki. And then, the Aztec priests gaze like a searchlight rests on the known faces of the public land grabbers. It has to be thought, and once it is thought, it can be done. I have had enough of corruption. My quarter of tolerane is up! I am saying: DEATH TO THE THIEVES! (At least in my Nyanza!)
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Post by podp on Feb 12, 2015 22:06:09 GMT 3
every time the Nairobi governor's name come up the opening of Uncle Tom's cabin lowly character comes in mind. just to remind the young and those not inclined to read novels ..."“He was a short, thick-set man, with coarse, commonplace features, and that swaggering air of pretension which marks a low man who is trying to elbow his way upward in the world. He was much over-dressed, in a gaudy vest of many colors, a blue neckerchief, bedropped gayly with yellow spots, and arranged with a flaunting tie, quite in keeping with the general air of the man. His hands, large and coarse, were plentifully bedecked with rings; and he wore a heavy gold watch-chain, with a bundle of seals of portentous size, and a great variety of colors, attached to it,—which, in the ardor of conversation, he was in the habit of flourishing and jingling with evident satisfaction. ” Excerpt From: Harriet Beecher Stowe. “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” that is how I picture the boy born and raised in Majengo ending marrying into the Mboya family and now aiming to be PORK groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/wanakenya/THatbcvCKZI This is after a man moved to court to have him removed from the office for contravening Chapter Six of the Constitution on Leadership and Integrity. Organization for National Empowerment Chairman, Benjamin Ndolo sued Kidero claiming he is too corrupt and therefore unfit to hold any public office. In his suit, Ndolo claims that Kidero has been swindling the County Government of Nairobi millions of shillings to foot for his personal expenses. He cited the recent court battles involving an election petition against the Governor and his assault case with Shebesh, saying Kidero paid his lawyers from the county Government’s bank account. Ndolo also revealed that the alleged sh35 million Kidero paid Shebesh to forgive him came from the public coffers. This comes barely a week after Kidero signed a consent ending his assault dispute with Nairobi Women rep, Rachael Shebesh. He noted that Kidero had on several occasions involved himself in corrupt practices and should be removed from office and prosecuted for flouting the Leadership and Integrity Act. Should Kidero be impeached for stealing from the public?
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 13, 2015 17:48:17 GMT 3
Should Kidero be impeached? Asks Pod with some cheek!
Wouldn't that trigger an avalanche? -- William Rito Singh, Kimemia, Ndung' u of CBK... All members of the JSC, NSSF board, ..... He he podp! Kidero has an insurance policy. A member of the untouchables! Those born to loot and rape the state of Kenya and get away with it!
Until then.
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Post by podp on Feb 13, 2015 23:06:31 GMT 3
Should Kidero be impeached? Asks Pod with some cheek! Wouldn't that trigger an avalanche? -- William Rito Singh, Kimemia, Ndung' u of CBK... All members of the JSC, NSSF board, ..... He he podp! Kidero has an insurance policy. A member of the untouchables! Those born to loot and rape the state of Kenya and get away with it!
Until then. have to revisit Fanon every time one starts giving up. Deeply disappointed by this neo-colonial dispensation dominated by a “compradore” bourgeoisie hopelessly linked to Western economic and financial interests, Fanon increasingly came to view the peasantry as the only hope for the African revolution, indeed as the revolutionary class par excellence www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol4no7/4.7-3Revisiting.pdf“Populism’s principal concern is with its peasant constituency and it sees the state as rational only insofar as it serves peasant interests and recognizes popular demand” . Do the oppressed have an obligation to be moral? Observing people’s attempts to organise, mobilise and emancipate themselves, it is evident they are motivated by a sense that not only must the material world be made more equal, but that the body and consciousness are also engaged in this struggle for freedom. ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/wretched-earth-moral-revisiting-fanon-violence/otherwise in today standard newspaper In a letter to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) boss and the Director of Criminal Prosecutions, Tobiko has requested for an update on the investigations following a four-day expose by The Standard newspapers on a forensic report by Audit firm KPMG. Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000151676/tobiko-asks-for-mumias-sugar-scam-probe-update
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 15, 2015 17:27:04 GMT 3
Should Kidero be impeached? Asks Pod with some cheek! Wouldn't that trigger an avalanche? -- William Rito Singh, Kimemia, Ndung' u of CBK... All members of the JSC, NSSF board, ..... He he podp! Kidero has an insurance policy. A member of the untouchables! Those born to loot and rape the state of Kenya and get away with it!
