baldilocks

Informal and Quite Unscientific Poll

While I was pumping the again high-priced gasoline into my car a couple of days ago, a lady (black, presumably American) asked me what I thought of the suddenly-inflammatory illegal immigration issue. Following our accord that the laws of our land should be followed, I got the idea of asking acquaintances what they though of the issue.

One of my barbers--black American--thinks that any stengthening of illegal immigration laws or even a more active execution of the present laws would be an excuse for the police to “harass and round up Mexicans.” However, the owner of the cleaners that I’ve frequented for twelve years—a black Jamaican immigrant—takes a more thoughtful tone. He thinks that some program of limited duration should be set up to allow present illegal immigrants to register for their green cards. After the time has expired, however, he thinks that any illegals should be deported.

I’m a little ambivalent about prospect of asking any Mexican-descended acquaintances, since I don’t want such persons to think that I’m trying to “start something,” but I plan on asking one of my across-the-street neighbors—an American couple of Mexican descent--as soon as I run into one of them.

In the meantime, I’d like to find out what my readers think. Especially valuable would be opinions from those of Mexican-descent--American citizens or not--along with first-/second-generation Americans and immigrants of any heritage.

FULL DISCLOSURE: For those who don’t know, I’m a first-generation American on one side.

Driving Mr. Bill

In a week in which the question of how illegal immigrants should be handled are all the talk--from downtown LA to Capitol Hill--one is tempted to find this story :::amusing?::: ::::ironic?:::: ::::scary?::::

NEWARK, N.J., March 27 (UPI) -- An embarrassing hole in security surrounding former U.S. President Bill Clinton turned up when one of his chauffeurs was found to be a wanted man.

Shahzad Qureshi, 42, was in one of three cars awaiting Clinton at Newark Airport last week when a Port Authority policeman happened to check license plate numbers.

The computer came back showing the Pakistani national had skipped a residency-status hearing in 2000, and a deportation order had been issued by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the New York Post reported.

Qureshi was still in jail Monday awaiting immigration processing, the report said.

This incident, if true, demonstrates the scope of the problem and the schizophrenia built into it. Either we have immigration laws or we don't. And if we don't, we should stop wasting money pretending to enforce those laws and simply allow anyone near our former presidents or any other person/facility we want to keep secure.

Alright. I pick 'scary.'

The Old, Cold High Road

In den USA erfrieren im Winter immer wieder alte Menschen in ihren Betten.

(Translation: In the USA, old people very often freeze to death in their beds during wintertime.)

After searching, I only found one story of a single American senior who froze to death in her home due to inability (presumably) to pay her gas bill. My eighty-four-year-old great-aunt--who, obviously, knows far more old people that I do--knows of no one to whom this has happened. However, we live in LA—though, even here, it’s often been close to freezing at night during the past few winters.

What about you folks in the north-east and the mid-west? My grandmother lives in Chicago, my grandfather in Albuquerque, and my aunt still has old friends living in New York and Oklahoma. They all seem to be okay, with no reports of home heating issues during this abnormally cold winter.

Undoubtedly, however, there are many American senior citizens who are in need of monies to defray their home heating oil costs. And, courtesy of the viewers of the German TV show Weltspeigel were generous enough to donate their Euros toward that end at the behest of the show's producers, many of them may have a few more dollars in their pockets. I say schönen Dank on behalf of the seniors in my family, even though none of them is in danger of freezing to death in subsequent winters, God willing. However, other American seniors who don’t have any younger family members who care about them and who rely solely on their meager Social Security benefits could probably use a little extra Geld. (And who am I to look a gift-horse in the mouth, especially when I won’t be the recipient of the gift?)

Along with Ray D. at Davids Medienkritik, though, I would humbly suggest to our generous German friends that they donate their funds to a recipient much closer to home--to a place in more demonstrable need and to which their form of exchange would not be subject to exchange rates. A few years ago, their neighbors to the west experienced a devastating death rate (in the tens of thousands) of their seniors due to excessive summer heat, lack of air conditioners and due to many of the seniors’ younger relatives being on holiday and incommunicado.

But the French debacle was about more than lack of funds.

Ray is inclined to view his countrymen’s gesture as ‘snobbish’ and ‘condescending.’ He’s probably correct, as far as the producers of Weltspiegel are concerned. However—unless those Weltspiegel's viewers are proactive seekers of alternative information, they are only reacting to the spun news which they are fed. The situation is often much the same right here in the US.

