baldilocks

Emperor Still Has No Clothes Alert (KingShamus)

Baldilocks wondered when President Obambya was gonna get around to asking Congress for authority to...you know...go to war.

I too have a question--Does SuperGenius Hussein McSmartyPants have a plan or is he just making it up as he goes along?

“Our military action is in support of an international mandate from the [United Nations]Security Council that specifically focuses on the humanitarian threat posed by Colonel Qadhafi to his people,” the American president said. “Not only was he carrying out murders of civilians, but he threatened more.”

Okee-dokee, St. Barry.  So you're just doing your Euro-hip Nobel Prize winning humanitarian act.  Right.  Got it.

“I also have stated that it is U.S. policy that Qadhafi needs to go,” Obama said, noting that a United Nations resolution last week authorizing force against Libya is based on humanitarian concerns, not regime change. “When it comes to our military action…we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.”

Wait...what?

I hate to get pushy about this, but which one is it Bamster?  Are we enforcing a no-fly zone, or are we trying to stick a fork into Mad Moammar? 

Maybe we should ask newly butched-up warlord Nicholas Sarkozy what the hell is going on here.  He might have a clue.  Obama clearly does not.  Even better than the President's feckless display of spectacular obliviousness is the fact that he's created a foreign policy scenario where a sawed-off twerpy French Prime Minister probably has the best handle on the situation.      

Besides Obama delivering the change we can all be horrified by, it's important to consult history.  Erwin Rommel famously remarked, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Very true, but the Field Marshall never told us what would happen to the plan when we finally made contact with our allies.  In case you've gotten confused, we're supposed to be protecting Libyan rebels from the predations of Colonel Qadaffi.  Nobody really knows who the hell these people are, who they're friends with or what kind of government they want to create in the place of the current.  Armed with that lack of information, of course we should throw our support behind the Libyan rebel forces.

Just to be clear:  Obama has just gotten us into a war where we're not really calling the shots while we're somehow doing most of the fighting with no clear idea what victory would look like for people who probably despise us with a thousand year old Kaaba-sized chip on their shoulders and who will most likely plot against us once we're done doing the wet work for them.

Anybody else ready for 2012?

War Powers Resolution of 1973

Pretty straight-forward.

PURPOSE AND POLICY

SEC. 2. (a) It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgement of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicate by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.

(b) Under article I, section 8, of the Constitution, it is specifically provided that the Congress shall have the power to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution, not only its own powers but also all other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

(c) The constitutional powers of the President as Commander-in-Chief to introduce United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations  where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the  circumstances, are exercised only pursuant to (1) a declaration of war, (2)  specific statutory authorization, or (3) a national emergency created by  attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed  forces.

Pray tell, which of the emphasized circumstances exists?  Which of these gives President Obama license to order the intervention in Libya?

Help me out, here.

Consistency

...among the leftmost wing of the House Democrats.  Good to see it.

Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Donna Edwards (Md.), Mike Capuano (Mass.), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Rob Andrews (N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.) “all strongly raised objections to the constitutionality of the president’s actions [in Libya]” during that call, said two Democratic lawmakers who took part.

Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) even asked why President Obama's actions aren't impeachable.  And from an unnamed Democrat lawmaker:

“They consulted the Arab League. They consulted the United Nations. They did not consult the United States Congress...They’re creating wreckage, and they can’t obviate that by saying there are no boots on the ground. … There aren’t boots on the ground; there are Tomahawks in the air.”

In my previous post, a guest tries to float (verb usage intentional) the idea that there was no congressional authorization for either of the Iraq Wars, among other actions in which the United States Military has been ordered to engage.  Of course the assertion about the two Iraq conflicts was easily disputed.  I haven't bothered to look up the others, most of which were conducted by Democrat presidential administrations.

I do hope the Left wing of the congressional Democrats stands firm.  We will see.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

There's Something Missing (UPDATED)

I can't figure out what it is.

BENGHAZI, Libya — President Barack Obama authorized limited military action against Libya Saturday, saying Moammar Gadhafi's continued assault on his own people left the U.S. and its international partners with no other choice. The Pentagon said it fired 110 cruise missiles at 20 targets along the Libyan coast.

Let me see...what's missing here?  Oh yes!  It's this: the US Congress hasn't authorized this military action aka war.

Surely we will soon be seeing the antiwar crowd out and about, blocking traffic and asserting that the president is waging an illegal war, a war-for-oil, etc.

I'm sure we will see this soon.

UPDATE:  President Obama is in Brazil.  He announced this strike against Gadhafi from the Brazilian capital. It appears that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is running things from Paris.

UPDATE: I knew we could count on the antiwar activists!

"Anti-war protesters arrested near White House"

The protesters, some shouting anti-war slogans and singing "We Shall Not Be Moved," were arrested after ignoring orders to move away from the gates of the White House. The demonstrators cheered loudly as Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in 1971 leaked the Pentagon's secret history of the Vietnam War that was later published in major newspapers, was arrested and led away by police.

And there were protests all around the country! New York, Chicago, San Francisco...

There's only one problem.  The protesters were there to mark the eighth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, to call for complete withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan (told ya so) and to support Bradley Manning, the Army private who leaked classified documents to Wikileaks.

It has only been one day, however. I'm sure they'll get around to protesting the US intervention in Libya.  I have faith!

 

Inciting Attack

This is what he has planned for all those who love and protect America and, ultimately, for America itself:  failure…

KABUL – Eight American troops were killed in two separate bomb attacks Tuesday in southern Afghanistan, making October the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces since the 2001 invasion to oust the Taliban.

In one of the insurgent assaults, seven Americans were killed while patrolling in armored vehicles, U.S. forces spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said. He said an Afghan civilian died in the same attack. The eighth American was killed in a separate bombing elsewhere in the south, also while patrolling in a military vehicle, he said.

…and demoralization.

[L]ast month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, [Foreign Service Officer Matthew] Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter [pdf] to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

Mr. Hoh is also a former Marine captain who served in Iraq.

When President Obama stated that he would continue until November to dither about General McCrystal’s request for an additional 40,000 troops, a child could have predicted that such an announcement would embolden both the Taliban and al Qaeda. 

Does anyone remember that we went into Afghanistan to clean out the nests of terrorists who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11?

It’s easy to see that the president is trying to lose Afghanistan.  But the loss would simply be another stab at the old America that the president wants to smother and would assist in making way for the America he wants to shape in his own image.

Will this wake America up?

President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

Helmeted, body-armored feds knocking on American doors—would that do it?

How much more foreign policy leg-spreading and domestic forging of tyranny does the president have to perpetrate before we see that we’ve been had?

Wait a minute.

If we flake out in Afghanistan, it won’t just embolden Islamists overseas…it will embolden those living here.

When the Mumbai terrrorist attacks happened, most observers concluded that such a thing would never occur here because too many American citizens go about armed—even in leftist utopias like my home state.  In Mumbai, armed Islamists ran wild for days.  Here, the duration would be roughly eight hours, max (about two in places like Oklahoma).

But what if Islamist did try a Mumbai-style attack here?  Would that give President Obama the excuse to create his SA…er…National Police Force? (Godwin can bite me.)

Is this what Vice President Biden was talking about last October?

Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough - I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur. [snip]

[I]t's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right. Because all these decisions, all these decisions, once they're made if they work, then they weren't viewed as a crisis. If they don't work, it's viewed as you didn't make the right decision...

(Maybe it's what the then vice president-elect only thought he was talking about.)

Pretty soon all such questions will have their answers.  I think that most of them do already.

(Thanks to the Drudge Report and to Instapundit)

PREVIOUSLY:  Told Ya So

UPDATE: One supposes that this is mere coincidence:

KABUL – Gunmen with automatic weapons and suicide vests stormed a guest house used by U.N. staff in the heart of the Afghan capital early Wednesday, killing at least seven people including three U.N. staff, officials said. A Taliban spokesman claimed responsibility, saying it was meant as an assault on the upcoming presidential election.

No, I don't think so either.

The Fruit of Anger, Part One

Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools. --Ecclesiastes 7:9 (KJV)

Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. --Romans 12:19 (NIV)

Black Cop: "If I told you once to take [poster with Obama-as-Joker] down and you put it back up then I can charge you with whatever I want to charge you with, okay?" [snip]

White Male Protester: "This used to be America."

Black Cop: "Well it ain't no mo', okay?"

When I asserted that the above-documented incident was evidence of racial discord that is being sown in the minds and spirits of Americans since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, some people didn’t believe me (and copped an attitude in their disbelief as well, which is always fun).

As the aphorism goes, there are some things that cannot be defined, but we know them when we see them. However, I will attempt to explain to my readers and guests why that incident was emblematic of the racial Sign of these Times. Fair warning: I’m thinking that this will take at least two posts.

