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Post by jakaswanga on Sept 13, 2014 22:03:24 GMT 3
GODANE DISPATCHED ---The drone-hit killer strikes again.
President Uhuru Kenyatta of the republic of Kenya stood up and been counted. He congratulated Barrack Hussein Obama of the United States, on the occasion of his clean drone-hit kill of the Al-Shabaab Somali leader, Sheikh Ahmed Godane. Godane was vaporised together with 6 other key leaders of the movement in an inferno wrought by hellfire missiles.
He lived by the sword, he died by the fire. In the world of asymmetric power, the technological superiority of the world's policeman and super power, the United States, rode home unopposed. Where is that sling in the David and Goliath tale?
On the look of it, Mr. Muigai meant he was speaking for the nation of Kenya, and therefore interpreting and articulating the national interest of the republic of Kenya.
I want to offer dissent. And argue Kenyan nationalism currently has a mistaken understanding of Somali nationalism, an important neighbour, and this leads to confused policies toward the political and social crisis in that country, and, as the problematic spills over into our territory, our gut feelings and reactions may not be the most enlightened options for the long-term sensibilities on this.
In this respect, therefore, I consider the president's tidings of congratulations toward Washington DC, to have been private, merely reflecting his own traumatised emotions. This is very understandable, given that in the Westgate Mall terrorist attack, the President lost members of his family and would humanly welcome the death of the initiators. That is, a soul is easily beholden to the desire for revenge.
Extra judicial slayings by the state is a slippery slope. It is an act of barbarism. Luckily, most states are currently barbaric and led by barbarians. Which makes the world a fairly normal place for those who know how power games have always been in history. Murder at every turn of page. Mass murder at every paragraph.
Take Iraq for instance. Just by American action only, how many Iraqis have perished between Norman Schwarzkopf Desert Storm and David Patraeus's Shock and Awe? Both Generals serving an emperor Bush!
But I want to keep it Kenyan for today.
I want to argue the modern national consciousness of Kenya can and should not wax jubilant in congratulatory glee, at extra-judicial killings of AFRICAN leaders of whatever credentials, the killing outsourced to foreigners [like Obama] or not. That we are powerless to prevent foreigners from murdering at will in our continent is one issue, that we yell Hossana Hossana once they are done is another. The latter, a total lack of dignity, total lack of racial pride, and the most horrific betrayal of nationalist autonomy.
Let Obama try killing a Russian on Russian territory or anywhere else, or a Chinese on Chinese territory or anywhere else.
How did a Chinese Nationalist put it when there were so many Chinas –-Mainland, Taiwan, Macau, Hongkong and god knows what else, all under different regimes. He said.
I better commit suicide. There is no China.
A huge carcass with a heart pulled out do I see
with beaked scavengers from yonder sponging.
Die these Chinas! Die these Chinas! Remain one!
A Chinese emperor was once forced to sign trade concessions to Britain, guaranteeing his subjects as opium addicts, a huge guaranteed market for British-owned opium cultivated by Chinese labourers! –-What songs do the Chinese sing about this episode to themselves, I once asked a Chinaman building roads in Afrika. He looked at me: bleeding heart songs.
Nations have prides that must be minded. Even a rum dum garbage republic of corrupt Mpigs like Kenya still has pride which must be minded. And it would be nice to have the president, even if not much steady upstairs, having an instinctive recognition of that fact. These terms like His Excellency, there are moments when they imply certain things, like the embodiment of the collective, autonomous will of a people. An embodiment of something holy, you know, like the flag of any country is just a piece of cloth, but it is one to die for, and men and women do, die for that piece of cloth. An embodiment of something. If one is a fool and thinketh not, still they should instinctively recognise the deal, when they see soldiers salute the flag with this death look in their eyes.
First, some emotional stuff of myself too. I always feel sleeplessly uneasy, when killers from afar come to the African shores and murder Africans of their choice at will, and worse, when they do all this to the rapturous joy of a horde of natives. It reminds me of those tribal chiefs who offered hunting concessions to white slave-hunters, in exchange for a few guns go give them advantage over their local opponents. They eventually fell to savage manipulations, and all would end up as vassals selling Africa, facilitating colonialism. What had appeared to them as a strategic formation of alliances, was but ushering a period of darkness from which we are still trying to recover.
A bit like the Laibon Lenana complex and his 1904 agreements which should run for 999 years!
First forward to today, and still sections of the African continent have been reserved for imperial powers like the USA and her minions like France and the UK, to hunt and kill whoever they describe as a renegade worthy of their kill-lust. Libya, areas of Mauritania and Niger, Algeria and North Mali (Azawad), Sinai and Somalia are fair game. Of late, Goodluck (in name only) Jonathan of Nigeria too has seceded large areas of Nothern Nigeria to the kill-lust of Western Powers, in exchange for his survival, or oil concessions underneath, seeing his national army is minded to other things but fight the Boko Haram insurgents.