Until then.have to revisit Fanon every time one starts giving up. Deeply disappointed by this neo-colonial dispensation dominated by a “compradore” bourgeoisie hopelessly linked to Western economic and financial interests, Fanon increasingly came to view the peasantry as the only hope for the African revolution, indeed as the revolutionary class par excellence www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol4no7/4.7-3Revisiting.pdf“Populism’s principal concern is with its peasant constituency and it sees the state as rational only insofar as it serves peasant interests and recognizes popular demand” . Do the oppressed have an obligation to be moral? Observing people’s attempts to organise, mobilise and emancipate themselves, it is evident they are motivated by a sense that not only must the material world be made more equal, but that the body and consciousness are also engaged in this struggle for freedom. ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/wretched-earth-moral-revisiting-fanon-violence/otherwise in today standard newspaper In a letter to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) boss and the Director of Criminal Prosecutions, Tobiko has requested for an update on the investigations following a four-day expose by The Standard newspapers on a forensic report by Audit firm KPMG. Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000151676/tobiko-asks-for-mumias-sugar-scam-probe-update [/font] However deeply disappointed by the neo-colonial comprador bourgeoisie, a whole-sale pinning of hope on the peasantry is uncalled for. That would be infantile romanticism. The peasantry has been a majority class in empires that lasted millennia --Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient China, Aztec and Maya, Roman empire and you name it----- all without the revolutionary breakthrough of industrialisation. So, I think the peasantry by itself is not a revolutionary class. But, as history has since equivocated, when organised by the potent new-world ideology boasting worker's consciousness, which is the Vietnam and Chinese experience under their communist parties, the peasantry transmutes from the sheep ever accepting Otishotish's tarimbo in their hinds, into a fearsome and heroic cult of national liberation. It all boils down to organisation. Meanwhile, ours will first be to understand, analyse and reveal publicly the process of creation, ascension to and control of the state, social dominance and self-perpetuation of the parasitic comprador. We can not ignore this class's spectacular ability to mobilise the ''ethnic homebase'' to underwrite their private pillage and rule of rot, often inciting the own ethnic group to hate the other. This rightist clarion call to super patriotism -the evocation of ''tribal national'' fervour, is the necessary fascitoid pitch which the comprador must adopt to seal the sale --the sale that them parasites are to the good of the community. Well, has there ever been a greater land-grabber in Kikuyuland than the Kenyatta name? But look, he is the Muthamaki, saviour of the tribe, the deity whose cough is law. And, considering Kisumo Korando's molasses patch, is there a greater land-grabber from Nyanza in Nyanza than Raila Odinga? And look, he is Daker Madit, saviour of the tribe, the Agwambo whose word is divine. And, considering Daniel Arap Moi of the Kalenjin; has there ever been a greater land-grabber from the Rift Valley than Arap Moi? -(I think William Ruto Singh is still an amateur in this light, in comparison to the old potentate Moi). But Lo, behold, who is in line to be Uhuru Kenyatta's running mate if Ruto goes under at the ICC? None other than Gideon who? Gideon Arap Moi. From the Daniel clan. The comprador therefore, in our political polity, have an obvious knack for ''getting away with impunity'''! That is the privilege of a ''blue-blooded'' aristocracy.But yes, it is a gravy train with tremendous risks. When everybody has to make a career by thieving, pillaging the tax-payer, the meat of tolerance is soon gnawed to the bone, and it hurts mighty. The rodent's sharp teeth on Wanjiku's bones. This is what makes Narok interesting. Governor Tunai pillaging his own hometurf is a straw that broke the camel's back. General Nkaissery issuing all military edicts to ban demonstrations against Tunai all led to naught. Nothing wrong with Narokman Tunai. Just that a few of his local peasants said, okay, we will die, but hope our children will not forget our blood! Will the elite now sacrifice one of their own, Tunai?, to shield themselves from wider popular anger? Or are they afraid that when you throw the pack a bone, they will only be encouraged to come for more? And before you know it, the chant is death to all state thieves. And Kenya is a paradise of state thieves! Where to, from here?? Devolution which under good management would have decreased socio-political tensions, seem to have only agravated them, every county at war with its president, his excellency the governor!