Last year when those who were paying attention discovered the I-deology called “Black Liberation Theology,” many black Americans—including me--had the proverbial light bulb come on over our heads. You see, we had heard the rhetoric before. Not often in churches (though sometimes it is--as I’ll demonstrate below) and not holistically, but piecemeal--from various organizations within the communities in which we often live; organizations designed to “help” black people or “uplift” black/African heritage. (Side note: Often, the celebrators of this “African” heritage do not have the smarts or discipline to immerse themselves in the scholarship of any singular existing African culture. Knowing this to be a fact, a certain enterprising individual saw the value in fabricating a hybrid of African cultures and marketing that hybrid to a black populace who was mostly ignorant of what they were really embracing. Thus do we have Kwanzaa.)

Most black Americans have long been familiar with the Nation of Islam, their wacky theology, their assertion that the white race is Satan incarnate, etc. As a matter of fact, I’ve never hidden the fact that my immediate family--mother and stepfather--were members of the NOI when I was a teenager. (We’re all born-again Christians now.) But what most of us did not know  was that smaller, almost unknown organizations had sprung up in the 1960s with its messengers and its rhetoric, most of it similar to that of the NOI; revolving around hatred of white people and the innate supremacy of black Africans--a counter to the white supremacy under which most black Americans were subject prior to that time—and predicting that the superior African would ultimate triumph over his “natural” enemy, the European/Caucasian/white.

Most black Americans did not join these organizations; most didn’t even know that they existed and if they did know, they held them in contempt. However, if the formal structure was unknown, the rhetoric was not. “God-d*mn Amerika,” “US of KKKA” and much worse ersatz curses could be heard coming out of the mouths of every father, uncle, brother, grandfather, etc. who had ever been stopped for the sin of Driving While Black or whose progenitor had been formally if unjustly executed by the state…or had disappeared into the night, only to be found in a river…or buried in a shallow grave. Such curses were often heaped upon a country that once adhered to the separate-but-equal legal doctrine and once looked the other way as local government entities heaped oppression on American citizens of African descent. (Side note: not part of the Lynching Narrative were those black Americans known as “crazy n*ggers”--that is, black Americans in the South who took their right to bear arms seriously. Those white Southerners inclined to terrorize blacks wouldn’t bother such men. I’m told that my great-grandfather, Lucius Jenkins, was such a man. Dr. Condoleezza Rice says that her father was yet another.)

In the fifties and sixties, things began to change—not all at once, but gradually, as is typical of societal upheavals. (In reality, the “gradual” change happened pretty quickly.) But by that time the anger was already brewing and the impatience with the work of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob had already caused many to abandon Him—as often happens when humans operate by their own time rather than God’s.

That’s an overview of why organizations like both the old and New Black Panthers exist. But there's something special about Black Liberation Theology: many if not most black Americans knew of its fabric but did not know that it existed as a coherent package of principles and tenets with a label. Black Liberation Theology has long walked covertly as underlying current snaking its way into the thinking of Americans who are black and who fail to keep up their spiritual guard. This previously unnamed ideology would pop up its head in various venues and unlikely sources. Example: several years ago, my great-aunt claimed that somewhere in the Bible there existed a prophecy predicting that “the black man would rule the earth.” Having read the Bible back and forth, I heatedly disputed this notion—not because I cared whether black people would rule the earth or not, but because I was disgusted that someone would lie to her about the Word of God. Of course, she couldn’t cite the quote.

Several years later—last year to be specific—after the name of Reverend Jeremiah Wright became infamous and the tenets of Black Liberation Theology became well-known, I asked my aunt to think about where she had heard about the notion of world-wide black rule. She didn’t have to think too long. She’s Catholic and the assertion had come from a priest who was visiting her church; a Liberation Theologian--one of Sowers of the currently and continuously sprouting sapling called Racial Discord.

So what does all this have to do with the incident that occurred on August 25, 2009? Hint: go back to the beginning.

To be continued...

(Thanks to bgates)

PREVIOUSLY:  What the Sowers of Discord Hath Wrought

Told Ya So

Told ya so (August 1, 2007).

This is the deal: if we leave Iraq prematurely, bailing out of Afghanistan will shortly follow. If that happens things will get worse here—and I’m not just referring to the terrorists. Because if the terrorists either follow us home or the ones already here get the signal to act, the Left—who continues to ignore all the precursors to 9/11 and, therefore, has never believed Islamists when they say that their only goal is to kill, convert or subdue the world to Islam--will find a way to blame that on Bush and, yes, on the military.

And if that happens, we're all screwed.

Told ya so (August 20, 2007).

And yes, [the Leftists] want us out of Afghanistan too, no matter what they say.

Told ya so (February 25, 2008).

Don't forget, both Senators Clinton and Obama want us out of Iraq immediately and I contend that they're building up to calling for the withdrawal from Afghanistan--that's what Obama's contention regarding ammo shortages in Afghanistan was about. He heralded the beginning of a narrative.

Told ya so (April 15, 2008).

[T]he anti-war Left is building up to the point at which it can characterize Afghanistan in the same manner as it has done with Iraq—as a lost cause. I’ve seen the rhetorical beginnings of it here and there (and I think [AP chairman Dean] Singleton's aborted question was part of that) but no one prominent is ready to say it straight out. The foundation hasn’t been sufficiently laid yet.

I say that the overt denigration of our efforts in Afghanistan is on the way (and, no, it won’t have to make sense). Why? Because every Bush effort must be demonized and scrapped--every single one, even the so-called righteous War.

The Bush edifice must be torn down. Feel free to tell me that I'm wrong.

Told ya so (September 22, 2009 by Allahpundit).

Serious question about their “good [Afghanistan] war” lie: Was it really a lie if no one was fooled? [snip]

Feigning support for a mission launched in response to 9/11 to win an election is one thing; shrugging about it afterwards is another, and goes way, way beyond “blithe” unless you’re a stalwart dove or the type of see-no-evil sucker who laps up leftist canards about how Sunni and Shiite jihadists would never work together. But save the outrage: The lesson to draw, especially if you’re an independent, is that Democrats can’t be trusted to prosecute even a “good war,” even if it’s one that they explicitly promised to prosecute. Internalize that point, because I promise, it’s being internalized in Iran and Russia as I write this.

History of the Future (UPDATED)

Today is the 70th Anniversary of the invasion of Poland by the Soviet Union.  Following close on the heels of the invasion of the country by Hitler's Germany on September 1, 1939, this resulted in the disappearance of Poland until the aftermath of the Allied victory in World War II.

Do you think that President Obama knew this history before deciding to break America's agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic?  Neither do I.

But I bet that his puppeteers advisers did.  And I'm 100 percent sure that Vladimir Putin is celebrating.

(Thanks to Gabriel Malor)

PREVIOUSLY: I Can't Decide

UPDATE: Happy Judas Molotov-Ribbentrop Day!   Jules Crittenden notes the bitter irony of events and has some excellent links at the end on the history of World War II's beginning.

UPDATE: Arthur Chrenkoff reminds us of how savage were hallmarks of the the 20th century: the tribal wars and genocides of Europe.

The Second Revolution

In the wake of what appear to be a stolen election by Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (as if all Iranian presidential election outcomes since 1979's revolution aren’t determined in advance by the mullahs), Iran’s people are rising up against their rulers in favor of the opposing candidate, Mir Hossein Mousavi.  As with any revolution, it isn’t pretty.  It is, however, breath-taking.

Instead of going on over things about which I have only cursory knowledge (as if that has stopped me before) here are some words you should read and photos you should peruse.

How an authoritarian theocracy puts down dissent (photos and videos).

Totten—Iran’s government is the Foe of the World:

“Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei’s police and the Basij militia are using violence and terror to suppress the Iranian people at home. His terrorist proxies fire missiles at Israel while torturing, maiming, and murdering Palestinians. He sponsored a violent coup d’etat against the elected government in Beirut last year with his Hezbollah militia. He sponsors a terrorist insurgency against the elected government of Iraq, while his fanatical proxies shoot and kill American soldiers. A car bomb cell belonging to the regime’s Lebanese franchise was recently arrested in Azerbaijan, and more cells were rolled up in Egypt. Terrorists sponsored and encouraged by him and his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini, have murdered civilians from Argentina to Japan.

The regime’s only allies in the world are terrorist armies and Bashar Assad’s Baath Party state in Syria. Assad himself, like Khamenei and Ahmadinejad, is a pariah among the Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Azeris, and Israelis who make up the region.

 In Tehrangeles, support for the people.

 Obama Administration: No condemnation for Iran's violent government suppression of protest.  I thought that the president’s “We’re all Muslims now” speech had made things all better in the Muslim world! 

The world waits for the Leader of the Land of the Free.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

Missiles of November

Russia takes the opportunity to test welcome President-elect Obama to the world stage.