Therefore, I’m more inclined to attribute ‘generosity of spirit’--rather than condescenscion--to the Germans desiring to protect the aged in America. They were on reacting to a perceived problem.

Our German friends, however, should take it one step further: exhort all of us to keep an eye on our aged parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. The deaths of French seniors in such large numbers back in 2003 spoke to a larger issue than lack of environment-regulating machinery: it told the world that all too many French people just didn’t consider the fate of their living forebears to the extent that they would make sure that their parents/grandparents were safe and well.

Many Americans can’t throw stones at the French in this area.

One of the American beneficiaries of German generosity is a Boston couple—Jerry and Anne Garten. Their saga was put before Weltspiegel viewers and they gave generously. One thing, however: Jerry and Anne have six daughters. As one of Ray’s commenters notes, the Gartens’ children and grandchildren (assuming adult grandchildren exist) don’t seem to be able to kick in ten dollars a week to ensure that their forebears don’t freeze. (I’m not discounting the possibility that the Gartens are horrible parents, but making sure that they don’t die a horrible death is different from having anything to do with them; honor thy father and mother and all that.)

If it is true that older Americans in large numbers are dying due to their inability to afford heat, then it is our problem—a problem that can be solved by us. Whether the European Union countries want to use a well-noted problem of theirs and throw it back in our faces as a real or imagined American problem is, mostly, irrelevant. It is up to all of the relatively young and able-bodied fend for their parents and other older relatives. Consider it returning the favor.

(Thanks to Pajamas Media)

Movie News

Susan Sarandon is considering a role as the lead in a biographical movie of celebrated (and maligned) Gold Star mother/Iraq War protester Cindy Sheehan.

More interesting is the question of who will play the role of the late Army Specialist Casey Sheehan and how he will be characterized.

(Thanks to Pajamas Media)

Together or Separately Hanging

For all who haven’t been paying attention to such things, last week Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) proposed a motion that President Bush be censured for approving the National Security Agency (NSA) Terrorist Surveillance Program (or “domestic” warrantless “wiretap” program as the uninformed have deemed it). However, the motion went nowhere, simply because almost none of the senator’s Democrat colleagues were willing to back him up.

However, if the Democrats win control of the House (the body which votes to implement an impeachment; the Senate tries impeachments) in this year’s election, some predict that more than a mere “censure” may be in the offing for the president.

If Bush’s opponents find themselves in a position of power, the temptation to humiliate him is likely to be irresistible. [SNIP]

The urge to impeach is partly payback for the Bill Clinton era when Republicans dragged the president through the mud over his dalliance with the intern Monica Lewinksy.

I suppose vengeance is an only-too-human trait. But to what long-term end would partisan vengeance lead? Assuming that the Democrats take back the House—or assuming that, by off chance, a barely Republican-controlled House votes to impeach President Bush in regard to the NSA program, what can be expected?

• All aspects of the very classified program in question will be laid before the American public—and before the enemy, al Oaeda, which it was designed to monitor
• Many of the operational techniques of the NSA will receive identical exposure
• The program in question will be rendered useless
• If the president is found guilty of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ for approving the program, he will be forced to step down from his office and Dick Cheney will become president
• Much of the American public—most of whom approve of the program, but even some who didn’t initially do so—will be very disillusioned by the Congress they have put into power
• Much of the military’s morale—especially that of those in Iraq and Afghanistan--will plummet
• We pull out of Iraq and, probably, Afghanistan

(If vengeance is theirs, one might figure that the Democrats might have something brewing for a President Cheney as well. After all, the third in line for presidential succession is the Speaker of the House. In a Democrat-controlled House…well, you guessed it.)

Let’s say that the Democrats get back at the Republicans for all of their misdeeds—real and imagined. George Bush goes home to Texas and Dick Cheney goes home to Wyoming or to wherever. (I don’t think that the Democrats would dare incarcerate either man, though I could be wrong; some of them have already said and done things beyond the specter of imagination--mine, at least.)

What happens after that? Will my Democrat relatives laugh and say something like “haha! We got your president and your vice-president?” Maybe, and they will be right. But what will happen after that? What will happen to all of us?

What is the long-term Democrat goal for our country and its place in the world if all they (may) hope for comes to pass?