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Post by podp on Feb 16, 2015 21:05:46 GMT 3
have to revisit Fanon every time one starts giving up. Deeply disappointed by this neo-colonial dispensation dominated by a “compradore” bourgeoisie hopelessly linked to Western economic and financial interests, Fanon increasingly came to view the peasantry as the only hope for the African revolution, indeed as the revolutionary class par excellence www.jpanafrican.com/docs/vol4no7/4.7-3Revisiting.pdf“Populism’s principal concern is with its peasant constituency and it sees the state as rational only insofar as it serves peasant interests and recognizes popular demand” . Do the oppressed have an obligation to be moral? Observing people’s attempts to organise, mobilise and emancipate themselves, it is evident they are motivated by a sense that not only must the material world be made more equal, but that the body and consciousness are also engaged in this struggle for freedom. ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/wretched-earth-moral-revisiting-fanon-violence/otherwise in today standard newspaper In a letter to the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) boss and the Director of Criminal Prosecutions, Tobiko has requested for an update on the investigations following a four-day expose by The Standard newspapers on a forensic report by Audit firm KPMG. Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000151676/tobiko-asks-for-mumias-sugar-scam-probe-update [/font] However deeply disappointed by the neo-colonial comprador bourgeoisie, a whole-sale pinning of hope on the peasantry is uncalled for. That would be infantile romanticism. The peasantry has been a majority class in empires that lasted millennia --Pharaonic Egypt, Ancient China, Aztec and Maya, Roman empire and you name it----- all without the revolutionary breakthrough of industrialisation. So, I think the peasantry by itself is not a revolutionary class. But, as history has since equivocated, when organised by the potent new-world ideology boasting worker's consciousness, which is the Vietnam and Chinese experience under their communist parties, the peasantry transmutes from the sheep ever accepting Otishotish's tarimbo in their hinds, into a fearsome and heroic cult of national liberation. It all boils down to organisation. Meanwhile, ours will first be to understand, analyse and reveal publicly the process of creation, ascension to and control of the state, social dominance and self-perpetuation of the parasitic comprador. We can not ignore this class's spectacular ability to mobilise the ''ethnic homebase'' to underwrite their private pillage and rule of rot, often inciting the own ethnic group to hate the other. This rightist clarion call to super patriotism -the evocation of ''tribal national'' fervour, is the necessary fascitoid pitch which the comprador must adopt to seal the sale --the sale that them parasites are to the good of the community. Well, has there ever been a greater land-grabber in Kikuyuland than the Kenyatta name? But look, he is the Muthamaki, saviour of the tribe, the deity whose cough is law. And, considering Kisumo Korando's molasses patch, is there a greater land-grabber from Nyanza in Nyanza than Raila Odinga? And look, he is Daker Madit, saviour of the tribe, the Agwambo whose word is divine. And, considering Daniel Arap Moi of the Kalenjin; has there ever been a greater land-grabber from the Rift Valley than Arap Moi? -(I think William Ruto Singh is still an amateur in this light, in comparison to the old potentate Moi). But Lo, behold, who is in line to be Uhuru Kenyatta's running mate if Ruto goes under at the ICC? None other than Gideon who? Gideon Arap Moi. From the Daniel clan. The comprador therefore, in our political polity, have an obvious knack for ''getting away with impunity'''! That is the privilege of a ''blue-blooded'' aristocracy.But yes, it is a gravy train with tremendous risks. When everybody has to make a career by thieving, pillaging the tax-payer, the meat of tolerance is soon gnawed to the bone, and it hurts mighty. The rodent's sharp teeth on Wanjiku's bones. This is what makes Narok interesting. Governor Tunai pillaging