The Kenyan army being in Somalia, unable to contain the situation without Western Powers, has a debt of gratitude too. Incorporated into a settlement agenda which, by the uselessness of the government they are dying propping up in Mogadishu, they instinctively recognise is a sham. But the debt of gratitude is paid by compliance.
The nature of that gratitude involves hefty amounts of ''callable' tribute, and the son of Jomo could simply just have been publicly acknowledging this, for the record. I am your prisoner. Ever available for treaties that shall function as those we referred to as ''protectorates''.
In effect, Nigeria is a ''protectorate'', and Kenya too, is a ''protectorate''. That the independence of post-colonial African states has always been fictitious is amptly documented –-all the great first generation post-colonial writers have been here, but never since the European pacification have we watched the savage hunting down of rebel Africans by foreign powers under full co-operation with local chiefs not called collaborators.
In the next section I want to use historical time to position competing narratives of terrorism and evil. I will visit Spartacus. Erased from Roman history for some centuries after getting the drone-hit kill of those days, the crucifixion; after he and his mates had gone through the Guantanamos of Rome with their horrors in those days. In historical time, this universal villain of Rome would emerge as one of the greatest potent symbols from antiquity. What happened to his bad press?
I have since gathered Jesus of Nazareth too, crucified, only picked up fame when he had been dead and forgotten for a century! In his day he was an irritating subversive fly around Roman soup, swatted in a show-case ritual of super power brutality.
Then I will go read what enlightened Somali commentators themselves say about their very very bad guy, Godane.
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Post by jakaswanga on Sept 22, 2014 20:01:01 GMT 3
On the look of it, Mr. Muigai meant he was speaking for the nation of Kenya, and therefore interpreting and articulating the national interest of the republic of Kenya.
I want to offer dissent. And argue Kenyan nationalism currently has a mistaken understanding of Somali nationalism, an important neighbour, and this leads to confused policies toward the political and social crisis in that country, and, as the problematic spills over into our territory, our gut feelings and reactions may not be the most enlightened options for the long-term sensibilities on this.
.....
Then I will go read what enlightened Somali commentators themselves say about their very very bad guy, Godane.  DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF IS DANGEROUS hmmm I insist: when you have territorial disputes with a people, and your army is deep into things in their country, do not go around PUBLICLY jubilating over the deaths of their sons, however villainous you consider them. |
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 1, 2015 16:15:55 GMT 3
The following is only in passing: my beef of contention on this Godane thread, has to to with the essay attributed to the President, plastered in the DailyNation-Saturday 31-01-15, and which extols African dignity and sovereignty and the rest. We will get to that in due course. But first, the following is also too good to be true. --May be we should best do it at the QUIXOTIC CHANNEL. As I openly always proclaim, my chief economist is Hjalmar Schacht, the NAZI fixer of depression in three years, curer of high unemployment. (Modern central bankers with their infinite quantitative easings are, if you ask me, useless, clueless pedestrians at finance. Eurozone for instance is a decade into recession now! with Greece dead  !). So let us see how far our local budding fascist still has to evolve. -may he be not YET even a fertilised egg. Okay, methinks if you do not want external funding -either as loans or grants/aid, then you are putting all 'credit begging eggs' in the domestic basket. Or, at least, you really ought to yearly quadrupple internal wealth, to produce enough surplus to fund your grandiose --SGR like-- stuff ... even follies like pyramids Kibaki retirement home if you like. And then I remembered having read the following long ago, and may be talked about it with my BiL Mank, Uhuru's chief economist in waiting! www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-08-04/kenya-to-cut-local-borrowing-by-half-as-samurai-bond-considered This distrust of --or vote of no confidence in-- our domestic capacities, according to me, was herding us back to the DEPENDENCY mode where Kibaki had weaned us away from -- foreign debt servitude. So I thought Uhuru was being a recidivist, essentially a retard. Emilio Mwai Kibaki, having been an economics don at Makerere -even if his tenure as finance minister was the standard Mobutist -kelptocratic-- pillage and currency mismanagement, in his eventual stint as head of state, having been freed from the stunting shackles his goat-herd dominator, Daniel Arap Moi, gave us a powerful hint of the missed chances of the past decades. There were brilliant flashes like in improved -- think of Michuki at transport  -- services, and, especially, the ex don's theoretical underpinning of the state credit policy is not something an economically illiterate successor could easily develop an alternative narrative against, me thought. And, compared to Kibaki, I always say Uhuru Kenyatta is a layman; even