Month: January 2008

Kenya’s Tribal Unraveling

Kenyatonykarumbaafpgetty

The latest atrocity: 50 people burned alive in a church where they had sought refuge from the widening chaos. One Kenyan blogger weeps:

I feel that the people of Kenya have been completely robbed of everything they have gained over the last 40 years. We lacked few things but at least we were generally a fair people. I feel that the change we thought we had in 2005 was just an illusion…

I feel that Kenyans have been robbed of something that can never be valued — their electoral process.

Under these circumstances, tribalism flares, as it has in Iraq:

I was told it’s Kenya against kikuyus …  I guess we are no longer Kenyans.

The Red Cross is calling the post-election meltdown a "national disaster." Thousands are now displaced from their homes. The best global round-up is, as usual, at Global Voices. You’ll learn more nuance and diversity of view from the posts of Kenyan bloggers than from the MSM.

(Photo: A Kenyan demonstrator is wounded after he was beataen by anti-riot police, 31 December 2007 at Kibera slum in Nairobi where riots against a controversial declaration of incumbent Mwai Kibaki as President of Kenya swung into a third day. By Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty.)

The Looming GOP Civil War

This primary season seems to me to have made it both more possible and more bitter. Romney isn’t a solution. And Huckabee helps heighten the contradictions. After what Bush and Rove have done to conservatism, I cannot say I am surprised. Fundamentalism and conservatism may be temporary electoral allies, but as a coherent governing philosophy, they are each others’ nemesis. Even a war cannot disguise that divide.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"You know, I was going to vote for Obama and even announced that a week or so ago. But this is a great example of why it’s best to wait and see how things shake out. Not being blinded by candidate worship, it’s easier to sniff out the bullshit. And you have to have your head stuck deep in the sand to deny that Obama is trying to close the deal by running to the Right of his opponents. And call me crazy, but that’s not a trait I generally appreciate in Democrats, no matter how much it might set the punditocracy’s hearts a flutter," – Markos Moulitsas, actually blogging his own opinion.

The Paulites vs Fox News

They have a point. ABC’s criteria make much more sense:

placing first through fourth in the Iowa Caucuses, polling at higher than 5% in one of the last four major New Hampshire polls, or polling at 5% or higher in one of the last four national polls.

But then ABC isn’t actively trying to destroy Ron Paul’s candidacy in order to protect its viewers from the crazy notion that not all conservatives want to occupy Iraq for ever. Fox News has been trying that for a long time.

Why The Islamist Right Killed Bhutto

Walid Phares:

It was a war of ideas that the Taliban and their ilk feared the most. It is one thing for the radicals to measure themselves in comparison with the military’s authoritarianism. But it is another thing to be blasted ideologically by a woman who would dominate Pakistan’s politics. By jihadi standards it was unbearable to see Lady Benazir seizing the premiership of the executive power. A staunch modernist and a genuine Muslim, she would have been their worst nightmare. With her in power, forget about the Talibanization: There would be no suppression of women and no brutalization of minorities. There would be fierce empowerment of civil society. This is why the combined "war room" of al Qaeda, the neo-Taliban and the Pakistani jihadists decided to eliminate her.

There’s some new evidence that the military was involved in the assassination. And Musharraf has stopped trying to deny she was shot at close range.