Month: August 2011

USA to Follow KEN?

USA to Follow KEN?

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Politicians the world over are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Take Kenya, for instance. Wednesday a new political party was announced, a reaction to the public’s intense dislike of current politicians. Should we follow Kenya’s lead?

The new party in Kenya is the United Democratic Front (UDF). Wow, that blew me away. At last, a truly representative group of savvy (all) men who are united in their respect for voter’s wishes. Now that’s a change. And they’re going to be in the front, too!

Sensitivity to the complexity of issues doesn’t mean you don’t need good marketing. I think these three-letter wraps are perfect. In the airline industry we’ve used three-letter codes for years to designate airports.

ORD is Chicago. LOL is Derby, Nevada. ACK is Nantucket. This helps us remember where we’re going to, if of course, we were sure we were going and that there would be an FAA (Fair trAffic Actors) to assist us.

Although the announcement yesterday was greeted by throngs of people nearly overflowing the covered bus stop at Uhuru and Kenyatta avenues, it was hard to figure out exactly what the new party stood for. Fortunately, Google helped with a simple UDF search.

The UDF clearly stated “it’s commitments to the people of Kerala to rise to their aspirations for Growth and overall development along with a peaceful living for the entire section of society.”

Now there’s a mission statement.

An obvious error in today’s main newspaper in Nairobi reported, “The UDF… is linked to some politicians associated with the G7 grouping.“. I and most of Kenya are unable to explain this, but we are waiting for them to add another digit or letter.

Perhaps, though, with my long experience following politics in Kenya, I can make an inference as to really why this new party was formed.

The two principle leaders of the UDF, crossing their waving hands in the photo above, are (left to right, or vice versa depending upon which photoshop or political analyst you use) is Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and suspended Higher Education minister William Ruto.

I for one would be concerned that their travel schedules might disrupt their local policy planning. They are traveling back and forth to The Hague quite a lot, since they are both indicted by the World Court for crimes against humanity, and the vast majority of the Kenyan people refused to allow them to wiggle out of that one.

And then there’s the possibility that Ruto will go to jail (in Kenya). The question with Ruto is whether he will go to jail in Kenya first, or the Netherlands first. That’s why the PRE (“president”) suspended him from his cabinet position.

Both men have crossed existing party lines and old ethnic barriers to form this new party. This carries on the tradition they began during the turbulence following the 2007 election when (allegedly) they both recruited thugs often not in their own tribe to shoot police, club clergy to death and set fire to buildings.

Now the question comes home. Should we follow Kenya’s lead? Perhaps Senator David Vitter could start a new WTF party. He might go to jail, soon, too.

And then there’s that other senator, Joe Lieberman self suspended from the DEM but unwilling to join the GOP for GOK (God Only Knows).

That’s a team, now! Vitter and Lieberman, or Lieberman and Vitter, just like Ruto and Kenyatta (or Kenyatta and Ruto).

Amazing, isn’t it?

Rain No Gain Only Pain

Rain No Gain Only Pain

by Arusha ♥ 2 Comments

Folks, it is drizzling near Dadaab. And it shouldn’t be. This is normally a dry season. We’ve got to understand again and again that this terrible famine is man made. It is not the work of God.

Yesterday I listened and watched to report after report, including from Kenya itself, decrying the “60-year drought.”

There is no 60-year drought in Kenya. What there is, by the way, is more important: a famine of extreme proportions. But it is not caused by drought. And all the western journalists flying into the dusty desert for the first time aren’t checking facts.

Even if we hadn’t missed a rainy season in March, even if the rains had been normal, I dare say even if the rains had been above normal, we would have had this famine.

The Dadaab refugee camp is not overflowing with starving people because there was no rain. There is no drought that caused this.

Here is NOAA’s report of rainfall in the area for the month of July just past. This is the area to which all the foreign correspondents are flying in northeast Kenya, southern Somali. In a normal year, these areas would be completely white. From about the end of May to the middle of November, for the last hundred years, not a drop of rain falls.

And now, it seems at least for the moment, it’s raining. Study the picture above. It was taken by Agence France Presse yesterday near the Kenyan town of Liboi, which according to GoogleEarth is about 27 miles northeast of the misery center of Dadaab.

There are pools of water. There is green grass. There is an automobile, although the AFP caption for the picture reads “Somali immigrants repair a tyre 2km inside Kenya enroute to Liboi. There are few who can afford to pay up to $150 to travel from the capital Mogadishu.”