with the veteran Kinyua as his brains at finance during his headship there in the GCG fiasco, he Muigai was the author of such ERRORS as to be a laughing stock around sane heads. So, comparing this to ... I certainly do feel the need to congratulate young Muigai for making an apparent about turn away from his Bloomberg-reported foolish drift from the course charted by our former LOOK-EAST PRESIDENT. -I will remember the LOOK-EAST KIBAKI was ridiculed by Jukwaa's late handle, Job, our then ODM die-hard whose piety is only comparable to our remaining URP die-hard and former boss, Mwalimumkuu.This was a by the way folks: the article I want to concentrate on, is this www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Forget-foreign-intervention/-/440808/2608152/-/cipypl/-/index.html I want to insist Obama's rampant assassination campaign of drone-hits, one of which claimed the Somalian Godane, and which Uhuru Kenyatta lauded openly, is such a self-serving intervention from a foreign entity, with no goodness it its heart for Africa. Short or long-term. And if young Muigai, blinded by personal injury after Westgate and fooled by youthful naivety, to think that, in the case of Sheikh Godane, the security interests of Kenya coincided with those of the United States in this case, I will seek to persuade him to drop such an illusion; and I will reason such a mercenary attitude is obsolete as he himself seems to realise when he penned the above at Addis Abbaba. I will be back with the beef. |
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Post by jakaswanga on Feb 1, 2015 17:38:39 GMT 3
back with the beef then. First, the whole article by the Kenyan president, www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Forget-foreign-intervention/-/440808/2608152/-/cipypl/-/index.html I willl try not to be too harsh. (The truth is African leaders and this AU talking shop tend to get to my nerves like now the elevation of the half-corpse Robert Mugabe to its presidency; just after the bloody tyrant of E-Guinea, Theodore Obiang' Nguema, is awarded uncritical PR-mileage as host of the African Nations football championship: --O saviour of the orphaned tournament, after Morocco chickened out! All hail the Messiah Theodore!) I detect loose nuts in the minds of our presidents and other excellencies, and it need must be tightened, or at least pointed out. Without fear nor favour. This is a whole continent's future! Now, I have beautifully read President Kenyatta's pitch. Nationalist pitch above. Good. When you came out in public to praise a foreign president for the extra-judicial slaying of another African, I told you, your Excellency, that you were a quisling fcuck-head. Now, I like your article above, because somewhere in its hinterlands, however dim and confused, are the seeds of a consciousness contrary to the one you expressed in your congratulatory message to Barrack Hussein Obama for his drone-hit extirpation of another Muslim outlaw, and worse, within his own birthland, Somalia. ''States like these form an axis of evil!', said the once American war-president George ''Dubya'' Bush! Without irony, he was talking about Iraq, Iran and North Korea! And Barrack Obama, recently after editing 6000 pages of CIA torture details to 300, said: 'American has always been a force for good ... --Barrack too, like his predecessor POTUS, did not bat an eyelid, not even to leave room for later qualification. It prompted some leading cultural critics within his own exceptional country to wonder whether he really is that dumb. A history of the CIA involvement in Latin America in the last half a century is termed the PERIOD OF EVIL by critical Latino-American historians. Barrack saw no evil, heard no evil, knows not of no evil. (we will save him the Vietnam part of his country's history! And let sleeping dogs lie, even in the White House!) But of this one we must remind him. Yes, president Obama of the USA has a KILL-LIST. He is a drone-hit killer of non-white peoples across the globe, and he keeps Guantanamo Bay for Arabs, the way earlier Roman emperors used to keep Christians and barbarians waiting to be fed to lions for entertainment. This is all fine for his country, the exceptional USA, whose interests are apparently served by a president being prosecutor, Judge and Juror/Executioner; and that is topped up by a skidded security agency --the CIA - running deranged torture. From what I increasingly hear of the USA informed opinion, not even the American public itself is sure of the moral compass of this business. They have become morally insecure in their exceptionalism. That is their stew, and we do not have to join them in it. We are not exceptional. We are normal. Normal people do not bother legitimating torture. They know straightway it is evil. Good, away with Obama and his drone-hit kills in Somalia. He is not helping the situation, merely pandering to the blood-thirst of his electorate at home. Collecting skulls abroad to come and hold aloft, like an Aztec priest atop a pyramid. Thia credible prosecution you demanded for yourself at the hands of the ICC and Bensouda/Ocampo, is the SAME TREATMENT you, a young African leader, should demand for all indicted Africans, whatever the charge. What was the charge against Sheikh Ahmed Godane again? Crimes against  humanity? And some ICC or American kangaroo court sat down and ordered his death and, in his case, you, An African sovereign demanding credible process for himself, reckons the 'terrorist' Godane