baldilocks

Irony Burrito

Soul Food:  it’s yummy stuff. The origins of what is known a Soul Food, however, are often forgotten. For very pertinent reasons, it can legitimately be called ‘Black Food.’

Foods such as rice, sorghum (known by Europeans as "guinea corn"), and okra — all common elements of West African cuisine — were introduced to the Americas as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Yams and watermelon are other examples.

Eventually, such fare became known as Southern Food. These days, Soul Food is considered a delicacy. (Personal note: I like the stuff very much, with the following exceptions. Yams and chitlins have crossed the threshold of my lips only once, respectively.) But, back in the bad old days, masters fed their slaves the type of food considered crap, and saved the choice meats, grains, and vegetables for themselves. Much of the fare called Soul Food consists of plantation throwaways.

European enslavers fed their captive workers as cheaply as possible, often with leftover/waste foods from the plantation, forcing slaves to make do with the ingredients at hand. In slave households, 'vegetables' consisted of the tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions. Soon, African-American slaves were cooking with new types of "greens": collards, kale, cress, mustard, and pokeweed. They also developed recipes which used lard, cornmeal, and offal; discarded cuts of meat such as pigs' feet, oxtail, ham hocks, chitterlings/"chitlins" (i.e., pigs' small intestines), pig ears, hog jowls, tripe, and skin.

So what’s my point? It’s this.

The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.

For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.

They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.

(All bolding mine.)

Rice and other Spartan grub. Hmmm.

One wonders how the OWS cooks know that the “freeloaders” are vagrants and criminals. After all, aren’t both the “professional homeless” and the “amateur homeless” (the OWS protesters) squatting on land that does not belong to them? I bet I know how they know: most of the amateurs are white and most of professionals are black.  And both groups are freeloaders. After all it isn’t as if the OWS protesters bought the food.

I wonder why the OWS cooks don’t want to cook for the “professional homeless” aka “freeloaders.” And what are the “non-freeloaders” doing to help the cooks? Delivering the goods? Chopping the vegetables? Washing the dishes? Disposing of litter? Not according to reports.  But, of course, the “non-freeloaders” are speaking “truth to power,” so, one assumes that counts.

But, oh wait! Some designated persons labored to prepare the food and want it to go to the hungry and downtrodden!  Except not the actual hungry and downtrodden. 

But, oh wait! The “freeloaders” are vagrant and criminals! But according to the Left, vagrants and criminals do what they do only because the rich won’t help them. So the OWS want to help them! Except they don’t.

But, oh wait! OWS cooks will still feed the “professional homeless”—just not the good stuff.  Only the slave food.

But, oh wait! There are soup kitchens where the “vagrants, criminals, and freeloaders” can eat. Wonder who funds those places. No matter. The “vagrants, criminals, and freeloaders” have the soup kitchens--equal but separate facilities in which to chow down. They can “freeload” on someone else’s dime and time.

So, in one ill-considered decision, the Occupy Wall Street sorts manage to epitomize hundreds of years of slavery and government oppression against black Americans and, on top of that, managed to promote one of the principles in the Bible—that those who do not work, should not eat.  In one fell swoop, they have become everything they say they are against.

Chew on that.

(Thanks to Ace of Spades HQ)

A Reminder of the Other Black Genocide (UPDATE)

In 2008, I posted the following video via YouTube. It had been part of a series which exposed the truth about the Islamic Civilization with special emphasis on the horrors of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade.  My intent was to counter the exhortations of Barack Obama's former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and the like-minded who continue to excoriate America and the rest of Western Civilization for past sins against black African Slaves and Americans of African descent.

The owners of YouTube, however, have blocked the account of John Alembillah Azumah--the man interviewed in the series and the author of the book, The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue. One can guess that some people were offended by the series--a state of affairs which often occurs when the truth is told.

This particular copy of the video, entitled "Muslim Black Slavery - Islam Slave History of Black Africa," is now posted at MetaCafe by a third party.

Here's Azumah's preamble:

The success of Mohammedan Islam in deceiving, misinforming, deforming and contorting both history and reality over a period of almost fourteen hundred years has been astounding--that is, until now.

The greatest tragedy about this particular subject is that most of the descendants of African slavery--the black people in the Americas, around the world, as well as among the African blacks--are totally ignorant of the actual facts.

Before we lose the concentration of our visitors, I would like to make the following statement and then prove it: that the worst, most inhumane and most diabolical of the black African Slave Trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and, later, aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.

I predict that, as usual, the two subcultures--those of denial of facts and of Political Correctness--will attack us without once disproving a single statement and/or conclusion that we make.

And here are some pertinent excerpts:

While the European involvement in the African Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the Americas lasted for just over three centuries, the Arab involvement in the African Slave Trade has lasted fourteen centuries and, in some parts of the Mohammedan world, is still continuing to this day.

(...)

It should also be noted that black slaves were castrated based on the assumption that the blacks had an ungovernable sexual appetite.

(...)

A comparison of the Islamic Slave Trade to the American Slave Trade reveals some extremely interesting contrasts.

While two out of every three slaves shipped across the Atlantic were men, the proportions were reversed in the Islamic Slave Trade: two women for every man were enslaved by the Muslims.

While the mortality rate of slaves being transported across the Atlantic was as high as ten percent, the percentage of slaves dying in transit in the Trans-Sahara[n] and East African Slave market was a staggering eighty to ninety percent.

(...)

While many children were born to slaves in the Americas--the millions of their descendants are citizens in Brazil and the United States of today--very few descendants of the slaves that ended up in the Middle East survived.

While most slaves who went to the Americas could marry and have families, most of the male slaves destined for the Middle East were castrated and most of the children born to the women were killed at birth.

Azumah pronounces the denial of the facts concerning the on-going Islamic Slave Trade as 'obscene.'

To those whose male ancestors survived American Slavery long enough to ensure that the former would be alive in the twenty-first century and, therefore, be able to refer to me as a House Negro for suspecting the motives of the putative builders of the "Ground Zero" Mosque, I feel pity.

That pity is mixed with a sense of astonishment, however, at this conclusion: that so many black people are so well indoctrinated with perpetual anger at the sins of America's past, that they would ignore the more egregious sins of Islam's present and desired future.  Hurling epithets and pretending that the opponents of the "Ground Zero" Mosque want to stifle freedom of religion is a lot easier than gathering the pertinent facts, connecting them, analyzing them and coming to a cogent conclusion, it seems.

On the other hand, perhaps such people have indeed concluded that Islam would like to expand its decimation of those of African descent--with black men being the special and specified targets for annihilation.  Perhaps the slinging of epithets, etc. is merely a smokescreen--an insurance for the future.  Such people will be able to say to their future masters, "see? I stood up for the Ummah against that infidel, Ochieng."

Maybe such people are merely trying to protect their own testicles--such as they are.

Enslave a man's mind and the rest of him--including his testicles-- will follow; no more need for physical chains.

UPDATE: John Alembillah Azumah's bonafides: he is the Director of the Centre for Islamic Studies at the London School of Theology.  I would imagine that he has competent security and, no doubt, he is in need of our prayers.

Tactical Analysis

In the wake of the al Qaeda terror attack in Uganda, the Obama Administration states, for the record that:

...U.S. intelligence has indicated that al Qaeda leadership specifically targets and recruits black Africans to become suicide bombers because they believe that poor economic and social conditions make them more susceptible to recruitment than Arabs," the [Obama Administration ] official said. "Al Qaeda recruits have said that al Qaeda is racist against black members from West Africa because they are only used in lower level operations."

By now, however, anyone who has been close observing what this administration says and does knows that nothing can be taken at face value--especially a statement which should produce a "duh" in the minds of anyone who is familiar with Islam's history in Africa.

So, what to make of such an unneeded statement? Here's what.

Most recently, the online commentariat on the Right has been abuzz about the NAACP and its formal statement condemning the Tea Party movement for its alleged racism against blacks (more about that in a later post). 

So, when President Obama calls al Qaeda terrorists racist (true, but who cares? dead is dead) and his minions in the NAACP call the Tea Party movement racist (untrue), they are attempting to plant seeds in the minds of the uninformed and still evaluating.

They are attempting to paint the Tea Party movement as a terrorist movement in the arena of public opinion. Sissy Willis comes to the same conclusion before I do. 

And if the attempt is strategically successful, the president will attempt to make the designation public policy.

[Edited]

Best Headline This Year

From one of my progenitors no less...

"Gaddafi’s United States of Africa: Would you buy a used camel from this son of the desert?"

Philip Ochieng isn't as hard on Gaddafi as one might expect from a person who knows the actual history of both Arab Muslim-black African relations and the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade, but I think his opinion is more cynical than he lets on.  My father's area of the world isn't exactly a bastion of free expression.

What I'm Reading (October 8, 2009)

Airlift to America: How Barack Obama Sr., John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya and 800 East African Students Changed Their world and Ours by Tom Schachtman

To refresh your memories, the Tom Mboya Airlift is the endeavor that brought Barack Obama Senior and hundreds of other young Kenyans to America to be given Western higher education and to return to their home and be prepared to lead their nation in the wake of its independence from the United Kingdom.

Before you curse the day that fate brought Barack Obama Sr. to America, don't forget that if the Airlift hadn't occurred, I wouldn't exist either.

One of the many disconcerting facts that I've run across since discovering the existence of Barack Obama Jr. is how much the students of the Mboya airlift were nurtured and supported by prominent individuals of the hard Left of that era and this one--Cora Weiss of the Institute for Policy Studies and entertainer Harry Belafonte, to give a pair of seemingly divergent examples.

When I mentioned this to my mother, she said "oh yes, Roosevelt [University, Chicago where my parents met] was crawling with Communists back then."  Mom never quite saw the attraction of Leftism, lucky blessedly for me and my siblings.

However, one can't imagine how eerie it is to feel as though your existence was engineered by someone other than God and one's parents.

The Stopped Clock

Normally I avoid Obama speeches like the plague. The president’s need to be on TV every single day reminds me of an ex-boyfriend who thought he was so great, so much God’s gift to womanhood, that a girl couldn’t possibly be in her right mind for preferring another over him.

“Stop calling me!”

(One thing about Obama-on-TV-fatigue: I’m sometimes think that the inducement of it is intentional.)

However, the speech made during President Obama’s first trip to the African continent as president was bound to produce some items of interest even though I had to take a nap in the middle of reading it.

In parts of it, President Obama almost sounds like Milton Friedman in his praise of self-reliance and laissez-faire economics.

We must start from the simple premise that Africa's future is up to Africans. [SNIP]

Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict. The West has often approached Africa as a patron or a source of resources rather than a partner. But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants. In my father's life, it was partly tribalism and patronage and nepotism in an independent Kenya that for a long stretch derailed his career, and we know that this kind of corruption is still a daily fact of life for far too many.” [SNIP]

No country is going to create wealth if its leaders exploit the economy to enrich themselves, or police can be bought off by drug traffickers. No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top, or the head of the port authority is corrupt. No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, and now is the time for it to end.” [SNIP]

People everywhere should have the right to start a business or get an education without paying a bribe. [SNIP]

You have the power to hold your leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people. You can serve in your communities, and harness your energy and education to create new wealth and build new connections to the world. You can conquer disease, and end conflicts, and make change from the bottom up.

To be honest, I don’t think that a person who was not President of the United States and a President of the United States who was not of African descent would be listened to with respect to a message of self-reliance. Oh, you think that’s not fair? Fairness has nothing to do with reality. As a matter of fact, the concept of “fairness” is what’s taking this country down as I type this.

