In Kenya to be medical doctor is no longer such a big deal. Kenyans are known to hold great esteem for and ardently idolize education, but achieving the distinction of MD has lost its lustre . Not so much because everybody on the streets of Nairobi is a medical doctor but because the meanly paid physicians have been ruthlessly ground down from their past towering heights with deplorable remuneration.
Their implacable employer, the Kenyan government seems to have made the astounding achievement of realizing the socialist dream of equality in a capitalist market economy -- although with a minor twist. All professional classes have been neglected and frustrated to the point of being more or less equally miserable and discontent. By virtually starving doctors, the government has thrust the stature of the men and women of the medical profession to levels no higher than that of the average hungry idler.
Which brings to mind the question, if a doctor in this country cannot afford a descent meal, or be able to pay his rent and transport costs where are we going as a nation? A second-hand clothes stall owner at Gikomba often takes home at the end of the month more than what an average doctor earns. What really are we saying? That it is no longer worthwhile to be a skilled professional in this country?
Given the track record of the Kenyan government the answer to the last question would probably be yes. Within the geographical area denoted by the slum conjuring word -- Kenya, it has become imperative for people to raise their goals in life a bit higher.
This means one has to aspire for better paying jobs like being a politician, a preacher, a trader, a speculator of imaginary parcels of land or even a drug dealer. These occupations are the only one's that seem to provide the surest path to financial security and prosperity.To be a farmer is now a euphemism that literally means to be downtrodden or to be inordinately silly. A teacher, much like the manner in which a camel is taken to be the ship of the desert, implies being a generational courier and transmitter of poverty. As for the engineer he is not even needed, quacks run the construction industry in the country.
Keen not to leave behind the most respected professional class and to keep in line with the government's policy of degrading and denigrating professions. The doctors request for better pay has been met with a counter-offer in form of token increments and promises for more which this government has no intention whatsoever of keeping -- they'd rather bribe the doctor's union officials. This as the mostly young doctors are rapidly being reduced to paupers while senior bureaucrats and MPs get to raid the national coffers at will and raise their incomes and allowances at their own pleasure.
Only the other day, the MPs hijacked the Contingency Fund which is meant for national emergencies, with the urgent and wholesome reason of catering for the honourable members' mortgages -- which have sky rocketed alongside the phenomenal rise in the banks' interest rates. Mind you MPs have utterly refused to pay their taxes, in blatant contravention of the new constitution.
Apparently in the minds of the politicians there was an abrupt break in the calamities Kenya has been facing and their own peculiar prognosis for the remainder of the year showed that we would have no more disasters until the next financial year. Since then the disasters have only increased in number and magnitude -- there is a famine that continues to afflict millions of people, road carnage that is getting out control, the poisoning of a quarter of a million children in northern Kenya by contaminated food provided by unscrupulous businessmen and now the long awaited rains have come with vengeance. The ravaging floods are reducing parts of Kenya to miniature versions of Bangkok.
In the midst of all that the country got an early and unpleasant Christmas present of being drawn into a war (which officially is not a war) that has suddenly put a humongous hole in the cash books at treasury.The MPs remain mum about the disaster money they gobbled up, and it is unlikely that the idea of refunding any or all of the money the brazenly hijacked from the Contingency Fund has even crossed their minds.
True to form though, the super special club of hypocrites called the augsut House or simply Parliament, has had its members at the forefront of the clamour for the government to do something in aid of the disaster affected Kenyans. They have been shrieking the loudest that the government is not doing enough as the country is facing the worst floods since the El Nino ones fourteen years ago. This despite the fact that they themselves are the culprits who have left the government broke and ill equipped to deal with those emergencies . Incidentally the floods have come in quick succession to the worst drought in sixty years and right after the MPs callously increased their mortgages. "Bad, bad MP. But teeribo, teeribo karma," says my imaginary zen master -- Master Wu "poritician shouldu neber touch contingency kitty!"
In the issue of the doctor's pay, the government can start by asking the MPs to pay their taxes and to return the money they raided from the Contigency Fund if it is really cash-strapped as it claims. I think the issue of the doctors' salaries is more of a national emergency than the MPs mortgages can ever be. Kenyans are not yet that evolved -- or patient enough -- to mend fractures and perform internal surgeries with pure meditation.
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Kenya Police: Kenya's biggest criminal gang?
The whole country is aghast with the serialized investigative documentary Jicho Pevu on KTN. What we are learning of the ongoings in the police force is beyond appalling.
If the allegations are true -- and they appear to be -- then we have a parallel, surreal, underground, demonic world in the Kenyan police force. One full of fiends, walking-killing zombies and the strenuously muffled and eerie wails of families of those murdered. It is irrefutably becoming evident that there is an institution wide cultic-like brotherhood in the police force; it's initiation rights demands the price of cold blooded murder -- all officers have to be blooded in, first with graft and then with the all essential murder in order for one to fully earn the trust of initiated colleagues and superiors.
Within the force we are told, those who get scalped are whistleblowers who have self-righteously chosen to make themselves martyrs by going against this mafia like brotherhood . And what exactly is it that the initiated police officers do for this brotherhood? To what lengths would they go for this clandestine apparatus that is attuned to benefit senior police officers and politicians? They make people eat shot out brains of others, physically rip off male genitalia from their owners in broad daylight, kill fellow police officers in cold blood in front of their children, traffic narcotics, extort money from businesses and provide security to international criminal rings. All in the name of a twisted nexus of cop brotherhood.
Where are the interests of the people of Kenya in all of these treasonous acts? Where is the sense of moral rectitude? How come this brotherhood has to find a sense of unity only by bathing in the blood of the innocent? Why do they only find diabolical mirth, comfort and joy in the continuous flow of warm, spilled blood of ethically upright and steadfast policemen ?
It is simple, the Kenya Police force has become the sanctuary of the vilest and purest form of wickedness that can be found on Earth, with the tentacled monster that is the nexus within the police eating up by means of murder, deceit and cover up any threat of light, righteousness and justice. It has become Utumishi wa Kuwaua Wote, Service to Kill You All, having long ditched their erstwhile motto of Utumishi kwa Wote, Service to All.
The macabre and barbaric police brotherhood only feels safe and content in transacting and sacrificing the lives of others in exchange for drug money, corruptly obtained money, blood money, pimp money, chang'aa money, simply money, money, and more money .
These shameful police officers have been left soul-less, they are zombies and killing machines for hire, who spend the time in between their atrocities in extorting money from criminals, in alcoholism, in serving as the clientele in prostitution, and commit all sorts of perverted wickedness. Their frenetic lifestyle does not prevent them from finding time to blackmail each other and in wringing money from legitimate businessmen by threats in which they are ever happy and never content in demonstrating their murderous capacity.
In a strange mix of hedonism and casual homicide, the decadent elements in the police live in an alternate reality where there is no morality, religion, cultural identity, justice or value for human life. There is only the brotherhood, endless trails of corpses, sin money and an all pervasive, acrid smell of the rotting blood of victims . The money that they do so an appaling array of acts for, is thrown and gobbled up by them like one would expect of a dog being thrown a dry bone. It is acquired through such horrid perpetration of violence and revolting brutality that puts to shame as civil conduct the joy frenzy for bloodied meat amongst the hungriest of hyenas.
It is no lie or joke, within the Kenya Police exists the biggest, most vicious criminal gang in the country and it is already accredited as one of the most overzealous murderous entities in the whole world. Lest we forget, the United Nations was so concerned that it sent a special rapporteur -- Professor Phillip Alston , who confirmed the allegations way back in 2006. Yes, the supposed crime fighters are the biggest kenyan mobsters, murderers, thieves and liars. Ask any pub or matatu owner in Nairobi who is extorted daily and has been forced to accept this culture of bribery as a mandatory requirement to do business under pain of death or in the very least hideous harassment. Ask any youth who has ever been arrested, or any victim of this gang that is the police that constantly preys on the property and sweat of others.
To those who are close to the murderers of the dearly departed Chemorei and the other executed police officers, if you are a trusted colleague, a friend or related to one of these venal fiends, you are in urgent need of repentance and cleansing of your conscience. For you have been relishing and feasting everyday on proceeds from murder -- in all that you have received from any one of them you have revelled in the blood, mangled heads and shot-out brains of diligent, honest police officers and other innocent Kenyans. You need redemption for enjoying and spending time with a daily perpetrator of heinous marvel -- a fugitive from all that is right in the eyes of God and humanity. More saliently, for those of you who happen to be spouses of one of these now exposed and infamous police officers and provincial administrators, you are creatures in need of intercessional prayers. That each of you continue to sleep each night in the bloodied arms of vile fornicators and murderers, and by the fact you are willing to live with it, then by virtue of your complicit affiliation, you yourselves happen to be much worse than your murderous husbands or their panty-phobic prostitutes .