President [Dmitry] Medvedev ordered missiles to be stationed up against Nato’s borders yesterday to counter American plans to build a missile defence shield.

Speaking within hours of Barack Obama’s election, Mr Medvedev announced that Russia would base Iskander missiles in its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad – the former German city – next to the border with Poland.

He did not say whether the short-range missiles would carry nuclear warheads.

Taking advantage of the world’s attention on the US elections, Mr Medvedev also cancelled plans to withdraw three intercontinental ballistic missile regiments from western Russia by 2010.

In his first state-of-the-nation address, Mr Medvedev said the missiles would be deployed “to neutralise if necessary the antiballistic missile system in Europe”. He added that Russia was also ready to deploy its Navy off Kaliningrad and to install electronic jamming devices to interfere with the US shield, which relies on a radar station in the Czech Republic and ten interceptor missiles in Poland.

Well. I think that it doesn't take too much discernment to figure out that today's Presidential Daily Brief that DNI Chief Michael McConnell is conducting for the president-elect--his first top secret intelligence briefing--will have a distinctly Russian flavor.

Nato’s eastern members greeted the Russian move with dismay.

Gee, ya think?

21st Century Missile Crisis?

Peter the Great is headed for Venezuela:

Russia flexed its muscles in America’s backyard Tuesday as it sent one of its largest warships to join military exercises in the Caribbean. The nuclear-powered flagship Peter the Great set off for Venezuela with the submarine destroyer Admiral Chabanenko and two support vessels in the first Russian naval mission in Latin America since the end of the Cold War. [SNIP]

The voyage to join the Venezuelan Navy for operations came only days after Russian strategic nuclear bombers made their first visit to the country. Hugo Chavez, the President, said then that the arrival of the strike force was a warning to the U.S. The anti-American Venezuelan leader is due to visit Russian President Dmitri Medvedev in Moscow this week as part of a tour that includes visits to Cuba and China.

Peter the Great is armed with 20 nuclear cruise missiles and up to 500 surface-to-air missiles, making it one of the most formidable warships in the world. The Kremlin has courted Venezuela and Cuba as tensions with the West soared over the proposed U.S. missile shield in Eastern Europe and the Russian invasion of Georgia last month.

Missiles are equal to a missile shield in Vladimir Putin’s universe (as if the deployment of the warships has to be an equitable move on the part of the Soviets Russians).

Last week Russia deployed two TU-160 BLACKJACK strategic bombers to Venezuela in order to take part in military exercises with Hugo Chavez's forces. The bombers returned home Friday but not before they took a “stroll” around the Caribbean. Additionally, Russia is set to participate in naval exercises with Venezuela in November. So why is Russia's Navy down south right now?

The Russian military hasn’t deployed to the Western Hemisphere since the USSR broke up.

RUSSIA'S OTHER ISSUE: Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili calls for an international investigation into the origins of the Georgia-Russia conflict, saying that the West cannot allow the breakup of his country to stand. Good luck with that, Mr. President. As you well know, Russia is an old hand at manufacturing facts; creating the idea that Georgia was at fault for its own invasion and the annexation of its territory must have been like falling off of a log for our friend Vlad. In the West, we call this 'astroturfing.'

(Thanks to Hot Air)

Failing to Think Through the Propanganda

I've been pretty busy today but I had to laugh at this. CNN:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN's Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi on Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous* region of South Ossetia.

So, Vlad, are you going to tell us which candidate you have in mind? Perhaps the one who said that he looked in your eyes and saw the letters 'K,' 'G' and 'B?' Spill it, Komrad!

See, Putin has McCain in mind, of course, but the Tsar is just yapping for the benefit of the home crowd. What he might not have suspected when he decided to float that ridiculous assertion, however, is that, were he to name McCain, it would make it more likely that McCain would become president and not less. And you know that Putin would prefer to deal with Obama.

Keeping talking, Vlad.

*Was the region autonomous when Georgia went in? Or was it still located within the internationally recognized borders of Georgia?

Georgia and Russia: Who Started What

Michael Totten:

Virtually everyone believes Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili foolishly provoked a Russian invasion on August 7, 2008, when he sent troops into the breakaway district of South Ossetia. “The warfare began Aug. 7 when Georgia launched a barrage targeting South Ossetia,” the Associated Press reported over the weekend in typical fashion.

Virtually everyone is wrong. [SNIP]

Michael talks to two regional experts who state what those who have looked a little deeper into the cause of this situation could figure out: Russia has followed in the steps of the old USSR in that it tries to keep ethnic conflicts stoked in the independent countries which used to be its vassal states. The experts that Michael talked to point out that, since the break up of the Soviet Union, Russia has tried this over and over again, starting with the Baltics.

Go ahead and read the rest.

UPDATE: Just wanted to post one of Michael's excellent photos; this one was taken in Tbilisi.

UPDATE: US delivering "devilish" aid to Georgia. Pravda.

Day-Dreaming

Consider this scenario.

1. Illegal Mexican nationals inhabit, say, Arizona to the point of being a majority; the US government does nothing about it.

2. The Mexican government allows them to retain their citizenship.

3. The Mexican Nationals try to chase all the Americans who are not of Mexican descent out of the state--aka cleansing ethnically.

4. The Americans fight back.

(Yes, I know. Some of this isn't make believe.)

What do you think the US would do if Mexico came to the aid of their countrymen?

What would it do if Arizona declared its independence from the US?

And, forgetting the fact that the US has Mexico overwhelmingly outgunned--the fact that might usually makes right--who would be morally in the right?

UPDATE: Reality mirrors fiction and turns it on its side.

Security is being heightened along the southern U.S. border because of a threat that warring Mexican cartels may send hit men into the United States, authorities said Monday.

Law enforcement officials would not discuss specific security measures being taken at the ports of entry, along the border or in the city of El Paso, Texas.

"We received credible information that drug cartels in Mexico have given permission to hit targets on the U.S. side of the border," El Paso police spokesman Officer Chris Mears said.

You don't think what has happened in the Republic of Georgia could happen here? Think again.

To Russia With Love--Or Something

Speaking of philanthropy, Georgians haven't lost their sense of humor, it seems. In response to Russian looters, Tbilisi residents set up a fine display of modern art and world-class snark in front of the city's Russian embassy (click photos to get larger versions).

"To the Russian Army from the Georgian people"

Veronica Khokhlova has the English translation from Oleg Panfilov's blog.

To the Russian embassy in Tbilisi they brought old refrigerators, toilets, rolls of toilet paper, irons, bottles of vodka, forks and spoons, clothes and other objects that [looters from the Russian army] took interest in during their visits to private houses of Georgians, state institutions, military bases and army barracks.

People are coming up to have a closer look, shake their heads, laugh. Cars that are passing by are honking...

Now that's generosity!

UPDATE:Thanks, Glenn.

NOT SO FUNNY: "Russia can have at its borders only enemies or vassals."

Russia Planted

In spite of all the talk for the last few day that Russia had agreed to pull out of Georgia, Russia plans to build 18 new check points inside of the country--with the minority of them being in South Ossetia--while Russia's Deputy Chief of General Staff Anatoly Nogovitsyn says "we're not moving." "Peacekeeping," you know.

So much for the terms of the cease-fire.

"21st Century Barbarians"

Watching the press conference, taking place in Tblisi, featuring US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Georgian President Mikhiel Saakashvili. The president is formidable and eloquent in making his case against Russia.

More later. I have yet more duties this morning, however brief.

UPDATE:

UPI:

"With the signature of the Georgian president on the cease-fire accord, all Russian troops and any irregular and paramilitary forces that entered with them must leave (Georgia) immediately," Condoleezza Rice said Friday during a news conference in Tbilisi with Saakashvili. [SNIP]

At times speaking emotionally, Saakashvili emphasized the document he signed was "a cease-fire agreement, not a final settlement," stressing that his country would rebuild.

"We are under Russian invasion and Russian occupation right now," he said. "I want the world to know that Georgia never, ever will reconcile with ... occupation."

The description 'emotional' doesn't begin to cover the Georgian president's answers this morning.

Georgia has signed the agreement. Now it's on Russia. The thing is this, however: Russia and her parent, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and notorious for breaking/ignoring agreements, cease-fires and settlements alike.

UPDATE: A Russian armored Column is located 15 miles outside of Tbilisi. On the move?

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'.

Where Are The Anti-Warriors?

I see no reports of them marching in front of the Russian Embassy in DC.

No Code: PINK.

No International ANSWER.

Antiwar.com talks about the Russia-Georgia conflict, but only to criticize the actions of the Bush Administration and hint that the war isn't "all Russia's fault."

What gives?

UPDATE: Surely the anti-warriors will be up-in-arms (so to speak) about this!