Some might opine that the congressional Democrats plan on impeaching President Bush. However, yesterday on FoxNews, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) refused to take impeachment off of the table when pressed on the subject by Chris Wallace. Maybe he didn’t want to show the Democrats’ hand, as I suspect that Senator Feingold did with the censure motion. (Don’t get me started on the senior senator from Illinois, a man who, himself, was in dire need of censure last year.)

Many have mused ad infinitum on the strategic goals of the Democrats--what they could possibly be. To regain a measure of power in the federal government, sure, but to what purpose? Breaking the present Republican monopoly in at least two of the branches of government is a fair goal, but how far are some of them willing to go to achieve that goal? Using the exposure of a top-secret security measure designed to protect all Americans, while reframing the details of that measure in order to make the uninformed believe that it is meant to invade the privacy of those same Americans in order to regain power is a tactic that is more than Machiavellian. I suppose that those who would approve of such a tactic would say that the ends make the means worthy.

Is the goal simply this: holding power for its own sake? If true, it's a pretty mundane target. Shreading an intelligence program to get at one's political rivals, however, would bring infinitely more dire problems.

If the Democrats regain majorities in both houses of Congress, I hope that the vast majority of them remember that we're all in this together. If the don't...well it's on, I guess, in more ways than one.

(Thanks to Jeff Goldstein)

Three Years; Civil War?

Tomorrow, the Coalition of the Willing begins its fourth year in Iraq. The anniversary has been marked in many ways by many of the principles—by President George W. Bush, by US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, by General George Casey--the commander of US forces in Iraq--by those worldwide who continue to oppose OIF and call for its immediate end and, most notably, by former interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. With last months attack on the (Shi’a) Golden Mosque in Samarra and the resultant upswing in violence in many parts of Iraq, the question of the day is whether an Iraqi civil war is in full swing.

In his short statement about the anniversary, President Bush pays tribute to the men and women of the US military and the sacrifices they all have made:

[T]his morning, our reflections were upon the sacrifices of the men and women who wear our uniform. Ours is an amazing nation where thousands have volunteered to serve our country. They volunteered to -- many volunteered after 9/11, knowing full well that their time in the military could put them in harm's way. So, on this third anniversary, the beginning of the liberation of Iraq, I think all Americans should offer thanks to the men and women who wear the uniform, and their families who support them.

He doesn’t mention the phrase ‘civil war.’ As a matter of fact, Nedra Pickler is concerned that the president didn’t mention the word ‘war’ at all, as if the absence actually means something. Other than that—along with a now-expected slant--there’s quite a bit of pertinent information in the article, including the back and forth from sources expected and otherwise as to the state of Iraq. Onward.

Stressing political accomplishments and dissing the terrorists, Secretary Rumsfeld takes the high and optimistic road about Iraq even though he, disappointingly, takes a mild shot at blogs, along with the Big Media.

Some have described the situation in Iraq as a tightening noose, noting that "time is not on our side"and that "morale is down." Others have described a "very dangerous" turn of events and are "extremely concerned."

Who are they that have expressed these concerns? In fact, these are the exact words of terrorists discussing Iraq -- Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates -- who are describing their own situation and must be watching with fear the progress that Iraq has made over the past three years.

The terrorists seem to recognize that they are losing in Iraq. I believe that history will show that to be the case.

Fortunately, history is not made up of daily headlines, blogs on Web sites or the latest sensational attack. History is a bigger picture, and it takes some time and perspective to measure accurately.[SNIP]

Consider that in three years Iraq has gone from enduring a brutal dictatorship to electing a provisional government to ratifying a new constitution written by Iraqis to electing a permanent government last December. In each of these elections, the number of voters participating has increased significantly -- from 8.5 million in the January 2005 election to nearly 12 million in the December election -- in defiance of terrorists' threats and attacks.

Then, the secretary, going all Godwin on us, cuts to the chase.

Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

Former Prime Minister Allawi isn’t so optimistic about events in his country. In fact he asserts that the civil war has already started.

Well it’s unfortunate that we are in [a] civil war. We are losing a day, an average [of] fifty to sixty people throughout the country if not more - if this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. [SNIP]

Maybe have not reached the [unintelligible; will fill in when a transcript is available] yet, but we are moving towards this point and we should avert the path of the country and avert getting there. [SNIP]

Sectarianism will spread throughout the region and even Europe and the United States would not be spared.

The former prime minister says also that there is a serious exodus of Iraqi citizens from the country.

General Casey estimates that Coalition troops have a few more years in Iraq. There will be fewer, obviously, with many of the partners withdrawing on schedule at the end of the year and US troops levels already having been reduced.