Frankly, I’m not sure that the president believes his own words. Actually, I know that he does not believe his words. He proves that he doesn’t by providing yet more “aid” to the tune of $63 billion, in spite of what people like James Shikwati, Dambisa Moyo and Philip Ochieng say about what aid--read: global-scale welfare--has done to the initiative of Africans. And the fact that this American chief executive has, in six months, set in motion the nationalization of much of his own country’s economy resounding buries the praise and exhortation of freedom and self-reliance to the continent of his fathers. The president’s words in Ghana were merely that—‘just words.’ To Americans, that is.

But to the Africans? I wonder whether some countries and/or ethnic groups will heed these words and, perhaps, follow through on them. Because it really doesn’t matter whether President Obama means what he says to the Africans or not. What does matter is whether some group/nation on the continent believes that free markets, etc. will improve their lot. And what does matter is whether an African group/nation puts forth a sustained follow-through on those beliefs. It is, however, up to the various sets of Africans whether they want to institute positive change, if you’ll pardon the expression. Just because Barack Obama talks out the side of his neck doesn’t mean that his insincere words won’t save some someones. God uses whomever He wants.

Africans have been sitting on a goldmine for millennia. But as it turns out, they are also sitting on a breadbasket. Think of this every time you see the starving, disease ridden African children on TV.

The “dark” continent could become reborn. All they need to do is stop trying to dupe people into giving them their money via the Internet, stop having tribal wars, ignore the DDT and biotech food naysayers, depose the kleptocrats and....

Find a basis for the rule of law. One does exist, as we know.

Tangent: here’s a opinion about Europe and Africa and how the two continents have developed over the centuries.

Europe embraced Christianity and that, in my opinion, made many intellects and talents open to divine inspiration. That Europe squandered its blessing by lording it over the world and then turning on each other does nothing to diminish that blessing. However, I bet that Europe and Russia turning on the Jews in the early to twentieth century was the final straw for God. Now that continent’s decline proceeds apace.

Will America follow in Europe’s footsteps? Some believe that it already has. Spiritual laws apply.

(Thanks to Rae and to Instapundit)

The Hazards of Having African Relatives

No this isn't about him.

The weirdest thing happened this morning. I received an email from my father--the African one--saying that he was in Nigeria attending a conference and that he was without money or a passport; he said that he had accidentally left them in a cab.  (Most regular readers know that my father is Kenyan journalist Philip Ochieng.)

It was the correct email address. The wording of the letter, however, seemed suspiciously generic as if were a broadcast--or a Nigerian email scam.  But I thought it was my father so I emailed back—“Okay I will help.”  Blessedly, however, I decided to Google the name of the conference.

So when the incipient scammer wrote me back with details I said “will help you, Father, but I need to know that you are who you say you are.”  Two simple questions were asked and the answer to one should have rolled off of the tips of my father's fingers.

The response?

Julieet [sic],
why are you asking such question, i want you to use the information of the Hotel manager and send what you said you have for now. i also want you to call me on this number +*************.
Get back to me with the scanned copy of the transfer receipt.

I don’t think so.  My father’s email address has been hacked.

So now I have to figure out how to let him know this. Suggestions?

UPDATE: An old friend volunteered to look up the headers and they do resolve to Nigeria.  The friend jogged my memory and I remembered that there is still an old email address of my father's lying around so we'll see whether he still has access to it.

I'm not calling there.  Arm. Leg. Firstborn.

Vengeance is His

Yes I know.  I’m just jumping back in without an explanation.  Maybe later.

President Obama seems to have a problem with our closest ally, the United Kingdom.

First there was the bust of Churchill:

A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to [Former President] George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.

The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office during President Bush's tenure.

But when British officials offered to let Mr Obama to hang onto the bust for a further four years, the White House said: "Thanks, but no thanks."

(Rumor has it that the president treated the bust far less ceremoniously than that.)

Then there was the president’s treatment of  UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown days ago:

Obama, breaking with precedent, wouldn't grant the prime minister the customary honor of standing beside him in front of the two nations' flags for the TV cameras. [SNIP]

Still, Brown kept a stiff upper lip as he sat in the Oval Office yesterday as Obama, skipping the usual words of welcome for his guest, went straight to questions from the news services. Brown didn't get to speak for six minutes, after Obama had already answered two questions.

Many observers seem puzzled.  I’m not and neither is the UK press.  It’s about Kenya.

If you recall, before Kenya became Kenya (1963) it was a British colony known as British East Africa.  Between 1952 and 1960, there was this little “difference of opinion” between the UK and the natives of British East Africa—primarily from the Kikuyu tribe.  That conflict is known as the Mau Mau Uprising.  There were tens of thousands of African civilians killed and, according to Wiki, seven to ten thousand Africans interned by the British colonial masters.  In Dreams from My Father, President Obama says that his grandfather was tortured by the British during the conflict, though he was not a Kikuyu but a Luo.  Guess which prime minister ordered the Mau Mau insurgency to be put down.

Mystery solved.  It seems that the president is seeking to humiliate the progeny of those who humiliated his ancestors.  Revenge isn’t that complicated a motive.

However, a question remains.  Is this any way for a President of the United States to behave?

Read also about the gifts which the Obamas gave to the Browns during the latter's visit, especially this one: a collection of 25 classic American films on DVD.  Not exactly special.  And even more curiously:  Brits can't play American DVDs.

To be fair, Prime Minister Brown was thoughtless in his gift-giving as well.  One of his gifts to the president:  a seven-volume classic biography of Churchill by Sir Martin Gilbert.  One would expect a UK Prime Minister to know the history of his own country, but one could say the same thing about our own head of state.

UPDATE: Welcome, Ace's morons!

UPDATE: Welcome all others.  Just to clear up some items, I am half Luo like President Obama (take note of my URL), born and raised in the United States.  My father and the president's father arrived in the United States via the same means--the Mboya Airlift.

Relative Poverty

Before today, I’ve never posted anything about Barack Obama’s half-brother, George Onyango Obama, a resident of one of Nairobi's worst slums. The reason: unlike many, I don’t think that it is automatically the senator’s responsibility to support those whom he has taken no part in creating. And even if it is discovered that there was some agreement between the two brothers, it would be one made between individual adult members of a family and, therefore, none of my business.

In contrast, I took on the responsibility of supporting Obama-Kogelo School with the assistance of many others, because a public promise was made to many children. Some of these children may have the chance to fulfill the same type of dreams which Barack Obama Sr. and Philip Ochieng had a half century ago.

I do understand why some of the senator’s political opponents have made an issue of the fact that Senator Obama has done nothing to lift his younger brother up from his degraded existence, one which is light-years removed from that of a Harvard-educated lawyer and US Senator. (And now it has been discovered that the senator has an aunt on his father’s side--Zeituni Onyango--living Boston public housing.) Senator Obama is the sponsor of the Global Poverty Act (S. 2433)—a proposed law designed to feed all the hungry children of the world and funded by American tax dollars, naturally. In other words Barack Obama would legally compel Americans to give even more to the poor of the entire world even while he made the choice not to do so for his own flesh and blood. The two stances are hypocritical on their faces. Conservative pundit Dinesh D’Souza thinks so as well and has been raising money for the immigration and upkeep of George Obama.

One wonders, however, if the senator, believing that he will win next week’s election, thinks that his proposal will take care of all the George Obamas and Zeituni Onyangos of the world. Senator Obama seems to think that he can solve all of the problems of this country by forcing American workers to give their proceeds to those who cannot or will not work. Why shouldn’t the ideal be applicable worldwide?

But to me, Barack Obama’s advocacy of GPA and D’Souza’s efforts to “save” George Obama represent the same sort of futility. If the parents of the world will not do enough to feed their own children and the George Obamas of the world—especially the American ones—will not do everything in their power to improve their individual situation and that of their kinsmen and their countrymen, nothing will change. All these charitable endeavors will just be like tossing money into the furnace.

With these thoughts in mind, I am thinking of disbanding Save Senator Obama Kogelo School, Inc. Because the organization is a non-profit, I am obliged to either refund the money or donate it to another charitable organization and that’s what I am likely to do next week, but I haven't made up my mind at this point.

At any rate, it is likely that the school will be built/remodeled after the election by an organization which prefers to remain anonymous to avoid the politicization of it all. And in the event of an Obama victory I suspect that Obama kinsman Kenya Prime Minister Raila Odinga will take it upon himself to upgrade the Obama ancestral village all around. Such is the way of countries where semi-strongman politics is present—if you win, your relatives and your hometown win also.

I almost disbanded my effort immediately after reading my father’s September op-ed on D’Souza’s actions. After all, in email, he said something similar—but less stinging--to me about my effort.

[W]here was this latter-day savior before Barack appeared in the news pages? Why is it that he's only interested in helping the relative of a celebrity, whereas hunger is rasping millions of other Kenyans?

If he were a genuine savior, wouldn't he organize an institution - like Father Grol's Undugu Society - to channel publicly collected funds to benefit more human beings? Granted, he has a right to choose to help only a single individual.

As we know, this is something I actually did do.

But in the event, why not do so privately?

How is the heck are people supposed to know that they can give to a particular charity if the holder of that charity doesn’t tell anyone about it?

My prideful response: if you all are so smart, build your own schools, feed your own countrymen. After all, Mboya’s efforts to educate Obama Sr., Ochieng Sr., and hundreds of other Kenyans back in the day seem to have borne fruit for the individual students and their American offspring, but it didn’t do much for the country that it was intended to benefit.

"You" are merely trying to embarrass the Senator. The urge in your puny mind is to convince the world that Barack is a skinflint who cares nothing about helping his own brother out of a quagmire.

That’s correct. And after the discovery of the existence of the American aunt, this image is reinforced--not because of D'Souza's actions but because of Obama's.

You are telling Americans that the man seeking their votes is a sadist whose entire paternal clan in Kenya is perishing from hunger.

Years ago, in my ignorance, I asked my father why the poor in Nairobi’s slums don’t have indoor plumbing. He never answered me. Now I think that I know the ‘whys’ of both. And, more than ever, I'm inclined to agree with Kenyan economist James Shikwati: the kindest thing that the West could do for Africa is to cease all aid. It would be a great compliment to the competence of all the ethnic groups on the continent.

I’ll post my decision next week and inform the donors.

Through the Looking Glass

Max Taves of LA Weekly interviews me about my parallel/mirror life with Obama and about my effort to save the school in the senator's father's hometown and named in his honor. The profile is pretty accurate, though I don't recall saying that I "worry about my bills." And I have never met my father face-to-face, though we do talk by phone and e-mail.

I've already been called irresponsible by an Obama supporter for "naming" the school "Barack Obama's School" and advised that I needed to "re-think" that decision. I received no apology for all the erroneous assumptions in the friendly advice, however, when I pointed out that it was the residents of Nyang'oma-Kogelo, Kenya who dubbed their secondary school 'Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.'

(And, yes, I hate the picture. The bougainvillea were swelling me up yeah, I've gotten fatter since this latest bout of not-smoking--ten months.)

(Thanks to Michael Bowen, Patrick Frey and Jill Stewart)

By the Way

The Russian-Georgian-Ossetian-Abkhazian conflict is a tribal war, just like any such conflict on more southerly continents and should be called such. Oh the technology is more advanced and the political intrigue, strategy and subterfuge are far more elaborate, but one look at the history and you can figure it out that this conflict is fundamentally like any tribal power-grab; for example, say, that which occurred in Kenya. And, already, there are more dead bodies than was so for the Kenya conflict--the result of more efficient methods of killing. So the next time you here someone refer to "those savages in Africa murdering each other for a tribal power grabs," be sure to point to the Caucasus.

We all have the potential to be savages.

Just sayin'.

Obama Kogelo School Update: Waiting for the Mail Man

UPDATE (September 18, 2009): More is forthcoming about the outcome of this campaign.

Don't you hate snail mail anymore?