his own hometurf is a straw that broke the camel's back. General Nkaissery issuing all military edicts to ban demonstrations against Tunai all led to naught. Nothing wrong with Narokman Tunai. Just that a few of his local peasants said, okay, we will die, but hope our children will not forget our blood! Will the elite now sacrifice one of their own, Tunai?, to shield themselves from wider popular anger? Or are they afraid that when you throw the pack a bone, they will only be encouraged to come for more? And before you know it, the chant is death to all state thieves. And Kenya is a paradise of state thieves! Where to, from here?? Devolution which under good management would have decreased socio-political tensions, seem to have only agravated them, [url href="http://mobile.nation.co.ke/counties/Laikipia-governor-deputy-reconcile/-/1950480/2620852/-/format/xhtml/-/mwjnhrz/-/index.html"]every county at war[/url] with its president, his excellency the governor! [/quote] I want to agree with you on the peasants not being revolutionary now and in the past. Marx was wrong to hope and imagine communism would destroy capitalism. Itt wasn't communism that did the deed. It's capitalism that has killed off the bourgeoisie. Or how do you explain individuals like Ruto the DP and Rito the Governor being factors in todays Kenya, or if you go 20 years back Jirongo and Ruto in YK92 pulling strings? I also strongly do not buy the idea that since Kenyatta senior ruled and now we have Kenyatta junior (as in Papa Doc handing over to Baby Doc in Haiti) things are rosy for that class of individuals. much as it is true that in Luo land the Odingas hold sway and in Kalenjin land the Mois do, there is instability that is continuing to unfold such that the powers that Kenyatta jumior has will never reach the ones Papa Doc had. What the Gema communities are made to see Kenyatta as muthamaki is the fear factor. Gema communities oath enmass. Same with the Kalenjins. As for Luos voodoo works. none of that type of glue is bound to last. Sunday governors announced that they will not accept the MoU saying its contents had not been agreed upon. CoG Chairman Isaac Ruto said if counties sign the MoU as it is, they will have surrendered all their health functions to the national government. "The MoUs have not been agreed on the wording and terms. Our position is that we welcome the scheme but we will have to meet with them first to agree," he said. He added: "It's like they want counties to surrender the health function to them. They cannot use the equipment to arm twist counties to surrender health facilities." Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000151849/row-over-sh38b-medical-equipment-deepens/why are counties not towing the line of PORK meekly like sheep? Marxism provides an answer to that dilemma as noted in the BBC report quoted below. Looking to a future in which the market permeates every corner of life, Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto: "Everything that is solid melts into air". For someone living in early Victorian England - the Manifesto was published in 1848 - it was an astonishingly far-seeing observation. At the time nothing seemed more solid than the society on the margins of which Marx lived. A century and a half later we find ourselves in the world he anticipated, where everyone's life is experimental and provisional, and sudden ruin can happen at any time. A tiny few have accumulated vast wealth but even that has an evanescent, almost ghostly quality. In Victorian times the seriously rich could afford to relax provided they were conservative in how they invested their money. When the heroes of Dickens' novels finally come into their inheritance, they do nothing forever after. Today there is no haven of security. The gyrations of the market are such that no-one can know what will have value even a few years ahead. This state of perpetual unrest is the permanent revolution of capitalism and I think it's going to be with us in any future that's realistically imaginable. We're only part of the way through a financial crisis that will turn many more things upside down. www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14764357Borrowing from Marx “Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htmso that we are on the same starting point let me again borrow from the Marxists. