Obama - Are You Ready For This One?

I’ve tried and tried to understand the USA electioneering system but I always get lost somewhere in the Primaries, Caucuses and Super Tuesdays. Ours here I understand a little bit too well. Stuff enough ballot boxes with khangas and lamps and there you have your ticket to parliament. And a ministerial post soon after.

I’ve since given up on the US system but at least I know the basics. Barack Obama is in the lead. And he took a major stride towards Democratic Party’s presidential nomination with a victory over Hillary Clinton in North Carolina - a big win for the Obama camp which has put him almost beyond Hillary’s reach. The good very forgiving lady will need a miracle to reach him now.

In my effort to understand the system further, I came across a candidate who could very well be the next president of the United States of America. Maybe just as much as Nazlin Omar could have been Kenya’s president. His name is Jonathon ‘The Impaler’ Sharkey and he’s a Satanic Dark Priest, Sanguinarian Vampyre and a Hecate Witch. As a self proclaimed Satanist, Jonathon will be vying for the US presidency under the Vampires, Witches and Pagans Party which he founded in 2005. The party is officially recognized by the United States Federal Election Committee. Under Jonathon’s leadership (if he wins), gay marriages will not only be allowed, but as an ordained priest (Satanic) he will devote time once or twice a month and conduct them himself at the White House. He has major beef with the likes of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaida and although his preferred form of punishment for terrorists is to viciously impale them, he also has good plans to drop a bomb in the holy city of Mecca and level it to the ground.

This is not the first time Jonathon is vying for public office. He gave presidency a shot in 2004 and now again in 2008. He has also vied for congress in 3 states in the past, New Jersey, Indiana and Florida. In 2006, he ran for Governor of Minnesota.

It’s difficult to write much about him without sounding like I’m campaigning for him but one last thing. Those who know about wrestling might know him by the name ‘Rocky Hurricane Flash’. He’s also a professional boxer. You may not want to but if you want to see him on some blood stained vampire site, you can check it out here.

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Fishy Business With The IDPs: Why The Mad Rush?

One of the reasons why politicians in Kenya and indeed most readers in this blog can never understand or empathize with Kenya’s Internally displaced persons has to do with understanding the emotion of fear.

Let me illustrate this to you in a bit more detail. I was still only a young child barely 4 years old when we used to live in Isiolo with my parents. Even now some memories of that house are still etched firmly on my mind. Our house was right next to the bush where on at least two sides of the strong fence we had no neighbor but the thicket as far as the eye could see. I still remember looking out of the sitting room window on most evenings and seeing the clear silhouette of an elephant. I kid you not.

Now one of the best kept state secrets of Kenya was unfolding in Isiolo at that time and it was the Shifta bandit menace. One day, when my father was not around and we were only in the house with my mum and kid brother and the house help, a very fierce gun fight broke out right outside our house at about 7pm in the evening. Our mum huddled me and my brother into a large wardrobe in our kids bedroom and she joined us there as she locked it on the inside as best as she could. The gun battle went on outside for hours and hours. Mercifully that was one of the few gun fights that the Shifta appear to have lost to the Kenyan security personnel otherwise this blog would never have existed and I would not be here today. The Shiftas in those days did not take any hostages. I must have had an inkling, even at that tender age that all was not well because I am told that I threw up inside that stuffy cupboard. To be honest that part I do not remember. But I remember falling asleep in there as endless gun shots continued to ring out all over our compound.

But apparently I was very brave because years later, my dad told me that they were in the police mess less than 100 metres from our house when the firing started and one the civilians taking cover inside some large cupboard was terrified. So much so that soon the floor appeared to be water logged only for everybody to discover that the man had urinated on himself.

Fear is not a pretty emotion but just imagine for a moment that that is the chief emotion amongst most of the IDPs idling away in camps. The memories of the terrible terrible things that happened to them barely 4 months ago are still very fresh on their minds.

And then to make matters worse the government is very determined that the IDPs should go back to the place which for them still has very scary memories. Many watched their loved ones being killed. Others watched as their mothers, wives and sisters were savagely raped in front of their very own eyes by people they thought they knew well.

But the Kibaki government does not really care. All they want is for the IDPs to go back to their farms. So the big mystery is why would people still in so much fear want to go back to a place that has crazy and fearful memories for them? The truth is that the government is forcing people to go back. And the details of exactly how they are doing this is extremely disturbing to say the least (see my latest raw notes for the full story).

For starters it is a human rights violation to force IDPs to go back to their homes against their will and indeed better judgment. One just needs to carefully observe how the politicians are behaving over this IDP issue to realize that there is something very wrong here.

Last weekend Lands Minister James Orengo while addressing a meeting in the Rift Valley suggested that the IDPs be settled elsewhere other than the Rift Valley. That remark has drawn the fire of many Central province MPs who have said that Orengo was wrong as a cabinet minister to say what he said. They have vowed that the IDPs MUST be re-settled in the Rift Valley.

The truth is that it is not too hard for the government to find land elsewhere in the country to settle these suffering brothers and sisters of ours, other than the Rift Valley where the bitter truth is that they will never be safe. They can be given land exactly the size of what thye lost in the Rift valley, or if the land is less fertile, something larger. The truth is that there are vast tracts of idle, undeveloped land all over the country.

Why should President Kibaki and his cronies rush to re-settle the IDPs without addressing the core issues that led to their displacement in the first place, as Rift Valley MPs have requested so many times? Are we not just postponing the inevitable, namely another painful eviction in the near future? What about the scars and memories the IDPs have of those farms that they are being asked to go back to? I am well aware of the fact that history bores most of my readers in this blog, but studying the history of how most of the IDPs ended up being settled in the Rift Valley will help anybody solve the mystery of why the government is in such a mad rush to get the IDPs back on their farms (I tackle this issue in great detail in my latest raw notes.)

Folks we could be triggering off trouble in the Rift Valley re-settling the IDPs so quickly and without addressing the core problems. And even the issue of having police protection is not quite reassuring enough. As one victim put it; they were living right next to a police station but that did not stop them being attacked and were forcibly evicted off their land.

She visited lover in servant quarters leaving husband in bed

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