does not deserve the same!? And should best be executed summarily! That is when I can not resist getting harsh at African presidents as if Omar el Bashir's sponsorship of the Janjaweed is less terroristic than Godane's crimes! How many mass murderers are there at the pinnacle of the AU? ---a post-colonial times born, Uhuru generation African, should know, even if he is a president and power corrupts his mental faculties. Now you, Mr President, comes here to shout at the top of your voice I am saying: to jealously guard our sovereignty, to assiduously work to secure our freedom and dignity, we, the people, nor our accursed leaders must never be the cheergirls to -nor the praise-singers of-- foreign leaders on murder sprees in Africa -regardless of what the Foreign power accuses the supposedly guilty African of. You ''Uhuru'' damn well know Dedan Kimathi in his time was a terrorist, convicted and hanged by the foreigner in his colonial legal order. Posthumously today, that terrorist Dedan Kimathi is our national hero. (-Of course I do remember it took the 2nd liberation to belatedly declare him thus officially! Kiambu-born Kenyatta I did not much like Nyeri-born Dedan, did he!?)So, Mr. Kenyatta II, Somali history like Kenyan history can later turn, and in a re-assessment, declare Godane a folk legend. And you, our current Excellency, could be, in restrospect then, cast an arrsehole homegaurd,like we do those despicable creeps who cheered the execution of Dedan Kimathi. Kill him! Kill him! Kill the terrorist! (the mob chanted at Pontius Pilate holding court on a now famous renegade!) It is my job hobby as a history teacher to warn the conscience of my country Luoland  against the treachery of quisling collaboration, to own degradation. (Luoland is blinded by the blood kinship with Obama!) Therefore, O excelleny of the multi-state of Kenya, Forget foreign interventions in the continent! is Good thinking. Now put your mind to it, O your highness, Or Africa will make you eat back these your words daily. ECOWAS wants to form an expeditionary force to deal with BOKO-HARAM. Nigeria's army, without a single operative helicopter in the North, -ah, those low oil prices-- is sending a begging mission around: to where first? ------O God, you guessed it! One hopes, to fund our intervention in Somalia, Dr. Rotich at finance, having raised his debt budget options, will not be running to -God forbid! the same place as our Oga brothers now! And that was that for today. |
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Post by jakaswanga on Apr 4, 2015 16:03:06 GMT 3
I read, as POTUS is coming to visit PORK and is much perturbed. Yawa, Hearing of the American resolve to partner Kenya in the anti-terrorist, anti-Al-Shabaab fight, only deepens my anxiety. Why am I disturbed!? 1. I was actually of the opinion this is ALREADY the case. That we are already Lock and Key in cooperation with the Yankees, ever since the Al-Qaida bombardment of the USA embassy in Nairobi. 2. Before this recent renewal of battlefield love, in a now distant era we of course were intimate partners with the USA against the spread of Communism in Africa. This was the partnership which saw us Kenyans host marine bases, and our government house UNITA and Jonas Savimbi's interests against Angola and Sam Nujoma's SWAPO. In those days Namibia was still an apartheid South African protectorate, and the MPLA professed Marxism Leninism.That is a century ago. Ronald Reagan, an earlier whiter version of Barrack Obama, declared the Castro brothers of Cuba Africa's greatest enemies --- remember Chester Cocker? Constructive engagement et al? The reasoning was, Cuba was running Soviet Moscow's errands in Africa, with Angola as the headquarters. -There were in deed over 30,000 Cuban troops in Angola, brow-beating the boer-ridden South African Defence Force (SADF). Terrorist Super Star Nelson Mandela was still in jail those days, slugging rock at an Island prison off Cape Town, and the racist white apartheid regime in Pretoria, a Christian outpost and frontline against World Communism. And Kenya the republic of, was, too, fighting the good fight with good folks against the red menace. No mention there of the much-touted second liberation!) NB: The peoples republic of China, currently Kenya's leading FDI source and trade darling and infrastructure locomotive, belonged to the red axis of evil in those days. Over a century ago. And the Americans were our rock and solid partners against such world evil. Over a century ago. (barrack obama was not yet born, so he would not know how tight america and kenya are already!)) So what is the white House talking about here!? Do they take Uhuru Kenyatta for a Korsakov wreck of no memory, his cranial lobes eroded by zealous overconsumption of the Tennessee-brew, Bourbon? Is it not so, that Wilson Airport Nairobi is mentioned in the ''dark flights'' report, that, under the Raila $ Kibaki GCG, fully subscribed to Dubya's war on terror, our security organs kidnapped Somali and other Islamic youths around Kenya and ''renditted'' them to Mogadishu for some vintage, robust interrogation, some of them ending up in Guantanamo bay, in Cuba. And everytime there has been a bomb blast in Nairobi, aint the FBI been first on the scene? I am saying we just doing fine on the cooperation field. The real problem, is that it is not working, and the other problem, is to understand, or at least investigate why it is not working, and will not work, regardless of its re-affirmation. mobile.nation.co.ke/news/US-pledges-to-help-Kenya-fight-Al-Shabaab/-/1950946/2674668/-/format/xhtml/-/oltns3/-/index.html THE REPUBLIC OF YEMEN. What do we learn? First: For those who really want a lyrical description of USA elite marines fleeing Al-Anand, they should try TIME dispatches from Saigon, just before it changed names to Ho Chi Mihn city. Scene the American embassy. Subject: Evacuation. Reason: Vietcong entry.  