- Al Shabbab are emboldened by the act of terror that struck at the heart of Kenya's economic class.
- Victimisation of Muslims and Somalis,from the verbal attacks to most likely a retaliation from people who have had a pent-up anger at the acts of the terrorism and who associate the terrorists with either Muslims or Somalis,to physical assault on them in the form of gun-attacks and arbitrary arrests by the government forces.
- Increased funding and work of the Anti Terrorist Police Unit.This will be a means to neutralise the so-called terrosts.Funding can only from one source,external governments because we are too strained as a nation to stain a war on terror.
- Greater subjugation of the Muslims in Kenya and throughout the world as they try to fit in and fear reprisal for not towing the official line.All Imams will be warned,Muslim sermons monitored and the practice of Islam undermined.
- Kenya does not pull-out of Somalia,we are forced to bear the human cost of the war in Somalia and economic stagnation as we focus solely on funding the military and forget all about economic development.
- Massive decline in tourists arrival and foreign investment in Kenya,resulting in diminished GDP growth and greater recipe for a human capital problem in Kenya due to masssssssive unemployment.
- Regional witch hunting where every country will find it profitable to claim Al Shabaab attack in order to get funding from the powers that be.
- Crime rates will increase due to a combination of the above factors.
Monday, September 23, 2013
THE AFTERMATH OF THE WESTGATE ATTACK
I foresee a situation where
Sunday, September 8, 2013
DANGER-GLOBAL ALERT OVER MERS (Future Headline)
The most important news never make it on national or international press because of the editorial policy of those companies.Some headlines can be stranger than fiction and the more reason for you not to read them.
So,do you know about the novel alpha-coronavirus?Do you care to know about it?Read on
DANGER-GLOBAL ALERT OVER MERS- November 5th 2013
The World Health Organization has declared novel coronavirus infections MERS as a global pandemic.All countries with international flights connections and or recent arrivals from Mecca for the annual Hajj pilgrimage are considered potential hotspots.The Health regulatory authorities are urged to put in place measures to counter its spread through quarantine and thorough checks on arrival.Any person who may have come into contact with a case should report if they were suffering from any chest infections and or respiratory distress and treated for a flu in the last one week.The WHO and other international disease surveillance organizations urge the populace not to panic and to continue with their day to day activities but with caution.
The above scenario will potentially happen .Pointers to this are the black-out given to news on the transmission,virulence and potential of the disease.Many of my friends and relatives will go for Hajj this year and I hope and pray that they are given enough information on how to protect htemselves from exposure to the virus.The dilemma though is the culture of secrecy in matters epidemic.By highlighting concerns of likeminded people as in the article below I hope some action is taken to ensure control of the spread of the disease.Imagine the outcome once MERS is a pandemic?Lets not just imagine and instead do something about it now to avert future catastrophe.
Below are two good reads on the matter,one from a scientist ehom i suggest you follow to understand more about the MERS and the other from a journalist
Virology Down Under-the blog for Virology Down Under. Info and opinion on viruses: what they are, how they tick and the illnesses they cause.
Censorship Doesn’t Just Stifle Speech — It Can Spread Disease By Maryn Mckenna http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/08/ap_mers/
In October, Saudi Arabia will host millions of travelers on the hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holy sites. The hajj carries deep meaning for those observant Muslims who undertake it, but it also carries risks that make epidemiologists blanch. Pilgrims sleep in shared tents and approach the crowded sites on foot, in debilitating heat. They come from all over the world, and whatever pathogens they encounter on the hajj will travel back with them to their home countries. In past seasons, the hajj has been shown to foster disease, from stomach flus to tuberculosis or meningitis.
The Saudi Arabian government has traditionally taken this threat quite seriously. Each year it builds a vast network of field hospitals to give aid to pilgrims. It refuses visas to travelers who have not had required vaccinations and makes public the outbreaks it learns about. This year, though, the Saudis have been strangely opaque about one particular risk—and it’s a risk that has disease experts and public-health agencies looking to October with a great deal of concern. They wonder if this year’s hajj might actually breed the next pandemic.