If the allegations are true -- and they appear to be -- then we have a parallel, surreal, underground, demonic world in the Kenyan police force. One full of fiends, walking-killing zombies and the strenuously muffled and eerie wails of families of those murdered. It is irrefutably becoming evident that there is an institution wide cultic-like brotherhood in the police force; it's initiation rights demands the price of cold blooded murder -- all officers have to be blooded in, first with graft and then with the all essential murder in order for one to fully earn the trust of initiated colleagues and superiors.
Within the force we are told, those who get scalped are whistleblowers who have self-righteously chosen to make themselves martyrs by going against this mafia like brotherhood . And what exactly is it that the initiated police officers do for this brotherhood? To what lengths would they go for this clandestine apparatus that is attuned to benefit senior police officers and politicians? They make people eat shot out brains of others, physically rip off male genitalia from their owners in broad daylight, kill fellow police officers in cold blood in front of their children, traffic narcotics, extort money from businesses and provide security to international criminal rings. All in the name of a twisted nexus of cop brotherhood.
Where are the interests of the people of Kenya in all of these treasonous acts? Where is the sense of moral rectitude? How come this brotherhood has to find a sense of unity only by bathing in the blood of the innocent? Why do they only find diabolical mirth, comfort and joy in the continuous flow of warm, spilled blood of ethically upright and steadfast policemen ?
It is simple, the Kenya Police force has become the sanctuary of the vilest and purest form of wickedness that can be found on Earth, with the tentacled monster that is the nexus within the police eating up by means of murder, deceit and cover up any threat of light, righteousness and justice. It has become Utumishi wa Kuwaua Wote, Service to Kill You All, having long ditched their erstwhile motto of Utumishi kwa Wote, Service to All.
The macabre and barbaric police brotherhood only feels safe and content in transacting and sacrificing the lives of others in exchange for drug money, corruptly obtained money, blood money, pimp money, chang'aa money, simply money, money, and more money .
These shameful police officers have been left soul-less, they are zombies and killing machines for hire, who spend the time in between their atrocities in extorting money from criminals, in alcoholism, in serving as the clientele in prostitution, and commit all sorts of perverted wickedness. Their frenetic lifestyle does not prevent them from finding time to blackmail each other and in wringing money from legitimate businessmen by threats in which they are ever happy and never content in demonstrating their murderous capacity.
In a strange mix of hedonism and casual homicide, the decadent elements in the police live in an alternate reality where there is no morality, religion, cultural identity, justice or value for human life. There is only the brotherhood, endless trails of corpses, sin money and an all pervasive, acrid smell of the rotting blood of victims . The money that they do so an appaling array of acts for, is thrown and gobbled up by them like one would expect of a dog being thrown a dry bone. It is acquired through such horrid perpetration of violence and revolting brutality that puts to shame as civil conduct the joy frenzy for bloodied meat amongst the hungriest of hyenas.
It is no lie or joke, within the Kenya Police exists the biggest, most vicious criminal gang in the country and it is already accredited as one of the most overzealous murderous entities in the whole world. Lest we forget, the United Nations was so concerned that it sent a special rapporteur -- Professor Phillip Alston , who confirmed the allegations way back in 2006. Yes, the supposed crime fighters are the biggest kenyan mobsters, murderers, thieves and liars. Ask any pub or matatu owner in Nairobi who is extorted daily and has been forced to accept this culture of bribery as a mandatory requirement to do business under pain of death or in the very least hideous harassment. Ask any youth who has ever been arrested, or any victim of this gang that is the police that constantly preys on the property and sweat of others.
To those who are close to the murderers of the dearly departed Chemorei and the other executed police officers, if you are a trusted colleague, a friend or related to one of these venal fiends, you are in urgent need of repentance and cleansing of your conscience. For you have been relishing and feasting everyday on proceeds from murder -- in all that you have received from any one of them you have revelled in the blood, mangled heads and shot-out brains of diligent, honest police officers and other innocent Kenyans. You need redemption for enjoying and spending time with a daily perpetrator of heinous marvel -- a fugitive from all that is right in the eyes of God and humanity. More saliently, for those of you who happen to be spouses of one of these now exposed and infamous police officers and provincial administrators, you are creatures in need of intercessional prayers. That each of you continue to sleep each night in the bloodied arms of vile fornicators and murderers, and by the fact you are willing to live with it, then by virtue of your complicit affiliation, you yourselves happen to be much worse than your murderous husbands or their panty-phobic prostitutes .
Dr. Richard Sezibera's poisoned chalice: Bureaucratic dinosaurs and the EAC
The enthusiastic and youthful Rwandan comrade Dr. Richard Sezibera, secretary general of the EAC is a frustrated man. His face -- that of a fresh, young person in a key leadership position -- is what we should strive to make the norm in the East African region. Yet the old guard of technocrats and bureacrats from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and even in Rwanda will not let him be. They are hellbent on hindering his efforts and seemingly, will never show him the respect his office deserves. It is time to say enough to this effrontery both to the person of the secretary general and to the EAC member state of Rwanda.
I deplore it as utterly vile and disrespectful to treat the youth in this manner, leave alone yoking Dr. Sezibera with disdain on the sole basis and perception that he is an upstart from Rwanda. What further credentials does one need? Deep furrows on one's forehead, thick strands of grey hair or is it his lack of a deep vernacular accent that would make him sufficiently boring and unintelligible?
It has become standard practice for the old civil servants in senior positions to conspiratorially murmur the old tired song of inexperience whenever they have to work under a younger administrative superior. Yet most of them didn't even know how to hold writing implements when the immediate post-colonial administrators handed them the reins of service that they adamantly refuse to pass on to the next generation.
Hard as they may try Dr. Sezibera should not let them weaken his resolve, neither should he expect to be given any meaningful aid by these naysayers; who sit at his table all the while secretly sabotaging his efforts and gleefully plot his downfall and ignominous exit.
As part of the young generation in Kenya I voice my unequivocal support to the beleaguered secretary general against his detractors who have no appetite, vision or stake in a prosperous and united East Africa which can only be trully realized and forged into a single entity by unbiased and unprejudiced younger generations.
As the youth we must stay vigilant and become more vocal in supporting this emerging trend of the youth moving into leadership positions, one that seems to only provide galling apprehension to the old bureaucratic cynics. The disgraced old guard is a greedy and embittered, time barred lot -- one that understandably perceives the dream of a united East Africa with suspicion and apathy. We have little use and we must root out such saboteurs, who out of selfish reasons prefer the status quo which provides them with perks that millions of other East Africans can only dream of .
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
I deplore it as utterly vile and disrespectful to treat the youth in this manner, leave alone yoking Dr. Sezibera with disdain on the sole basis and perception that he is an upstart from Rwanda. What further credentials does one need? Deep furrows on one's forehead, thick strands of grey hair or is it his lack of a deep vernacular accent that would make him sufficiently boring and unintelligible?
It has become standard practice for the old civil servants in senior positions to conspiratorially murmur the old tired song of inexperience whenever they have to work under a younger administrative superior. Yet most of them didn't even know how to hold writing implements when the immediate post-colonial administrators handed them the reins of service that they adamantly refuse to pass on to the next generation.
Hard as they may try Dr. Sezibera should not let them weaken his resolve, neither should he expect to be given any meaningful aid by these naysayers; who sit at his table all the while secretly sabotaging his efforts and gleefully plot his downfall and ignominous exit.
As part of the young generation in Kenya I voice my unequivocal support to the beleaguered secretary general against his detractors who have no appetite, vision or stake in a prosperous and united East Africa which can only be trully realized and forged into a single entity by unbiased and unprejudiced younger generations.
As the youth we must stay vigilant and become more vocal in supporting this emerging trend of the youth moving into leadership positions, one that seems to only provide galling apprehension to the old bureaucratic cynics. The disgraced old guard is a greedy and embittered, time barred lot -- one that understandably perceives the dream of a united East Africa with suspicion and apathy. We have little use and we must root out such saboteurs, who out of selfish reasons prefer the status quo which provides them with perks that millions of other East Africans can only dream of .
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
Kenya's new Judicial Garb : Dressed to till?
The much awaited unveiling of the new garb for judges was one of the most deplorably shabby and unedifying judicial spectacles we have had the misfortune of witnessing as Kenyans . As an urgent recourse to justice the Director of Public Prosecutions Keriako Tobiko should have immediately intitiated proceedings against the person responsible and a court other than the supremely embarassed one left to expedite the conviction of the culprit(s) for a criminal lack of fashion sense.