And they left Lebanon too  and this dispatch from Mogadishu, march 1994. new York times. -WHY DO ALL THESE ''GOOD-INTENTION'' -ENDED THINGS FAIL? That is something I will let you to briefed on by my friend, the goodly Professor Kagwanja of the institute of Strategic studies Nairobi. Personally I prefer to go back to the source. In chilling clarity, sharp and coldly told, it is all there in black and white, or, as we say these digital days, on a touch screen.  No, that is not the one I meant. The one I meant was ALREADY tabbed for Jukwaa -yes, that is why i love Jukwaa, (the ladies may not like the prehistoric sexist machismo of the likes of Otishotish and Kamalet and the  homophobe Mwalimkuu), but these guys know the score when the bells toll. And so the eagle-sharp Cyclopic eye of correspondent b6k referred us long ago to the core. THE GEOPOLITICAL CHESS GAME by Zbigniew Bzerzinski. And Otishotish analysed the section that dealt with Africa -I forget the thread but it all here in the archives. And because to date there has been not even a murmuring of an alternative thinking to this genius of the practical power game
 we know the score  Three weeks before Hadi fled Yemen, Obama described Yemen as a brilliant sucess. with all the golden information at his table from the CIA, NSA GCHQ, FBI etc, how could Potus get it that wrong? --why should I think he gets it right in Somalia? That president Uhuru Kenyatta and his handlers loudly pretend allying the Kenyan security operation in Somalia to the American geo-political interest, serves our aim of LINDA NCHI, is, in my opinion, an example of their having been brought up in a ''couveuse''. That is, they are a cream brought up and risen up in an environment where they neither had to do their own thinking, nor take responsibility for their actions, but, like naturally weakly-born babies, grow up in an super-safe, sterilised incubator.What do I want? I would like Kenya to facilitate a Somali conference and peace process for all warring parties without PRECONDITIONS. Therefore, Al-Shabaab too in attendance. And put it straight. Now look here, you miraa-addicted goats and religious retards. We want to trade, have you within the EAC, screw your women and you screw ours -for money or for love but not for force!The way it is now, we are gearing up for a hunting season. Somalis will be hunted and routed out of every Kenyan village, from Kapenguria to Migori; from Nanyuki to Nyahururu. Because Christian Kenyans are in the privacy of their homes, commiserating in compassion with the parents of the slain young lives of Garissa, contemplating the hit back.And it is just that Christians too, are not amateurs in the game of death. And personally as a man who has seen the dynamic game of death up close as segments of a population dehumanise another, I really would like to have Kenya avoid that satanic escalation. And I am convinced we can. But with the likes of Mr. Kenyatta sucking up to drone-hit killers like Obama, intensifying hatred seems to be the preferred trajectory. And that worries and pisses me off. Yawa! Professor Kagwanja, wuog iwuo, omera |
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Post by mank on Apr 4, 2015 22:11:08 GMT 3
I recall that conversation BIL. But what caught my attention today is how much you have sold me to Uhuru... and the guy ain't buying. It must be that he doesn't stop at Jukwaa. As for me BIL, a chain of things in life command that I keep my MIA streak. There will be a better day. |
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Post by OtishOtish on Apr 5, 2015 3:20:58 GMT 3
prehistoric sexist machismo of the likes of Otishotish ...
That is a serious slur, and I will be lodging complaints with Comrade OO. I cannot possibly be sexist for a very simple reason: as a happily married man, I am not allowed to think of any woman, in any way, except for the one time in the year when I do what is required to fulfill what the law here insists are my "conjugal duties".
The Big Brain, Zbigniew Bzerzinski: Yes, he is very much in the picture, although he has publicly stated that Obama should do more to move away from being Mr. Nice-And-Conciliatory and get better at cracking heads, i.e. dealing sharply with those who would thwart America's will to global domination.
You are quite right that folks in places like Kenya seem to have funny ideas about their supposedly important role as a "critical ally in the war on terror"---which President Obama will strongly remind us of in a few months---as they keep getting told. Consider this: where is the largest US military base in Africa? when East African nasties get "renditioned" by their sovereign & independent governments, where is their main stop for "robust interrogations"? where is the USA military about to spend billions in an expansion that (as per agreement) will last a couple of decades? Djibouti. And which direction are the folks there facing? Mostly North, although once in a while, during a slow period and a tea-break, some guy in Texas has the time to send one or two drone-missiles into Somalia.