The reason is MERS: Middle East respiratory syndrome, a disease that has been simmering in the Middle East region for months. The virus is new, recorded in humans for the first time in mid-2012. It is dire, having killed more than half of those who contracted it. And it is mysterious, far more so than it should be—because Saudi Arabia, where the majority of cases have clustered, has been tight-lipped about the disease’s spread, responding slowly to requests for information and preventing outside researchers from publishing their findings about the syndrome.
The Wall of Silence
To understand why MERS is so troubling, look back to the beginning of 2003. For several months, public-health observers heard rumors of a serious respiratory illness in southern China. But when officials from the World Health Organization asked the Chinese government about it, they were told that the countryside was simply experiencing an outbreak of pneumonia.
The wall of silence around what came to be known as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) cracked only by chance.By mid-March there were already 150 cases of the new disease in seven countries. SARS wound up sickening more than 8,000 people and killing almost 800 in just nine months. Luckily, the disease was quelled in China and Canada (where travelers from Hong Kong touched off an outbreak in Toronto) before it had a chance to evolve into a more efficiently spreading strain.Many experts believe that given time to mutate in humans, SARS might have become a deadly pandemic.
For this disease too, the first notice was a posting to ProMED—this time by a doctor working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, describing a patient who had died several months before. That September 2012 communiquè, helped physicians in London realize that a Qatari man they were treating was part of the same outbreak. From there, MERS unspooled. People also fell ill in the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany, Italy, and Tunisia.
But Saudi Arabia, home to the vast majority of confirmed cases, remained far from forthcoming about what it knew. Announcements from the Ministry of Health supplied little useful detail and discussed illnesses and deaths that happened some indeterminate time in the past—possibly days, possibly even weeks.
So far the number of MERS cases is just a fraction of the toll from SARS, but health officials fear that the real count could be higher. Especially worrisome is the death rate among the afflicted: While SARS has been estimated to kill roughly 10 percent of its victims, MERS so far has killed 56 percent.
Certainly censorship about the spread of disease is nothing new. The largest well-documented pandemic, the great flu of 1918, is called the Spanish Influenza in old accounts not because it started in Spain (it may have begun in Kansas) but because Spain, as a neutral nation during World War I, had no wartime curbs on news reports of deaths.To this day, no one is sure how many people died in the 1918 flu; the best guess hovers around 50 million worldwide. Regardless, since the virus took 11 months to circle the planet, some of those millions might have lived had the later-infected countries been warned to prepare.
After SARS, no one thought that it would happen again. In 2005 the 194 nations that vote in WHO‘s governing body promised not to conceal outbreaks.And beyond that promise, public-health researchers have believed that Internet chatter—patterns of online discussion about disease—would undercut any attempts at secrecy. But they’ve been disappointed to see that their web-scraping tools have picked up remarkably little from the Middle East: While Saudi residents certainly use the Internet, what they can access is stifled, and what they are willing to say appears muted.
Nearly 100 years after the great flu, it turns out that old-fashioned censorship can still stymie the world in its ability to prepare for a pandemic.
So what now? The behind-door seething may be having an effect. A WHO team was finally allowed into Saudi Arabia in June, and the Saudi government has announced limits on the number of visas it will issue for this year’s hajj. Meanwhile, governments and transnational health agencies have already taken the steps that they can, warning hospitals and readying labs. With luck, the disease will stay contained: In July, WHO declined to elevate MERS to a “public health emergency of international concern.But the organization warned it might change its mind later—and if it does, we should fear the worst, because our medical resources are few.
At present there is no rapid-detection method, no vaccine, and no cure.
While we wait to see the full extent of MERS, the one thing the world can do is to relearn the lesson of SARS: Just as diseases will always cross borders, governments will always try to evade blame. That problem can’t be solved with better devices or through a more sophisticated public-health dragnet.The solution lies in something public health has failed to accomplish despite centuries of trying: persuading governments that transparency needs to trump concerns about their own reputations. Information can outrun our deadly new diseases, but only if it’s allowed to spread.
Tawakal’s note:
Choices have consequences and the choice to do nothing in the face of MERS will only lead to disaster.We can wait until WHO yells,Fire!! but it might just be too late and more costly to contain the pandemic by then.Let the innternational media pick on this chatter on the fringes of cyberspace and transform into a public health awareness campaign without the delirium of SARs and H1N1 interventions which were later found to have been overblown,to the benefit of Roche?