TBILISI, Georgia - Russia ordered a halt to the war in Georgia on Tuesday, after five days of air and land attacks that sent Georgia's army into headlong retreat and left towns, military bases and homes in the U.S. ally smoldering. Georgia insisted that Russian forces were still bombing and shelling.

Despite the televised order by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia launched an offensive Tuesday in the Kodori Gorge, the only part of the breakaway region of Abkhazia still under Georgian control, sending in tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery.

Because War is Not the Answer!!!! Putin Medvedev (same thing) Lied! More Georgians Died! I'm sure that the human shields are headed to Abkhazia as I type this.

Rogue State (UPDATED)

Ralph Peters says, Meet the New Russia, Same as the old Soviet Union.

IT'S impossible to overstate the importance of what's un folding as we watch. Russia's invasion of Georgia - a calculated, unprovoked aggression - is a crisis that may have more important strategic implications than Iraq and Afghanistan combined.

We're seeing the emergence of a rogue military power with a nuclear arsenal. [SNIP]

This is the "new" Russia announcing - in blood - that it won't tolerate freedom and self-determination along its borders. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is putting it bluntly: Today, Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine (and the Baltic states had better pay attention).

Georgia's affiliation with the European Union, its status as a would-be NATO member, its working democracy - none of it deterred Putin.

Nor does Putin's ambition stop with the former Soviet territories. His air force has been trying (unsuccessfully) to hit the new gas pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. The Kremlin is telling Europe: We not only have the power to turn off Siberian gas, we can turn off every tap in the region, any time we choose.

Peters goes on to (correctly) lambaste the initial reactions of Barack Obama and George W. Bush. On John McCain's reaction seemed commensurate to the situation.

Peters also wonders why the West seems caught off-guard by Russia's actions.

Any soldier above the grade of private can tell you that there's absolutely no way Moscow could've launched this huge ground, air and sea offensive in an instantaneous "response" to alleged Georgian actions. [SNIP]

[The Russians] managed to arrange the instant appearance of a squadron of warships to blockade Georgia. And they launched hundreds of air strikes against preplanned targets. [SNIP]

Make no mistake: Moscow intends to dismember Georgia.

Peters turns his rant-guns to the MSM and then points to the alleged fecklessness of the Bush Administration:

Just as Moscow has reverted to its old habit of sending in tanks to snuff out freedom, Washington has defaulted to form by abandoning Georgia to the invasion - after encouraging Georgia to stand up to the Kremlin.

Reminds me of 1956, when we encouraged the Hungarians to defy Moscow - then abandoned them. And of 1991, when we prodded Iraq's Shia to rise up against Saddam - then abandoned them. We've called Georgia a "friend and ally." Well, honorable men and states stand by their friends and allies. We haven't.

I think Ralph Peters is an intelligent man who has knowledge far and away above my level, along with the ability to apply that knowledge to reality. So I'm wondering how he thinks that the US could act effectively to defend Georgia while we're in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wouldn't one of these endeavors ultimately get the short end? Wouldn't some entity be abandoned?

As I've said in a few places, there are no good choices for the US in this matter--and that's sometimes the way it is.

UPDATE: Responses proposed:

America must hit where it hurts: Russia’s international prestige, an obsession of Mr. Putin’s. To begin with, we must do everything possible to see Russia’s membership in the Group of 8 industrialized nations be suspended (something the Republican presidential hopeful John McCain called for even before this crisis).

Once the fighting is over, America must step up its campaign for NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Should European countries reject the idea, America could designate them “major non-NATO allies,” along the lines of Israel and Pakistan. This would involve more American military trainers in Georgia, intelligence-sharing, joint exercises and other steps, if not a full pledge by Washington to defend the country in case of attack.

Would being booted from the G8 really hurt Russia? And if both Ukraine and Georgia are voted into NATO, what happens if Russia ignores this, remains in Georgia and moves on to Ukraine? Will the EU members of NATO change its complacency spots? More than likely they will expect the US to act, then criticize us while our troops are dying and theirs are chillin' in the rear echelon. (Disclaimer: I'm an REMF myself.)

To paraphrase Darkstar: All. Bad. Choices.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

President Bush to Russia: End This

The POTUS says what all other observers have figured out: Russia wants Georgia back.

(Thanks to Hot Air)

Russia and Georgia: Regaining What Was Lost (UPDATED: Russians Almost Take Out Saakashvili)

Georgia backs down but Russia doesn’t; Georgia wants America and NATO to step in.

The Russians want regime change--Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compares Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to Saddam Hussein and is angry that the US is ferrying 2000 Georgian troops home from Iraq after Saakashvili recalled them.

Russia had little to fear from NATO when considering the launch of an invasion on its former vassal state; it has Europe over a barrel (HT Rick Moran; read that, too).

Armed with wealth from oil and gas; holding a near-monopoly over the energy supply to Europe; with a million soldiers, thousands of nuclear warheads and the world’s third-largest military budget, Vladimir Putin believes that now is the time to make his move.

(Take note on the oil issue, US Congress.)

Kagan says that this war isn't really about South Ossetia--that Saakashvili’s real crime against Russia is being “president of a small, mostly democratic and adamantly pro-Western nation on the border of Putin's Russia.”

Georgia is owed protection from the US, says Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left. From that assertion, one supposes that there will be no anti-war movement spearheaded the Left this time. I guess War sometimes Is the Answer.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy goes to Tblisi and to Moscow, presumably to talk sense. Sarkozy seems to have a winning personality without being spineless, but that won’t stop this, because, for Russian, it’s all about the runaway slave states.

In all the reports and blog posts I’ve read on the topic in the past few days, one name is conspicuously missing: Dmitrij Medvedev—the Russian President. I guess we know who is wearing the pants in that marriage, as if there was any doubt.

More to follow.

UPDATE: War for Oil? Powerline:

News reports indicate that Russia may have tried to bomb the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which runs through Georgia. If so, the bombs missed, and flow of oil through the pipeline was not interrupted. The BTC pipeline runs from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey; note Russia to the north and Iran to the south.

The pipeline is capable of pumping the equivalent of 1 million barrels a day and is the only oil conduit in the region not in Russian control. Back in 2002, when the pipeline was being built, Russia was adamantly against its construction.

For these reasons, it would be of enormous strategic benefit to Russia if it could reassert dominance over Georgia, or merely have an opportunity to demonstrate to Turkmenistan and Azerbaijain that any means of getting their petroleum products to market independent of Russia may be unreliable. These issues are a key subtext to Russia's conflict with Georgia and Georgia's desire to join NATO, and otherwise seek protection from the West.

(Thanks to Roger Kimball; read that, too. It's about Russia and Georgia and McCain and Obama.)

UPDATE: Russians take Gori while President Saakashvili makes a narrow escape from the city and, possibly, from Russian bombers (just seen on cable news).

UPDATE: Saakashvili at WSJ (HT: MTheads):

This invasion, which echoes Afghanistan in 1979 and the Prague Spring of 1968, threatens to undermine the stability of the international security system. [SNIP]

This conflict is about the future of freedom in Europe.

All Cold Warrior eyes are on the Caucasus region. Believe it.

Russia Bombs Gori, Georgia

The Russians take an offensive move, in more ways than one.

GORI, Georgia — Russian air attacks over northern Georgia intensified on Saturday morning, striking two apartment buildings in the city of Gori and clogging roads out of the area with fleeing refugees.

Russian authorities said their forces had retaken the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, from Georgian control during the morning hours. They reported that 15 Russian peacekeepers and 1,500 civilians have been killed in the conflict.

The war was allegedly was started by the Georgians, who the Russians say were ethnically cleansing the ethnic Russians from South Ossetia, the disputed region. (South Ossetians wants independence from Georgia.) But the attack on Gori is more than standing up for one's tribe; it's punishment, and not just for the South Ossetia issue. It's not as if Georgia could go toe-to-toe with Russia.

NATO is calling for a cease-fire.

(Thanks to Ed Morrisey, who waits for certain people to criticize Russia for 'air-raiding villages and killing civilians.' )

UPDATE: Are the Ukrainians helping Georgia? I wouldn't doubt it. They hate their former masters as much as the Georgians do. (Recent reason for hate: many suspect that Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was poisoned by Russia's FSB; he survived but his face bears the marks of some illness/ingestion.)

Holy crap.

UPDATE: Joshua Trevino:

The real question for Georgia, then, is not whether is will win or lose — it has already lost — but how bad its loss will be. The worst case scenario is a Russian occupation and annexation. Fortunately for the Georgians, that’s also the least likely.

Trevino places the blame mostly on the Georgian president. But the Russians aren't exactly faultless.

Russia has baited the hot-tempered Georgian leader with trade and travel embargoes as well as saber-rattling. Georgia has had to tolerate a few thousand Russian troops on its soil -- only Moscow recognizes the self-declared independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. And in April, Russia downed a Georgian drone over Abkhaz -- that is, Georgian -- air space. Russia in recent years has also granted citizenship to the separatists.