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htmso when you read David Ndii on Naro explain how the Mungiki came into being strong soon after the land clashes of the 1990s To be sure, landless and land-poor Central Province kikuyus migrated to other parts of the country — the Coast and Lamu in particular — but the Rift Valley took the lion’s share. In fact, Kikuyus accounted for half of the estimated 700,000 settlers who migrated into the Rift Valley from independence to 1990. Up until the early 90s, a young man could trade his quarter acre inheritance in Kiambu for at least two acres or more of good land in “ruguru” then go and make a respectable life for himself. Obviously, this chapter would come to an end at some point. When it came, it was abrupt, brutal and dramatic. In the early hours of December 24 1994, Administration Police officers and Kanu youthwingers descended on an IDP camp in Maela, Naivasha where an estimated 30,000 mostly kikuyu victims of clashes had been living for about a year. The IDPs were sorted by ancestral origin, put in trucks and dumped at various places in their “home districts”. Those originally from Kiambu were dumped in Kirigiti Stadium. The message could not have been clearer.Three things followed. First, crime soared. Second, Mungiki became a household name. Third, young men and some not so young took to drink. The crime wave did subside to a degree, but Mungiki and lethal brews still stalk the land. Young men are still selling their inheritance. Most of them are dead in three years. www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/The-big-picture-in-Narok-crisis/-/440808/2623352/-/mtsqxhz/-/index.htmlwe can appreciate how Marx would have described the Mungiki as lumpenproletariat. The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.Whatever politicians may tell us about the need to curb the deficit, debts on the scale that have been run up can't be repaid. Almost certainly they will be inflated away - a process that is bound to be painful and impoverishing for many. The result can only be further upheaval, on an even bigger scale. But it won't be the end of the world, or even of capitalism. Whatever happens, we're still going to have to learn to live with the mercurial energy that the market has released. Capitalism has led to a revolution but not the one that Marx expected. www.bbc.com/news/magazine-14764357
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 17, 2015 20:45:30 GMT 3
PODP WRITE: And podp wrote: William Ruto is in power because he --gets the bonus-- REVERSED, more or less, the massive immigration into the Rift Valley which Ndii enumerates above. This reversion is the expulsion process which has gone down into history as PEV. (2007/8). A massive exercise in ethnic cleansing, majority wise Gikuyus.
And yes, the threat of being national hate figures from Mpeketoni to Kiambaa Eldoret, has precipitated a siege mentality amongst the highlanders, leading them into the ready hands of the Muthamaki. All internal contradictions forgotten for the moment, relatively speaking. (we are noticing the uncomfortable fits as TNA evolves into JAP.) But the Muthamaki is still absolute, the uncontested messiah of the highlanders!
NB: In Narok, the aggrieved Masais run into the arms of Minister Orengo to help them. Well, Orengo was the hyena who sold them to Oloololo fraudsters in the first place when he was lawyer. In Gikuyuland, the landless rally behind Baby Kenyatta to fend them against marauding fishmongers and their cattle-rustling allies. Well, the Kenyatta family incidentally was the chief land-grabber whose insatiable land greed led to the migration of highlanders to enemy territories as it were!
So I agree with you Podp The Mungiki: a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue, working against their true interests. But for how long can aspirations of the people be penned and played like football between a dodgy elite? -even if that elite has the full backing of international capital? (IMF has written some blurb of late at how great Kenya is!)