No money could have bought the pained expression of distaste on Njoki Ndungu's face, one of the two women in the supreme court, and the awkward pangs of embarassment on the rest. The judicial emperors and empresses were portrayed as foolhardy stiff necks and were stripped of their dignity in the new outfits. Like in the fable of the Emperor's New Clothes they had to have been tricked to parade to Kenyans such undignified and atrocious 'things'. Six of the judges seemed to have been ambushed or marooned with the uncomfortable imperative to dorn the ludicrous garb.
Only the oblivious Chief Justice, Dr. Willy Mutunga soldiered on and pretended to be neither pertubed by the farcical outfits nor by the urge amongst those present to laugh them out. On the merit of his demeanour many Kenyans were left with the perception that the chief justice was probably a cheeky suspect or bumbling culprit in the gaffe. Should the goal have been to inspire a humble ambience -- then those responsible outdid themselves. By going straight out for the lowest rung and grossly humiliating the august bench.
It leaves one to wonder what good it did to gleefully lump their Lordships with tea pluckers who are strenuously prevailed upon to put on similar looking polsysterene coats at tea plantations. Mercies! The 'supremes' probably even have comparable contraptions in their farm stores or in their kitchen cabinets for dishwashing!
We are an agricultural nation, only I didn't know the constitution envisions that we aspire to be a thoroughly rustic one as well. This with ridiculous looking judges trying to evince venerated dignity in front of bemused suspects and litigants; whilst at the same time having the lawyers' legal minds forcefully bent into more verdant dispositions by the agricultural ambiance whenever they enter the courtroom. With this switch of gears we will be sufficiently rusticated in a few years. So much so our brothers across the borders would fear no more the political integration of East Africa. A fear that arises out of the apprehension they will be dominated by the overstated wily nature of Kenyans -- which is the only thing good I can envision coming out of this shambanization.
The design should have remained the same, with the same black patterns, belts and the rest with only the red replaced with a resplendent blue (ICC Trendifilova blue) made of good quality material. 'Good' meaning not some shiny, cheap, flimsy thing fit for the red light district. The expensive wigs though should be left to their dead owners, if they really do come from the shaved heads of dead white men or more fittingly -- imposed on the Nairobi City Council ascaris (sic), the worm characters who nefariously prowl the streets of Nairobi with the pretext of enforcing by-laws. Saddled with expensive wigs on their heads perhaps they would think twice before chasing hawkers to their early deaths on the death traps that are the Kenyan roads.
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
Friday, 30 December 2011
The Fugitive President: Al Bashir & The Shambles of Kenyan Diplomacy
Executive, Judiciary studiously oblivious of each other
The court order that was issued on Monday, November 28th, 2011 for the arrest of Sudanese president Omar el Bashir in the event that he should ever come again within the boundaries of Kenya and pursuant to the orders of the ICC, was a most untimely ordinance.
Regardless of its merit on the basis of law and the increasingly thorny issue of Kenya's adherence to the Rome Statute. Despite even the fact that the court proceedings which culminated into that diplomatically awkward ruling had been started over a year ago and shortly after Bashir's visit -- which was in lieu of a profoundly strange official invitation to the new constitution's promulgation ceremony. I still believe that it would have been prudent that the order should in the very least have been held in abeyance through judicial processes in the court.
Such action could have been procedurally facilitated by the State Law Office through technical submissions and petitions to delay the delivery of the ruling in court until the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had squared things out with Khartoum or informed them beforehand of the impending court order. Both in diplomatic terms and in light of the increasingly complex security questions in the Horn of Africa Kenya has shot itself in the foot.
What of the victims?
The importance of the legal proceedings in the ICC on behalf of the victims in Darfur cannot be overstated, the issues are real and most urgent. But these cannot be viewed in isolation for indeed there are other equally if not more grievous and important matters that are not in the ambit of the crimes that the court is currently pursuing but which are directly affected by the course of the ICC proceedings and the subsequent ramifications.
Not in the least amongst these I would assume would be the issue of security for the populace in Nuba mountains and the Darfur region itself and in general the rights of black and Arab minorities in the north and south.
The fact that it has been acknowledged publicly by all parties who were involved in the negotiation and implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that the acquiescence and co-operation of Bashir was essential to the peaceful resolution to what was one of Africa's and the world's greatest diplomatic headaches, even though the co-operation was grudgingly given at times, is something that cannot be lightly discounted.
What was the Sudan would as a certainty be in far much dire straits were it not for the statesmanship of a now demonized Bashir. In place of the overflowing optimism in the new state of South Sudan the only thing that would have been overflowing in that region would have been blood and tears.
Kenya's wobbly foreign policy
By this order from the Kenyan High Court, which flies in the face of a continent wide political agreement not to carry out the ICC arrest warrants, Kenya stands to lose the shine on its diplomatic cap as a an accommodating player that believes in consensus and fair play while it needs most the support of the region and the rest of Africa with the ongoing military operation in Somalia.
With the recent diplomatic gaffes such as the Prime Minister heading to Israel while the Foreign minister was scheduled to jet off at the same time to diplomatic charm offensives to Turkey and Iran, the loathsome drama of the shabby unravelling of what used to be Kenya's well run and esteemed diplomatic corps continues. There seems to be an increasing frequency of such tell tale signs that Kenya might be biting more than it can chew on managing and balancing its growing foreign relations portfolio.
The simultaneous visits to what are currently inimical states in the international arena and which at the moment are embroiled in a vicious, virulent round in the context of worsening relations, was a tawdry move on the part of Kenya and particularly by the PM. Coincidence or not we flippantly risked alienating countries that have been playing a positive and pivotal role in the stabilization and provision of humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Playing chicken with Turkey ... and Iran
Whatever their secondary motives were, both Iran and Turkey have been consciously bending backwards to allay regional fears of widening of the Somalia conflict into a proxy diplomatic war or military conflict between Muslim countries and the west, the sort of crazy arrangement that invariably demands thousands of African lives as conflict fodder. This they did by making as transparent as possible their dealings in Somalia and by exclusively working with the internationally recognized government in Mogadishu which is the TFG and partially also with the UN mandated AMISOM force.
Before the Al Shaabab situation there have been high powered delegations led by executive heads of government from both Turkey and Iran to Kenya which to the best of my recollection up to this day have not been reciprocated. Now that we are in trouble and suddenly need their clout in the Muslim world, in an act of brazen shamelessness we send over minnows to Turkey and Iran while our PM is next door in Israel being regaled and revelled with hospitality in what is considered by both countries as a belligerent state.
Israel is intrinsically an important and strategic ally of Kenya and this relationship will continue to get stronger in the foreseeable future, but it is nothing short of a dastard case of myopia to ignore, prevent, undermine or under-rate the need for growth of relations between Kenya and Turkey, Iran or any other non-traditional partner states with friendly inclinations.
Of Friends and Foes
As if the diplomatic convolutions are not complicated enough to be shouldered by one poor, contentedly introspective country, Kenya found itself catapulted into another old standing feud in the region this time between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This in the face of an alleged connivance and direct support of the Al Shaabab by the Aferworki government in Asmara.
The diplomatic tiff with Eritrea over its actions in Somalia is still simmering and threatening to boil over. The whole region is now playing a happy cast in an African classic in which the enemy (Kenya) of the enemy (Al Shaabab) of my enemy(Ethiopia) ... is not a friend (Eritrea).
With all these facets of a complex security, political and diplomatic prism in the region, Kenya risks becoming the coalescing agent and focal point for both regional and international interests that might feel aggrieved by Kenya's policies. In effect, the imbroglio in the region and balancing of interests could impel disaffected quarters to take up negative counter-roles to those of Kenya in the conflict in Somalia. Eritrea's alleged actions is the first serious and dangerous signal, that could herald a new chapter of strife not only between traditional enemies but one which could snowball into something far much bigger involving all countries in the Horn of Africa.
NAM went defunct; Kenyan diplomacy in hot pursuit
The growing distrust that Kenya is only a pawn firmly in the hands of the west might grow with the court's ill timed order authorizing the arrest of Bashir. Which further muddles all the efforts Kenya has been forced to put up to rally international support in yet another heave to solve the Somali problem and reinforces a dubious outlook on Kenyan diplomacy. A brand of diplomacy that hitherto had been perceived to be the most unbiased in the region.
If the fissures in Kenya's foreign policy are not urgently fixed it would sound a death knell to what has been painstakingly built over the years. It would in the short term herald confusion in the region and mark a troubling turn of events, confirming the declining trajectory of Kenya that started in the post-election violence in 2008. The gaping hole left would be hard to fill, for despite the complexities of international politics Kenyan foreign policy has since independence been a fairly consistent one that faithfully trod along the lines of the old Non-Aligned Movement and provided a platform for regional co-operation.