Those outbreaks taught us to be cautious in the face of news of imminent epidemics.This may lead to complacency in our response to MERs and with dire consequences.
On another note,am just wondering if the MERS outbreak was not in the Middle East and specifically Saudi Arabia,what would have been the response?Hmmmh!!!!Food for thought!!!!
Saturday, September 7, 2013
DEVOLUTION WILL KILL THE KENYAN STATE
Coming soon,pros and many cons of the devolved system of governance.
DEVOLUTION-A RECIPE FOR ECONOMIC RUIN
In all honesty I am in brace position,ready for the impact of the Kenyan economy hitting rock bottom and social unrest exacerbating the capital flight and reversal of the good fortunes of the last few years of foreign investor confidence.
I do feel that the excessive taxation by the central government and not far from now county government local taxes and cess it will be untenable to do business anywhere in Kenya unless the black market.Our nation is at a crossroads as to the path to choose for progress.A majority of people(me not included) decided that introducing devolution will magically solve our problems of inequality and inequity of resource distribution.But what are the pros and cons of devolved governance?and how do we reach a consensus of the most appropriate governance system?This is not really a simple question as we each have our own experiences that has shaped how we perceived the old system of central control.This clouded peoples judgement and noone want to hear control from a single entity in Nairobi anymore
Ever since independence we distorted central leadership to be a source of self-engradisement of a few privileged and influential who amassed as much land,property and wealth and formed the elite class.The pyramid then had its body of middle class in a rat race to aspire to achieve enough to live on the same level and never think of anyone else.The base was made up of the greater largesse of the population,the slaves.For their is no other term to call one who is subservient and under the yoke of poverty, destitution and despair.The best that they can hope for is to be on the good books of the middle class in order to feed off the crumbs that are left for them.In this system ,honor and respect depends on ones wealth status and so you can guess the honor and respect that the poor and the marginalized had.
The elite and middle class in the pyramid resided in Nairobi and other major towns and dictated how the majority of the people would live.The cronyism that started has not stopped but has instead increased over time.The little assets we had was given away or lies bare and unattended while there are poor people willing to till the land.The poor need not be just statistics like the livestock which one brags about..The inequality perpetrated by the elite and consolidated by the bourgeous polarized this nation to the extent that the gap between the haves and have-nots widened.
The poor people in the periphery of power were promised redemption and salvation once a devolved system was set up.Therefore they overwhelmingly voted to have a system with a de-centralised structure which would be governed at their doorstep.Little did they know that they were just devolving greed,corruption,nepotism and misuse of public resources.ore so it becomes very difficult in the African culture to stop your tribesman who is doing anything wrong lest you be termed a traitor.So unbeknown to them,the previously marginalized village folk stand to be marginalized and made poorer by the devolved system.
In the meantime the tax paying,middle class has not increased and so any source of funding for development of the counties can only come from the countable middle-class who are already burdened with heavy taxation.The other options are very limited in the form of domestic and foreign borrowings.Inviting foreign investment in Kenya,to me is not the solution.The gains from such a move are illusory.The foreign owned companies will always repatriate the profits gained from local operations leaving the government with minimal collection in the form of tax from the ventures.The foreign companies and nationals get to come over and invest,pillage and plunder and disappear as soon as the resources are exhausted but we are only to get special arrangement to penetrate their markets.Any move to attract foreign investment should also target reciprocal arrangement ot allow Kenyan products and entrepreneurs penetrate those markets.The solution lies in giving locals financial muscle to compete in the export market.Nothing more,nothing less.
The nett economic effect of a county system of governance is one of uncertainty and ambiguity.No two counties will have similar policies and this will lead erosion of investor trust in doing business in a nation of 48 governments.There may be a few stand out counties where logic and good leadership may prevail and result in better returns for the locals of those counties,but those would be few and countable.In the end for the economic progress of Kenya as a nation and to increase our competitiveness internationally we cannot rely on this devolve system to spurse economic growth.
In conclusion I wish to state that devolution does not make an economic sense to the Kenyan state and we should click the undo button and revert to central governance but with amendments.