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Post by podp on Feb 17, 2015 22:42:03 GMT 3
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 18, 2015 23:34:27 GMT 3
KPMG! Creepy amateurs like Kroll and associates! Garbage peddlers like Ocampo$Bensouda anti-Africa ICC indictments! I will remember soon, but I must have offered a short piece on this blog, in which I scripted my fascination with Dr. Alfred Mutua, the current governor of Machakos, no longer to be referred to as his Excellency. In an earlier life he was the chief government spokesman, a position in which he earned the name Dr. Goebbels, a distinction I think. Dr. Alfie had a natural talent for telling an outrageous lie without degenerating into a laughing stock like the infamous Comical Ali, the notorious information minister of the Baathist Saddam Hussein. This comedian gave his last press conference in Baghdad, hailing Iraqi victor, even as American tanks rolled into the hotel-yard from whose balcony he was speaking! Alfred Mutua was blessed with a baby face, a devilish camouflage of rotund and innocent placidity, evoking more natural sympathy than antipathy. A child, when you deny it a cookie, and insist he/she eats sukumawiki for health, can disown you -''you are not my papa anymore''!, only for him/her to fall into your laps 3 minutes later after knocking its head on a stool. And all you do is say ''Oh my boy! O my boy! okew kaoch wuong-gi, we ywak kamano omera!'' So when Mutua insisted there were no starving Kenyans even as TV pictures showed us skeletons, nobody really took it against him. You know, he is a bit like b6k's favourite, Jenipher Psaki, the genuine or fake blonde at the state department over there at DC. Jenipher has actually become a Youtube star! and has developed a greater hit/name recognition on the net than say Hilary Clinton! The point is, some people can tell the most outrageous lies and get away with them, repeatedly. But ingrained in my mind is Goebbels Mutua's vocabulary dismissing the Kroll investigative report. The report is ''immaterial, unsubstantial, full of rumours and innuendo; legally hollow! It lacks both veracity and verification! It is shoddy and very much trash! And should be treated with the contempt it deserves. '' and he went to the next question, about foreign policy! I just knew instinctively Mutua had set a precedent. His classmates would follow suit. Truth could never be their associate, so their act could only be various shades of denial. It is an absurdity which sets the state for unpalatable corrections. Such extreme denials of reality, are the realms of madness. And so I read this from Kidero: ' Madness! But that is the sign of our times! The foundation of our republic of cards!
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Post by podp on Feb 19, 2015 7:11:46 GMT 3
KPMG! Creepy amateurs like Kroll and associates! Garbage peddlers like Ocampo$Bensouda anti-Africa ICC indictments! Dr. Alfie had a natural talent for telling an outrageous lie without degenerating into a laughing stock like the infamous Comical Ali, the notorious information minister of the Baathist Saddam Hussein. This comedian gave his last press conference in Baghdad, hailing Iraqi victor, even as American tanks rolled into the hotel-yard from whose balcony he was speaking! Alfred Mutua was blessed with a baby face, a devilish camouflage of rotund and innocent placidity, evoking more natural sympathy than antipathy. A child, when you deny it a cookie, and insist he/she eats sukumawiki for health, can disown you -''you are not my papa anymore''!, only for him/her to fall into your laps 3 minutes later after knocking its head on a stool. And all you do is say ''Oh my boy! O my boy! okew kaoch wuong-gi, we ywak kamano omera!'' So when Mutua insisted there were no starving Kenyans even as TV pictures showed us skeletons, nobody really took it against him. You know, he is a bit like b6k's favourite, Jenipher Psaki, the genuine or fake blonde at the state department over there at DC. The point is, some people can tell the most outrageous lies and get away with them, repeatedly.But ingrained in my mind is Goebbels Mutua's vocabulary dismissing the Kroll investigative report. The report is ''immaterial, unsubstantial, full of rumours and innuendo; legally hollow! It lacks both veracity and verification! It is shoddy and very much trash! And should be treated with the contempt it deserves. '' and he went to the next question, about foreign policy! I just knew instinctively Mutua had set a precedent. His classmates would follow suit. Truth could never be their associate, so their act could only be various shades of denial. It is an absurdity which sets the state for unpalatable corrections. Such extreme denials of reality, are the realms of madness. And so I read this from Kidero: ' Madness! But that is the sign of our times! The foundation of our republic of cards! red high light friends were telling me the best presidency combination would have been Uhuru and Kaloser while the opposition should have been RAO and Ruto. that aside the circus continues "I am concerned that the reports have suggested that there was plunder when I was there. I ran several companies before. I ran SmithKline Beecham and Nation Media Group before Mumias and my legacy is a legacy of performance. Trashing that legacy is a big concern, it kills me," Kidero said. Read more at: www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2000152131/my-legacy-is-that-of-performance-so-trashing-it-kills-me-kidero-now-tells-critics