As a member of the NAM Kenya's foreign policy in principle was one of being neutral and forging positive ties with all countries that desire mutually cordial and beneficial relations. This is supposed to be done without regard to a country's position in the ideological and political divides in the world and without reference to any other pre-existing bilateral relations. This has been the basis of what used to be the bedrock of East Africa's stability, but given recent events this stability projected across the region by Kenya may not be worth counting on in the future.
Getting it right -- Paranoia is king in Somalia
The waning credibility of Kenya's foreign policy could have been partially behind the flip flopping debacle of the TFG in Mogadishu at the onset of the Kenyan army's incursion, that was launched in light of persistent Al Shaabab aggression and provocation.
The government of Sheikh Shariff had to be strenuously courted and pressured to take a more favourable stance with regard to Kenya's military operations in Somalia, and this was plainly conjectured in the media as stemming from the ludicrous concern that Kenya might be playing a double game that in the end would see the setting up of a strong state-like entity in southern Somalia -- which could only further serve to undermine the central authority of the TFG government.
This is something that for obvious reasons could not have been taken lightly by Sheikh Shariff's government given its already shaky hold in central Somalia and none at all in the secessionist north. It says more about what is emerging as Kenya's stock in trade --shabby foreign policy, than the Somali president's conspiratorial outlook.
Even with Somali paranoia something must have gone terribly awry for Mogadishu to have even seriously considered Kenya's state involvement in such a plot. Despite the direct assurance of the Kenyan government, which has done more than any other entity in trying to reconstitute the Somali state back to it's full stature, power and control of ALL of its internationally recognized territory, the TFG is nonetheless wary of GoK's intentions. Apparently cheap talk has gone viral within the Kenyan government, and Kenyan diplomats are only the latest victims.
Dine the Animists, beg the Arabs
The fact that the court order was given when practically half the new executive branch of the government of South Sudan -- including cabinet ministers -- was in Kenya on a series of training seminars, must have done a lot more than raise a few eye brows in Khartoum. Now that the the Republic of Sudan has kicked out our ambassador and recalled its own, in effect severing diplomatic ties it remains to be seen how the diplomatic row will be resolved. Given past precedents particularly with our awkward, placatory, grovelling attitude to Muslim majority countries we will probably beg ourselves back. We did it with the U.A.E., we routinely do it with Saudi Arabia and given our ongoing exploits alongside the TFG in Somalia it seems we will be doing a lot more serenading, begging and pleading in all sorts of dubious and unpleasant places. States that in less exigent circumstances we would afford to snub into more reasonable diplomatic decorum, are literally having a field day slapping the face off the Kenyan diplomatic corps.
PS: Only a day after I wrote this article on the 29th of November 2011, our Foreign Minister Moses Wetang'ula had -- as predicted and true to form -- begged back the diplomatic ties with Khartoum. Unsurprisingly he contentedly bragged about this minor coup in a glitzy conference with reporters -- as a trailing presidential hopeful such intense focus is dear and rare and he milked it for all it was worth. The Attorney General Githu Muigai, is still coating his shoes with a thick layer of dust, running around the corridors of justice trying to extricate Bashir -- who in theory is a fugitive president -- from the Kenyan judicial jaws
By M. Wycliff
Nairobi,
The court order that was issued on Monday, November 28th, 2011 for the arrest of Sudanese president Omar el Bashir in the event that he should ever come again within the boundaries of Kenya and pursuant to the orders of the ICC, was a most untimely ordinance.
Regardless of its merit on the basis of law and the increasingly thorny issue of Kenya's adherence to the Rome Statute. Despite even the fact that the court proceedings which culminated into that diplomatically awkward ruling had been started over a year ago and shortly after Bashir's visit -- which was in lieu of a profoundly strange official invitation to the new constitution's promulgation ceremony. I still believe that it would have been prudent that the order should in the very least have been held in abeyance through judicial processes in the court.
Such action could have been procedurally facilitated by the State Law Office through technical submissions and petitions to delay the delivery of the ruling in court until the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had squared things out with Khartoum or informed them beforehand of the impending court order. Both in diplomatic terms and in light of the increasingly complex security questions in the Horn of Africa Kenya has shot itself in the foot.
What of the victims?
The importance of the legal proceedings in the ICC on behalf of the victims in Darfur cannot be overstated, the issues are real and most urgent. But these cannot be viewed in isolation for indeed there are other equally if not more grievous and important matters that are not in the ambit of the crimes that the court is currently pursuing but which are directly affected by the course of the ICC proceedings and the subsequent ramifications.
Not in the least amongst these I would assume would be the issue of security for the populace in Nuba mountains and the Darfur region itself and in general the rights of black and Arab minorities in the north and south.
The fact that it has been acknowledged publicly by all parties who were involved in the negotiation and implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that the acquiescence and co-operation of Bashir was essential to the peaceful resolution to what was one of Africa's and the world's greatest diplomatic headaches, even though the co-operation was grudgingly given at times, is something that cannot be lightly discounted.
What was the Sudan would as a certainty be in far much dire straits were it not for the statesmanship of a now demonized Bashir. In place of the overflowing optimism in the new state of South Sudan the only thing that would have been overflowing in that region would have been blood and tears.
Kenya's wobbly foreign policy
By this order from the Kenyan High Court, which flies in the face of a continent wide political agreement not to carry out the ICC arrest warrants, Kenya stands to lose the shine on its diplomatic cap as a an accommodating player that believes in consensus and fair play while it needs most the support of the region and the rest of Africa with the ongoing military operation in Somalia.
With the recent diplomatic gaffes such as the Prime Minister heading to Israel while the Foreign minister was scheduled to jet off at the same time to diplomatic charm offensives to Turkey and Iran, the loathsome drama of the shabby unravelling of what used to be Kenya's well run and esteemed diplomatic corps continues. There seems to be an increasing frequency of such tell tale signs that Kenya might be biting more than it can chew on managing and balancing its growing foreign relations portfolio.
The simultaneous visits to what are currently inimical states in the international arena and which at the moment are embroiled in a vicious, virulent round in the context of worsening relations, was a tawdry move on the part of Kenya and particularly by the PM. Coincidence or not we flippantly risked alienating countries that have been playing a positive and pivotal role in the stabilization and provision of humanitarian aid to Somalia.
Playing chicken with Turkey ... and Iran
Whatever their secondary motives were, both Iran and Turkey have been consciously bending backwards to allay regional fears of widening of the Somalia conflict into a proxy diplomatic war or military conflict between Muslim countries and the west, the sort of crazy arrangement that invariably demands thousands of African lives as conflict fodder. This they did by making as transparent as possible their dealings in Somalia and by exclusively working with the internationally recognized government in Mogadishu which is the TFG and partially also with the UN mandated AMISOM force.
Before the Al Shaabab situation there have been high powered delegations led by executive heads of government from both Turkey and Iran to Kenya which to the best of my recollection up to this day have not been reciprocated. Now that we are in trouble and suddenly need their clout in the Muslim world, in an act of brazen shamelessness we send over minnows to Turkey and Iran while our PM is next door in Israel being regaled and revelled with hospitality in what is considered by both countries as a belligerent state.
Israel is intrinsically an important and strategic ally of Kenya and this relationship will continue to get stronger in the foreseeable future, but it is nothing short of a dastard case of myopia to ignore, prevent, undermine or under-rate the need for growth of relations between Kenya and Turkey, Iran or any other non-traditional partner states with friendly inclinations.
Of Friends and Foes
As if the diplomatic convolutions are not complicated enough to be shouldered by one poor, contentedly introspective country, Kenya found itself catapulted into another old standing feud in the region this time between Ethiopia and Eritrea. This in the face of an alleged connivance and direct support of the Al Shaabab by the Aferworki government in Asmara.
The diplomatic tiff with Eritrea over its actions in Somalia is still simmering and threatening to boil over. The whole region is now playing a happy cast in an African classic in which the enemy (Kenya) of the enemy (Al Shaabab) of my enemy(Ethiopia) ... is not a friend (Eritrea).
With all these facets of a complex security, political and diplomatic prism in the region, Kenya risks becoming the coalescing agent and focal point for both regional and international interests that might feel aggrieved by Kenya's policies. In effect, the imbroglio in the region and balancing of interests could impel disaffected quarters to take up negative counter-roles to those of Kenya in the conflict in Somalia. Eritrea's alleged actions is the first serious and dangerous signal, that could herald a new chapter of strife not only between traditional enemies but one which could snowball into something far much bigger involving all countries in the Horn of Africa.
NAM went defunct; Kenyan diplomacy in hot pursuit
The growing distrust that Kenya is only a pawn firmly in the hands of the west might grow with the court's ill timed order authorizing the arrest of Bashir. Which further muddles all the efforts Kenya has been forced to put up to rally international support in yet another heave to solve the Somali problem and reinforces a dubious outlook on Kenyan diplomacy. A brand of diplomacy that hitherto had been perceived to be the most unbiased in the region.