[TIM] RUSSERT[of Meet the Press]: […] I want to take you back to something you said almost exactly a year ago. “By this time next year - you know, you base all of your planning on assumptions. Assuming that the political process continues to go positively, and the Sunni are included in the political process, and the Iraqi army continues to progress and develop as we think it will, we should be able to take some fairly substantial reductions in the size of our forces.” So you said the process is positive, the troop development is positive. Has been, this is a year ago, and you said therefore we could reduce our troop levels.

GEN. CASEY: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: That has not happened. So what is the problem?

GEN. CASEY: It has happened, Tim. We—right after—right before Christmas we off-ramped two brigades. We did not, we chose not to bring two additional brigades into Iraq, and our, our forces are 7,000 to 10,000 less as a result of that. And so we have started that process. And that process is a process that—again, go back to your base assumptions, as long as those two things continue to hold—that process is going to continue, I expect through 2006 and into 2007. So the process has begun.

Additionally, the general disagrees with the former prime minister:

MR. RUSSERT: Former Prime Minister Allawi said yesterday that Iraq is in civil war. Is he correct?

GEN. CASEY: The prime minister’s been out of, the former prime minister’s been out of the country, Tim. I haven’t talked to him about the security situation in, in a while, frankly. But I don’t, I don’t think he’s correct. As you can imagine, we look at this very closely, and I, I do not believe, one, that we are in a civil war right now; two, nor do I believe that a civil war is imminent or necessarily inevitable.

Perhaps he’s correct, perhaps Mr. Allawi is. But note the lprime minister’s prediction: that religious war will span the globe. If the prediction is a reasonable one, will the immediate pullout or even gradual reduction of Coalition forces completed, say, by the early 2007, hasten or hinder an Iraqi civil war or such an ominous forecast for the world? That is the question that we have to ask ourselves and the question I hope that our leaders--all of them—are asking, without regard to politics.

Old News

With the way much of the Big Media reports long-known facts about the military, you'd think that some of them just discovered gold.

Of some 32 million Americans now in [17 to 24 age] group, the Army deems the vast majority too obese, too uneducated, too flawed in some way, according to its estimates for the current budget year.

And has done so every year at least since I've been paying attention (the last twenty-five). The article lists several other factors, all of which have been disqualifiers for military service since the draft ended and the military started relying solely on volunteers over thirty years ago.

As I said before, the military doesn't want the crack/meth-baby offspring of my baby-boomer cohorts. Imagine that.

One of the Worst

José Guardia at Barcepundit remembers those who fell in one of the most horrendous attacks perpetrated during the Global War on Terror(ists).

It Ain't (Always) That Serious

Just because a record has a groove don’t make it in the groove.

--Stevie Wonder, “Sir Duke” from Songs in the Key of Life (1976), Grammy winner for Best Album in 1977

Last week, instead of musing on the social merits of the musical lamentation regarding how hard it allegedly is out there to be a pimp, Terry Teachout (subscription only) and Scott Johnson at Power Line discussed recording artists from a time when real talent was appreciated and marketable. The subject? Who was the best between Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan. Terry picks Billie:

[F]or all their obvious differences, the two women [Fitzgerald and Vaughan] had one big thing in common: Neither was especially interested in the words of the songs they sang.

In Vaughan's case, this lack of interest was so total as to be startling. To hear her near-abstract rendering of, say, the first two lines of Carolyn Leigh's deftly crafted lyric to "Witchcraft" ("Tho-ose fingers uh-in my hairrrr/That suh-llie come-a-hitha starrrre") is to realize that for her, the words of a song, good or bad, had no meaning in and of themselves. They were merely a pretext for the emission of interesting sounds -- and, as Gustav Mahler wisely said, "Interesting is easy, beautiful is difficult."

Fitzgerald, by contrast, sang with the clean articulation of a swing-era canary who wanted her listeners to understand the lyrics, or at least be able to make them out. But did she care about them? I wonder. She got nothing, for instance, out of the juxtaposition of "roaming" and "Romeo" in the verse of Irving Berlin's "I'm Putting All My Eggs in One Basket," a neat half-rhyme on which Fred Astaire (for whom Berlin wrote the song) never failed to put the sliest of spins. It's as if she hadn't even noticed.