PREVIOUSLY:

Russia and Georgia Go To War

Russia and Georgia Go To War

The Republic of Georgia, that is. It's a border dispute--or at least on the surface it is.

CNN

TBLISI, Georgia (CNN) -- Georgia's president said Friday that his country is under attack by Russian tanks and warplanes, and he accused Russia of targeting civilians as tensions over the breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia appeared to boil over into full-blown conflict.

"All day today, they've been bombing Georgia from numerous warplanes and specifically targeting (the) civilian population, and we have scores of wounded and dead among (the) civilian population all around the country," President Mikhail Saakashvili told CNN in an exclusive interview.

"This is the worst nightmare one can encounter," he said.

Asked whether Georgia and Russia were now at war, he said, "My country is in self-defense against Russian aggression. Russian troops invaded Georgia."

About 150 Russian armored vehicles have entered South Ossetia, Saakashvili said, and Georgian forces had shot down two Russian aircraft.

Russia's Defense Ministry said it sent "reinforcements" to South Ossetia to help the Russian peacekeepers already stationed there.

The events followed an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss a dramatic escalation of violence in Georgia and South Ossetia. The session ended Friday morning without a statement about the fighting.

Bloomberg:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said [while in Beijing for the Olympics] ``war has started'' over the breakaway region of South Ossetia as Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili accused its neighbor of a ``well-planned invasion.''

Saakashvili said in a Bloomberg Television interview that his nation of 4.6 million people is ``fighting to secure its borders'' amid a ``full-blown military aggression'' involving thousands of Russian troops. Aerial bombings and wide-spread fighting in and around the region killed an unknown number of civilians and wounded ``scores'' more, Saakashvili said. [snip]

Saakashvili, 40, said Russia amassed troops for months on its northern border before hostilities began.

There will be more.

"His" Committee, His Preconditions

Here’s Obama’s latest sop to the Gaffrican American community:

“Just this past week, we passed out of the out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee - which is my committee - a bill to call for divestment from Iran as way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon,” Obama said at a press conference in Sderot, Israel.

Later on, the Obama campaign corrects its candidate’s words—the bill was his (partially), but he’s not on the committee. Obviously.

So if Obama is a co-sponsor to 2007 legislation implementing sanctions designed to discourage Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, didn’t he sign on to a precondition?

Basically, Obama agreed legislatively to a precondition, the concept of which he repudiated in a 2007 debate and on his website.

Diplomacy: Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

Then, during a press conference in front of the Israelis, he crows about the success of a step toward making that precondition official US policy while claiming membership to a senate committee to which he does not belong.

Got that?

To be fair, I think that the Bush administration's latest forays into diplomacy with Iran made it easier for the senator to pull off this particular flip-flop without many observers raising a stink. But doesn't the fact that Obama has being talking no-preconditions while sleeping sanctions the whole time suggest a pattern of behavior to Obama supporters?

(Thanks to LA Times Blog)

Why the Russians Are PO'd (Re-edited)

Short of an all-out MAD ignition scenario, a missile shield protecting Eastern Europe would render a Russian attack on the Europe Union totally ineffective. Richard Fernandez explains how and why, reminding us that a government-culture which is still capable of disposing of an Alexander Litvinenko in such a hair-raising manner, remains capable of anything--especially when it deems that its back is to the wall.

Russia is mad because its government has this fantasy in which the West would attack it and it would retaliate, be victorious and regain its former glory. I know, I know. Why would the West want to attack Russia? That question doesn't matter. What matters it that it is convenient for the Russian government to believe that we would want to. This belief provides a premise for the conclusion that Putin's Medvedev's Russia should revert to the old Cold ways when Russia was strong. And a missile shield makes that fantasy less likely to become reality.

Richard also discusses the effect a proposed missile shield could have on Iran's nuclear dreams--basically laying out the rationale for a Russia-Iran alliance.

Nervous?

(Thanks to Instapundit)

[Re-edited for clarity; thanks to Tully]

Joining Forces? (UPDATED)

Iran tests its medium- and long-range missiles.

The US and Israel have condemned Iran after it test-fired a long range missile capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
Iran state media said nine missiles had been fired in total, including a new Shahab-3, with a range of 2,000km (1,240 miles).

Tehran has tested the missile before, but the latest launch comes amid rising tensions with the US and Israel over the country's nuclear programme. [SNIP]

The launches were intended to deter any Israeli or US strike against Tehran's nuclear installations, says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus. [SNIP]

In the Israeli parliament, Housing Minister Ze'ev Boim said: "I suggest Israel will not talk, and Israel should prepare itself to do what is needed to do."

The White House and both American presidential candidates also condemned the Iranian test.
Describing Iran as a "great threat", the Democratic challenger, Barack Obama, called for tougher sanctions while his Republican rival, John McCain, said the test demonstrated the need for effective missile defence.

And Russia reacts badly to a proposed US missile defense shield designated to protect the Czech Republic and Poland.

The verbal spat between the US and Russia came after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday inked an initial agreement on missile-defense deployment with the Czech government in Prague, as reported by the Associated Press.

According to Reuters, Russia's Foreign Ministry responded to the news in a statement: "If the real deployment of an American strategic missile defense shield begins close to our borders, then we will be forced to react not with diplomatic methods, but with military-technical methods."

In reaction to that statement, the US criticized Russia for its "bellicose rhetoric," which it said was meant to intimidate the European partners of the US into backing out of the defense plan, according to the BBC. [SNIP]

The US insists the shield is designed to protect against attacks from "rogue states" in the Middle East, such as Iran.

But Russia has strongly protested, saying the deployment of the US shield would threaten its security by blunting the capabilities of its own missile force.

Are we looking at the beginning of the alliance from Hell?

UPDATE: And before someone tells me that the mullahs would never work with the god-less, infidel Russians, save it. They'll join--temporarily, to be sure--with whomever they think will give them a leg up on the object of their hatred and envy: Israel.

UPDATE: More on Obama's reaction from Jim Geraghty:

On Today Show this morning, Matt Lauer asked Obama if he were president this morning, what his immediate response would be to Iran's missile tests.

I think we've got to gather up all the intelligence necessary with the situation, but there's no doubt that we're seeing rising tensions in the area.

To echo Ed, intelligence-gathering? This isn't a rumor of missile tests. U.S. systems detected and tracked at least seven of the missiles. The regime announced it on state-run TV, and showed missiles flying into the air (although perhaps it was file footage).

Don't forget what the 2008 Democrat nominee for POTUS said about how to handle Iran.

Diplomacy: Obama is the only major candidate who supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions.

Yes, as of today, July 9, 2008, that's still his policy. He still believes that those who want to bring the return of the Mahdi can be appeased.

North Koreans, Syrians and Strong Horses

This morning, US Intelligence Officials—including CIA head General Michael Hayden*--gave a classified account to Congress as to what it knew and when it knew it with regard to the bombing of a Syrian facility by the Israeli Air Force last September. Allegedly included in the briefing is video evidence obtained from within the now-destroyed facility—a facility whose core was almost identical to a known plutonium-producing facility in North Korea. According to the article, the video shows North Koreans “touring” the facility to boot.

The WaPo article also says that this evidence could “complicate” the US efforts to strike a deal with North Korean President Kim Il-Sung Jong-il regarding his nukes. Hmmm. Sometimes I wonder whether we're really trying to “strike a deal” with such a monster anyway. It seem to me that the Bush Administration’s policy toward the Norks is more strategically-minded: putting the American seal of approval on the "negotiations" per Li'l Kim's demands, but, in reality, standing back while Kim’s neighbors put up with the bulk of his insanity. And, after the regional players tire of playing and being played, the US would sign off on whatever they decide—especially if the decision comes from the Japanese. And who could really expect a man possessing nuclear power capabilities while keeping his own people in such a state to listen to actual reason anyway? Selling the tech to the Syrians seems far more in-character for the gulag-keeper.

As for the Syrians, their ambassador to the US--Imad Moustapha—is predictably outraged at being bombed by the hated "Zionist Entity," but rightly points out that the West claimed that Saddam’s Hussein’s Iraq had a nuke program also, but no evidence of same was subsequently found. Some think that Saddam managed to move evidence of such a program to…Syria.

Captain Ed notices, however, that Syria seems less than willing to restart its program

after seeing how the Bush administration dismembered the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq for less.

Can we call this the “Strong Horse Syndrome?” Or perhaps the Reagan Syndrome?

One wonders whether we’ll see the reverse of such a syndrome after January 20, 2009.

*General Hayden will retire from the Air Force in July, but stay on as CIA director.

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

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

Complicated War Doctrine

The ever-resourceful Richard Fernandez gets hold of some US Army secrets so sensitive that the less tactically- and strategically-minded among us might not be able to grasp the implications.