If the fissures in Kenya's foreign policy are not urgently fixed it would sound a death knell to what has been painstakingly built over the years. It would in the short term herald confusion in the region and mark a troubling turn of events, confirming the declining trajectory of Kenya that started in the post-election violence in 2008. The gaping hole left would be hard to fill, for despite the complexities of international politics Kenyan foreign policy has since independence been a fairly consistent one that faithfully trod along the lines of the old Non-Aligned Movement and provided a platform for regional co-operation.
As a member of the NAM Kenya's foreign policy in principle was one of being neutral and forging positive ties with all countries that desire mutually cordial and beneficial relations. This is supposed to be done without regard to a country's position in the ideological and political divides in the world and without reference to any other pre-existing bilateral relations. This has been the basis of what used to be the bedrock of East Africa's stability, but given recent events this stability projected across the region by Kenya may not be worth counting on in the future.
Getting it right -- Paranoia is king in Somalia
The waning credibility of Kenya's foreign policy could have been partially behind the flip flopping debacle of the TFG in Mogadishu at the onset of the Kenyan army's incursion, that was launched in light of persistent Al Shaabab aggression and provocation.
The government of Sheikh Shariff had to be strenuously courted and pressured to take a more favourable stance with regard to Kenya's military operations in Somalia, and this was plainly conjectured in the media as stemming from the ludicrous concern that Kenya might be playing a double game that in the end would see the setting up of a strong state-like entity in southern Somalia -- which could only further serve to undermine the central authority of the TFG government.
This is something that for obvious reasons could not have been taken lightly by Sheikh Shariff's government given its already shaky hold in central Somalia and none at all in the secessionist north. It says more about what is emerging as Kenya's stock in trade --shabby foreign policy, than the Somali president's conspiratorial outlook.
Even with Somali paranoia something must have gone terribly awry for Mogadishu to have even seriously considered Kenya's state involvement in such a plot. Despite the direct assurance of the Kenyan government, which has done more than any other entity in trying to reconstitute the Somali state back to it's full stature, power and control of ALL of its internationally recognized territory, the TFG is nonetheless wary of GoK's intentions. Apparently cheap talk has gone viral within the Kenyan government, and Kenyan diplomats are only the latest victims.
Dine the Animists, beg the Arabs
The fact that the court order was given when practically half the new executive branch of the government of South Sudan -- including cabinet ministers -- was in Kenya on a series of training seminars, must have done a lot more than raise a few eye brows in Khartoum. Now that the the Republic of Sudan has kicked out our ambassador and recalled its own, in effect severing diplomatic ties it remains to be seen how the diplomatic row will be resolved. Given past precedents particularly with our awkward, placatory, grovelling attitude to Muslim majority countries we will probably beg ourselves back. We did it with the U.A.E., we routinely do it with Saudi Arabia and given our ongoing exploits alongside the TFG in Somalia it seems we will be doing a lot more serenading, begging and pleading in all sorts of dubious and unpleasant places. States that in less exigent circumstances we would afford to snub into more reasonable diplomatic decorum, are literally having a field day slapping the face off the Kenyan diplomatic corps.
PS: Only a day after I wrote this article on the 29th of November 2011, our Foreign Minister Moses Wetang'ula had -- as predicted and true to form -- begged back the diplomatic ties with Khartoum. Unsurprisingly he contentedly bragged about this minor coup in a glitzy conference with reporters -- as a trailing presidential hopeful such intense focus is dear and rare and he milked it for all it was worth. The Attorney General Githu Muigai, is still coating his shoes with a thick layer of dust, running around the corridors of justice trying to extricate Bashir -- who in theory is a fugitive president -- from the Kenyan judicial jaws
By M. Wycliff
Nairobi,
Juba's Jugglery: Is bare the best?
In South Sudan it is perfectly okay for women and girls to strut their breasts in public devoid of any clothing. It used to be so prosaic that no one really bats an eye lid even today if they see an uncovered bosom strolling down the street. The South Sudanese culture deems it an acceptable cultural practice that dates back thousands of years.(Perhaps going as far back as when the only cover on breasts was the shade of nearby trees in the garden of Eden)
The irony is that women are now being punished for covering them up (at least in part) by wearing what are considered decadent western-styled clothes. The people who sell these clothes also face instant deportation if they are foreigners and constant harassment by the fledgling South Sudanese police or more aptly the police militia.
It derives a weird kind of logic in which propriety is turned on it's head and one is left to wonder what can be more explicit than the barest of breasts. If adornment of little or no article of clothing is acceptable as the norm --far much more explicit in my humble view -- then isn't it a bit hypocritical to lunge at young women and traders who wear or sell these clothes that are considered visually evocative but which still in any case cover most parts of the body?
Anyone who watched the cultural dancers during the Declaration of Independence of R.o.S.S. would understand what am talking about. I will not pretend here to know what are the markers of propriety and the cultural context of Sudanese dress codes. Though I am aware, that what was televised globally during that joyous occasion and ceremony in itself does not imply that this is the way people there normally dress.
Nonetheless anyone who has been to the northern parts of Kenya going all the way into the hinterland of South Sudan right up to the outskirts of Juba, will know that what the civilized world considers as adult nudity is still very much a common sight in these regions.
What is happening in Juba is like the Turkana admonishing and punishing their teenage girls and women for wearing tank tops yet most of the time they are stark naked from the waist up, barring the intricate mass of beads around their neck .
All of our african societies had similar dress codes barely a century ago. Yet it seems so foreign and outlandish a thing today for women in modern african societies to expose their torsos. You have to jump from South Sudan all the way down to the mesmerizing reed dance in the enclave kingdom of Swaziland to see as many uncovered breasts in a single place on the African continent.
In the massive continental area in between, the practice or rather fashion has disappeared -- you can blame bashful christian missionaries and colonials for that. It was they who hammered into the natives heads that going about practically naked was not what Christ would want and that nudity and modesty don't mix. Another example perhaps of the utter savagery of the domineering nature of the colonialists, who nevertheless successfully made us their ardent clones.
It is all in the mind I guess. What is taken to be acceptable by a given society and what that society does in reaction to what it perceives as threats to its social fabric (particularly with regard to morality, cultural practice and ethics) is that society's business. But within the context of a globalized world and with the increasing convergence of values, that which is deemed as culturally acceptable is bound to change even in the remote villages of South Sudan.
M. Wycliff
Nairobi,
The irony is that women are now being punished for covering them up (at least in part) by wearing what are considered decadent western-styled clothes. The people who sell these clothes also face instant deportation if they are foreigners and constant harassment by the fledgling South Sudanese police or more aptly the police militia.
It derives a weird kind of logic in which propriety is turned on it's head and one is left to wonder what can be more explicit than the barest of breasts. If adornment of little or no article of clothing is acceptable as the norm --far much more explicit in my humble view -- then isn't it a bit hypocritical to lunge at young women and traders who wear or sell these clothes that are considered visually evocative but which still in any case cover most parts of the body?
Anyone who watched the cultural dancers during the Declaration of Independence of R.o.S.S. would understand what am talking about. I will not pretend here to know what are the markers of propriety and the cultural context of Sudanese dress codes. Though I am aware, that what was televised globally during that joyous occasion and ceremony in itself does not imply that this is the way people there normally dress.
Nonetheless anyone who has been to the northern parts of Kenya going all the way into the hinterland of South Sudan right up to the outskirts of Juba, will know that what the civilized world considers as adult nudity is still very much a common sight in these regions.
What is happening in Juba is like the Turkana admonishing and punishing their teenage girls and women for wearing tank tops yet most of the time they are stark naked from the waist up, barring the intricate mass of beads around their neck .
All of our african societies had similar dress codes barely a century ago. Yet it seems so foreign and outlandish a thing today for women in modern african societies to expose their torsos. You have to jump from South Sudan all the way down to the mesmerizing reed dance in the enclave kingdom of Swaziland to see as many uncovered breasts in a single place on the African continent.
In the massive continental area in between, the practice or rather fashion has disappeared -- you can blame bashful christian missionaries and colonials for that. It was they who hammered into the natives heads that going about practically naked was not what Christ would want and that nudity and modesty don't mix. Another example perhaps of the utter savagery of the domineering nature of the colonialists, who nevertheless successfully made us their ardent clones.
It is all in the mind I guess. What is taken to be acceptable by a given society and what that society does in reaction to what it perceives as threats to its social fabric (particularly with regard to morality, cultural practice and ethics) is that society's business. But within the context of a globalized world and with the increasing convergence of values, that which is deemed as culturally acceptable is bound to change even in the remote villages of South Sudan.