The paperwork for the non-profit should be here today. In the meantime, the site--obamaschool.org--exists is being worked on as we speak. (If you go there right now, however, you'll only get the password-protection screen.)

As soon as I receive the paperwork and get the site up, we'll resume actively taking donations to modernize Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.

UPDATE (11:20 AM PDT): Fedex delivers! More later today.

PREVIOUSLY:

California Says 'Obama-Kogelo School Non-Profit Approved!'
School for Kogelo Update and Book Gift
Save Obama School: The Funding
Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

Just to Keep Hammering on a Point

Few of the bloggers who were conjuring a grand confrontation (NSFW) between Islam and Christianity in the Kenyan tribal/political chaos of 2007-2008 saw fit to commemorate the 1998 attacks perpetrated on Kenya and Tanzania by Islamists.

But interestingly enough, this one did. I've tangled with her in the past, but this time I have to say, well done, Debbie, and thank you. (Scroll down for a painting that makes a point.)

If our allies take a couple for the Team, we should acknowledge it. Be better than Obama.

PREVIOUSLY:

More About Obama and the 1998 Bombings
A US Presidential Candidate Remembers the Anniversary of the African Terror Attacks
Al Qaeda's 1998 Attacks on Africa

More About Obama and the 1998 Bombings

Regarding Obama’s failure to acknowledge yesterday’s anniversary of the 1998 al Qaeda attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania: I don’t think that people are grasping what an enormous oversight this is on Obama’s part.

First of all, he wants to be president of the United States—the person who pledges to protect us from enemies foreign and domestic. Well, ten years ago one of our enemies foreign launched preemptive strikes against America and two of its allies, Kenya and Tanzania, with the allies taking the brunt of the attacks. It was clearly a prelude and build-up to 9/11. Second of all, Obama is descended from a citizen of Kenya.

But the acknowledgment “slipped his mind.”

Oh yes, and there was even a commemoration ceremony in DC yesterday for the fallen.

I guess it’s true that Obama and alleged relative Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga aren’t in constant communication because guess what Odinga was doing yesterday.

The fact that there has been not one public word from Obama about this is unimaginable. It's another drop on the rock.

PREVIOUSLY:

A US Presidential Candidate Remembers the Anniversary of the African Terror Attacks
Al Qaeda's 1998 Attacks on Africa

Born in Sudan; Made in the USA

Gotta love this.

BEIJING - Lopez Lomong, a
former Lost Boy of Sudan who spent a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to America, will carry the United States flag during Friday's opening ceremonies in Bird's Nest Stadium.

"This is the most exciting day of my life," said the 23-year-old runner, who will compete in the 1,500 meters. "It's a great honor that my teammates chose to vote for me. The opening ceremony is the best day and the best moment of Olympic life.

"I'm here as an ambassador of my country and I will do everything I can to represent my country well."

Lomong, who fled Sudan at age 6 and was separated from his family, was sent to America after officials read his letter describing what it would mean for him to live there, and resided with a foster family in Tully, N.Y. He became a citizen a year ago last month and made the team by finishing third at the June trials. [SNIP]

"This is another amazing step for me in celebrating being an American."

Thanks, Lopez, for reminding us of how blessed we Americans are.

(Via Newser)

Al Qaeda's 1998 Attacks on Africa

Ten years ago today--using the time-tested truck-bomb method--Islamists blew up the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The toll: in Nairobi 213 dead—of that number 12 were American; in Dar es Salaam 11 dead—all Africans—and 85 wounded.

From the Kenya attack, over 4500 were wounded, 150 were blinded.

From the Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower:

Beyond the obvious goal of calling attention to the existence of al Qaeda, the point of the bombings was vague and confusing. The Nairobi operation was named after the Holy Kaaba in Mecca; the Dar es Salaam bombing was called al-Aqsa, after the mosque in Jerusalem; neither had an obvious connection to the American embassies in Africa. Bin Laden put forward several explanations for the attack. He initially said that the sites had been target because of the “invasion” of Somalia; then he described an American plan to partition Sudan, which he said was hatched in the embassy in Nairobi. He also told his followers that the genocide in Rwanda had been planned inside the two American embassies.

That would be funny if it didn't make me nauseous.

Muslims all over the world greeted the bombings with horror and dismay. The deaths of so many people, most of them Africans, many of them Muslims, created a furor. Bin Laden said that the bombings gave the Americans a taste of the atrocities that Muslims had experienced. But to most of the world and even to some members of al-Qaeda, the attacks seemed pointless, a showy act of mass murder with no conceivable effect on American policy except to provoke a massive response.

But that, as it turned out, was exactly the point.

Wright says that bin Laden had been trying to get the Americans to come and get him in Afghanistan, figuring that, if he killed enough Americans we would. (We know what happened afterward and what is still happening, but I don’t want to make this post too much about Americans.)

I contend that there was another point. Al Qaeda did it for the same reason they do everything else. Evil is almost always its own point.

Kenya’s Daily Nation has, of course, been commemorating the attacks.

Nairobi’s Day of Horror Recalled

Nairobi. 10:40am. Friday August 7, 1998. First came two explosions, then the mighty sonic boom, the ground shook and the skies over a corner of the city darkened with a mushroom cloud.

As the smoke and dust cleared, tonnes of paper thrown up by the blast wafted lazily over the city, coming down in slow pirouettes that belied the force of the explosion that had sent them into the sky. By the time New York got its 9/11, Nairobi already had its August 7, a date of horror etched in the collective memory of millions of Kenyans.

When the dust had cleared 213 innocents, nearly all of them Kenyans, lay dead.

The target of the terrorist attack, the US embassy, a stout, solid, fortress by the Haile Sellasie Avenue-Moi Avenue-Kenya Railways roundabout, was still standing defiant, but a mere shell gutted into the insides. Twelve American and 31 other embassy staff, nearly all Kenyans, lost their lives.

Adjacent to the embassy building, the taller 7-story Ufundi Cooperative House [containing a secretarial college], not constructed to withstand bomb attacks, had crumbled to the ground.

(Emphasis mine.)

Sound familiar?

More:

How the Nairobi Terror Attack was Planned

Victims: Only the Scars Have Died
“We forgive you, but we have not forgotten.”

Personally speaking, I learned quickly that none of my immediate family had been injured. Though I had never met any of them at the time, this was a great relief to me. The American response to the attack, however, made my then ongoing transformation from Democrat to Republican irreversible.

Many things were galling about the attacks, but one was the fact that Africans—Kenyans and Tanzanians—weren’t even the targets of the bombings but took most of the casualties. (This was also the case with the 2002 Mombasa attacks; Israelis were the targets.)

To quote myself:

I liken [al-Qaeda attitude toward the terror attacks in Africa] to a demolition company destroying a building. Who cares if the "vermin" in it are destroyed along with the building? For that is the cultural view that [many? most?] Arab Muslims hold for blacks, even for those blacks who are foolish enough to believe that being Muslims themselves will save them. Sudan, anyone?

At any rate, my heart goes out to those who are still feeling the physical, emotional and spiritual pain caused by those attacks. At least one of your American friends is thinking of you today, Kenya, and I know for a fact that I am far from alone.

California Says 'Obama-Kogelo School Non-Profit Approved!'

UPDATE (September 18, 2009): More is forthcoming about the outcome of this campaign.

California has approved the non-profit status of 'Save Senator Obama Kogelo School, Inc.' So now I'm merely waiting to receive all that stuff (via snail mail) required to run such a business.

As for donations, the effort is still accepting them, but because there was no proof that the business was a non-profit, Paypal decrypted the donation button. (Recall that the first part of the fund-raising effort was to raise enough money to establish the non-profit.) Paypal breaks the donation buttons but still allows the business to accept donations. I don't get the logic, but, for now, go to Paypal and use the email address obamaschool-at-gmail-dot-com.

Look for obamaschool.org by Monday.

PREVIOUSLY:

School for Kogelo Update and Book Gift
Save Obama School: The Funding
Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

School for Kogelo Update and Book Gift

UPDATE (September 18, 2009): More is forthcoming about the outcome of this campaign.

Don't worry, my little project is still on the move. Your donations designated to 'Save Senator Obama Kogelo School' amount to over $3000. The two issues--the non-profit corporation and the website are in the works and should be finished by the end of this week. Of course I will post any new information here each day. [Button deleted; see update below.]

On a person note, thanks to HT for the gift of

As is so for most books of length borrowed from the Los Angeles Public Library, I never have enough time to finish them before giving them back if they are in high demand and short supply. LF is one such book, so this gift is especially appreciated.

UPDATE: Fixing the donation button...

UPDATE: For now, the HTML buttons won't work for the School cause. If you have a Paypal account you can donate by using the email address: obamaschool-at-gmail-dot-com.

PREVIOUSLY:

Save Obama School: The Funding

Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

Save Obama School: The Funding

UPDATE (September 18, 2009): More is forthcoming about the outcome of this campaign.

What a difference a day makes. The non-profit is going through the California legal gauntlet, but I have had it expedited. I was only able to do that because of the nice little surge in donations due to promotion of the cause by several sites. (No worries. I’m keeping a list of them as I see them in my referrers log and plan to give them their props.)

At present the haul is over $1,200 $2200 and that’s not counting the initial $500+ laid out to incorporate the non-profit! I’ve spent the morning writing ‘thank you’ notes. You all are wonderful.

I have a hidden helper who is assisting me with the website. I had said that it would be a blog but it won’t be—though it will certainly have a blog. One thing necessary for this endeavor to be successful: keeping an eye on what’s happening in Kenya so that will be a part of the site as well. I do have some experience in the area, as well as a contact or two.

Keep it going!

PREVIOUSLY:

Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

Obama Kogelo School Update: Non-Profit Done!

UPDATE (September 18, 2009): More is forthcoming about the outcome of this campaign.

Several good, kind readers--including anonymous Milbloggers--come to my rescue, or rather, to the rescue of Obama Kogelo Secondary School Students and the non-profit is created! Now the website is being built at obamaschool.org; I will let everyone know when it goes up.

So the first battle is won, now the second, longer one looms. Stay tuned and please...

UPDATE: Non-Profit name: Save Senator Obama Kogelo School, Inc.

PREVIOUSLY:

Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

UPDATE: Hello, my friends from Hot Air.

Save Obama School, July 30, 2008

So I have $110 for my project. When the total gets to $500 I’ll apply for the non-profit. Can we get there today? I think so.

I had decided to set up the site in a blog format since that’s something that I can do personally, since, with Typepad Pro, one can have infinite bloggage for a base fee. One big problem: the name ‘Luo American’--the URL of this site--is incorporated and if I set up a non-profit in connection with this blog, I can imagine that our friendly tax collectors would take a dim view of such a thing. So I’m going to set this up separately with Blogger or Wordpress.

Let’s do this thing!

(Photo courtesy of Democrat=Socialist)

PREVIOUSLY:

Save Obama School, July 30, 2008
Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit
Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

Save Obama School: The Site and The Non-profit

This is the deal: it will cost $500+ to start a non-profit entity in California for “Save Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.” In addition a web designer must be paid to assist with obamaschool.org (unless some kind soul is willing to donate his/her services). I have a grand total of $25 in donations to this cause and five of it came from me.* I want to start a Facebook campaign but need a beneficiary.

Do I have to appeal to your emotions to get this done? No, not pity, but pride? Heck, I said I wasn’t go to do this but I will.

Don't you want to show the Democrats how it’s done?

Well if you do…

Contact me at juliette-at-luoamerican-dot-com.

PREVIOUSLY:

Saving Obama School
Raising A Village

*Make that $75!

Saving Obama School

The official name of the school which the senator promised to help is: Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.

What the Obama School needs:

• Water
• Sanitation
• Electricity
• Remodeling
• Security
• Maintenance

to bring water to the school by sinking a borehole and building a water tank, erect a perimeter fence, complete the science laboratory and add much needed new classrooms, additional latrines, and a school dining hall

For the things that are in constant demand--e.g. school supplies, wages for security guards, spare parts--I'd say that a two year funding is enough.

