Kenya stands in between the Past that is dying and the future that is afar coming.

I would assume that at this moment we share a view that Kenya and its citizens are about to see the light. We are standing in between the past that is dying and yet to be buried and the future that is afar coming. The teachers and health care practitioners have seen it, but they feel that if they don’t agitate for it, it will soon belong to a few individuals. It is not my intention here to foretell the better tomorrow that is a distant but to uncover a few dilemmas that surrounds those who hold us down. They are a disgrace to the society that has changed and working day and night to belong to that future. Kenyans do run in the streets of London, Kibera, Kisumu, Mombasa or Beijing lifting the flag of the country high up and what they really want to see last is these disgraceful traffic Police officers busy normalizing corruption. It is in fact irritating to find all these retirees or public servants seated in office and advocating for change since 1963. The legal system is another outrageous ridicule to the public, I beg to separate the good personnel from those who square their differences in social media and the attention seekers who are paid to protect the rich at all costs.

Let me be realistic here for a moment, Corruption and Tribalism are NOT the greatest evils affecting the Country as we have always insisted. The greatest challenge we have to accept and deal with it now is the FAULTY legal system that asks ‘WHO’ before taking any action. I do not intend to generalize the entire system, but I am talking about the Bigwigs that own, run and predetermines the new lead. How then can we separate politics from the justice system if all the players are out in rallies? Those whom we have entrusted with our justice system by virtue of being educated in the area are running around for deals and coins and like a spider web, the legal system only catches the weak but the heavy weights always shake it off. If you don’t believe it, then ask this question: How many years is your poor neighbor serving in Prison for stealing your chicken? How many years are we to find out what was Anglo leasing, Goldenberg and Mumias Sugar Saga and when do we recover the tax-payers money. We can assume the answer to be lack of evidence, just like when we don’t have evidence for seeing an Officer ask for a bribe.

Disgraceful, I should say and truly some departments need to be closed indefinitely and their money be paid to teachers and RECEE Squad. It is retard for traffic police for heaven’s sake to normalize and domesticate corruption as though it is a requirement. Kenyans are cheeky, they know you come out at 10 AM and leave at 4 pm and you will always be in the same spot daily and obviously they will outsmart you in many ways and if it gets worse they will give you Ksh50 and all will be well .http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LOevV7_5yYThis animal, has grown big horns of late and it is even using the hierarchy to protect their colleagues. I recently watched an incident where several officers were lynched by the Anti- corruption commission but they were rescued by armed officers from the same department. My humble question without any intend to disrespect is whether the President, Deputy President, DPP and Inspector of police are aware of this shameful act? Kamiti Maximum Prison should be full to capacity with these mammals. I suppose we should try the Life sentence and make their records public and on bill boards.

Lastly, how can we deal with retires from public service and the lawyers who are taking up almost everything in the country? They run about 80% of all political offices, whether elected or appointed.  I don’t disagree with the fact that they are hardworking citizens, but retiring is not inability but fairness to other persons seeking to take up a similar position after all we are over 40 million. I understand that the pipe is juicy and fishy and perhaps you’ve sucked enough to last for your great grandchildren, be mindful because we will rob them if you don’t let us get a chance. You are at 70 and you still expect your neurons to shoot at the same rate as the younger folks.  I am not being disrespectful writing this observation, it is what it is and that if we don’t ask for a chance we will have created a loop hole for young folks to join the militia or rebel the system. Let’s create hope and vision for the youth to see themselves as being part of that future you are living in.

Are Some African Litigators the new tools for western Idealism and injustice or is it a coincidence?

As you can read, I have only posed a mere question that is hanging in the mind of a villager, and therefore should not be understood as  a statement of fact but rather an individual thought on uncertainties and coincidences surrounding ICC versus Kenya. I did pick up a few bones from the current ICC case personnel, and coincidentally it fits the West Africa and South America (Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago). I do pray and hope that this is one of the few coincidences that bring fortune to the African people to be considered in such a ‘high caliber’ court  and to put to rest Trevor Roper’s ideology that Africa has nothing to write about except gyrations of barbarous people, and to believe they are brains to rely on. The contrary can also be true, in that it can be a case of using a desperate brother with little sense to catch his brother and if they do not, it’s themselves to be blamed.

Secret Envelop presenter- Koffi Annan- Ghana (former UN Secretary General)

Presiding Judge- Eboe Osuji Nigeria. (Former legal advisor to UN High Commission for Human Rights.)