M. Wycliff
Nairobi,
Sun, Sex and God
Where is the meaning?
The people of old, including our African ancestors were right -- without the Sun, there is nothing. It is the source of all life and joy as we know it. If the Sun should cease to be, even for a blinking moment we will be overtaken with horrendous and instantaneous catastrophes; which would make the word 'apocalypse' seem like a coy euphemism for a stroll in the park. The most gruesome, horrible form of death would be a welcome relief from the terrifying events that would ensue.
Courtesy of modern science we now know the life-party on planet Earth will one day come to a grim and abrupt end. Our Sun like all the other stars will someday have to cough up and die and any remnants of human civilization will be inevitably swallowed into the eternal darkness that engulfs the visible Universe.
What are we here for then? Just to live and struggle and to teach our children the same so that they in turn can teach their children to mindlessly struggle and survive? Are we really here just to be part of such a meaningless recursive cycle of one generation struggling to survive to teach the next one essentially to do the same task to the umpteenth generation?
Yet it is amazingly clear that in any case if future generations were to solve all the problems of the Earth and resolve all the problems that have bothered man ever since he realized the meaning of the abstract concept of bother -- and was bothered about it -- that their efforts and hence all of humanity's effort since the advent of mankind will undoubtedly, inevitably and immutably come to naught with the demise of the Sun.
That is right, without embracing what dialecticians deplore as the convenient concept of God everything can be logically deducted to come to zero, null, zilch, nothing. Simple mechanics dictate that the Sun -- just being a giant fireball will at some point use up it's finite fuel reserves and then all we are doing, that has ever been done and will ever be done will at a very precise and definite period in time come to nothing. That is if humanity ever gets that far -- an impossible feat by all reckoning, scientific and otherwise; man is too foolish, selfish, greedy, vicious and too vile a specie to be extant even say in a million years.
Mother nature will take us out, long before we figure out how to go back in time to see if really Jesus of Nazareth walked on water. With the death of the Sun everything on this minuscule, cosmically speaking insignificant part of the galaxy we call the Solar system dies along with it. Nothing will remain of this planetary system with the last and most spectacular gasping breath of the Sun.
How can such wonderful things as ourselves and everything else on this planet come of their own accord and perish of no accord? Where is the sense in that? What evolutionary merit is there in the great design of the Universe if everything was meant to emanate from nothing, develop over billions of years and then end up where it started -- dissolve into nothing -- and for no apparent reason at that!
So, where do the dotted lines lead?
There is a God. There is a master planner. There is a creator.
No matter how remote, faint, imperceptible and irreconcilable he is to our modern way of life, scientific knowledge and prowess, there will always be that vivid, innate awareness of something not quite within the range of man's ability of comprehension. That is awe inspiring, all encompassing, veiled from material probity yet certainly present. Forbiddingly silent, keenly watching and to man's eternal irritation and chagrin incessantly biding time.
Perhaps he will reveal himself in our time and spatial dimension, perhaps we can only trully "know" whence we move to a pre-existing, ever-existing alternate reality.
Perhaps all that happens once we die is that nothing really happens.
Perhaps he is waiting for the end of time or maybe 'God' is the end of time, or perhaps the Universe and everything there is -- is 'God' itself. Good gracious! That could mean all of us could be essentially God!
All I have expressed above are the sort of crazy, desperate ideas that run through the minds of millions of people each and every day. What is there beyond this life? Some as you have already noticed choose to think themselves as God.
One French mathematician and philosopher called Rene Descartes, in a way greatly contributed to this development. According to him one could not be certain of the reality of anything but of his own being -- and why? Well, he concluded the only proof of reality is that if you can shoot a random thought through your mind then there you are! You exist!
Unfortunately all else cannot be proven to be as real as your random thought, infact not even your brain can be proved to exist. Descartes was not the first person who ever alluded to his own deism, but from there it became fashionable to muse if really there was such a being as God. After hundreds of years of expounding, much philosophical debate some are pretty content to simply think of themselves as the centre of everything, and for those flagrantly brazen enough -- man is God.
Don't be silly, you are not God;
You don't feel too Godly right now do you? Ofcourse not, don't be foolish, you are not God no matter what ideology or philosophy you subscribe to you will NEVER convince yourself -- to the point of being sufficiently content that you are really God.
No amount of karma will make you karma itself. The very instant you walk into a toilet after you declare yourself a god, you are humbly reminded of your mortal nature through the very ungodly-like biological processes you are compelled to submit to in the privacy of the washroom. No living human on the planet is exempt, from presidents and royalty to the idler in Timbactou -- they all must squat and . . . well you know the rest.
If you can overlook that and still declare yourself a god, then you trully don't need 'God' because you have no sense of meaning for the word.
Humanism is rubbish. Just think of selfish greed in capital letters and there you have what it means. It has many ideological siblings and offspring with fancy nicknames like hedonism, anarchism, agnosticism, atheism, utilitarianism, amorality etc.
I don't waste too much time on them, and perhaps you prefer not to either. Unless of course you need and want passable excuses for more wanton sex, more fun, more money, more power and the crux of it all -- less rules. These are the very components of human existence that in part provided the motivation to invent or explore the above mentioned notions.
As humans we all want in some measure some of these perks that come with money and power, but if extrapolated to any numerically significant social unit, exclusively guided for instance by hedonism, the situation quickly translates to one of more chaos, more misery, more crime, more conflict, more violence, more death and so forth.
Laws are Godly, human logic isn't;
Human laws and rules have purpose. They are there to ensure social order. This enables as many people as possible, in as an orderly a fashion as possible, and as equitably as the powerful ones can be prevailed upon to accept -- allow in theory, the maximum number of people to grab whatever they can and hold onto it for as long as they can. Which is why it probably isn't a joke, that obeying laws --not only traffic rules -- increases longevity. They ensure we do things more methodically and controllably; including killing each other.
The nature of God is not so easy to understand, and no man can possibly do, for then he would not be so mysterious and Godly. Would he? But fortunately his laws are.
If I may, I have a quirky, messy analogy that may demonstrate his nature. First visualize he is the beach and we are the sand grains. Then add onto that he is simultaneously the beach owner, the beach restaurant, the sea and the people playing on the beach. To make it roundly complex, he is animate and inanimate at the same time.
The more you delve into this analogy the less sense it makes. For instance in my example he would have to be pouring onto himself mango juice if he were both the glass and the person pouring the mango juice.Then he would have to be drinking himself, remember he is also the mango juice and the person drinking the mango juice. Besides that he would have to be swimming in himself in multiple instances at the same time because he is all the people on the beach and the water in the sea. Perhaps as a side show he would have to be the cat that poops on a favourite couch and in perplexing twist he then has to be angry at himself for he is the cat, the home owner, the the couch and so on.
If you can rationalize that into human understandable terms without contradiction then you are well on your way to defining God empirically in scientific terms! All in all, what am trying to say here, is that the more we try to reduce God into terms that describe our level, using human logic, all we end up doing is generate more and more irrationalities.
It all reminds me about a very fascinating story of a certain scientist called Schroedinger, who in an effort to explain a counter-intuitive concept elaborated with an example of a cat in a cupboard that could be dead, alive and even more interestingly -- dead and alive at the same time! But in his case it all made sense, courtesy of the very real world of Quantum Physics.
The Bible is not infallible -- but it is the only thing that makes sense;
We are not part of God simply because we are humans and sentient but simply because everything is him, in him and from him. And how do I know? Well he told me so. Could anything be easier than that.
Yes he told us in the Bible what he is, who he is and where he is, yet we bother to define, comprehend, measure, quantify, rationalize, philosophically deconstruct, mythologize and do all the funny things the human mind is capable of doing to dispel the nagging reality that we are not a force onto ourselves and that we are and we will be held accountable for our actions.
I fail to see what joy there should be in 'killing" the concept of God. Everyone knows, including those who are busy trying to kill God like the Marxists, atheists, agnostics etc that he isn't dead. With blatant intransigence they forge ahead while they know what they are doing and all the attendant rationalizations and all their elegant intellectual posturing will never silence the voice within them of the being whose existence they are busy repudiating .
In an effort to provide ourselves the comfort and excuse not to do what he explicitly wants us to do -- and more incredibly, for our own good -- we have decided to make the most striking fact of existence itself a figment of man's fertile imagination.
What then of racism, religious fundamentalism, social and gender prejudice, economic disparity, political double standards, patriarchy, bigotry, militarism and many other social ills that many devout people perpetuate and even promote with such gusto? What does that have to do with atheists and homosexuals? In any case hasn't this kind of myopic dogmatism been tried for centuries and only managed to drive humanity further into misery? Isn't this sufficiently demonstrated by the dark ages?