The school's principal suggested a minimum of 8.2 million Kenyan shillings which is equal to roughly $129,220 at today’s rate. That shouldn't be too tough.

So here's what we have:

• Domain name: obamaschool.org
• Email address: obamaschool@gmail.com
• Pay Pal Account; the account leads to my personal account until I can get enough money to set this up as a non-profit.

What we need:

Someone to assist in setting up the website. (No I didn't set this one up. Typepad did.) And someone here in the states who knows about the logistics of these things.

BTW, don't forget to donate to this site (Luo American Inc.) also.

PREVIOUSLY:

Raising A Village

Raising a Village (UPDATE: Send Info!)

Over at doubleplusundead, they’re talking about a Barack Obama promise that was made in 2006 to the Kenyan school located in the village where his late father was born—a promise that hasn’t been fulfilled. The school has been renamed in the senator's honor.

He told the assembled press, local politicians (who included current Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga), and students: "Hopefully I can provide some assistance in the future to this school and all that it can be." He then turned to the school's principal, Yuanita Obiero, and assured her and her teachers: "I know you are working very hard and struggling to bring up this school, but I have said I will assist the school and I will do so."

Obiero says that although Obama did not explicitly use the word "financial" to qualify the nature of the assistance he was offering, "there was no doubt among us [teachers] that is what he meant. We interpreted his words as meaning he would help fund the school, either personally or by raising sponsors or both, in order to give our school desperately-needed modern facilities and a facelift". She added that 10 of the school's 144 pupils are Obama's relatives. Obiero was not the only one to think that the US Senator from Illinois, who had recently acquired a $1.65 million house in Chicago, would cough up. Obama's own grandmother Sarah confidently told reporters before his visit: "When he comes down here, he will change the face of the school and, believe me, our poverty in Kogelo will be a thing of the past."

There's also an orphanage in the village. And over one hundred of these kids are related to Obama. (It wouldn't be surprising if some of them are related to me also.)

Now the senator and his wife make a lot of money, so I’m sure that this is merely an oversight. I’m sure that they meant to set up a fund on their own and/or have their supporters donate to assist his kinsmen. With the campaign and everything, I’m sure that this promise is just one thing that got lost in the shuffle.

Well. Since I am of the same tribe as Obama, I think that it should fall to me to assist in filling in this gap. I’d like to start a fund to help this village school—and others, if possible.

Off the top of my head, the following information needs to be known:

1. an itemized list of the things which the village schools in Kenya require and that school in particular
2. supporting items and services for the above list
3. the logistics
4. the oversight plan of the money and the tasks
5. maintenance and upkeep required

In addition, there's an over-arching concern about the infrastructure in the country: how much modern technology can the village handle?

I’m a fund-raising virgin, however, so as soon as I get some more information, we’ll get this ball rolling.

BTW, this will be a non-partisan endeavor. I’ve tweaked Obama as much as I'm going to on this topic. I'll keep thumping him about other stuff but not about this. Heck, he can help--even get out in front of this parade as he is wont to do. Call it a tribute to Tom Mboya.

So, experienced fund-raisers. Talk to me.

UPDATE: Welcome, Conservative Grapevine readers! For any helpful information you'd like to submit, write to obamaschool-at-gmail-dot-com.

The Trans-Saharan Slave Trade

I wish that I would have found the following a couple of months ago. However, there's no time like the present.

Here's a little something for those who would urge God to damn America for her real and perceived sins against her citizens who are of black African descent.

The worst, most inhumane and most diabolical institution of the black African slave trade was initiated, refined, perpetrated and implemented by the Mohammedan Arabs and later aided and abetted by the black converts to Mohammedan Islam.

I predict that, as usual, the two subcultures--those of denial of facts and of political correctness will attack us without once disproving a single statement and/or conclusion that we make.

--John Alembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

Odinga and Obama Won't Meet

Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga--an imagined boogie man in a number of American imaginations and a real one for a number of Kenyans--is in the United States today, but is not scheduled to officially meet with his "cousin," Senator Barack Obama. Says Kevin J. Kelley of the not-meeting:

Right-wing extremists have been circulating baseless claims on the Internet that Senator Obama is closely allied with Prime Minister Odinga, who is described by the Obama-haters as both an Islamist and a socialist.

Dude, it was Odinga himself who claimed that Obama was his cousin. And the two did hang out regularly when Obama made his last trip to Kenya in 2006. And Odinga did get his undergrad in what used to be East Germany. And he did name his first born 'Fidel Castro.' As for the Islamist stuff, read here and scroll down to the bottom for the background.

Kelley is playing to the preconceived notions of Kenyan and other African audiences. However, the jury's still out on what the nature of the relationship is between the two men. And if the purpose of not meeting during the visit is stop the tongues from wagging--as Kelley suggest--then neither of them is any great judge of human nature.

What I think is this: both men have shown a propensity to take on whatever ideology each deems necessary to bring them power. And it doesn't matter what the nature of the ideology is.

(Thanks to LGF)

Kenya Happenings

Kenya: The Basics

Obama Birth Rumors

Ed Morrissey asks:

Was Barack Obama born in Hawaii or somewhere else, or did he just change a name?

Ed cites Jim Geraghty, who thinks that the Obama Campaign’s failure to produce the candidate’s birth certificate has caused these rumors to fly:

1. Obama was not born in the US, but in Kenya.
2. Obama’s middle name was Mohammed, not Hussein (but then why change it to another Arabic name?)
3. His real first name is “Barry”.

Of these, only one is serious.

My first instinct is to call Bravo Sierra on this story, since it’s most likely an ever-mutating product of the malignant imagination of a guy named Kenneth Lamb who saw fit to make up lies about my tribe—the same tribe that Obama stems from. Lamb claims that our tribe is an Arab tribe. Yes, really. The goal in creating this fiction is to refute the idea that Obama, whose mother was a white American, is a “legal” “African American,” whatever the heck that is. (I suppose that, by this logic, I am half “African American” since my mother is a black American.)

See the guy on the right? That’s my father, journalist Philip Ochieng, a Kenyan Luo like the senior Barack Obama. The two were also friends (something which Father's beginning to rue since he's being inundated by American media requests of late). Does he look like an Arab to you?

Obama has produced so many gaffes—both about his personal life and about American history—that I’m beginning to wonder whether anything he says is something which he hasn’t learned rote from a script. However, allowing this fantasy about the Luo tribe--one born of ignorance regarding African countries--to mix in with real, live concrete issues regarding a prospective Barack Obama presidency hurts the opposition to that candidacy. That it p*sses me off is beside the point.

Make no mistake, Lamb’s novella is the origin of these rumors.

AIDS Alarm Unsounded Except in Africa--and Russia

Remember when the World Health Organization predicted that AIDS would become a heterosexual pandemic worldwide? Now the organization has retracted the prediction.

A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.

In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.

Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease, said understanding of the threat posed by the virus had changed. Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognised that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients

(And no, considering the name of the physician, I'm not sure that WHO isn't trying to prank the world.)

James Taranto notes the many ominous cries of panic regard heterosexual AIDS since the 1980s and wonders whether there will be a similar reversal of opinion with regard to Global Warming twenty-five years hence.

One thing I found noteworthy in the Independent report is that Russians have a high rate of infection HIV (1%)--the identical rate of that in South Africa in 1991. Seventeen years later, South Africa's rate is 25%.

WHO attributes Russia's rate mostly to the large and growing amount of IV drug-users. That fits with this report on Russian "hypermortality, where, between AIDS, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, avoidance of healthcare and abortion rates, the citizenry appears to be committing mass suicide.

Is this the inevitable final comedown of a wholly atheistic society?

(Thanks to James Joyner)

MORE ON MASS SUICIDE: In...Japan.

Since 1998, when it nearly doubled in a year, Japan’s suicide rate has remained among the developed world’s highest. (Although, arguably, not as high as it is sometimes portrayed as being, with over 30,000 people taking their own lives every year so far this decade.) Recently, suicide in groups, usually by means of a charcoal stove in an enclosed car in a remote park, has been on the rise, with participants usually meeting on line. More recently, suicide has taken a turn toward being a public health problem of the sort normally only considered in areas where the threat of a suicide bombing is a reality: hydrogen sulfide gas and other noxious gasses emerged as a new trend in suicide earlier this year, with people in hotel rooms or other densely populated areas killing themselves, then taking others with them as the gas spread throughout the building or emergency workers tried to rescue them.

I'd call it post-war depression. The war in question is World War II.

The Obama-Odinga Connection

The Kenyan media have belatedly discovered the phenomenon which I refer to as the Obama Whisper Campaign: the allegations floating around the Internet that the senator is a crypto-Muslim. The writer of the (report? op-ed?) doesn't cover any new ground on that topic. However, there are a few areas which contain information new to me.

The first concerns the relationship between Obama and Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

“It is true that the Prime Minister and the senator are related. Senator Obama comes from a family and clan to which the Prime Minister’s mother belongs, and they are cousins,” he said.

In the American sense, a cousin is the child of your parents’ siblings. But in Luo culture, the members of your father’s or mother’s clans are your cousins.

A clan would typically have hundreds of thousands of members, and the relationship is more social than biological. [SNIP]

The Obama campaign denies that the senator and Mr Odinga are cousins. And three Kenya experts interviewed by Politifact also dismissed this claim, Ms Hollyfield reports.

So the two might not be blood relatives.

The second issue is more interesting.

A conservative Internet commentator, Michael Gaynor, speculated earlier this month that Senator Clinton’s campaign might play “the Kenya card” against Mr Obama.

Mr Gaynor says “the Kenya card” involves unspecified connections between the Kenyan-American senator and “the radical Kenyan prime minister.”

I doubt that Senator Clinton is that short-sighted. But if she is...

Are both of the Democrat candidates so intent on gaining power that they would risk splitting this country down racial lines? Because Obama has already risked this and if Clinton were to use this tactic, the estrangement would be nearly complete.

From the Gaynor op-ed:

With exits polls showing that rookie United States Senator and now front-running Democrat presidential hopeful Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. is taking more than 90% of the black vote against Hillary, will the Clintons finally play the Kenya card? [SNIP]

[S]crutiny of Obama associations came only AFTER he had become the Democrat frontrunner, too late for Team Clinton, and Team Clinton has NOT played the Kenya card to show how politically extreme Obama really is and how Obama is tied to the radical Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga (who told the BBC that he is Obama's cousin on his father's side [sic] and who ran an unsuccessful race for president of Kenya posing as an apostle of change).

Unfortunately for Team Clinton, the media has not compared and contrasted the Odinga and Obama presidential campaigns and scrutinized the Odinga-Obama connection, although it certainly should have.

Well the Big Media hasn't.

Though it pains me to admit the following, I must: one would probably have better luck finding such a compare/contrast series at blogs authored by people whom I have ridiculed for looking suspiciously at the Odinga-Obama connection. Yes, being half Luo myself, I took their suspicions personally.

I'm yet not ready to totally absolve some of them of cultural prejudice because some of them did willfully lie (absolution is not mine to give anyway), but I will apologize for being wrong if it is discovered that the Obama-Odinga relationship is more than meets the eye.

In light of sheer numbers, one might be forgiven for believing that about almost every relationship the good senator has--genetically, incidentally and purposefully.

Kenya Happenings

Kenya: The Basics

A Parent Appearing Apparent

I love this:

With the swearing in of the new Cabinet – as [Kenya's Daily Nation] put it – the Kibaki-Odinga unity “...appeared apparent...” I was girding my loins to attack it immediately on the spot, but other more urgent issues came up.