Lead Prosecutor- Fatou Bensouda Gambia

I would wish this to be a coincidence, and not the alternative which has always been the case. In the most fair places we would think for instance in the church of Catholic, an African has never been and might not be a pope. Are we to dine now and believe we have been trusted to lead and prosecute or it is the usual case of pay a brother to get as much Diamond as possible?

I hold no truth to the observation but i am expressing a thought.

Nandi County: Get sense in your next election.

I am a proud villager, a true Kenyan and a Pan – Africanist and I think I deserve a couple of pages to enlightened my county of Nandi, I will recommend a view other counties to take notes on the same. From what we have at the moment even though it is still early to criticize devolution, I believe strong leadership is required to allow this cute baby called county government to grow. It is time to lay off the power brokers and stop them from molesting the baby and inflicting unnecessary traumas. It is ‘WE’ the people who are the rightful owners of the government and we are to be blamed if we put retirees, sensationalist, drama queens, mana babies and some diaspora persons to run our affairs willy-nilly.

Top on the list are the brokers and their ‘BEST MAN’ for Governor, they always come up with the most malignant governor with ability to metastasize and attack almost all the organs vital to county development…. Schools, hospitals, water etc. If you have been to Kapsabet, you will always find this type of cartels outside Generation hotel or behind Jubilee Wholesalers with a group of familiar faces, I meant the group that run almost every meeting held in Nandi and partially Uasin- Gishu. They are always in the CDF committee, sometimes part of women groups, Kass marathon officials, and they belong to almost every political party. In- depth analysis might prove that they are among those who allowed the cutting down of ‘Tendonik’ in Danger forest. If this group successfully enable one of their own to power, it will be their time to eat and they will award themselves all sorts of tenders, projects and positions in the county

Secondly are the retirees, who make up majority of the elected positions in Kenya. They are very good patriots I admit, especially in offering guidance and direction in leadership. On the contrary, I do believe they are too damn exhausted to execute high pace managerial and administrative positions. In Agriculture, which everybody in the county is an expert, there is a concept of peak productions levels. Humans do also have their peak times to effect necessary outcomes and I beg to presume with allowable degree of disagreements that majority of retirees are past their peak productive periods and should stay away from active duties and over advice. In fact, they can make good village elders, school committee and cattle dip chairmen only and only if they can get over their ‘I am rich ‘attitude. Leave the retirees alone and let them stay away from county positions, especially if they have a screwed past or they have been in the Government of the ‘Mzee.’

The third group are the Sensationalist, drama queens and manna babies who don’t make and will never make good governors or leaders. These are the group of persons who spring out of the jungle and all over sudden they are dishing out cash like ‘mabarua ya sherehe’. You struggle to make to the next meal and what you want to see last is someone throwing away money. I will consider them suspects of major scandals, with exception of being the ‘Mana Baby’ I mean ‘mtoto wa Mdosi.’ What we need to ask ourselves is where they get the money. The sensationalists whom we often elect, are the worst of the kind. They show up about 2 years to election, with a lot of irrelevant projects, tournaments, youth groups, selfies, proposals and harambees but they won’t tell people exactly where they come from and what they do. They are very eloquent and generous, within no time they will have consume the entire society like wild fire. The good-for- nothings drunkards will soon sing their praises because they get bribes for a bottle of changa’aa. Eventually the all-county is drunk and blindly praising mediocre who has been begging around parliament buildings in Nairobi. Soon after elections, he will buy land build his house and disappear to the city to reward fellow conmen. This is the worst group and we need to search for them and get them marry a village women and stay at home where we can monitor them as bear parental responsibilities. Be careful with them because they happen to be the political projects of certain big politicians or NGOs funding for specific foreign interests ‘Wachana na hawa’.

Lastly is the diaspora , and I am very specific to those who have gone out of the country  for over 15 years and they are yet to marry and build a house. They share similar fate with retirees, the only  differences is that they have wild imaginations and fantasies that, change that took 239 years in another world, will take them 5-10 years to do. Let them settle for volunteer duties or absentee assignment not elective position. It is very basic that if you’ve have been away from a place/country for over 10 years, your brain slowly loses touch with reality at ground and sooner you will have some weird quiz i.e. why do people walk without shoes or why don’t have cars and bla bla bla . They become ignorant and soon will differ with Abbe’ de Condillac view on poverty and wealth that “it is not being poor to lack a type of wealth of which one as not acquired a need, and which one does not even know”. They are exceptions to this category for instance ambassadors, student (all levels) and the exiled but this does not give them a wild card to evade certain questions: where were you and what were you doing? What did you achieve and how have you been helping the county develop?