I have many times listened to the Big Brain and read much of his writing. (The book I commented on here was probably Strategic Vision.) Africa is rarely considered. In his opinion, it's "in the bag", as one might say. As he sees it, African countries are hopeless and lead by weak, disorganized, and self-destructive leaders. That, in his view, makes it easy to control. To the extent that he is concerned with Africa, it is how best to share it with China. For him, the question is this: if two great warriors have cornered a deer, do they fight each other so that the winner gets all, or do they quietly share it? He prefers the latter. Should the Africans have any say in this? Absolutely not, in his view: they have not given the slightest hint that they care, and why would a deer about to become dinner have any say in the matter? Theirs is to dig stuff out of the ground, send it over for value-adding, and then buy it back at relatively exhorbitant rates. (Why they themselves cannot do the value-adding is an irrelevant question for the purposes of global control. Should the Europeans have any say? Well, historically, they have been important allies, but in the 21st they are neither able nor willing to do their bit when a global cracking-of-heads is required. So, why not. By all means listen to them, out of historical respect, but don't take them too seriously. So says the Big Brain. As he puts it in Strategic Vision, Europe is great as a large-scale retirement home, but that's about all it has to offer.
Ultimately, the USA cannot protect Kenyans from the Al Kebab lot. Kenyan leaders can go on and on about how "we will not negotiate with terrorists", "we will fight them until we win", and so on, but in the meantime they are finishing Kenyans! KDF is doing whatever in Somalia while Kenyans back home are getting it. What is the point? Why not, for example, have them protecting those Kenyan population centres that are close to Somalia instead of doing so many charcoal and sugar deals?
Some "curious" bits about the Big Brain:
* He has cheerfully admitted that when the USSR invaded Afghanistan, he was absolutely delighted. He dashed off a brief note to Carter: "let's start to finish them by giving them their own Vietnam!". And supporting to the Taliban? He had thought about that and decided that the rise of the mullahs would be a small price to pay for finishing the USSR.
* According to him, the idea that the world is facing some great peril from fundamentalist-Islam & supposedly related terror is, as he delicately puts it, "utter nonsense". But he admits that it is helpful in allowing the USA to do unpleasant (but supposedly necessary) things that its populace would otherwise oppose.
* Around 1996/1997, he came up with a plan---it's in one of his books---that the USA needed to assert aggressive control of parts of Eurasia. But the problem, as he saw it, was that the US public was not particularly keen on global military adventurism. Still, they would be if they felt the USA itself was threatened. He suggested that if, say, the USA were to be attacked by nasty types from that region, then, surely, the USA would have assert itself militarily in the area.
* Even the kids are well-trained: NBC major-journalist Mika Brzezinski has not been shy it tackling those who have the cheek to question the patriotism of a man who is getting the best advice one can get----from daddy.
In a game of chess, the pawns are the lowest pieces---to be sacrificed unless they show the potential to rise up to a higher position. On Bzerzinski's chessboard, African leaders are not even at the level of pawns. But folks like Uhuru insist or imagine---on merely being told that they are a "critical ally in the war on terror---that they are something else.
It's hard to imagine Clueless-Motormouth Duale speaking sense, but there is something in his idea of talking to the nasties across the border. Mindless tough talk from H. E. Uhuru is not likely to lead anywhere. This is Africa: look at the likes of Nigeria and learn from that. And that learning must not be limited to military matters: folks in the former NEP and the Coast have plenty to be pissed of about. Those issues must be addressed.
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Post by OtishOtish on Apr 5, 2015 3:26:46 GMT 3
Right after the Big Brain tells Carter of his plans to fwack the USSR, he puts on a stellar performance in Afghanistan: fight for God and your lands!
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Post by jakaswanga on Jan 21, 2016 23:21:49 GMT 3
THE GHOST OF A KENYAN PAYS THE KDF A VISIT IN SOMALIA
Kenyan chief of staff General Samson Mwathethe has accounted for Maalim Janow, the commander who led the Al-Shabaab unit which has caused us, and the KDF fraternity, so much sorrow. But the Kenyan major who commanded the Kenyan brigade at el-Adde in Somalia, name unknown, has still not been accounted for. By one source, Al-Shabaab took him war prisoner.
--Don't know, but I suspect the terrorists may have taken a leaf from the Americans, wherefore they are not too keen on Geneva Conventions. Ex US-VP Dick Cheney and his then boss, POTUS George Dubya Walker Bush, skidded off civilisation with their 'enemy combatant' category. This shuffle side stepped the Geneva norms governing the treatment of war prisoners and, evil in intent, allowed for the construction of medieval torture chambers, most legendary of which is Guantanamo Bay, annex Cuba in the Caribbean.