In addition, moreover, it happened to occur to my mind that, perhaps maybe, I duly owed the writer some more thoughtful consideration. It was probably likely that, if I tried to make an effort to enter the young juvenile’s mind, I might understand him adequately enough.

But it seems evident that repeated reiteration is an incorrigibly permanent feature of our newsrooms. It seems apparent that, as writers, our scribes simply cannot be able to see that appearances are not what they look like.

It's from my father's weekly grammar column, in which he sometimes injects politics, but is primarily used to lambaste instruct his colleagues in the art of wielding English: definitions, word usage and sentence construction. Redundancies are the topic today (yes, that statement may be redundant, but someone will ask). I don't doubt that I may have committed some of the same sorts of errors, but I still find this op-ed particularly funny.

My diplomatic abilities appear to be genetically acquired.

The politics:

The Kibaki-Odinga unity is a phenomenon of such material objects. Nobody else can see it exactly for what it is. For outsiders, it only appears or seems. Some think of it as mere make-believe. They do not accept it as a reality.

But the Nation reporter was two-minded about it. On the one hand, it was apparent because it was real.

But, on the other, its “apparentness” seemed like that of the will-o’-the-wisp – which was why it appeared apparent.

Kenya Crisis

Kenya: The Basics

Grave Digging

The Right has been musing about Obama's late father--a dyed-in-the-wool commie and from a Muslim family--for some time now, with most of the musing being irrelevant since the junior Obama was abandoned by his father. Now it's the Left's turn.

At Politico, Ben Smith features an article written by the senior Obama, in which the latter discusses the Kenyan president's economic positions; Senior is basically asking whether the president should impose hardcore Communism on his country or go with baby steps. The president in question? The Kenyan Republic's first, Jomo Kenyatta. The year? 1965.

You know what? I am really less than impressed with the ability of all too many "professionals" to separate what matters from what does not--the ability to analyze information.

A bit of assistance: if a person has only had contact with his/her father twice in a lifetime, it's pretty much impossible for that father to have any meaningful influence on that person's political ideology. (Do I have to repeat myself about my own father and our divergent politics?)

Yeah, I'm helping the Left but...call it charity.

Now another decision looms--do I want to read some sixties-era economic tome written by some African dude who just received his undergrad?

(Thanks to Ed Morrissey)

Kenya Heating Up Again?

Right now, I'm just pointing to it: 12 shot dead by police during protests across Kenya. Will have more to say as I gather information. My father is okay as of a couple of days ago.

Kenya: The Basics

"New" Info About Obama's Father

Most Africans of a certain age are/were communists? Say it ain't so!

For Heaven's sake, my father's named his political column "The Fifth Column." Being a commie was all the rage for young Africans in the sixties. Why do you think most African countries are in the state they're in right now?

Obama Sr. as a free-market capitalist would have been a far more of a surprise.

Greg Ransom's post contains a lot of interesting and useful information about Kenyan political history--especially in light of the country's recent turmoil--but anyone who has even a cursory connection with older Africans knows that many of them bought into Socialism fully and continue to cling to the failed ideology well past the sell-by date. There is no question of "hiding" or not "hiding" the father's leanings. And Obama Jr.'s leanings are as plain as the nose on one's face as well. (Told ya so.)

What happened to the Meccachurian* Candidate whisper campaign?

(Thanks to LGF)

[Re-edited]

*Coinage from See-Dubya

Great Society Gone Global

Michael Knox Beran joins the small but growing chorus of observers who maintain that the traditional donor-recipient relationship which the West has with Africa keeps the latter in a state of unending childhood. To demonstrate the point, he reminds us that the West once had Africa’s poverty problems—disease, dirty water, hunger—and that they weren’t solved by massive amounts of aid from other civilizations.

Before the twentieth century, Western parents expected to lose at least one of their children to illnesses that are preventable today. Not until late in the nineteenth century did the White House itself have clean water; in 1862, Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie died of typhoid, likely contracted from the mansion’s tainted plumbing. Hunger, too, once darkened what is now the prosperous world, though so effectively has the problem been solved that countries like the United States face a looming obesity crisis.

How did today’s prosperous nations create the embarrassment of riches that they now enjoy? No benign magician descended, à la Jeffrey Sachs [and his Millennium Project], on London or Washington to shower its inhabitants with money. Instead, the rich nations developed laws and freedoms that enabled people to take their futures into their own hands.

Beran contends that the constant flow of aid to African countries may sooth the consciences of the "Africrats"--e.g. Sachs, Bono, Madonna, Angelina Jolie and, yes, George W. Bush--but, in the end, all the money and foods stuff do is serve to line the pockets of Africa's infamous kleptocrats and, therefore, prolong the suffering of the common citizen of an African country.

Kenyan economist James Shikwati has been Shouting into the Wilderness on this topic for some time now and Beran uses his words to bolster the point.

When a drought afflicts Kenya, [Shikwati] says, Kenyan politicians “reflexively cry out for more help.” Their calls reach the United Nations World Food Program, a “massive agencies of apparatchiks who are in the absurd situation of, on the one hand, being dedicated to the fight against hunger while, on the other hand, being faced with unemployment were hunger actually eliminated.” When the requested grain reaches Africa, a portion of it “often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign.” Much of the rest of the grain gets dumped at less than fair market value. “Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away,” Shikwati says. “No one can compete with the UN’s World Food Program.” [SNIP]

Shikwati’s observations have been borne out most recently in Ethiopia, where the government’s collectivist agriculture policies have unsurprisingly resulted in famine. Foreign nations duly sent aid, which, according to a July 2007 report in the New York Times, government soldiers duly squandered… [SNIP]

The cycle is vicious. The aid that ends up in corrupt rulers’ bank accounts enables them to stifle both free markets and the political and legal reforms that free markets need to operate efficiently.

Zimbabwe’s Kleptocrat extraordinaire aka Robert Mugabe has been able to nearly destroy his country using aid from the Africrats, says Beran, by

[creating] a kleptocracy where the inflation rate recently reached 11,000 percent. Once southern Africa’s breadbasket, Zimbabwe now depends on subsidies to feed its people.

It’s surely an irony that a person like me, whose very existence stems from the paternalism of the West, would agree with Beran’s assessment of Western Civilization’s relationship to Africa. And, of course, the West does have some duties toward Africa after centuries of slavery and colonialism.* (Read King Leopold’s Ghost if you doubt that.) But, like prolonged parenthood, prolonged paternalism only harms the "child" And isn't the idea that Africa must endlessly be on the receiving end of Western charity just a bit racist? Well it's more than that, says Beran. Look only to Joseph Conrad's classic Heart of Darkness, says Beran.

[Darkness's protagonist] Kurtz, [Darkness's fictional narrator] Marlow says, “began with the argument that we whites, from the point of development we had arrived at, ‘must necessarily appear to them [savages] in the nature of supernatural beings—we approach them with the might of a deity,’ and so on, and so on. ‘By the simple exercise of our will we can exert a power for good practically unbounded.’ ” The thesis of Sachs’s The End of Poverty is not essentially different. He, too, believes that Westerners “can exert a power for good practically unbounded” over people who have not reached our “point of development.”

Unending aid is black inferiority acknowledged--with the more insidious differences being that it has a benevolent face and it enslaves both the giver and the receiver into thinking that Africans must have it to survive.

*The West has at least acknowledged its culpability in decimating Africa; that's more that Islamic Civilization has done.

Odyssey

Tom Mboya’s passion*—to provide the ‘elite’ of his nation with Western education so that they might come back home and build on the home turf—has borne some unforeseen fruit, both large and small.

Because of Obama’s prominence, Mboya’s endeavor has recently received the type of publicity of which the latter could have only dreamed back in the late fifties. However, it seems that, whether in America or Africa, Mboya operated by Jesus Christ’s axiom that when one asks, he/she shall receive. And it appears that Obama and I have many earthly beings to thank for the providence of being born American. One such being is American expatriate Gloria Hagberg.

From a 2005 profile:

Resting on a couch at the United Kenya Club in Nairobi, 92-year-old Gloria Hagberg is a lady at peace with the heavens and all below.

She came to Kenya 50 years ago and fell in love with the country and its people. Now in the sunset of her life, she spends her day going through scrapbooks and photo albums of her rich career as an educationist.

And she is not about to leave Kenya. "This is the only home I know," she insists.

Her best memories are of the time when she and her late husband, Gordon Hagberg, helped about 5,000 Kenyan students go to America for studies in what is commonly known as the airlifts between 1958 and 1962.

Among them were two future vice presidents of Kenya, the late Dr Josephat Karanja and Professor George Saitoti.

Others who passed through her hands later became senior politicians and some members of the Cabinet. They include Arthur Magugu, Dr Adhu Awiti, Samuel Adoyo and Kimani wa Nyoike.

She also nurtured journalists Hilary Ng’weno and Philip Ochieng before they took up their scholarships in the US. [SNIP]

Her role in the airlift project was to conduct pre-airlift classes for students who had qualified for the scholarships and to make their flight arrangements.

The classes were mainly to introduce them to America and counsel them on how to make it as students in a foreign country.

"It was not as easy as it sounds," she recalls. "Many of them had never been to Nairobi, let alone fly to New York." [SNIP]

Her husband’s memoirs capture the hectic moments in the following words: "Students flocked to the office where Sumat Patel and J.K. Jani were coping with the restless line. These two gentlemen were among the many who gave their time and money to get the airlift off the ground. Their energetic resourcefulness was later to be described as something akin to a miracle by the time the third airlift had safely delivered its passengers across the Atlantic."

But to get the job done, they were able to get tickets at fares that were half of the normal amount.

Gloria recalls a 5,000-plus crowd gathering at the airport that evening. They were members of family and well-wishers who had come to witness the historic day. She, her husband and the late Cabinet ministers Mboya and Gikonyo Kiano stood with the crowd to wave Kwaheri.

"The excitement was so high you could feel it in the air. The crowds were cheering and dancing, almost causing a stampede at the waving bay. Security people had to intervene to stop the frenzied crowds from jumping into the restricted area," she remembers.

Two days later the students arrived in New York flying via London. Gloria had already confirmed their bookings at the Hotel Martinique on 32nd Street at Broadway. Here the travel-weary students found tens of journalists waiting to report the event.

"I was so delighted to receive a cable that the students had landed safely in the US and were headed for their respective colleges. My husband and I went for a special dinner to celebrate the achievement." [SNIP]

Gloria recalls the second airlift taking place in September 1960. This one had 148 students who she had taken through her pre-flight course. They arrived in New York on September 13 aboard two DC-4 aircrafts. Fifty compatriots from the first airlift were at hand to meet the new arrivals.[SNIP]

Within 10 days of the arrival of the second group came a further 242 students.

"It was like a military invasion with hundreds of Kenyans landing in the US every week," she recalls with delight.

(Emphasis mine.)

How about that? I highlighted the instances of flight to show that, unless one is looking at a roster of passengers, it would be easy to confuse who was on which flight. Additionally, there were many, many people who provided resources--financial and otherwise--to bring these students to America. I tip my not-wig to them and, of those gone on, to their memories.

My source wondered whether Mrs. Hagberg was still alive. As of February, she was indeed--riding out the turmoil in her adopted homeland in relative safety (scroll down). February 1 was her 95th birthday.

I wonder how many Americans there are who are descended from these “invaders.” Obama and I may be the most narcissistic ones, but it's not possible that we're the only ones.

(A most heartfelt thanks to Buy Danish)

*Part of the airlift timeline is here.

Back to Africa Again

The airlift which brought my father--Philip Ochieng--and Barack Obama, Sr. to America is back in the news again. Originally discussed this time last year after Obama, Jr.'s Selma speech--which saw the senator curiously attribute some of the events surrounding his 1961 birth to the 1964 Selma march—Obama asserted that the airlift in question was due to the efforts of John F. Kennedy. Observers threw the BS flag on that as well since Obama had already been conceived by the time JFK was sworn in as POTUS.