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Post by jakaswanga on Mar 18, 2015 21:33:41 GMT 3
As I go to press now, the Molasses plant in Kisumu is as good as a relic. But things can be different, for those who are serious. Let us take a case study. Brazil. And calculate what we lost. sugarcane.org/sugarcane-products/ethanol And then some very curious thing. It should blow anybody's mind apart. But hell hathn't fury like I will generate if the following is true. has replaced 40% of its gasoline needs with what? And some will know Brazil is also an oil producer, with a conglomerate known as Petrobas. Now think of all these collapsing sugar companies in Kenya. Miwani, Nzoia, Chemelil, Sony, and the giant Mumias. Their collapse was not ordained by God, so let us hit the reason they collapsed, KPMG report or not. Now, let us put an econometric estimate to the ECONOMIC/FINANCIAL OPPORTUNITY COST. How much in real value was LOST --including up to clean air that reduces respiratory ailments, and all by this deliberate SABOTAGE of the sugar industry by known people. With a cold heart, I am taking an example from the peoples republic of China. These men, men they were, should all be named, and one by one charged under the deadliest crime, treason: plotting to collapse and effecting the collapse of the economy and causing economic ruin. It is worse than treason and worse than terrorism. It is a death sentence. No death sentence in our constitution? Aah, if a robber who held up a Mpesa agent for 20K can be summarily executed, what about managers who stole a trillion and ruined a whole sector? And then the --Mpigs-- peoples representatives at work. Worse than a parcel of excreta. My heart snarls at these vermin. We would now be having an industrial sector in Western and Nyanza, based on the cane plant. The molasses plant in Kisumu, would now be powering houses, kitches and cars, to leave alone pharmaceuticals. In my Luo Nyanza pivot, those who deliberately kill such an economic take-off must pay the price of treachery. Death.
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Post by podp on Mar 18, 2015 23:26:33 GMT 3
well sugar industry is dead in Nyanza and Western for two reasons, namely (1) when our Defense forces took over Kismayu in Somali instead of withdrawing yesterday, the generals led by CiC and CoS have become contraband (illegal) importers, and (2) the managers of sugar companies in Nyanza and Western collude with the illegal importers to bring the sugarcane industry down.
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Post by OtishOtish on Mar 19, 2015 3:06:38 GMT 3
A collapse of the sugar industry would be a huge economic disaster for the region, but it has been "on the horizon" for some time. Does anyone, apart from the "small people" who would be most affected, really care? Doubtful. A huge problem with the sugar companies is that the government has retained majority control in most of them. In Kenya, that means they are primarily Eating Vehicles: the government puts in the money***, the mismanagement takes it out, and the folks in the middle get shafted. Places like Miwani got eaten into the ground, and yet no lessons were learned. The current Sugar Woes reminded me that one William R. KaleSingha, as Minister for Agriculture, once came up with a Vision-2030 Strategic Plan for the industry. The plan covered the five years 2010-2014, so one can look back and make an "evaluation" of what, if anything, was implemented. Here it is: www.kenyasugar.co.ke/downloads/KSI%20Strategic%20plan.pdfTable 2.2 (on page 9) points out to a clear problem under COMESA, and the problem is discussed in the plan. And then what happened? COMESA exceptions will not continue forever. jakaswanga mentions ethanol. Page 34 of the report has a nice diagram of all the things one can do with sugarcane. How much of that is happening today? Take a look at pages 36-37 on ethanol. ***The report indicates that there is additional money to be eaten from elsewhere: " the subsector will continue to attract concessional funding from development partners ... the sugar industry is already attracting donor funds from a variety of sources including the European Union (EU) ..."
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Post by podp on Mar 24, 2015 22:03:40 GMT 3
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