We have watched IS satire, parading condemned Christians in orange jump-suits before slitting their throats with chain saws. I asked an Arab Muslim scholar to let me in on the know. He said word was Christians at Gitmo had degraded The Holy Quran in ways unspeakable, all in a calculated program to mentally break the Muslim prisoners, destroying the holy artefacts of their religion WITHOUT consequences. This reminds of what colonial Christian whites had done with Old African religions, burning the shrines as heathen and pagan, while keeping a few artefacts for curiosa shows in distant musea. The mentally broken Africans adopted The New Faith en masse.
Orange Jump suits!
Well, renaissance man and later Nobel Peace Price winner Barrack Obama, a harsh critic of torture when he was still a candidate, maintained the camp at Gitmo when he became POTUS. The man who traces his routes to the shores of Lake Kavirondo went on to become the personification of the drone-hit kill, Muslims doing the dying of course. By the doctrine of collateral damage acceptable, most of them innocent victims. In Somali Sheikh Ayro who preceded Godane as the Emir of al-Shabaab, too was dispatched by a US drone hit.
If one goes back to Mohammed Farah Aideed -Bill Clinton days, the Americans have been busy overtime killing or trying to kill Somali military leaders not to their liking. This fact informed my thinking when I concluded Uhuru Kenyatta was mentally offside when he jubilated another top Somali kill by foreigners. (that is the necessary mental alienation of the collaborative elite, their alienation from the historical realities of their nation and that of themselves!)
And now comes the curios information that the Al-Shabaab brigade which overran the Kenyan base is named after Saleh Ali Saleh Naban.
It is the kind of detail which is a cultural identifier, or pointer to a crisis, a warning to ourselves. How did it come to a terrorist brigade of a foreign land named after a Kenyan, kills scores of Kenyans soldiers in that foreign land? What demons from our own land are we trying to exorcise at the neighbours?
Here is how the Daily Nation reported on who Saleh Naban was, in obituary.
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Post by jakaswanga on Jan 23, 2016 10:43:21 GMT 3
KENYA IN MOURNING: THE BONES OF PATRIOTSHere is His Eloquence President Kenyatta addressing the nation in the aftermath of the military debacle at El Adde, Somalia, 15TH January 2016. He dredged deep into the well of patriotic zeal. Lucky us. The bottom of the well is far. With the kind of unemployment figures Kenya has, cannon fodder comes cheap and plenty. The tough act is keeping up torn appearances. I strongly suspect most of these boys are in the army for the steady income. Readily dying for Kenya, Yours is to Do and Die in the words of an old poem, is not why they joined. Of course there is stuff they would gladly die for, but I think Kenyan patriotism is not one of them causes. (see comparative FooT-noTe IRAQ.) But there is another alternative think on this. Those of due mental diligence may wand to ponder it. It is a point which, I am sure, will be very HARAM in the thinking of Kenyan security bureaucracy, at least the official one put across for public consumption. Take this for example, from the commander in chief. The war on terror can be very endless. Now here is Abdullahi Boru Halakhe with a heretical opinion on Al=Shabaab and its position within Somali nationalism. www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/01/al-shabab-guardians-somali-identity-20141144555841652.html The official government being a de facto puppet, it is the terrorist formation Al-Shabaab which is in this view the de facto custodian of Somali nationalist identity. However peverse, asserting Somali autonomy in the face of foreign domination. I believe, for one to have a state-of-the-think appreciation of this statement, one may need to pay attention to classical literature in national liberation movements, and in Africa, those who have never heard of neither Amilcar Cabral nor Frantz Fanon, may have some homework pending. There are historical situations where the seemingly perverse forms are the authentic forms of national resistance, like when the invading coalition, and occupation, are extremely powerful, militarily invincible. Historically that used be a guerrilla situation, but secularism seems to have decided history has ended. Theologists seem to have filled the intellectual vacuum arisen by the demise of secular resistance. (this surrender of the secular think-tanks would be a good explanation why HAMAS eclipsed FATAH in Palestinian nationalism). NB: There is an upsurge of terrorist movements in broken states. Broken states are in the rule stalled projects in the construction of new identities. Africa has some curious situations. In Kenya we generally accept in private, the majority of us have a deeper loyalty to their ethnic group, formerly tribes, than to the central state. But they all want a stake in the central state because it is the major instrument of socio-economic loot. In Ethiopia it is hardly any different. A millimetre thick if you scratch, what bleeds is Tigrayan, Oromo and the other nationalisms, seething. Rogue Eritrea fled that Union of Starvation long ago, at gun point. If Picot-Sykes is ramshackle in the Middle East, Berlin-1875 is hardly a stabler ride in Africa. In Iraq there are hardly any Iraqis left, but plenty of Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites. And