However, when I found out that my father had been on the same plane as Obama Senior, I did some digging and discovered that JFK had indeed been responsible for an airlift of students from Kenya before he became president. An op-ed written by my father in 2004 seemed to confirm this.

Like Obama Senior, I too went to the US on the famous Tom Mboya Airlift of 1959 [when hundreds of Kenyan students were given scholarships to American universities]. I first met Obama Senior in Tom Mboya's Nairobi office [Mboya was then the secretary general of the Kenya Federation of Labour]. Obama and I met up again on returning to Nairobi and remained drinking buddies for many years.

(Emphasis mine. That will be important in a moment.)

Note that my father calls the trip the ‘Tom Mboya Airlift.’ However, the 1960 article in TIME magazine calls it the ‘Kennedy Airlift.’ At first I chalked the difference up to cultural pride--of course, each nation would want to give their countryman the credit. After that, it seemed that the bit of history was settled. (Obama was on his own as far as the Selma issue went, however.)

Then, last week, I received an email from a gentleman named Gregory Gelembiuk who provided yet more info about the airlift. Mr. Gelembiuk contended that Senator Obama was deliberately lying about the Kennedy connection because the Ivy-educated senator was more used to doing in-depth research than I am, because he has access to more information than I do and because the senator has a history of, shall we say, selective recall. All are true but I was merely going by what my father had said.

Later in the week I received an email from the Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs who asked about the same information, so I provided him with my father’s email address and at least one link, courtesy of Mr. Gelembiuk. I don’t know whether either was useful to Mr. Dobbs, but today’s Post contains his piece entitled “Obama Overstates Kennedys' Role in Helping His Father.”

Contrary to Obama's claims in speeches in January at American University and in Selma last year, the Kennedy family did not provide the funding for a September 1959 airlift of 81 Kenyan students to the United States that included Obama's father. According to historical records and interviews with participants, the Kennedys were first approached for support for the program nearly a year later, in July 1960. The family responded with a $100,000 donation, most of which went to pay for a second airlift in September 1960. [SNIP]

A more accurate version of the story would begin not with the Kennedys but with a Kenyan nationalist leader named Tom Mboya, who traveled to the United States in 1959 and 1960 to persuade thousands of Americans to support his efforts to educate a new African elite. Mboya did not approach the Kennedys for financial support until Obama Sr. was already studying in Hawaii.

So the problem is that there was more than one sortie in the airlift and Obama--and Hot Air's Allahpundit and myself--got one of the Kennedy-funded trips confused with earlier ones which had different funding--an easy thing to do since none of us were born yet when the events in question occurred. Personally I didn't even know about the airlifts until Obama mentioned it last year and I asked my father about it afterward.

Compounding the confusion, my father innocently bunches all of the sorties together when telling of the endeavor in his 2004 column. He speaks of hundreds of students being the beneficiaries of Mboya’s idea rather than the eighty-one students in the singular year of 1959, among them himself and Obama Sr.

In 1959 Mboya coordinated an “airlift” of 81 Kenyan students to the United States to attend college, and shortly after attending the “Africa Freedom Dinner,” Mboya wrote [Dr. Martin Luther] King requesting financial assistance for a Kenyan student who was to enter Tuskegee Institute in the fall. In an 8 November 1959 letter to the New York Times Mboya explained: “Nothing constitutes a greater contribution to the struggle against poverty, disease and political subjection in Africa more than the contribution made towards our peoples’ educational advancement.” With the help of the African American Students Foundation and its sponsors, Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, and Sidney Poitier, Mboya raised sufficient funds to cover the students’ travel expenses.

Believing that Africans and African Americans shared “a common struggle” against colonialism and segregation King took an active interest in the education of African students. He encouraged college presidents in the United States to expand financial aid options available to Africans. He arranged for the Montgomery Improvement Association and other Montgomery organizations to fund five Kenyan students to study at American universities and pledged the SCLC and Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to fund the living expenses for Kenyan student, Nicholas Raballa, who was admitted to Tuskegee Institute.

(It is interesting to know that Mboya went to the black glitterati of the era for help and good to know that they came through. Upon discovering this new information, I briefly considered being nicer to Mr. Belafonte from now on, then discarded the notion. After all, who knows who else will be discovered to have been responsible for Obama's and my presence in this country?)

The bottom line is this: I dissent from Misters Gelembiuk, Dobbs and Morrissey in that I think the discrepancies in the airlift story are an innocent mistake on Obama's part. Of course I understand why they do not believe this-- they're thinking of all the not-so-innocent mistakes on topics large and small which the good senator has made. I, too, would have come to a similar conclusion if it weren't for the mitigating circumstances which I've highlighted. But "I ain't mad at" the above gentlemen if they're not convinced.

See, that's the problem with chronic dissembling. Even when you make an honest-to-goodness oopsie, no one believes that it stems from honesty or goodness.

[Re-edited]

The New-Old Kenya

Kenya’s parliament has implemented the changes in the country’s constitution which (re)create the office of prime minister—a position designated for ODM’s Raila Odinga--and attendant deputies.

This week’s constitutional amendments partially redefined the structure of government and portrayed a nation in the mood for reforms when Parliament sealed the power-sharing deal between President Kibaki and Mr Odinga.

An entirely new constitution is in the offing within one year.

Meanwhile, down on the ground, old hurts are nursed and older battles continue. My father wonders whether his countrymen can give up the “social HIV called tribalism." No more than any other group of humans, Mzee--if the fact that it rages here in the ‘Land of the Free’ is an indication. We can only remain vigilant against personal bitterness.

BTW, for those who were following when I didn't know the terrestrial whereabouts of my progenitor--Philip Ochieng--during the height of the Kenya Crisis, I can tell you where he is now as then: near a modem and a cell phone.

Kenya: A Point or Two in The Right Direction

With the more obvious aspects of Kenya’s social and political crises concluding, presenting a page dedicated to information about the country would seem to be a day late and a dollar short--were it not for the existence and presidential candidacy of Barack Obama.

Of course there are pages that are far more detailed and better researched than the one linked to above. But since I took it upon myself to put together information about what’s going on over there and to talk about it, it only seems fair to my readers to offer at least the bare bones of some facts, to at least point the way to answers. Fairness was also on my mind when it comes to those whom I have continuously excoriated and will continue to excoriate for repeating falsehoods--falsehoods implanted in their minds by those who would twist the still-perilous situation in Kenya to suit their own prejudices, fears and fantasies. (That last particular bit of fairness stems from one of the axioms in my personal code of conduct: bitching should never have itself as its sole purpose for existing if it can be helped. If one has a complaint, she should have at least one solution in mind. This is mine.)

Sources are multiple where possible--I tried not to rely on Wikipedia too much. Some sources are rank opinion but have within them still other sources. Obviously, as the number of sources read increases so will the view of Kenya's history and its woes become less distorted--at least for those with eyes to see. Suggested additions and verifiable (and polite) corrections are welcome.

Be vigilant against harsh reality. Making shizzam up doesn’t count. (A rebuttal.)

The Kenya Crisis

Kenya News: March 3, 2008

*Odinga predicts that Kenya can lure back the tourists and investors that were driven away by the violence of the last couple of months, depending on how fast the new coalition government “gets to work” with Odinga filling the soon-to-be created prime minister slot. Good luck with that.

*Meanwhile, the idea that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign planted the photos of rival Barack Obama as the latter was being costumed by a Kenyan Somali elder in native garb has reached the other side of the world; an idea of which I'm still skeptical. But, like the erroneous idea that the country of Somalia has something to do with this, the idea that Clinton has denigrated the Somali tribe of Kenya has circumvented the globe countless times while the truth probably will be ignored. What do I think is the truth? Those whose fear of Obama makes them nuts are probably the culprits. BTW, the latter are the flip side of the (other) whackos who have enshrined Obama as some sort of redemption figure.

*Kofi Annan has surprised me again. Upon his exit from Kenya following his diplomatic success, he urges Kenyan citizens to keep the figurative fire under their leaders—instead of the literal version under each other.

In your communities, in your villages and in your cities, maintain the pressure, maintain your interest and you will be surprised that if you do that how politicians miraculously find the courage to do the right thing…" Sound familiar: of, by, for.

*The constitutional amendment process necessary to recreate the position of prime minister will start in Kenya’s parliament on March 6.

*Kenya: histories of hidden war--This is a long, fascinating, even witty piece on Kenya’s dual image in the western psyche—and on reality. The reality is that it’s all about land and tribes. Read these instead of the work conjured by the fantasists who run off half-cocked about religious wars.

*Celebration and gratitude toward Annan, but the other Ochieng is skeptical of long-term success, to put it mildly; he’s seen this before. (BTW, I still don’t know exactly where he is.

What insures the ruling clique is that the masses - because of their anger - do not know the real structure of these sources of their miseries. Why? Because of yet another sin of commission perpetrated by the ruling clique.

It deliberately sings tribal songs to play our ethnic communities against one another in order to seal their minds against all social comprehension, so that, at elections, the people are forced to support only the candidates of their tribes - even where a candidate is a known murderer, thief or rapist.

Thus – although the anger has long-standing economic and constitutional roots – whenever it is triggered by many a Samuel Kivuitu**, it eggs the victims to rush for one another’s necks on the basis of tribe while the real culprits (of all tribes) enjoy their wealth padlocked in maximum security in their suburban homes.

*The US kicks in $25 million worth of reconstruction aid. I suspect that there are persons on both sides of the Atlantic who aren’t happy about this even though the amount isn’t that high. (Oprah probably has that in her purse in singles.)

*And, ending on a good note, a Kenyan man and a Russian woman won yesterday’s LA Marathon, with the woman dusting off several of the other Kenyan male runners!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Russia's Tatiana Aryasova made a smashing marathon debut Sunday, taking advantage of a head start on the male runners to capture the Los Angeles Marathon.

She held off a group of Kenyan men and finished in 2 hours, 29 minutes and 9 seconds. She gave little thought to the men in pursuit.

"It didn't matter to me," she said through a translator. "If I see the men behind me, it's not going to make me run faster."[SNIP]

Kenya's Laban Moiben won the men's division in 2:13:50. Aryasova and Moiben each received $20,000 and a car for winning their divisions.

BTW, thanks, runners, for creating the annual maze in downtown LA from which I had trouble escaping.

The Kenya Crisis

**Kivuitu is the head of the Electoral Commission of Kenya. Many believe that he trigger much of the violence by prematurely announcing President Kibaki's victory. Later Kivuitu blamed "outside forces" for making the election results controversial and said that he wasn't really sure who had won the presidency. I get the feeling that my father doesn't like him.

UPDATE: Acting Together for Kenya: Agreement on the Principles of Partnership of the Coalition Government. This is the preamble to the power-sharing agreement for which the signatories are Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. The witnesses are Kofi Annan and the present chairman of the African Union, President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania. (Each head of an African state takes his/her turn at the African Union chair.)

(Thanks to Wangari Kebuchi)

Kenya: Coalition Government Agreed To

Well it appears as though Kofi Annan's "go-along-or-else" tactic worked.

NAIROBI, Kenya - Kenya's rival politicians reached an agreement Thursday on a coalition government after weeks of bitter negotiations on how to end the country's deadly postelection crisis, mediator Kofi Annan said. [SNIP]

"We have come to an understanding on the coalition government," Annan told reporters. He added: "All I can say is that we do have an agreement."

The devil will surely be observable in the details.

This post is guaranteed to be updated.

UPDATE: Bloomberg:

The [power-sharing] agreement creates the post of prime minister who will have authority ``to coordinate and supervise government functions,'' former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at the signing ceremony in the capital, Nairobi. The prime minister and two deputies will be included in cabinet, Annan said.