Well. I’m truly not an expert on old-school jazz, but I do own a CD or two in the style. I’m inclined to sort of agree with Mr. Teachout, since I own a couple of CDs of Ms. Holiday’s work and not any of the other two ladies.

However comma…

One of my other favorite music styles is seventies and early eighties danceable funk. You know who I’m referring to if you know the style: recording artists that could actually play instruments, but (and) could make you want to get up and dance. And, very often, the words—if there were words—were nonsensical or even silly; paleo-rappers you might call many of them, if most rappers of present-day could play instruments or produce original and/or discernable melodies. (For all of you who get a bee in your bonnets whenever rap is criticized, I will admit to tapping my foot and “singing” along during the playing of some of Outkast’s offerings. Okay, I’m throwing you a bone. Get over it.)

The point is that sometimes listening to and enjoying music isn’t always about meaningful or heart-felt words. Sometimes it’s about the styling of the vocalist: the voice, certainly, but often the phrasing. Other times it’s about the obvious joy (or pain) that the singer is feeling about the song (as Mr. Teachout asserts). Still others, it’s about tapping your foot, clapping your hands, shaking your behind or even laughing (see Outkast).

Occasionally a song may be a fine piece of work, but is so depressing that you have to turn to something else. (See much of pop artist Sade’s work, especially 2000’s King of Sorrow. Great song, but it makes you want to refer the very talented Ms. Adu to a good shrink so she can get on some anti-depressants. I submit that she is the latter-day Billie.)

The decisive factor for musical greatness isn’t (or shouldn’t be) about a singular item, but a combination of qualities. The result of those qualities is some variation on this declaration: “I like that.” How often and how widely that result is produced is still not the end of the matter, but neither is the purported feeling that the artist may put into his/her work.

Just lie back and enjoy it.

(Thanks to Pajamas Media)

DPW Bows Out

The corporation Dubai Ports World of the United Arab Emirates will allow a US entity to buy the company which has operational control of terminals at six US ports. However, the Baron and Dympha point out that the deal itself has a big problem (still).

What no one seems to be paying attention to is that the deal violates our agreement with Israel not to do business with companies that are owned by states which embargo trade with Israel.

Additionally, what I'm wondering about is this: what happens if DPW changes its mind and keeps the company?

Assuming that DPW is honorable, however--and I'm not saying that the company's leadership isn't honorable--and follows its word, justice would indeed be poetic were Halliburton to acquire operational control of the ports.

(Thanks to Captain's Quarters)

Musings of a (Still) Free Press

My father—Philip Ochieng—took a week off from his usual commentary; it's not unprecedented (he’s been in precarious health of late). However, there is quite a bit of other interesting opinion-writing regarding the governmental raid of the Kenyan newspaper The Standard and the nation’s TV station, KTN.

Daily Nation Editorial, March 5, 2006 (I don't think that my father wrote this; it isn't in his writing style):

National Security minister John Michuki is trying very hard to back up his claim that that most brazen assault on the media since independence was in the interests of national security.

He is saying that the raid on the Standard newspapers and KTN premises - conducted by a shadowy police unit operating more like a private militia - had uncovered evidence of material that posed a threat to national security. Mr Michuki, however, was extremely economical with details on exactly what had been found. The most he could offer was that it was still being analysed.

This, to us, sounds like a desperate attempt to manufacture justification for a raid which has done incalculable harm to a government that was elected on a human rights and rule of law platform. The minister stated with his own mouth that anyone who provokes a snake must expect to be bitten.
We presume he meant that the Standard provoked the snake. So, anything else about alleged threats to state security can only be an afterthought. What happened was a blatant display of the coercive power of state machinery gone mad.

Mutuma Mathiu:

When a government turns loose hooded men on the population, when a government throws out the law, it ceases being a government and becomes an enemy of the people, an imposition willing to have its criminal way irrespective of the will of the people. [SNIP]

I don't think the government's criminal actions against the media was [sic] a punishment or revenge for an inaccurate story; rather, the story was merely an excuse, an opportunity to send a brutal message not just to the media but to the opposition and Kenyans, in general.

Gitau Warigi:

One thing was clear. This was not simply a bumbling operation by drunken officers. It was planned and deliberately executed. Could there be a cabal in government that has decided to throw all rationality out of the window and resort to bareknuckles in the name of combating imagined enemies of the State?

Lately, dark mutterings by State functionaries about there being "too much freedom" in the country have been on the increase. Soon, somebody in those circles is going to learn that such displays as we saw on Thursday are a suicidal way to demonstrate that the leadership has a backbone.