I do feel that the excessive taxation by the central government and not far from now county government local taxes and cess it will be untenable to do business anywhere in Kenya unless the black market.Our nation is at a crossroads as to the path to choose for progress.A majority of people(me not included) decided that introducing devolution will magically solve our problems of inequality and inequity of resource distribution.But what are the pros and cons of devolved governance?and how do we reach a consensus of the most appropriate governance system?This is not really a simple question as we each have our own experiences that has shaped how we perceived the old system of central control.This clouded peoples judgement and noone want to hear control from a single entity in Nairobi anymore
Ever since independence we distorted central leadership to be a source of self-engradisement of a few privileged and influential who amassed as much land,property and wealth and formed the elite class.The pyramid then had its body of middle class in a rat race to aspire to achieve enough to live on the same level and never think of anyone else.The base was made up of the greater largesse of the population,the slaves.For their is no other term to call one who is subservient and under the yoke of poverty, destitution and despair.The best that they can hope for is to be on the good books of the middle class in order to feed off the crumbs that are left for them.In this system ,honor and respect depends on ones wealth status and so you can guess the honor and respect that the poor and the marginalized had.
The elite and middle class in the pyramid resided in Nairobi and other major towns and dictated how the majority of the people would live.The cronyism that started has not stopped but has instead increased over time.The little assets we had was given away or lies bare and unattended while there are poor people willing to till the land.The poor need not be just statistics like the livestock which one brags about..The inequality perpetrated by the elite and consolidated by the bourgeous polarized this nation to the extent that the gap between the haves and have-nots widened.
The poor people in the periphery of power were promised redemption and salvation once a devolved system was set up.Therefore they overwhelmingly voted to have a system with a de-centralised structure which would be governed at their doorstep.Little did they know that they were just devolving greed,corruption,nepotism and misuse of public resources.ore so it becomes very difficult in the African culture to stop your tribesman who is doing anything wrong lest you be termed a traitor.So unbeknown to them,the previously marginalized village folk stand to be marginalized and made poorer by the devolved system.
In the meantime the tax paying,middle class has not increased and so any source of funding for development of the counties can only come from the countable middle-class who are already burdened with heavy taxation.The other options are very limited in the form of domestic and foreign borrowings.Inviting foreign investment in Kenya,to me is not the solution.The gains from such a move are illusory.The foreign owned companies will always repatriate the profits gained from local operations leaving the government with minimal collection in the form of tax from the ventures.The foreign companies and nationals get to come over and invest,pillage and plunder and disappear as soon as the resources are exhausted but we are only to get special arrangement to penetrate their markets.Any move to attract foreign investment should also target reciprocal arrangement ot allow Kenyan products and entrepreneurs penetrate those markets.The solution lies in giving locals financial muscle to compete in the export market.Nothing more,nothing less.
The nett economic effect of a county system of governance is one of uncertainty and ambiguity.No two counties will have similar policies and this will lead erosion of investor trust in doing business in a nation of 48 governments.There may be a few stand out counties where logic and good leadership may prevail and result in better returns for the locals of those counties,but those would be few and countable.In the end for the economic progress of Kenya as a nation and to increase our competitiveness internationally we cannot rely on this devolve system to spurse economic growth.
In conclusion I wish to state that devolution does not make an economic sense to the Kenyan state and we should click the undo button and revert to central governance but with amendments.
THE POLITICAL CIRCUS IS STILL ON
The clowns have put on the suits and adjusted the flippers ready to come on stage.Hardly three months after the last elections and people have started politics of us against them.In the mind of the Kenyan politician there is never such a thing as time-out.Time-out to reflect on the effect of their politicking on economic and social progress of this nation.
Friday, September 6, 2013
LEARN TO BE COMPASSIONATE
Ever since I was a young boy growing up,I was fascinated by the dedication and selfless actions of the community I lived in.,where
i was assure of security,shelter,food and a reasonable education.But as
i matured and became an adult, i've seen a change that i do not like
and would like to stop.This is a painful moment that i have to unleash
the vernom of a common man on to the leadership and largasse of the
great nation of Kenya who have allowed this to happen.
It is simple really,All-mighty had the Wisdom to raise prophets among the nations of the world in order to propagate the message of hope,justice,peace and equality.This was sufficient reason to obey and follow.But no,we are a wicked and lost people.Once upon a time,justice,equality,brotherhood of mankind and good neighbourliness were high ideals to aim for.But not any more.