These concerns though seeming to provide ample ground to disregard religion they do not provide any valid premise to disavow the existence of God. All the above ills are perpetrated by men, who cloak their flagrant greed and selfish aims in the hollowed out and rotten core of empty religious structures and doctrine.
Furthermore they do not vindicate the actions of those who take counter pose stances that are evidently inimical to what is a pre-ordained, and if I may, the natural order of things. 'Fagism' and homosexuality, to be blunt, cannot be justified due to the hypocrisies and failures of religion.
Some factional interests have found leverage in the failures and prejudices found within the major world religions to promote promiscuity and iniquity, things that as humans we innately know, despite our backgrounds and cultures, not to be right.
Don't be a sucker, live right;
How far we have fallen indeed. I do not know how explicit it can get other than fire being sent down from the sky to consume homosexuals, for Christians to get it into their heads that homosexuality is anathema to God. Yet God has already done that -- to Sodom and Gomorrah, whence the word sodomy gets its name.
But alas! We now have gay priests openly serving the faithful. It was not sufficient to win legal recognition and protection for their sin, but their guilt simply compels them to rub it right on the face of God. By tarnishing his altar with their open service as gay ministers they hope to rid themselves of their last obstinate opponents. The gay community has found it imperative to vanquish the last remaining enclave of dissenting voices, the irksome, moralizing voices of rebuke -- particularly in the West, where these voices happen to be marooned within the weakened and beleaguered Church.
In Africa the gay bandwagon has just made it over, and the tried and tested formula of getting constitutional and legal protection which is then rapidly followed by a pervasive program of robust promotion of gay rights in all social strata is just getting underway. Already there is growing discomfiture with the issue and politicians as usual are capitalizing with populist remarks followed by prevarications, partial retractions and twig like vacillation.
The pretext that homosexuality is moral on the grounds that emotionally and mentally gay people come pre-programmed that way falls flat on its face as the omnipotent God, nature, evolution or whatever one chooses to call it seems to have utterly failed or forgotten to provide the appropriate supporting biological mechanism for gay people to live fruitful, natural and fretless lifestyles. Instead what they have are collapsing recta, haemorrhoids and whatever else that afflicts them, with no feasible chance for natural procreation.
In my view it is the notion that homosexuality is natural that is a figment of man's imagination. For it has no discernible, natural biological merit; homosexuality is capable only of achieving perverted satisfaction and ultimately nothing more.
Think about it, since heterosexuals do enjoy having casual sex, even at times during these frivolous escapades develop some emotional intimacy, and feel perfectly normal afterward -- does it make it any less immoral? Does the fact that sex is consensual make it morally acceptable outside the context it is meant to take place in society and universally accepted as such? Being consensually gay and being infatuated can never wash away immorality.
We can be pressured by modernity and so called enlightenment to acquiesce as humans to homosexuality as an acceptable phenomenon (the rationale is that it is no more nefarious than any other anti-social practice) but it won't make it right in a million years. Should they be persecuted or discriminated against due to their orientation? Without equivocation I say no. They should be allowed to lead full, productive lives with the full freedoms and protection as any other members of society enjoy. But there is absolutely nothing to be endorsed in it either.
As the creator I believe God knows what is best for us. But that would be too simplistic, too narrow, constraining and parochial, too limiting and unimaginative, too uninspiring, deterministic and inimical to our modern liberal ways.
To the hardened souls and minds modern religion is just sanitized voodoo from the stone-age and what am advocating, may very well seem to them like pining for juju-figmentation and nostalgia for ignorance. Being the humans we are, we'd rather run ourselves into philosophical cul-de-sacs rather than accept the most logical of all answers. Which is that nothing ever comes out of nothing.
Seriously, of all things, can the entire and immeasurably complex Universe come from nothing? I don't know, but spontaneous emanation and self-origination theories that science offers regarding the origins of the Universe sound to me more like the mumbo-jumbo nonsense they tell us religion is all about. Even if both faculties have no proof for their respective claims and assertions on the origins of the Universe, something doesn't seem quite right with the one of such a big thing as the Universe coming from nothing.
As much as some of us may loath the idea, we are simply a creation of a masterful creator, and the greater good can only come by following the will of the one who designed existence itself.
I don't know how we ever got to the point we are, but it is a sad fake reality we have created, in which millions of people are taught all over the world to accept fiction as fact. I implore you to reject being a gullible fool. God is real -- and it is very unlikely that he could be congenial, happy or even apathetic with man trampling on his will.
By M. Wycliff
30-12-2011
Nairobi.
The people of old, including our African ancestors were right -- without the Sun, there is nothing. It is the source of all life and joy as we know it. If the Sun should cease to be, even for a blinking moment we will be overtaken with horrendous and instantaneous catastrophes; which would make the word 'apocalypse' seem like a coy euphemism for a stroll in the park. The most gruesome, horrible form of death would be a welcome relief from the terrifying events that would ensue.
Courtesy of modern science we now know the life-party on planet Earth will one day come to a grim and abrupt end. Our Sun like all the other stars will someday have to cough up and die and any remnants of human civilization will be inevitably swallowed into the eternal darkness that engulfs the visible Universe.
What are we here for then? Just to live and struggle and to teach our children the same so that they in turn can teach their children to mindlessly struggle and survive? Are we really here just to be part of such a meaningless recursive cycle of one generation struggling to survive to teach the next one essentially to do the same task to the umpteenth generation?
Yet it is amazingly clear that in any case if future generations were to solve all the problems of the Earth and resolve all the problems that have bothered man ever since he realized the meaning of the abstract concept of bother -- and was bothered about it -- that their efforts and hence all of humanity's effort since the advent of mankind will undoubtedly, inevitably and immutably come to naught with the demise of the Sun.
That is right, without embracing what dialecticians deplore as the convenient concept of God everything can be logically deducted to come to zero, null, zilch, nothing. Simple mechanics dictate that the Sun -- just being a giant fireball will at some point use up it's finite fuel reserves and then all we are doing, that has ever been done and will ever be done will at a very precise and definite period in time come to nothing. That is if humanity ever gets that far -- an impossible feat by all reckoning, scientific and otherwise; man is too foolish, selfish, greedy, vicious and too vile a specie to be extant even say in a million years.
Mother nature will take us out, long before we figure out how to go back in time to see if really Jesus of Nazareth walked on water. With the death of the Sun everything on this minuscule, cosmically speaking insignificant part of the galaxy we call the Solar system dies along with it. Nothing will remain of this planetary system with the last and most spectacular gasping breath of the Sun.
How can such wonderful things as ourselves and everything else on this planet come of their own accord and perish of no accord? Where is the sense in that? What evolutionary merit is there in the great design of the Universe if everything was meant to emanate from nothing, develop over billions of years and then end up where it started -- dissolve into nothing -- and for no apparent reason at that!
So, where do the dotted lines lead?
There is a God. There is a master planner. There is a creator.
No matter how remote, faint, imperceptible and irreconcilable he is to our modern way of life, scientific knowledge and prowess, there will always be that vivid, innate awareness of something not quite within the range of man's ability of comprehension. That is awe inspiring, all encompassing, veiled from material probity yet certainly present. Forbiddingly silent, keenly watching and to man's eternal irritation and chagrin incessantly biding time.
Perhaps he will reveal himself in our time and spatial dimension, perhaps we can only trully "know" whence we move to a pre-existing, ever-existing alternate reality.
Perhaps all that happens once we die is that nothing really happens.
Perhaps he is waiting for the end of time or maybe 'God' is the end of time, or perhaps the Universe and everything there is -- is 'God' itself. Good gracious! That could mean all of us could be essentially God!
All I have expressed above are the sort of crazy, desperate ideas that run through the minds of millions of people each and every day. What is there beyond this life? Some as you have already noticed choose to think themselves as God.
One French mathematician and philosopher called Rene Descartes, in a way greatly contributed to this development. According to him one could not be certain of the reality of anything but of his own being -- and why? Well, he concluded the only proof of reality is that if you can shoot a random thought through your mind then there you are! You exist!
Unfortunately all else cannot be proven to be as real as your random thought, infact not even your brain can be proved to exist. Descartes was not the first person who ever alluded to his own deism, but from there it became fashionable to muse if really there was such a being as God. After hundreds of years of expounding, much philosophical debate some are pretty content to simply think of themselves as the centre of everything, and for those flagrantly brazen enough -- man is God.
Don't be silly, you are not God;
You don't feel too Godly right now do you? Ofcourse not, don't be foolish, you are not God no matter what ideology or philosophy you subscribe to you will NEVER convince yourself -- to the point of being sufficiently content that you are really God.
No amount of karma will make you karma itself. The very instant you walk into a toilet after you declare yourself a god, you are humbly reminded of your mortal nature through the very ungodly-like biological processes you are compelled to submit to in the privacy of the washroom. No living human on the planet is exempt, from presidents and royalty to the idler in Timbactou -- they all must squat and . . . well you know the rest.