Here is NOA’s prediction of expected rain for next week. Good news, of course. White overlaid by brown and even green shades showing pretty intense drizzle for the desert in a dry season.

What seems to be happening this year is a shift due to climate change of the rainy season that usually occurs March – May, to now. The March-May period was dry.

But understand this, please: A single missed rainy season cannot possibly cause such misery. Unless..

…there’s a vicious war just now getting worse… there’s a world recession that has so increased food prices that normal development aid is collapsed into fractions of its worth… there is political tension in the area so that bumper harvests (in Tanzania) are being prevented from shipment to the areas in need.

All the above are true. Add the real stress caused subsistence farmers who are disconnected from their normal planting routines by climate change, and you have … famine.

There is real, significant, terrible famine. We are approaching a half million people starving in the area of Dadaab … where it may be raining.

Uniquely as always, Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times, is reporting the truer story. And he is located exactly where the famine is really being caused. And that is not Dadaab. It’s in the heart of the battle for Somalia.

Gettleman makes the same mistake everyone seems to be making: calling a huge area “the worst drought in 60 years” which, sorry to have to repeat, it isn’t. But this is buried deep in his story which is otherwise right on. He explains the catastrophe as a political one, not a climate-made one.

A number of you have emailed me asking me for advice regarding how you can personally contribute best. I’m not the one to ask. Click here for better recommendations than I will give you.

My recommendation is one you probably won’t expect.

Become political and support leaders who understand a world order. Spend significant resources to defeat T-Party like mentalities that refuse to ameliorate world suffering with even a penny of the rich.

This famine is man made. I’m not for an instant suggesting that American conservatives have caused the war which caused the famine. Quite to the contrary, if anyone caused it, it was Bill Clinton.

His sheepish retreat from dealing with the mess in Somali because of the political flack he got from BlackHawk Down is the main reason for the problems, now. Almost 20 years ago, we now see the damage of short-term political gain.

This isn’t a left or right issue. It’s an issue of simple long-term compassion. Unless we get our heads screwed on right and steadfastly so, there’s going to be famine at Thanksgiving in the rain forest.

The Deadly Deal

The Deadly Deal

by Arusha ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Africa and most of the world expects, now, that the U.S. crisis is over for the time being. Everyone everywhere presumes the two votes still required in The Senate and House will come off as predicted. Everyone, everywhere, is now assessing what this means to them.

It’s near sacrilege in America, today, to gauge your actions on how they might effect people as far away as Africa. There is still a mentality throughout the world to be sure, but especially in America, that responsibility ends at an increasingly narrowly defined notion of “home.”

Religious and political extremists mostly from the right believe that all that’s needed for a happy life is some kind of ultimate freedom from any complicated or extended responsibilities .. certainly any that extend as far from America as Africa.

We already know that’s how they feel, but we’ve been reduced to repeating it since efforts to change it have failed. We don’t even have to continue to the conclusion of what utter nonsense this is in a globally connected world. But having grown up in a tiny hamlet in northeast Arkansas, I know how small the universe can seem to many people. I know how dumb they often choose to remain.

It’s one of the great attractions of Africa to a first-time visitor: how vast it is. Confronted with such seemingly “free” and untouchable limits, a person is either absolutely awed, smacked to the floor in a feeling of complete insignificance, or … scared to death.

Those who are awed have a chance to explore new awarenesses, new understandings of how vast and different but connected are things in those global arenas, including foreign places. Those who get scared retreat into a clearer, smaller past, into everything known and nicely understood. They avoid global concepts, responsibilities.

They pack a gun and a spirit and take care of their own.

I’ve written in the last two weeks how a reduced American economy will effect Africa and the developing world, deeply. Just, of course, as it will effect us even more so at home.

Presuming “The Deal” gets passed in Congress, today, we will avoid implosion. We will retreat back into the world of AAA+. But “The Deal” cleaves America’s spending, which reduces government debt to be sure but reduces America’s output, too.

GDP will fall. Stimulus will end. Foreign aid and diaspora remittances will fall significantly. At home, social welfare programs will be cut drastically.

The poor, the developing world, those who are currently suffering will now suffer more. The rich in America will either be sustained at current levels or may prosper further.

And this horrible course will be unchangeable until the next election in November, 2012. And even if the results of that election then move in a fairer more progressive way, to ease the suffering of the poor at home and the developing world at large, it will probably be a year or more after that before new policies can begin to remedy this horrible situation.

Democracy at work.