The prime minister will be chosen by the largest party in Parliament, Annan said. That is Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement, which won 99 seats in the 222-member legislature.

The Kenya Crisis

Kenya News: February 26-27, 2008--Peace Talks Unsuccessful (UPDATED)

Annan stops the talks in order to jump-start them. Will it work? Not with people who really don’t want to talk.

To the news that Kibaki'€™s PNU and Odinga's ODM have failed to reach and agreement regarding power-sharing—specifically failing to agree as to the duties and scope of a theoretical Kenyan Prime Minister--the Daily Nation’s columnists react in frustration, among other emotions.

Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai enumerates the individual signs representing the downfall of her country and the dearth of leadership which spurs it ever forward. Meanwhile, Odinga’s ODM gears up for more protests, set to begin Thursday. I suppose that he thinks that doing the same the over again will yield a different result than the last time. Calculate the odds.

From David Kayumba at the African Executive, Sovereignty or Responsibility: Kenya at the Crossroads.

Recently the Kenyan Justice Minister Martha Karua asked the international community to stop pressurizing her government because Kenya is a sovereign state. Karua's understanding and application of ‘sovereignty’ when Kenyans are slaughtering each other yet her government has failed to guarantee security of persons, needs to be challenged. [SNIP]

We should not be begging juntas and cliques to hold people at ransom simply because they possess coercive instruments of power!

State sovereignty derives its legitimacy from people’s sovereignty and as such, the role of a state is that of an agent. The preservation of the latter cannot be done at the expense of the former. Individual sovereignty is a natural right that man comes into life with. Man is by nature a sovereign citizen of the earth and by this status, his/her inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property are inviolable. [SNIP]

How many Africans live abroad as refugees simply because of failed states that keep on boasting of sovereignty!? These Africans, though refugees, enjoy a level human dignity in their host countries. They are the sovereigns of themselves.

Condoleezza Rice say that there's no excuse for Kenya violence and the US is prepared to penalize Kenya for its leaders' obstinacy, whether the penalty ison purpose or not.

(Note: Since most of this post was composed yesterday, there is a higher chance than usual of an update being in the offing.)

UPDATE: A good development-- At Annan's request, Odinga postpones the announced new protests.

The Kenya Crisis

Since Everyone is So Interested in Kenya

...all of a sudden...

(Hey, Bozo! This is post number 44 of a series, rather than a fantasy-laden misshapen massaging of the facts put forth via a standalone, context-less blurb.)

Not Ready to Make Nice:Both Odinga and Kibaki find ways to dash the hopes of their countrymen by continuing to bicker over the role, function and duties of a proposed PM—the creation of which would require an amendment to the Bomas Draft aka the Kenya Constitution.

My father: Constitutions were made to be amended—especially when life and limb are at stake.

In a Letter to the Editor at the Daily Nation, readers contend that the ICG has endangered the lives of Kenyan runners—almost all Kalenjin--by claiming that they’ve participated in some of the massacres.

“No Political Will”: As promised, Odinga’s ODM will “peacefully protest” the lack of resolution to the crisis, said lack being exacerbated by Odinga’s trip out of the country over the weekend.

Kofi is almost ready to leave the Kenyans to their self-appointed fate.

Fear of a Barack Planet

From Politico:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of "shameful offensive fear-mongering" by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.

Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling attention to the African roots of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

"The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat front-runner dressed as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya," the Drudge Report said. [SNIP]

Plouffe said in a statement: “On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election.

The dervishes started their whirl about this yesterday in conservative blogs. I remember thinking “this will be a losing proposition for anyone who runs with it.” But if this particular aspect of the Obama-is-really-a-Muslim Whisper Campaign was ginned up by the Clintons, then Senator Clinton more desperate than we may have thought.

The move is so bad that it even caused GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele to bash it.

Back to conservative bloggers and their assertions about Obama’s religion. Many of them tend to try to figure out how Obama’s religion—whatever it may be--fits into his Kenya Luo heritage, his visits to Kenya, his relationship with Raila Odinga* (his second cousin), the present political and social chaos in Kenya and all of the other issues concerning the senator’s ties to that country. The problem with much of their analysis is that they tend to shape it to fit the conclusion. Therefore, since they “know” that the man is an undercover Muslim, then anything he does points to his being a Muslim—including having the temerity to meet with a relative and not being able to predict that the person will misbehave later on; including visiting a culture and being open to wearing their traditional dress.

There’s even some clown that’s claiming that Obama isn’t even an ‘African-American,’ but ‘Arab-American.’ Still others, expound from their wealth of knowledge and logic, want to claim that the senator isn’t ‘African-American’ because he isn’t a descendant of American slaves. (This sort of legalistic Bravo Sierra is why I prefer terms like ‘black,’ ‘black American’ or ‘black African.’ Also, I heard a Tuskegee Airman used the term ‘African-descended American’—very good.)

Of the several sites devoted to exploring Obama’s background, I’ve found only one that presents uncovered facts and lets the reader come to conclusions (the preamble notwithstanding). He is also open to correction.

Don’t get me wrong. I think that it’s reasonable to check into Obama’s past—including his religion. As a matter of fact it’s crucial to question the senator’s ties to Trinity United Church of Christ—whose About page makes no mention of the Sacrifice and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and the Salvation offered there from, and whose platform is remarkably exclusionary and similar in tone to that of the Nation of Islam. (TUCC also has ties to Louis Farrakhan, who talks up Obama whenever he can.)

I just think that it’s best not to operate from fear and the Right’s fear of Obama is palpable. Fear is what terrorists are selling and it also makes one blunder, conservatives. Ask Senator Clinton.

Learn to separate what is proven from the apparitions found in your nightmares.

And if Robert Spencer isn't worried, should you be?

(Thanks to Drudge and to Hot Air)

*There is this document which is supposed to have been signed by Odinga. It is a Memo of Understand which promises Kenya’s Muslims—10% of the population—that, if elected, Odinga would enact Sharia law. Many Kenyans seem to think that it’s a forgery, but no answers are forthcoming. A lot of actual research was done by Eric Scheie with links posted in this comment.

Kenya Fake Out (UPDATE: Odinga Meets with Former Nigerian President)

*After all the talk of a deadline imposed by the ODM and the talk of a final resolution to the Kenya crisis being imminent, what does ODM’s Raila Odinga do? He leaves the country, headed to parts unreported.

Causing the other principals to break with no deal made.

*Kenya’s Red Cross Society has registered 420 missing children.

*Members of Athletics Kenya, an organization whose purpose speaks for itself, stand accused by the International Crisis Group (ICG) of funding many of the killings. The body’s chairman, Isaiah Kiplagat, disputes this.

[F]ar from promoting violence, Rift Valley athletes were known for their involvement in local competitions promoting peace.

"I am sure no single athlete was involved in promoting violence as reported," Kiplagat said.

"They are busy training for coming competitions and they would not have that time for those things. In fact, as we speak, many are abroad training because of the problems here."

*And, an individual Kenyan athlete is thankful to be back home—in Kentucky.

UPDATE: Odinga is in Nigeria meeting with that country's former president, Olusegun Obasanjo. And before the usual suspects begin to wail, Obasanjo is a Christian.

The Kenya Crisis

Kenya News: February 21, 2008 (UPDATE: Peace Deal Done?)

*Women in White: The phrase "Women and Children Hit Hardest" is usually deployed in a sarcastic manner here in the USA; the purpose being to mock the purveyors of Identity Politics and of Nanny-statism. With the Kenya Crisis, however, the phrase carries none of its sarcasm and all of its horror: women and children--the most vulnerable groups--are the victims of not only quick deaths, but slow ones. Deaths of optimally functioning bodies, souls and spirits.

Kenyan women wearing white clothes to symbolise peace vowed on Thursday to surround the venue of crisis talks until a solution is found to the east African country's worst turmoil since independence.

Many women and children have been among the victims of post-election violence which has killed at least 1,000 people and forced more then 300,000 from their homes in a country previously seen as one of Africa's most stable.

Cases of rape and sexual violence doubled within days of trouble erupting, according to the United Nations. In refugee camps, traumatised children in makeshift classrooms have been drawing burned houses and beheaded people.

"All of you -- wear your white dresses, carry your food. Tomorrow (Friday) we shall go to peace house," said Violet Mavisi, an activist with the Coalition of Women for Peace and Justice, referring to the Nairobi hotel where talks are ongoing.

"We will circle their cars and make sure that those guys do not come out of there without a peace settlement."

*Kenya's religious leaders--Christian, Muslim and Hindu--call for new elections. Their statement is here.

*Odinga’s ODM threatens to resume protests if Kibaki’s PNU remains intransigent on changing the constitution to create the post of prime minister. The position was abolished by Jomo Kenyatta, independent Kenya’s first president. The government calls the threat a ‘bullying tactic’ since the all of the other protests resulted in many deaths. ODM has given a one week deadline.

The PNU responds by naming the threat: blackmail.

*Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai receives death threats via SMS. Text messaging has been a popular method of stoking the violence in Kenya.

*Clashes in Kenya’s Mount Elgon are going on unabated. In fairness, these clashes have been going on sporadically for years, with the main actor said to be a group called Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLDF). The bone of contention? Land allocation and distribution from the government. The grievance sounds familiar if you've been paying attention.

"Mt Elgon is a reflection of the country. If we had taken this [the Mt Elgon crisis] as a case study then maybe it would have helped solve the current crisis in the country," she added. ['She' is the National Council of Churches of Kenya coordinator for the western region, Florence Makhanu.]

*Kenya’s woes are destabilizing the entire East African region.

Before violence erupted after the disputed December 2007 election, Kenya was the region’s hub, with many people in neighbouring countries traveling frequently to the capital, Nairobi, for medical treatment, holidays, trade and education. IRIN spoke to a cross-section of people in Burundi, Rwanda, Somalia, Uganda and Tanzania and Sudan to gauge how the crisis was affecting them:
“Most consumables in Rwanda are imported, so delays in delivery from Kenya mean shortages, which translate into price hikes, which of course have an effect on our pockets,” a young Rwandan executive, who requested anonymity, told IRIN. “The sooner Kenya can return to a normal state of affairs, the better for us all in the region.”

Remember what Douglas Farah said: a destabilized Kenya is an opportunity for a “stabilizing” force.

The Kenya Crisis

UPDATE: Peace deal done? Almost.

Kenya’s rival political parties have nearly completed a deal to end the crisis that has kept this country on edge for almost two months, with the government agreeing to create a prime minister position, one of the opposition’s chief demands, a high-ranking government official said Thursday.

Not all the details have been worked out, the official said, but lawyers were drafting language on Thursday evening that would outline the job description of the prime minister position and how it would be incorporated into Kenya’s political framework.

An opposition official [ODM] confirmed that a deal was close, but was a bit more cautious, saying that the amount of power given to the new prime minister position had not yet been pinned down.

“It’s a major achievement,” said the opposition official, on the condition of anonymity because both sides had been asked by international mediators not to speak to the news media. “The next challenge will be to put meat on the bone.”

Odinga has said that the bare minimum he would accept is a post as PM--a position that was abolished by President Jomo Kenyatta in 1964.

Kenya News: February 19, 2008

* “Don’t tell us what to do.” The Kenyan government’s pride comes to the fore as it coolly welcomes US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Wasn’t that same pride the problem in the first place? Rice met with Kibaki and Odinga separately and with Kofi Annan. Rice: “[T]he time for a political settlement was yesterday.”

* Some of the reforms may include the return of the office of Prime Minister. The office was abolished by Kenya’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta , in 1964.

* “God welcomes everybody”: Normally a Christian missionary transport service, the Mission Aviation Fellowship has been evacuating Kenyan refugees from areas of heavy violence and it has done so without asking about tribe.