Our conduct as a community is anything but religious.Not a day passes that we do not hear of horiffic killings,utterly shocking defilement of minors by close relatives who are entrusted with their care or mass killings and ethnic clashes that leave thousands homeless and internally displaced(but never referred to as refugees).The religious people that we are,we forgive the wrong doers and hope that they do not repeat.We even accept compensation of a goat for the rape of a 2 yr old by the neighbour.Just because it was "shaitani alimuingia".It is time the people of Kenya realised that tolerating injustice and crime on a section of community is wrong and should not be accepted.But how do we start.?
We could declare a month of national and even international prayers with guess speakers from as far afield as China,but we shall still remain the same.We could build temples of gold and hope that this makes us holy,but if the wickedness has been deeply implanted into our national psyche,nothing can help us.
I dont want to be an apocalyptic prophet of doom,but if the truth be told,we have sunk too low as a nation. There are many causes for humans to sink this deep and its all out of our own making.We have failed to understand that the belief in God implies respect and compassion for other human beings regardless of station in society.Every day the cries of the Aids orphans go unheard,the bandits of the frontier districts dessimate villages and instill terror,with the pleas of the helpless falling on deaf ears.We indulge in illegitimate acts and believe in paying bribes even before they are solicited and simply look out for our personal interests only at the expense of the greater good.We select our leaders based on wealth and ethnicity and they do not dissapoint us,for they live up to the tribal cliches.
Dear Kenyans it is time we truly soul-searched and reflected on our perverted and immoral life.We should live up to the high ideals of Godliness and have genuine concern for humanity.We should seek redemption and repentance for our double lives and save our nation.Let us tackle the root causes of hopelessness and despair.Lets think of the possibility of living in a peaceful,just and equal society.We should stop deluding ourselves with our material possesions and should act humbly and modestly always.May this be the reality of our nation and inspiration for all generations.Because if we do not,we shall have broken the covenant and should live with the consequences.
It is simple really,All-mighty had the Wisdom to raise prophets among the nations of the world in order to propagate the message of hope,justice,peace and equality.This was sufficient reason to obey and follow.But no,we are a wicked and lost people.Once upon a time,justice,equality,brotherhood of mankind and good neighbourliness were high ideals to aim for.But not any more.
Our conduct as a community is anything but religious.Not a day passes that we do not hear of horiffic killings,utterly shocking defilement of minors by close relatives who are entrusted with their care or mass killings and ethnic clashes that leave thousands homeless and internally displaced(but never referred to as refugees).The religious people that we are,we forgive the wrong doers and hope that they do not repeat.We even accept compensation of a goat for the rape of a 2 yr old by the neighbour.Just because it was "shaitani alimuingia".It is time the people of Kenya realised that tolerating injustice and crime on a section of community is wrong and should not be accepted.But how do we start.?
We could declare a month of national and even international prayers with guess speakers from as far afield as China,but we shall still remain the same.We could build temples of gold and hope that this makes us holy,but if the wickedness has been deeply implanted into our national psyche,nothing can help us.
I dont want to be an apocalyptic prophet of doom,but if the truth be told,we have sunk too low as a nation. There are many causes for humans to sink this deep and its all out of our own making.We have failed to understand that the belief in God implies respect and compassion for other human beings regardless of station in society.Every day the cries of the Aids orphans go unheard,the bandits of the frontier districts dessimate villages and instill terror,with the pleas of the helpless falling on deaf ears.We indulge in illegitimate acts and believe in paying bribes even before they are solicited and simply look out for our personal interests only at the expense of the greater good.We select our leaders based on wealth and ethnicity and they do not dissapoint us,for they live up to the tribal cliches.
Dear Kenyans it is time we truly soul-searched and reflected on our perverted and immoral life.We should live up to the high ideals of Godliness and have genuine concern for humanity.We should seek redemption and repentance for our double lives and save our nation.Let us tackle the root causes of hopelessness and despair.Lets think of the possibility of living in a peaceful,just and equal society.We should stop deluding ourselves with our material possesions and should act humbly and modestly always.May this be the reality of our nation and inspiration for all generations.Because if we do not,we shall have broken the covenant and should live with the consequences.