A sample:

The world is full of bad people. Mind you, not everyone is bad, but there are enough of them out there that we have to arm ourselves.

Even many of our politicians might have trouble wrapping their brains around such insight!

Okay, especially them.

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.

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.

US Embassy in Belgrade Torched

Last week Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Today, Serbians respond…by setting the American Embassy on fire.

Serb rioters set fire to an office inside the U.S. Embassy Thursday and police clashed with protesters outside other embassy buildings after a large demonstration against Kosovo's declaration of independence.

Masked attackers broke into the U.S. compound, which has been closed this week, and tried to throw furniture from an office. They set fire to the office and flames shot up the side of the building. [SNIP]

More than a dozen nations have recognized Kosovo's declaration of independence, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany. But the declaration by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership [Muslims, BTW] has been rejected by Serbia's government and the ethnic Serbians who populate northern Kosovo.

For several days, Kosovo's Serbs have shown their anger by destroying U.N. and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies.

On Thursday, the neighboring Croatian Embassy also was targeted by the same group of protesters at the U.S. Embassy, and smaller groups attacked police posts outside the Turkish and British embassies in another part of the city but were beaten back.

Alright. Where's the next outbreak of human nature going to occur? Any guesses?

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

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

Note to Kenyan Readers (UPDATED: “Tell Obama we want guns”)

What is it with people? I’ve asked Kenyans to comment on what’s going on in their country while repeatedly acknowledging my knowledge and contextual deficiencies on the background of the crisis there. But I‘ve only received two Kenyan commenters. One “chastised” me for having no experience on the ground in that country (that’s a difficult feat to achieve from my office in South Central Los Angeles, California, USA). The other, after apparently reading only one post from the thirty or so Kenya posts I’ve written since January 1st and assuming that the post in question was the lone missive on the subject, ridiculed me as being a “faddist.” [2-9-08: In this case, an apology was offered and accepted.]

(I should like to be pat on the back for not playing the “do you know who my father is” card and would forget all this if either of them—instead of illogically sniping because someone who isn’t Kenyan cares about what's happening to that country--could tell me where he is.)

Know this, Kenyans: I’m not getting a whole lot of hits for my series on Kenya. My primary audience from this 4 ½ year old blog consists of Americans—conservative and military. I’ve diverted from my usually fare and my site-meter count has plunged as a result. You see, Kenyans, after Rwanda and after Bosnia, most Americans are tired of those who refuse to learn from the bad examples of others; they really don’t give a rat’s a** when a group of people are short-sighted enough to murder their own future. So the assertion that my Kenya posting is some sort of fad would be laughable if it weren’t an indication of something else: shame. You are ashamed of the behavior of your countrymen and you should be. (As your kinswoman, I know I am—as I often am upon revelation of crimes committed by my American kinsmen.) I mean why else would two Kenyans come to this blog and criticize a non-Kenyan for trying to keep track of what’s going on over there?

Well, check this out, Kenyans: even if I do go back to posting more lucrative fare, you all can’t hide the crimes that our ethnic brethren are committing against each other. The days during which that could have been achieved are over. So instead of stupidly bashing me for being fortunate enough to have been born and raised American, how about showing some National Will and stop murdering and raping each other? Failing that, how about sending my father and the rest of his family out? Alive? If you can do either--and, preferably, both--I will acknowledge your superiority.

UPDATE: National Will is not visible on the horizon (emphasis mine).

President Mwai Kibaki has claimed victory in the December 27 vote but opposition leader Raila Odinga says the polls were rigged. Even the international observers have cited serious flaws.

About 1,000 people have died in ethnic clashes, riots and looting since then.

The ethnic clashes have fueled [Senator Barack] Obama fever, with members of the Luo ethnic group rallying behind Obama [in his bid for the US presidency], whose father was a Luo.

''Obama!'' a group of Luo men shouted in unison, as they stood guard at a makeshift roadblock near the entrance of Kibera, Kenya's biggest shantytown outside Nairobi.

''We are supporting him here. We want him to win the election,'' said Mohammed Noor, 27.

''Did you know that Obama's father is also Luo?'' he added.

Behind Noor, young men yelled: ''Tell Obama we want guns!''

Fools.

(Thanks to This Ain't Hell)

UPDATE: Breakthrough? We'll see.

Kenyan Roulette...and Other Stuff (UPDATED: Kenyan MPs Banned from US)

Shocker: There are almost 12,000 Republicans who live in my district! I guess it’s a good thing we don’t have to wear a Scarlet 'R.' I took the neighbor mentioned in the last part of this post with me to the polling place. (Mr. Leo had a fall recently and must use a walker or a cane.) There was no poll station drama in contrast to some previous occasions. Good thing too--Mr. Leo would have defended my honor with his cane. The poll worker did, however, hand me a Democrat ballot without asking. But I don't demand perfection...well, not usually.

I did my part for Mitt Romney, but, unsurprisingly, John McCain prevailed. I’m glad that the professional and amateur conservative pundits are exercised about McCain’s general perfidy. I suppose that I would be also if I didn’t have other things on my mind.

One day after a goodly portion of this country helped to decide which two people will stand as the final candidates for POTUS, it’s good to contrast our mostly peaceful process against the type in which the result means more than the consistent process—one in which the axiom of “Any Means Necessary” to gain or preserve power means more than the lives and dignity of one’s countrymen.

On Kenya's President Kibaki:

Kenya emerged from its struggle for independence in the 1960s as a corrupt one-party state under Jomo Kenyatta. Daniel arap Moi prolonged that state of affairs after 1978. Under these rulers, Kenya became—to use the words of [Ghanaian economist] George Ayittey [quoted] in the recent book Making Poor Nations Rich—a “vampire state.” But then Kenya opted for a transition [in 2002 when Kibaki was first elected] that seemed to set it apart from much of the continent. Now when it looked as if Kenya was leaving behind its authoritarian politics, Kibaki, with a single stroke, has managed to make Kenya look no different than most corrupt and violent African states.

In doing so, the Kenyan ruler has followed the worst tradition of African politics of the last half-century.

On Kenya's ODM presidential candidate Odinga:

Odinga's ODM had been "supremely and idiotically naive" to think they could run a civil disobedience campaign without it leading to violence, [Oxford University's Professor David Anderson] said.

And Odinga's poor judgement plus lack of gravitas in handling the crisis had shattered his would-be image as a pan-African statesman able to carry Kenya forward, he said.

And this:

Kenya's opposition has threatened street protests if a meeting of regional foreign ministers, chaired by the government, goes ahead while talks to end bloodshed in the country are under way.

Negotiations between the rival factions continued on Tuesday, as fresh violence claimed 12 more lives.

The opposition attacked plans to hold a meeting of foreign ministers from the seven-member east African regional bloc IGAD, chaired by Kenya saying it would "legitimise Kibaki's position through the back door".

The foreign ministers are due in Kenya on Wednesday, with talks due the next day.

"If the IGAD meeting goes on in spite of our call for it not to go on," said Anyang Nyongo, secretary-general of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), "we shall call upon Kenyans to come out in their big numbers for a peaceful demonstration in Nairobi to strongly protest."

The government has banned street protests, and earlier ones have led to looting, rioting and a crackdown by police.

(Side note: you'll note that this last link is from Al Jazeera. That organization has taken keen interest in what's going on in Kenya and, as a result, doing a top-notch job of reporting--at least on this subject. A sensible person--rather than an alarmist or an ignoramus--can give credit where due and estimate that, while the situation itself has nothing to do with Islamists on the march, Islamists very likely may be viewing a fallen Kenya as an opportunity. All those who are looking for the "hidden Muslim hand" guiding the turmoil in Kenya need to recognize that.)

Am I “lording it over” those who don’t have the benefit of a culture which values the rule of law? There’s no need to. Anyone who takes even the most cursory mental journey back into our own history is reminded of the many and sometimes bloody struggles that our forebears had to live through for us to enjoy the victories of process—rule of law--over results. (Oh yes and I know that this particular war is one that will never be won since eternal vigilance is the weapon that need be always at the ready.)

Aside from wanton killing and my personal considerations, the most frustrating things about yet another African country falling to chaos is to observe as its leaders behave in such a ridiculously short-sighted and callous manner and to observe as they fail to learn from they myriad examples of power-mania on their own continent much less those existing elsewhere.

I was listening to radio talk show host Mark Levin last week and, on the subject of McCain, he opined that “everyone is selling perception.” Well, everyone wouldn’t be selling it if it weren’t such a lucrative commodity—if no one were buying. In Kenya, the perception that the only way to change economic and societal issues is to murder one's neighbors and relatives and/or drive them out of their homes has been sold. And that perception has given birth to the perception that vengeance has some purpose other than feeding on itself; it has been sold as well. It's up to Kenya's "leaders" to become actual leaders--to make another perception seem more appealing than the old one and its progeny.