If you can overlook that and still declare yourself a god, then you trully don't need 'God' because you have no sense of meaning for the word.
Humanism is rubbish. Just think of selfish greed in capital letters and there you have what it means. It has many ideological siblings and offspring with fancy nicknames like hedonism, anarchism, agnosticism, atheism, utilitarianism, amorality etc.
I don't waste too much time on them, and perhaps you prefer not to either. Unless of course you need and want passable excuses for more wanton sex, more fun, more money, more power and the crux of it all -- less rules. These are the very components of human existence that in part provided the motivation to invent or explore the above mentioned notions.
As humans we all want in some measure some of these perks that come with money and power, but if extrapolated to any numerically significant social unit, exclusively guided for instance by hedonism, the situation quickly translates to one of more chaos, more misery, more crime, more conflict, more violence, more death and so forth.
Laws are Godly, human logic isn't;
Human laws and rules have purpose. They are there to ensure social order. This enables as many people as possible, in as an orderly a fashion as possible, and as equitably as the powerful ones can be prevailed upon to accept -- allow in theory, the maximum number of people to grab whatever they can and hold onto it for as long as they can. Which is why it probably isn't a joke, that obeying laws --not only traffic rules -- increases longevity. They ensure we do things more methodically and controllably; including killing each other.
The nature of God is not so easy to understand, and no man can possibly do, for then he would not be so mysterious and Godly. Would he? But fortunately his laws are.
If I may, I have a quirky, messy analogy that may demonstrate his nature. First visualize he is the beach and we are the sand grains. Then add onto that he is simultaneously the beach owner, the beach restaurant, the sea and the people playing on the beach. To make it roundly complex, he is animate and inanimate at the same time.
The more you delve into this analogy the less sense it makes. For instance in my example he would have to be pouring onto himself mango juice if he were both the glass and the person pouring the mango juice.Then he would have to be drinking himself, remember he is also the mango juice and the person drinking the mango juice. Besides that he would have to be swimming in himself in multiple instances at the same time because he is all the people on the beach and the water in the sea. Perhaps as a side show he would have to be the cat that poops on a favourite couch and in perplexing twist he then has to be angry at himself for he is the cat, the home owner, the the couch and so on.
If you can rationalize that into human understandable terms without contradiction then you are well on your way to defining God empirically in scientific terms! All in all, what am trying to say here, is that the more we try to reduce God into terms that describe our level, using human logic, all we end up doing is generate more and more irrationalities.
It all reminds me about a very fascinating story of a certain scientist called Schroedinger, who in an effort to explain a counter-intuitive concept elaborated with an example of a cat in a cupboard that could be dead, alive and even more interestingly -- dead and alive at the same time! But in his case it all made sense, courtesy of the very real world of Quantum Physics.
The Bible is not infallible -- but it is the only thing that makes sense;
We are not part of God simply because we are humans and sentient but simply because everything is him, in him and from him. And how do I know? Well he told me so. Could anything be easier than that.
Yes he told us in the Bible what he is, who he is and where he is, yet we bother to define, comprehend, measure, quantify, rationalize, philosophically deconstruct, mythologize and do all the funny things the human mind is capable of doing to dispel the nagging reality that we are not a force onto ourselves and that we are and we will be held accountable for our actions.
I fail to see what joy there should be in 'killing" the concept of God. Everyone knows, including those who are busy trying to kill God like the Marxists, atheists, agnostics etc that he isn't dead. With blatant intransigence they forge ahead while they know what they are doing and all the attendant rationalizations and all their elegant intellectual posturing will never silence the voice within them of the being whose existence they are busy repudiating .
In an effort to provide ourselves the comfort and excuse not to do what he explicitly wants us to do -- and more incredibly, for our own good -- we have decided to make the most striking fact of existence itself a figment of man's fertile imagination.
What then of racism, religious fundamentalism, social and gender prejudice, economic disparity, political double standards, patriarchy, bigotry, militarism and many other social ills that many devout people perpetuate and even promote with such gusto? What does that have to do with atheists and homosexuals? In any case hasn't this kind of myopic dogmatism been tried for centuries and only managed to drive humanity further into misery? Isn't this sufficiently demonstrated by the dark ages?
These concerns though seeming to provide ample ground to disregard religion they do not provide any valid premise to disavow the existence of God. All the above ills are perpetrated by men, who cloak their flagrant greed and selfish aims in the hollowed out and rotten core of empty religious structures and doctrine.
Furthermore they do not vindicate the actions of those who take counter pose stances that are evidently inimical to what is a pre-ordained, and if I may, the natural order of things. 'Fagism' and homosexuality, to be blunt, cannot be justified due to the hypocrisies and failures of religion.
Some factional interests have found leverage in the failures and prejudices found within the major world religions to promote promiscuity and iniquity, things that as humans we innately know, despite our backgrounds and cultures, not to be right.
Don't be a sucker, live right;
How far we have fallen indeed. I do not know how explicit it can get other than fire being sent down from the sky to consume homosexuals, for Christians to get it into their heads that homosexuality is anathema to God. Yet God has already done that -- to Sodom and Gomorrah, whence the word sodomy gets its name.
But alas! We now have gay priests openly serving the faithful. It was not sufficient to win legal recognition and protection for their sin, but their guilt simply compels them to rub it right on the face of God. By tarnishing his altar with their open service as gay ministers they hope to rid themselves of their last obstinate opponents. The gay community has found it imperative to vanquish the last remaining enclave of dissenting voices, the irksome, moralizing voices of rebuke -- particularly in the West, where these voices happen to be marooned within the weakened and beleaguered Church.
In Africa the gay bandwagon has just made it over, and the tried and tested formula of getting constitutional and legal protection which is then rapidly followed by a pervasive program of robust promotion of gay rights in all social strata is just getting underway. Already there is growing discomfiture with the issue and politicians as usual are capitalizing with populist remarks followed by prevarications, partial retractions and twig like vacillation.
The pretext that homosexuality is moral on the grounds that emotionally and mentally gay people come pre-programmed that way falls flat on its face as the omnipotent God, nature, evolution or whatever one chooses to call it seems to have utterly failed or forgotten to provide the appropriate supporting biological mechanism for gay people to live fruitful, natural and fretless lifestyles. Instead what they have are collapsing recta, haemorrhoids and whatever else that afflicts them, with no feasible chance for natural procreation.
In my view it is the notion that homosexuality is natural that is a figment of man's imagination. For it has no discernible, natural biological merit; homosexuality is capable only of achieving perverted satisfaction and ultimately nothing more.
Think about it, since heterosexuals do enjoy having casual sex, even at times during these frivolous escapades develop some emotional intimacy, and feel perfectly normal afterward -- does it make it any less immoral? Does the fact that sex is consensual make it morally acceptable outside the context it is meant to take place in society and universally accepted as such? Being consensually gay and being infatuated can never wash away immorality.
We can be pressured by modernity and so called enlightenment to acquiesce as humans to homosexuality as an acceptable phenomenon (the rationale is that it is no more nefarious than any other anti-social practice) but it won't make it right in a million years. Should they be persecuted or discriminated against due to their orientation? Without equivocation I say no. They should be allowed to lead full, productive lives with the full freedoms and protection as any other members of society enjoy. But there is absolutely nothing to be endorsed in it either.
As the creator I believe God knows what is best for us. But that would be too simplistic, too narrow, constraining and parochial, too limiting and unimaginative, too uninspiring, deterministic and inimical to our modern liberal ways.
To the hardened souls and minds modern religion is just sanitized voodoo from the stone-age and what am advocating, may very well seem to them like pining for juju-figmentation and nostalgia for ignorance. Being the humans we are, we'd rather run ourselves into philosophical cul-de-sacs rather than accept the most logical of all answers. Which is that nothing ever comes out of nothing.
Seriously, of all things, can the entire and immeasurably complex Universe come from nothing? I don't know, but spontaneous emanation and self-origination theories that science offers regarding the origins of the Universe sound to me more like the mumbo-jumbo nonsense they tell us religion is all about. Even if both faculties have no proof for their respective claims and assertions on the origins of the Universe, something doesn't seem quite right with the one of such a big thing as the Universe coming from nothing.
As much as some of us may loath the idea, we are simply a creation of a masterful creator, and the greater good can only come by following the will of the one who designed existence itself.
I don't know how we ever got to the point we are, but it is a sad fake reality we have created, in which millions of people are taught all over the world to accept fiction as fact. I implore you to reject being a gullible fool. God is real -- and it is very unlikely that he could be congenial, happy or even apathetic with man trampling on his will.
By M. Wycliff
30-12-2011
Nairobi.
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