LIVING BEYOND YOUR MEANS-A CASE STUDY OF A BANANA REPUBLIC
So the government of Kenya has decided to implement the VAT Act and impose VAT on wide range of products previously exempt.This is despite a hue and cry from a cross section of citizens on the adverse effects of such a move.My people,this is just the beggining.Much is in the offing if the status quo continues.
The government has a cash crunch.Plain and simple.In June a very ambitious "growth" budget was proposed by the central government.Not to be left behind,counties started to outdo each other with outlandish and unrealistic estimates of expenditure.What noone ever asked them is how they were going to fund the expenditure?Its not as if the government suddenly started laying golden eggs.(As a flashback we already slew the bird which used to lay the golden eggs in 2007,through sales of govt stake in cash cow firms).
So with a trillion shilling budget,one needs to ask,where do you fund it from?With no clue as to the most approriate way to fund,the easier answer was,taxation.Over the last decade there has been a consistent and unstoppable tax demand placed on Kenyans that its difficult to figure out for how long the trend would continue without it caving in.
To understand the current cash crunch in government one needs to have a flash back of the last ten years of economic growth.There wasn't anything magical in the growth,nor were there above average returns on any of the growth sectors.No new avenues to create economic growth has been found except the sale of government stake in all cash cow firms like Safaricom and Kengen.After the sales,the government was at least able to meet immediate short term needs of funding a bloated coalition government.Now few years down the line,the government is soooooo broke that it had to delay salaries of state workers for the month of July 2013.
There has been no move to address the concerns of the populace on the heavy taxation that we are forced on.The root cause of the heavy taxation is the increased spending due to double layer of government and legislative structures of the new Constitution,and an appetite to do things on a grand scale at all times,trying to outdo what the previous regime did.Prudence dictates that you do not live beyond your means and this is a lesson the regime is yet to learn.The state needs to reduce expenditure and look for avenues to increase economic growth rather than taxation.The government is in a catch 22 situation and more woes are bound to arise.
My crystal ball can see a looming sequel of delayed state workers salaries in September or October.Then the government will raid the local banks and result in an increase in interest rates above 30%,and an economy on the verge of collapse.We shall be forced to dig deeper and deeper into our tattered pockets.I can only hope that am wrong and that all this are just rants of an insomniac.
The government has a cash crunch.Plain and simple.In June a very ambitious "growth" budget was proposed by the central government.Not to be left behind,counties started to outdo each other with outlandish and unrealistic estimates of expenditure.What noone ever asked them is how they were going to fund the expenditure?Its not as if the government suddenly started laying golden eggs.(As a flashback we already slew the bird which used to lay the golden eggs in 2007,through sales of govt stake in cash cow firms).
So with a trillion shilling budget,one needs to ask,where do you fund it from?With no clue as to the most approriate way to fund,the easier answer was,taxation.Over the last decade there has been a consistent and unstoppable tax demand placed on Kenyans that its difficult to figure out for how long the trend would continue without it caving in.
To understand the current cash crunch in government one needs to have a flash back of the last ten years of economic growth.There wasn't anything magical in the growth,nor were there above average returns on any of the growth sectors.No new avenues to create economic growth has been found except the sale of government stake in all cash cow firms like Safaricom and Kengen.After the sales,the government was at least able to meet immediate short term needs of funding a bloated coalition government.Now few years down the line,the government is soooooo broke that it had to delay salaries of state workers for the month of July 2013.
There has been no move to address the concerns of the populace on the heavy taxation that we are forced on.The root cause of the heavy taxation is the increased spending due to double layer of government and legislative structures of the new Constitution,and an appetite to do things on a grand scale at all times,trying to outdo what the previous regime did.Prudence dictates that you do not live beyond your means and this is a lesson the regime is yet to learn.The state needs to reduce expenditure and look for avenues to increase economic growth rather than taxation.The government is in a catch 22 situation and more woes are bound to arise.
My crystal ball can see a looming sequel of delayed state workers salaries in September or October.Then the government will raid the local banks and result in an increase in interest rates above 30%,and an economy on the verge of collapse.We shall be forced to dig deeper and deeper into our tattered pockets.I can only hope that am wrong and that all this are just rants of an insomniac.
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