I will end by saying that this my basic judgement on what I would consider in my voting criterion. It would be wild for me to categorize all persons under the above discussed personalities, but I believe commonsense and instincts carry more weight in having moral judgement pertaining to that which is good or bad. I only adopted a simple rule of average to arrive at this near accurate probability. It is a fact that most of our failed leaders have come from these peculiar groups but still there is a room for the outliers. To have a good leader is a collective responsibility and it requires every individuals input in writing or dialogue and sometimes the extreme is necessary to force those with proven records to take up leadership from the greedy political masqueraders who want everything for themselves. Saiseree.

Check it here! Just a thought

This is where the woes and problems of the world began? The UN Permanent members  and what is permanent?
Why not one African nation, European, American, Asian/Arab and Australian? This section only explains the structured nature of the Wars and conflicts in Middle east and Conflicts in Diamond rich nations of Africa.

CHAPTER V
THE SECURITY COUNCIL
Composition
Article 23
1. The Security Council shall consist of eleven
Members of the United Nations. The Republic
of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Northern Ireland, and the United States of
America shall be permanent members of the
Security Council. The General Assembly shall
elect six other Members of the United Nations to
be non-permanent members of the Security Council,
due regard being specially paid, in the first
instance to the contribution of Members of the
United Nations to the maintenance of international
peace and security and to the other purposes
of the Organization, and also to equitable
geographical distribution.
2. The non-permanent members of the Security
Council shall be elected for a term of two
years. In the first election of the non-permanent
members, however, three shall be chosen for a
term of one year. A retiring member shall not be
eligible for immediate re-election.
3. Each member of the Security Council shall
have one representative.
Functions and Powers
Article 24
1. In order to ensure prompt and effective
action by the United Nations, its Members confer
on the Security Council primary responsibility
for the maintenance of international peace and
security, and agree that in carrying out its duties
under this responsibility the Security Council acts
on their behalf.
2. In discharging these duties the Security
Council shall act in accordance with the Purposes
and Principles of the United Nations. The specific
powers granted to the Security Council for the
discharge of these duties are laid down in Chapters
VI, VII, VIII, and XII.
3. The Security Council shall submit annual
and, when necessary, special reports to the General
Assembly for its consideration.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/

Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with winners: Big Oil.

It has been 10 years since Operation Iraqi Freedom’s bombs first landed in Baghdad. And while most of the U.S.-led coalition forces have long since gone, Western oil companies are only getting started.

Before the 2003 invasion, Iraq’s domestic oil industry was fully nationalized and closed to Western oil companies. A decade of war later, it is largely privatized and utterly dominated by foreign firms.

From ExxonMobil and Chevron to BP and Shell, the West’slargest oil companies have set up shop in Iraq. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including Halliburton, the Texas-based firm Dick Cheney ran before becoming George W. Bush’s running mate in 2000.

The war is the one and only reason for this long sought and newly acquired access.

Oil was not the only goal of the Iraq War, but it was certainly the central one, as top U.S. military and political figures have attested to in the years following the invasion.

“Of course it’s about oil; we can’t really deny that,” said Gen. John Abizaid, former head of U.S. Central Command and Military Operations in Iraq, in 2007. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan agreed, writing in his memoir, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.” Then-Sen. and now Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said the same in 2007: “People say we’re not fighting for oil. Of course we are.”

For the first time in about 30 years, Western oil companies are exploring for and producing oil in Iraq from some of the world’s largest oil fields and reaping enormous profit. And while the U.S. has also maintained a fairly consistent level of Iraq oil imports since the invasion, the benefits are not finding their way through Iraq’s economy or society.

These outcomes were by design, the result of a decade of U.S. government and oil company pressure. In 1998,Kenneth Derr, then CEO of Chevron, said, “Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas-reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.” Today it does.

Exclusive: Hans Blix on ‘terrible mistake’ in Iraq

In 2000, Big Oil, including Exxon, Chevron, BP and Shell, spent more money to get fellow oilmen Bush and Cheney into office than they had spent on any previous election. Just over a week into Bush’s first term, their efforts paid off when the National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Cheney, was formed, bringing the administration and the oil companies together to plot our collective energy future. In March, the task force reviewed lists and maps outlining Iraq’s entire oil productive capacity.

Planning for a military invasion was soon under way. Bush’s first Treasury secretary, Paul O’Neill, said in 2004, “Already by February (2001), the talk was mostly about logistics. Not the why (to invade Iraq), but the how and how quickly.”

In its final report in May 2001 (PDF), the task force argued that Middle Eastern countries should be urged “to open up areas of their energy sectors to foreign investment.” This is precisely what has been achieved in Iraq.