Either of the Kenyan leaders could reshape the perception of themselves—and their country--from that of the stereotypical Third World autocrat-kleptocrat to potential savior while saving some lives in the process. Either could look like the statesman who rose above his personal considerations and his pride for the good of his people. And since it is personal pride that both seem to care most about, either could play the hero in the eyes of their countrymen and in those of the world--by putting forth some sort of compromise that is crucial to the actual implementation of rule-of-law.

Mature strategic thinkers these two are not, however. So UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon must play the parent.

“I told Kenya’s leaders, President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, that they bear a particular political responsibility for the future of Kenya. I stressed to all the Kenyan leaders the need to stop the unacceptable violence and killings and to resolve their differences through dialogue and the democratic process,” Mr Ban told the Council, according to a statement from his office.

The UN chief said political leaders should think beyond their individual interests or party lines, and to look to the future of Kenya as one country. [SNIP]

He said the UN supported the mediation process championed by [Ban’s predecessor Kofi] Annan and announced that a trust fund had been established through the UN Development Programme to support it in addition to assigning several UN staff.

:::shrugs:::Ban may be talking sense, but since when do Third World “leaders” listen to the UN?

Here’s the rare bit of good news, though; indeed it does seem to be a result of the UN's intervention: the Kibaki government has lifted its ban on live broadcasts. Please read the op-ed which explain how the government was able to implement the ban in the first place.

Meanwhile, I have not heard from my father. But no worries; I remain hopeful.

UPDATE: From All Africa:

The East African Community is considering sending a peace-keeping force to Kenya as one of the options in case the situation deteriorates, reports Anne Mugisa.

"Currently, there are negotiations within the East African set-up. A decision has not yet been reached but negotiations are on," Fred Opolot of the Uganda Media Centre told journalists yesterday.

The East African Community, chaired by President Yoweri Museveni, is made up of Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya.

Rwanda and Burundi, eh? The irony is thick.

UPDATE: Whoa!

Ten MPs are among prominent people facing an imminent travel ban to the United States following the country’s post-election political crisis.

The US accuses these people of being behind the violence in which nearly 1,000 people have been killed and more than 350,000 others have been displaced.

And Wednesday, America’s northern neighbour, Canada, followed suit by stating that it would also write demand letters to the same individuals with a view to blocking them from stepping on its soil.

US ambassador Michael Ranneberger Wednesday confirmed the drastic step, stating his country “decided to apply our travel restrictions on individuals who we believe participated in the instigation of violence, violation of human rights and breaking of democratic practices”. [SNIP]

“The ban will affect their families — their children who are studying in the US and their spouses. The individuals will also be affected.”

Thirty more people, he added were being investigated.

Members of both the PNU (Kibaki's party) and the ODM (Odinga's party) are on the list.

The Kenya Crisis

Exhortation From My Father

Normally, I don't post full articles/essays. But considering the by-line and the subject, you'll understand why I made an exception in this case.

Live for your country, don’t die for it

Story by PHILIP OCHIENG
Publication Date: 2/3/2008

I am a displaced person. Originally, I refused to move. After dispatching my family to various places, I locked myself up in my house to go on with my work. I had convinced myself that finishing the books I am writing was much more important than my safety.

Moreover, I thought that, at 70, if I died I would have lived a full life. But how illogical I was! If a fanatic killed me, how could I now dedicate my books to society? I recalled the philosopher’s admonition that no cause at all is worth dying for.

If you are so convinced that an ideal is vital for your society, then shouldn’t you make it your duty to live long enough to help your society to realise it? Once you are dead, of what use are you?

Thus only dastards can join battle with such swashbuckling as: “I am ready to die for democracy,” or: “I will die fighting for Kibaki.”

Nobody denies you your right to fight for Kibaki (or Odinga, Musyoka and Ruto).

The point is to do it intelligently. None of these individuals is worth your life.

Isaac Asimov, the American biochemist, once produced what he called “Three Laws of Robotics” to be written into the logico-mathematical pathways of each of his “positronic brains” to ensure that robots served human beings absolutely safely.

The third law is that a robot must keep itself intact every time it is deployed — unless this contradicts the first law (which is never to cause or allow any harm to a human user).

All the laws are actually central to all tool-making in human history. The third one makes the boomerang of the Australian native the most ingenious of all the tools ever made.

But, clearly, a soldier is much more important than a tool. That is why the law on self-preservation is even more significant to humans. Sure, a good soldier fights bravely in battle. But his bravery must include every stratagem that helps him to return to base unharmed.

Only then can he be available for another battle. Hence the saying: Live for your country: never deliberately die for it.

Patriotism is mental and manual commitment to one’s country for as long as possible. To die willingly, even in your country’s name, is treason.

Chest-thumping

To go to battle with chest-thumping carelessness – making yourself an easy prey to the enemy’s shrapnel — is to succumb to Shakespearean resignation: “Come what come may/Time and hour runs through the roughest day.” This is fatalism. Time has become your master, whereas time must flow in your own terms.

That is why, in the destructiveness of the present battle, you must protect yourself. There is no cowardice in dashing into hiding when necessary. Whatever the immediate factor, you save your life and make yourself available for a much more worthwhile battle.

If you die, I lose the chance to convince you that, at the moment, your weapons are aimed in the wrong direction. It is not the Kikuyu or the Kisii who have plunged us into Armageddon.

And, whoever it is, his targets are not the Kalenjin, the Luhya, the Luo or the Swahili.

No. Only individuals are guilty. Though they seek to hide under tribal labels, they have not done it to benefit their tribe but only themselves as individuals.

By taking arms to injure other Kenyans on the basis of their tribes, you are only making it easier for the culprits to hide under those labels. If Mr Samuel Fulani is the culprit, why attack the Swahili?

Indeed, you endanger your own lives. The crisis has revealed how desperately interdependent we are as tribes. Everything we do to another tribe boomerangs badly on us. However powerful its leaders may be, no tribe lives in a castle surrounded by a moat.

Every time you attack members of a tribe living in your area, you are digging the graves of your own relatives living in other tribal areas.

Once the revenge game begins, there can be no end to it. Why have we failed to learn even a single lesson from Somalia right next door? Yes, we wronged innocent Kikuyus and Kisiis. But, as Lewis Nguyai, my new MP, was telling my fellow constituents, a small spark of stupid reprisal is sure to turn into a national conflagration in which the arsonist himself is most likely to burn.

In other words, not a single tribe can gain even pesa nane from it. That was why I ran into safety – to be able, through writing, to continue to offer such advice. Maybe Robert Frost had Kenya and myself in mind when he wrote:

The wood is lovely, dark and deep;
But I have promises to keep
And miles to go before I sleep.

The Kenya Crisis

End of the Nightmare? (UPDATED: Yes, it's a Rant)

Maybe.

The Kenyan government and its main opposition group have agreed to a four-item agenda that includes a promise to end the violence that has wracked the country for more than a month, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced at a news conference Friday.

The first three items, to be completed within a 15-day period, are: stopping the violence and restoring fundamental rights; taking immediate measures to address the humanitarian crisis; and promoting “reconciliation, healing and restoration,” Annan said. The fourth item, which could take up to a year, aims for a resolution to the political crisis, the former secretary-general said.

UPDATE: In the comments to this post, BL@KBIRD writes:

So, what is the PC approach to Kenya this week? Still not allowed to say M****m or I***m?

You know what, BL@KBIRD? You don't even have to come here if you just want to insult somebody. This isn't Hot Air. And, yes, I consider the assertion that I am PC an insult--especially by somebody who who patently doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground with regard to me, my father's country, the work I've done on the crisis in Kenya or the work I've done on this blog for four and a half years.

My father and step-mother--who are Luos, who are not Muslims, whose tribe is not made up of mostly Muslims (in spite of a Free Republic ignoramus-authored comment to a post) and who are the same tribe as Odinga and Obama, the communists--are trapped in Kenya and could be killed simply on setting foot outside or being pulled out of their car. You see, after the Luos and the Kalenjin (you do know who they are right?) set upon the Kikuyu, the Mungiki (you do know who they are right?) understandably want revenge. They’ve already taken in upon at least one MP, so what do they care about one old journalist—even one who continues to call for an end to the massacres?

So you’ll forgive me if I don’t indulge your Islam versus Christianity fantasies or those of all the other ersatz Kenya experts out there on the web. I don't claim to know the nearly enough about the situation. That's why I study the situation every day, gather facts, look at every angle possible on what might be happening, try to come to conclusions on the smaller issues and try to delay the larger ones until the facts and how they fit together, are in.

Too bad others are not following this method and are, therefore, talking out their ass about things they wouldn't care about if they couldn't spin them.

If you were smart, you'd be more worried about the communists right here on your doorstep rather than the Islamists under your bed. If you were smart.