During these flights, passengers were sometimes eye to eye with members of the opposing tribe. [SNIP]

"The first thought, as a Christian, that you would have is ‘How can they kill each other?'" Terlouw said. What is happening here is absolutely horrifying. The church has called for reconciliation, but leaders realized that even their request was "preaching in a way that supported their own tribe."

The church made a leap forward recently when they confessed this. Terlouw said church leaders made a new statement of reconciliation: "Whatever our tribal background is, we belong to Jesus, and we want peace at any cost. We want to reconcile with anybody, whatever tribe, whatever color. And for the first time I think, that was not just lip-service, but that was real."

* With the 2008 Olympics on the horizon, Kenya’s team—whose members come from various tribes, of course-- may have to train in another country.

* A prominent Kenyan journalist—not my father—refuses to return home from a trip to New York. Interesting: he’s ODM’s Communications Chief.

* Six people have died of cholera in Kenya’s Mandera region.

* Who’s blogging Kenya? Its surprisingly large middle-class, naturally. (Thanks to Andrew Sullivan)

* Meanwhile, the proverbial "youths" don't want to compromise.

The youths from [Odinga's] Luo ethnic group who burned buildings in Kisumu in the wake of the election say they will accept little in the way of compromise. The stones in the road – marking the spot where one their friends was shot by riot police – could quickly become missiles.

"We voted for a president, not a prime minister," says one. "The least we can accept is an interim government with a revote in six months."

The young men, who spend their days drinking or smoking bhang, the local name for marijuana, are typical of the dispossessed from whom Odinga draws much of his support.

He campaigned on a policy of majimbo – a form of devolved government that promised to share the benefits of Kenya's booming economy with those who felt they were missing out to members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe.

In short, he offered his supporters hope.

Jaguba Nyabanda Anyango, a mechanic, says: "[Mr. Kibaki] has taken his people to the government. Now we want [Odinga] to take all Luos to government and provide jobs."

Without Odinga in the State House, they all say they will rip up their voting cards and turn their backs on Kenya's political system.

But first, they will burn what is left of Kisumu's once pretty city center.

"That is automatic if [Odinga] betrays us," says one of the young men.

The Kenya Crisis

Bush in Africa and More

President Bush and Mrs. Bush are in Africa this weekend (a six-day sojourn), with the intent to visit the countries of Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda and Tanzania. It's the president's second trip to the continent; let’s hope that he’ll skip the dancing. Among the objectives of trip are to highlight the US projects which aim to conquer AIDS and malaria and to scout out a site for the headquarters of the newly-created Africa Command. The only government which has offered to host the new command is that of Liberia.

Kenya had been on the itinerary but the president purposely avoided countries with unstable governments and, therefore, that leg of the trip was canceled for obvious reasons. Instead, the president sent Condoleezza Rice to Kenya. The SOS will arrive on Monday but will only be there for a few hours--just enough time to convey the president’s call for an end to the violence and his endorsement of a power-sharing agreement; basically to cosign on Kofi Annan’s efforts to convince Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga to take that option.

Maenwhile, the people long for normalcy:

"Why are [Kibaki, Odinga and Annan] not hitting the main issue so we can have a normal life in Kenya?" 35-year old taxi driver Dan Omondi told The Associated Press in the western city of Kisumu, which has seen some of the worst of the ethnic violence sparked by the political dispute. "When you are hungry you need food, not appetizers."

But others recognize that it isn't up to the Big Wigs to give life--real life--to the citizens. It never was.

In the case of Kenya, blame at this point would serve no useful purpose. Hundreds have died and thousands are displaced. We must focus on resolving the crisis. The U.S. and other Western countries have suggested direct face-to-face negotiations between Odinga and Kibaki. This Western approach NEVER worked in Africa.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan, and AU Chairman, John Kufuor and others have all suggest Government of National Unity (GNU) but that NEVER worked anywhere in Africa – not even South Africa after apartheid was dismantled. It is time for a NEW APPROACH – an African approach.

It starts by recognizing that the crisis is now beyond the capabilities of Odinga and Kibaki to resolve. When two elephants, it is the grass that gets hurt, says an African proverb. [SNIP]

The crisis in Kenya now is for ALL Kenyans to resolve. A sovereign national conference must be convened with representatives drawn from all sections of Kenyan society: political parties, religious bodies, tribal groups, professional groups, student groups, etc.

Here are a couple of excerpts from Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer's press briefing while enroute to the continent. First there's an overview of Global Peace Operations Initiative.

I think that it's important to know that our -- that we have a major initiative that's intended to build the capacity of Africans, themselves, to respond to conflict. That's the Global Peace Operations Initiative. It's called GPOI. And that was an initiative that the President pushed the administration to develop. It started in 2005. It provides $660 million over five years to train 75,000 peacekeepers worldwide, with a focus on Africa. To date, we've trained about 39,000 Africans in peacekeeping, and also equip them. And of the Africans deployed around the world in peacekeeping operations -- of which the majority are, again, Africa -- 80 percent have been trained by the United States. So we think that this is a major contribution to conflict resolution on the continent.

Then the situation in Kenya is addressed.

Q Do you feel like President Kibaki feels too comfortable in his U.S. support, his support from Washington, and that might make him less likely to make compromises that he might otherwise?

AMBASSADOR FRAZER: I think that both President Kibaki and Raila Odinga appreciate the strong support that the United States has provided to Kenya, and they see the United States as key to helping them to resolve this crisis. And so I think that both have heard our message that it will not be business as usual, and that any individuals who are seen as obstructing the effort towards a peace process, a power sharing agreement, as the President stated, will be subject to possible further sanction by the U.S. We've talked about a visa ban, but there are other issues and ways in which we can try to encourage them to negotiate in good faith.

Q Do you have a concern there's an impression -- perhaps a misimpression -- that the President is not engaged in solving conflict?

AMBASSADOR FRAZER: I think that there's some people who don't know what the true record is. And especially when you're in Washington, we need to step outside of the politics and look at the record.

And, finally, here are some excerpts from another excellent and very sad article on the origins of the Kenya conflict and the lastest effects: Balkanization.

Luos have gone back to Luo land, Kikuyus to Kikuyu land, Kambas to Kamba land and Kisiis to Kisii land. Even some of the packed slums in the capital, Nairobi, have split along ethnic lines.

The bloodletting across the country that has killed more than 1,000 people since the election seems to have subsided in the past week. But the trucks piled high with mattresses, furniture, blankets and children keep chugging across the countryside, an endless convoy of frightened people who in their desperation are redrawing the map of Kenya. [SNIP]

Whatever deal is struck will have to address the growing de facto segregation, since a resettlement of the country may further entrench the political and ethnic divisions that have recently erupted. Shattered trust is much harder to rebuild than smashed huts, and many people say they will never go back to where they fled.

“How can we, when it was our friends who did this to us?” said Joseph Ndungu, a shopkeeper in the Rift Valley, who said that men he used to play soccer with burned down his shop. [SNIP]

The roots of the problem go deeper than the disputed election, in which the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner over the top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, despite widespread evidence of vote rigging.

At the heart is a tangle of long-festering political, economic and land issues. Part of the trouble is the winner-take-all system in Kenya, which happens in much of Africa, where leaders often favor members of their own ethnic group and in the process alienate large swaths of the population. Many people in Kenya saw this coming even before independence in 1963.

“We were worried about the smaller tribes getting dominated by the bigger ones,” said Joseph Martin Shikuku, a 75-year-old opposition figure. “And you know what? That’s exactly what happened.”

The Kenya Crisis

Declaration to Defend My Own Honor

Being American-born and -raised and Kenyan Luo descended via my biological father,

Having given the bulk of my adulthood into the service of this great nation,

Having taken much heat for being a black Republican—heat from Democrats/Liberals/Leftists--and Conservatives!--both black and white ,

Having been open in my embrace of the Free Gift of Salvation from Jesus Christ,

Knowing the centuries of havoc that Islamists and Islamic conquerors have wrecked and continue to wreck upon “abd” aka black Africans,

Having wondered whether my biological father is dead or alive as he flees his own countrymen,

Having never met said biological father face-to-face,

Having attempted to dispel some of the ignorance regarding the contemporary chaos in Kenya and regarding the Luo tribe—membership of which Obama and I happen to share,

And having pointed out that Obama and his cousin, Raila Odinga, have deep communist roots (as do most European-/American-educated Africans over 60),

I, nonetheless, have to put up with crap like this from an alleged ally:

You seem pretty unhinged and living in your own fantasy Baldilocks. Communists? They don't practise FGM do they? [Neither do Luos.] I hear all the Mungali [sic] leadership have reverted [sic] to Islam [sic]. Why are you covering for Islam? [Actually the last two sentences require one big SIC umbrella. -Ed.]

Posted by: BL@KBIRD | February 02, 2008 at 09:12 AM

In reply, BL@KBIRD, I cordially invite you to do something for me...

Go fornicate yourself.

RELATED:

Pull Your Head Out
A Warning to the Right

Battling Tribalism

Here's today's rant from one of my parental units. (I have more than two, but you know which one.)

It is the mind that instigates the crimes that we commit, including the chauvinism which leads you to attack your neighbour on account of his ethnic affiliation. The upshot is that, in the war on crime, mental education is a hundred times more effective than a hundred manacles.

The chief failing of all [Kenyan] upbringing – including the classroom formality that we claim to be “education” – is that it does not attempt to remove from our minds any of the groundless assumptions, sentiments and thoughts that we hold against one another as ethnic communities.

THE CHIEF CULPRITS ARE OUR PARENTS, OUR teachers, our priests and – by the favouritism with which they hire and fire – our government officials. If these are members of our most “educated” elite, how can we expect our mass of peasants and proletarians to know any better? [SNIP]

The police may have prevented much of what has happened. They may arrest us and the courts may sentence us to stiff punishment.

But they cannot arrest and detain or jail the parochialism that hag-rides us as races, tribes, genders and religions. It is not their duty. Appalling is the revelation, since December 27, that, since independence, Kenyans have not moved even a flea-hop in the direction of mental education, uplift and refinement.

Nothing is more embarrassing than to listen to PhDs from one community, seated at the counter of a pub, uttering the most fetid drivel about other tribes. They demand “revolutionary changes” in the body politic but only if these changes are manned by members of their tribe. At the counter – that’s why I call them counter-revolutionaries.

FOR IT IS THEY WHO OUGHT TO PLAY THE VANGUARD role in our seemingly insuperable task of creating a single national mind out of a conglomeration of disparate ethnic minds. Yet since December 27, I have not seen even a single suggestion from the academic community that tribalism is our national bane number one – leave alone how to tackle it. [SNIP]

No, December 27 has not intensified our parochialism. It has merely removed the outer coating of our small-mindedness. It has merely laid us bare.

The Kenya Crisis

Progress in Kenya? (UPDATED)

Joint government agreed to.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- Kenya's ruling party and opposition have agreed to form a power-sharing government in an effort to end weeks of bloodshed that have engulfed the country since a deeply flawed election, an opposition lawmaker said Friday.

The two sides were still discussing who would lead the government and what roles each party would play, said William Ruto, a lawmaker from the opposition Orange Democractic Movement.

"We have finally agreed that there is a problem in the country and neither side can proceed on its own," Ruto said. "We have agreed to form a joint government. Details of that government, its time and how to share it are under discussions."

This deal was brokered by Kofi Annan. Question, Kenyans: Why do our brethren need Kofi to give them a reason to stop murdering and raping?

Even so, observers--including this one--are cautiously optimistic.

UPDATE: And, right on cue, my father posts his English grammar column. The words of the day are 'sometimes,' some time' and 'sometime.'

The Kenya Crisis