And if the intention was to send a message, violent as it were, to the Standard's owners, or its Board of Directors ... well ... that has been received loud and clear by everybody, even those it was not intended for. You can count the Kenyan voter right in there. When somebody in this government once told one [former Kenyan President] Daniel arap Moi to sit back and watch how a government is run, surely this could not have been what they had in mind.

(Don’t ask me how to pronounce the names.)

It appears that much of the country’s journalist population hasn’t be cowed by the government’s action against its colleagues. That’s a sign of hope. That Kenya’s media entities still feel free enough to slam its president and cabinet members for their apparent anti-liberal actions shows that they will not sit quietly while press freedom is violated.

As an additional twist to the situation, however, it's reported that the head of Kenya’s police agency officials wasn’t in the loop about the raids.

It has now emerged [that Kenyan] police commissioner Mohamed Hussein Ali was kept in the dark about the swoop, even though it was his own officers who masterminded the attack. [SNIP]

In the case of the raid on the Standard Group HQ and printing plant, it has emerged that final details of the raid were rehearsed during a meeting held at Harambee House [originally the official residence of the head of state, but, in practice, now the State House] on Wednesday evening. National Security minister John Michuki and CID [Central Investigation Department] director Joseph Kamau were reported to be present but Maj Gen Ali was not even invited.

Note to those who claim that free speech is clamped down upon here in the US: this is what real oppression looks like.

Academy Awards

Pajamas Media is "liveblogging" the Academy Awards.

I haven't seen any of the nominated movies, but I am interested in seeing Crash simply because I want to find out how racist Los Angeles allegedly is.

Anecdotally, the worst racism I've ever experienced was in Chicago and in Northern California; in the latter area, I was called the n-word openly, while in uniform.

An Epidemic

Or maybe the suppression of free expression is just more noticeable in this age.

Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki appears to be taking some totalitarian steps that are frightening to me personally, as well as being another blow to an Africa that seems to take two or more steps backward for every step forward toward having more than a handful of free, open and peaceful societies.

Johannesburg - The African Editors' Forum (TAEF) has called on Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and his government to stop terrorising Kenyan journalists.

It said that Thursday morning's raid on The Standard newspaper in Nairobi by armed and masked police had shocked editors throughout Africa.

TAEF said: "We call for the immediate release of those detained, for the return of equipment stolen, and for the government to pay for the speedy repairs of broadcasting and printing equipment vandalised by the rogue policemen.

"They forced the 24-hour television station off air, took computers from the newspaper's newsroom and beat up staff and security personnel, among other illegal actions."

From the Telegraph (UK):

Tens of thousands of copies of yesterday's edition were set on fire in yards outside The Standard Group's print warehouses, where equipment was also badly damaged.

According to Tom Mshindi, of the group, the armed men, carrying AK-47 rifles and said to number at least 100, arrived in unmarked four-wheel-drive vehicles at about midnight.

His journalists recognised several as being members of an elite cadre of Kenya's police force.

The reason for the raid?

The raid came after three Standard journalists, arrested on Tuesday, were yesterday charged in Nairobi's magistrates' courts with printing "an alarming publication". On Saturday the newspaper alleged that President Mwai Kibaki and Kalonzo Musyoka, an opposition figure who helped lead the campaign to vote down a new constitution favoured by Mr Kibaki in a November referendum, had met secretly.

As most regular readers of this blog know, I have an interest in the well-being of one particular Kenyan journalist. My father is the managing editor of the Kenya's Daily Nation and has been an uncomprimising critic of his president. He has experienced some persecution during his long career, but he's an old man now. Still, it's not in my nature to worry.

Sunday is the day of his weekly op-ed piece, and with Nairobi being nine hours ahead of Los Angeles, I've been waiting until this afternoon to comment upon this turn of events in order to see what he had to say. I will post it later if it's on topic.

(Thanks to Tim Worstall and to readers Marty and Veeshir)

UPDATE: Bare Knuckle Politics has a video of the TV station raid. These things don't go as well hidden as they used to.

(Thanks to Glenn Reynolds)

Support the Danish!

Lots of people forget that the LEGOs of many a baby-boomer childhood are a Danish product. What we may also have forgotten is how versatile LEGOs are.

Cheney's got a gun

You can illustrate current events and support freedom of expression at the same time. Pretty handy, eh?

(Thanks to Diane)