Here’s how they did it.

The State Department Future of Iraq Project’s Oil and Energy Working Group met from February 2002 to April 2003 and agreed that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.”

Arwa Damon: Iraq suffocates in cloak of sorrow

The list of the group’s members was not made public, but Ibrahim Bahr al-Uloum — who was appointed Iraq’s oil minister by the U.S. occupation government in September 2003 — was part of the group, according to Greg Muttitt, a journalist and author of “Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq.” Bahr al-Uloum promptly set about trying to implement the group’s objectives.

At the same time, representatives from ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Halliburton, among others, met with Cheney’s staff in January 2003 to discuss plans for Iraq’s postwar industry. For the next decade, former and current executives of western oil companies acted first as administrators of Iraq’s oil ministry and then as “advisers” to the Iraqi government.

Before the invasion, there were just two things standing in the way of Western oil companies operating in Iraq: Saddam Hussein and the nation’s legal system. The invasion dealt handily with Hussein. To address the latter problem, some both inside and outside of the Bush administration argued that it should simply change Iraq’s oil laws through the U.S.-led coalition government of Iraq, which ran the country from April 2003 to June 2004. Instead the White House waited, choosing to pressure the newly elected Iraqi government to pass new oil legislation itself.

Did Iraq give birth to the Arab Spring?

This Iraq Hydrocarbons Law, partially drafted by the Western oil industry, would lock the nation into private foreign investment under the most corporate-friendly terms. The Bush administration pushed the Iraqi government both publicly and privately to pass the law. And in January 2007, as the ”surge” of 20,000 additional American troops was being finalized, the president set specific benchmarks for the Iraqi government, including the passage of new oil legislation to “promote investment, national unity, and reconciliation.”

But due to enormous public opposition and a recalcitrant parliament, the central Iraqi government has failed to pass the Hydrocarbons Law. Usama al-Nujeyfi, a member of the parliamentary energy committee, even quit in protest over the law, saying it would cede too much control to global companies and “ruin the country’s future.”

In 2008, with the likelihood of the law’s passage and the prospect of continued foreign military occupation dimming as elections loomed in the U.S. and Iraq, the oil companies settled on a different track.

Bypassing parliament, the firms started signing contracts that provide all of the access and most of the favorable treatment the Hydrocarbons Law would provide — and the Bush administration helpeddraft the model contracts

Upon leaving office, Bush and Obama administration officials have even worked for oil companies as advisers on their Iraq endeavors. For example, former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad’s company, CMX-Gryphon, “provides international oil companies and multinationals with unparalleled access, insight and knowledge on Iraq.”

The new contracts lack the security a new legal structure would grant, and Iraqi lawmakers have argued that they run contrary to existing law, which requires government control, operation and ownership of Iraq’s oil sector.

But the contracts do achieve the key goal of the Cheney energy task force: all but privatizing the Iraqi oil sector and opening it to private foreign companies.

They also provide exceptionally long contract terms and high ownership stakes and eliminate requirements that Iraq’s oil stay in Iraq, that companies invest earnings in the local economy or hire a majority of local workers.

Iraq’s oil production has increased by more than 40% in the past five years to 3 million barrels of oil a day (still below the 1979 high of 3.5 million set by Iraq’s state-owned companies), but a full 80% of this is being exported out of the country while Iraqis struggle to meet basic energy consumption needs. GDP per capita has increased significantly yet remains among the lowest in the world and well below some of Iraq’s other oil-rich neighbors. Basic services such as water and electricity remain luxuries, while 25% of the population lives in poverty.

Share your story of the Iraq War

The promise of new energy-related jobs across the country has yet to materialize. The oil and gas sectors today account directly for less than 2% of total employment, as foreign companies rely instead onimported labor.

In just the last few weeks, more than 1,000 people have protested at ExxonMobil and Russia Lukoil’s super-giant West Qurna oil field, demanding jobs and payment for private land that has been lost or damaged by oil operations. The Iraqi military was called in to respond.

Fed up with the firms, a leading coalition of Iraqi civil society groups and trade unions, including oil workers, declared on February 15 that international oil companies have “taken the place of foreign troops in compromising Iraqi sovereignty” and should “set a timetable for withdrawal.”

Closer to home, at a protest at Chevron’s Houston headquarters in 2010, former U.S. Army Military Intelligence officer Thomas Buonomo, member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, held up a sign that read, “Dear Chevron: Thank you for dishonoring our service” (PDF).

Yes, the Iraq War was a war for oil, and it was a war with losers: the Iraqi people and all those who spilled and lost blood so that Big Oil could come out ahead.