Have a nice weekend.

UPDATE: And the idiot is still trying to tell me that all Luos are Muslims. Now I see what I'm dealing with.

The Kenya Crisis

Kenya Roundup: Ban Ki-Moon, Annan in Nairobi

It’s impossible to know who really won the Kenya election.

Official results gave Kibaki an edge of 231,728 votes, or 2 percent, out of about 10 million cast. Initial results of an exit poll by the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute found that rival Raila Odinga had won by an 8 percent margin.

Election officials allowed five accredited Kenyan observers into the tallying center in Nairobi only in the final phase of vote-counting, and three of them shared their accounts with McClatchy [News Service]. All said that the gravest cheating occurred in that room, where commissioners — all appointed by Kibaki — compiled returns before announcing them to the public. [SNIP]

Results were announced even when documents were missing, incomplete, unsigned by officers or party representatives, incorrectly tabulated, photocopied or forged.

"Both sides stole votes," said Julius Melli, a 31-year-old Kenyan radiographer who witnessed the tallying of Maragua [District]. "But Kibaki stole more, and they stole it inside the tallying center."

Again someone wants to know where to locate the leadership—governmental, moral and spiritual.

Another ODM MP dies—this time at the hands of the police. From the details, the shooting may merely be the result of a romantic triangle, but the timing couldn’t be worse.

The killing has led to the postponement of peace talks in the capital, Nairobi.

The first substantive talks between government and opposition began earlier on Thursday.

"We have postponed this afternoon's session and we will work all day tomorrow [Friday] so that the leaders can attend to urgent matters and call their constituents," said former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is mediating the talks.

(As you may have gathered, I’m not all that jazzed up about Kofi Annan’s arrival to mediate the conflict. It isn’t as though he has an exemplary track record in such matters during his tenure as Secretary-general of the UN. :::cough:::Iraq:::cough:::)

It’s all about the Rift Valley.

Spiritual warfare made flesh? A Catholic Priest falls to one of the mobs.

This past Saturday, Father Michael Kamau of the Nakuru diocese lost his life to the downward spiraling violence in Kenya. A man of faith, kindness and inspiration, Father Michael will be deeply missed.

His death is the terrible result of terrifying ethnic divisions that are splitting Kenya in two. Father Michael was returning from the seminary where he taught, in Kakamega, to his home diocese. Like thousands of other Kenyans, he was stopped at a roadblock by a gang of vengeful youth. He was asked to show his ID, and when his name revealed that he was of the opposing Kikuyu ethnic group, the gang brutally killed him on the roadside.

Unfortunately, I think that this is an answer to the above question regarding moral and spiritual leadership.

Ban Ki-Moon arrives in Kenya.

The Government and ODM negotiators Thursday gave hope to millions of Kenyans deeply hit by a political crisis by agreeing that the ongoing violence must end in seven days.

The talks are expected to be boosted Friday by the arrival of United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to offer support to his predecessor, Mr Kofi Annan, who is leading the mediation process.

The two teams will today decide on a proposal to bring on board former African National Congress (ANC) secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa as the chief mediator of the talks.

The six-member team, which will henceforth be called the Kenya National Dialogue Team, emerged from their inaugural meeting chaired by Mr Annan beaming with optimism at progress of the talks.

African Union chairman: "If Kenya burns, there will be nothing for tomorrow.”

The Kenya Crisis

Kenya: Weapons and Words (UPDATED)

ODM MP Melitus “Mugabe” Were was murdered by a mob; Obama appeals for peace via a Nairobi radio station.
*****

It is inconceivable how people who have all along lived in harmony, shared resources and common utilities, can turn around and start butchering each other senselessly. [SNIP]

Most surprising, President Kibaki, at whom the buck stops, and his rival Raila Odinga, other than that photo-ops session last week, have not taken the message of peace to the doorstep of their followers.

Is there an echo in here or is that just plain common sense?
*****
Many reasons for the implosion. One result.
*****
US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer says that the situation in Kenya is an example of ‘ethnic cleansing’ rather than of genocide. The difference?

The aim originally was not to kill, it was to cleanse, it was to push them out of the region[.]

Normally, I'm just as much the pedant as the next blogger over, but I doubt that this distinction makes a difference to the dead and their families.
*****

Granted, this was started by politicians. The elections were just the flint that set alight the situation. However I refuse to absolve the participants of the mayhem of their share of the blame. The fact of the matter is that at the end of the day you must take responsibility for your [own] actions.

If you threw stones, hacked people, burnt houses or looted then you are also to blame.

If you didn’t throw stones or hack or burn or loot but you spread hate through your blogs, your text messages, your emails and your conversations, please believe you are just as bad as the panga wielding youths. You are equally to blame.

PERSONAL: I asked my sister whether my father and step-mother wanted to get out and, if so, if there was anything I could do to facilitate them doing so and coming here—with me being the lone American in the bunch. However, the only way out is via land vehicle into a neighboring country--such as Uganda--and then by air. And the initial part of that method is more risky than hunkering down at home—at least for some.

Oh and then there’s this.

Reporters Without Borders urges the Kenyan authorities to use all necessary means to quickly identify and punish those responsible for the death threats sent to leading journalists [via email] in Nairobi yesterday, hours after an opposition Orange Democratic Movement parliamentarian was murdered.

My father’s name wasn’t listed, but I don’t think that he’s reading his email anyway.

To those who are praying for my family, I thank you and I urge you to keep doing so for them and for all of the others.

UPDATE: State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack on Frazer's words:

...he would let Jendayi Frazer’s comments stand but did not say they represented Washington’s official position.

He stressed that the State Department’s Office of War Crimes Issues continues to closely monitor the post-election violence between Kenya’s ethnic groups for “any incidence of atrocities” and is documenting all cases being brought to its attention.

The Kenya Crisis

Kenya Descends

I'm tired.

After a month of bloodshed, Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki finally met face-to-face last week for that proverbial photo op. It was the first time the two had met since the country fell into ethnic violence as a result of Kenya's December 27th election.

The meeting didn't do anything to stop the violence, which, of course it wasn't meant to. Good thing too.

At least 19 people were killed here on Sunday in battles between members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and Luos and Kalenjins who backed his rival Raila Odinga in disputed elections a month ago.

A Reuters reporter heard screams late into the night. Mobs stopped cars on the main highway and demanded passengers' identity cards. One man was beaten before being kicked under the wheels of a minibus as it sped to safety.

At least 750 people have died since the December 27 polls plunged Kenya into a spiral of violence, battering its image as an east African trade and tourism hub and one of the continent's more stable nations.

And the backlash has begun in earnest.

Kikuyus torched the homes of Luo rivals in the center of Navaisha. Police, apparently overwhelmed, did not intervene. Gunshots rang out into the evening.

Looters used iron bars to smash the windows of shops belonging to non-Kikuyu businesspeople, and made off with television sets, groceries and clothing.

One woman came screaming down the road from a blazing house.

"They set it on fire, they are killing my brother and sister," Alice Okoth said.

Mike Aringo, a 27-year-old resident, said hundreds of men swarmed the area Sunday morning.

"They told us if you are a Luo, you will be killed today," Aringo said. Odinga is a Luo.

PERSONAL: My father was fine as of yesterday. His English grammar/usage column and his political column ran on successive days. However, I am under no illusion that his renown or his age would grant him permanent immunity to the blood lust of murderous gangs were they able to catch up with him, my step-mother or anyone else in my family. But I pray and I hope.

Here's the best from Father's political column, in which he tells the story of a low-ranking Kenyan police officer talking a mob down from their intended actions:

Said he: “Listen, my brothers and sisters. This is our country. We have built it together for many arduous years. What can we possibly gain by destroying it with the same single ‘stroke of havoc’ with which uncaring people once ‘unselved’ the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “aspens dear’?”

The words are mine. But the message was the policemen’s. [SNIP]

And it showed that the mob is not always completely deaf to reasoned appeals. As soon as my hero finished his words, I saw the crowd balk and turn back. I saw a number throw away their “crude weapons”...[SNIP]

This was where [Kibaki and Odinga] let the nation down. [SNIP]

Even when they finally made the appeal, it left a great deal to be desired. For, as I say, appeals which are not didactical are almost always worthless.

An appeal must be explanatory. It must teach Kenyans why it is useless and dangerous to kill one another for the sake of parochial politicians.

The reason we kill one another as tribes at critical political moments is that none of our institutions of governance and moral upbringing has done anything serious to demystify and demonise the tribe as a vehicle of politics.

We usually lay the blame on the Government, the Church and the university.

We should. But, in my opinion, the living room is the chief culprit.

It is there that we introduce our children to some of the most grotesque tribal stereotypes. As they say, prevention is cheaper than cure.

UPDATE: Ninety dead over the weekend.

The Kenya Crisis