the things the militias on all sides do! Terrorism if you ask me.So those who want to do terrorist analysis without identity politics, I wish them well, but I warn them, there are deeper depths of thought to indulge on this issue, and so on Al-Shabaab too, for us Kenyans. Meanwhile here is Uhuru Kenyatta ritually mourning the dead KDF in his capacity as commander in chief, side-kicked by the opposition moguls Raila and Kalonzo. Even the cheapest books on propaganda dictate this ritual of fake hearts fake tears. The elite cannot behave otherwise than keep up appearances of singular purpose. Why don't I believe they are genuine? You do not trash the kind of chapter six (integrity clause) we had in the new constitution, then mournfully turn around later at some bloody event to profess your love for the nation to me. Saluting the dead in scripted emotions is a job description of CiC, the rest is acting talent. I saw Obama in tears too after another school shooting. All in a day's work for good pay. Enjoying theatre, the political theatre of the Kenyan professional politician is not a faculty I lack, but take it seriously? My mind and heart are a bit too seasoned around Africa to be taken in by calculated elite gimmicks of mass mobilisation, however heeled, polished or schooled off by the best of propagandists. Uhuru, Ruto, Raila, Kalonzo, Weta, Nkaissery, Omamo, and them all in politics are but fake, ritual mourners busy with the next election. They are professional mourners, you know, like the hired mourners of our Kisumu city, busy with the next meal. POLITICIANS ARE PROFESSIONAL MOURNERS. That is a job description. Nothing to be ashamed about. Here is a cultural read of your country. This, lower down Is this, higher up. Sometimes I wish my memory were shorter, and my world narrow! Here is the professional mourner politician in his role as CiC: ' 'They boast of caring only for death, and in doing so kill not only soldiers in places like El Adde but children in schools and women on the streets.''Now, Take for instance my famous brother Barrack Obama's 'surgical strikes'. Then consider the doctrine of ' acceptable collateral damage', the necessary evil. How, when you add them up, does it look from the predator hunting fields of Waziristan in Pakistan, etc? Indiscriminate? Is this Uhuru sentence applicable? ... In doing so -authorising his drone-hits, kills not only terrorists in places like Waziristan but children in schools and women on the streets of Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya
.. .'' Just think about it. www.wired.com/2011/12/photos-pakistan-drone-war/ Believe your own sides propaganda at your own peril. Armed strangers in any country are always unwelcome, even American boys dying to liberate Europe from Adolf Hitler's madness. Hear some Somalis cynically think out aloud, that the el-Adde attack was a result of a business disagreement on charcoal and Khat dividends. The lootenants looted the wrong guys. And paid the price. So, any new thinking? Throw more young men at the jaws of the monster, let the monster masticate and spew out bones for us to burry. The bones of patriots. Patriotism, Oscar wilde or Johnson said, is the last refuge of the scoundrel! I will be a scoundrel then. No worries, the likes of Mwathethe and Ngondi are just scoundrels too. Only they lack the self knowledge to recognise themselves as such. Thus they are doomed to continue their theatrical road show of deluded steps. FOOTNOTE: Watch the iraqi army collapse in Ramadi in the face of an IS onslaught. Watch the same deserters return later, full of fight, now organised as Shiite militia, flying the banners of their faith. Under the Iraqi flag, they fled the battlefield like cowards. Back under their IMAM flag, they are equally suicidal like ISIS battalions. Ferocious beyond compassion.
Explain that for yourself.
Assertions of historical identity is a place to begin. The Shiite faith is their historical identity, the Iraqi state, a fake not worth the ultimate sacrifice.ASKARI MASKINI ARON OJODE, a story of a land. It could be a soldier is just another trade, and not among the best in the world for foot soldiers. That could be why Bill Clinton dodged the draft, and the family of Dubya Bush made sure he too, did not go to Vietnam. Don't know, but could be. Sorrow does not jam my mind. The two American boys above became commanders in chief sending young men to die abroad in wars they themselves would never be found in, foot soldiering. The bones of former soldiers, only old soldiers know, and poets can tell.
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-- services, and, especially, the ex don's theoretical underpinning of the state credit policy is not something an economically illiterate successor could easily develop an alternative narrative against, me thought. And, compared to Kibaki, I always say Uhuru Kenyatta is a layman; even with the veteran Kinyua as his brains at finance during his headship there in the GCG fiasco, he Muigai was the author of such ERRORS as to be a laughing stock around sane heads.
humanity? And some ICC or American kangaroo court sat down and ordered his death and, in his case, you, An African sovereign demanding credible process for himself, reckons the 'terrorist' Godane does not deserve the same!? And should best be executed summarily!
homophobe Mwalimkuu), but these guys know the score when the bells toll. And so the eagle-sharp Cyclopic eye of correspondent b6k referred us long ago to the core.
