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The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site
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@JohnGithongo at #Mindspeak You must vote we all have a stake Twitpic

#Mindspeak Swing Vote 2013 with @JohnGithongo Twitpic

Kenya whale shark safari swims in controversy Aljazeera

njeri karianjahi @jrnjeri today was such an intellectually
stimulating day,got to meet @alykhansatchu and attend #mindspeak
suweeet!
Wangui Kaniaru @amka_kumekucha @AnnMcCreath @alykhansatchu
@johngithongo True! A really inspiring presentation. Great crowd with
Kenya as our common cause. #swingvote2013
John Githongo @johngithongo @alykhansatchu #Mindspeak It was a great
pleasure Aly Khan, Asante!
chiefkeya™ and 12 others retweeted you Feb 16: Middle Class is a Tribe
says @JohnGithongo #Mindspeak
Nikhil Hira @Nikhil_Hira @johngithongo Nothing unites our elite more
than theft! #Mindspeak Well said sir!
coldtusker @coldtusker RT @Deno_mwas: The future is a direct
consequence of the choices of today @johngithongo #mindspeak
She @sheilanasongo My vote is no longer about me. Its about my kids.
It determines if their dreams can come true. My vote equals their
future #mindspeak
Syowai Winnie @SyowaiSyo @waithash Very true. I wish they could air
todays #mindspeak on tv. Everyone needs to know to greatness in their
vote.
Samuel Mungai Ndichu @samuelndichu I think I missed a very good
edition of #Mindspeak today. But many thanks to the tweeps who took
notes and shared them. @alykhansatchu
Thogi @thogii Fantastic&insightful talk by @johngithongo at
#Mindspeak this morning!Many thanks to @alykhansatchu for making it
all happen!Great stuff! :D
Helle Sejer-Hansen @helle1970 Thank you to @alykhansatchu and
@johngithongo #Mindspeak #swingvote2013 for a brilliant morning.
Inspiring.
Kirubi David @KirubiDavid http://youtu.be/HcD5maoMAN8 Swing Vote
2013 #mindspeak very creative.
Okii Eli @Nextstevejob @alykhansatchu @johngithongo - I guess the
even more difficult decision is to select the CFO co-running with
Kenya next CEO #Mindspeak
Onyango Rachael @OnyangoRachael The big elephants [US, China & India]
can bang us around but it up to us Kenyans to determine our own
agenda' - @johngithongo #mindspeak
Aly-Khan Satchu @alykhansatchu Things will not go back to normal
Things will change completely #Kenya #Mindspeak @JohnGithongo
http://www.rich.co.ke
Sir.Runyu @Sir_Runyu Of all sessions I have attended before,
#mindspeak tops the list of the most informative, and on all spheres
of life. @alykhansatchu kudos!
Vladamir I @Deno_mwas @johngithongo says that political will doesn't
exist naturally in politician's hearts. It has to be manufactured.
@alykhansatchu. #mindspeak
Walter Okelo @walterokelo @johngithongo and @alykhansatchu on stage
at #Mindspeak,Intercontinental, Nbi. pic.twitter.com/2A1VLhqp
caroline kere @carolinekere I *Shudder* > @alykhansatchu: You will
have Mike Sonko at the airport to meet President @Barackobama says
@JohnGithongo #Mindspeak
Ten Gb. @AntonyWafula The options presented 2 u will always be
imperfect Leaders carry a lot of Baggage #Mindspeak @Akwede-Kenya.
Onyango Rachael @OnyangoRachael "@Njathika: 'The word consequences
has become very pregnant & has become part of our lexicon since
@afasstsecy used it' - #mindspeak"
Mwangi Kingi @mwangikingi super cobra #mindspeak @johngithongo @alykhansatchu
martin ngugi @martongugi Hunger for Devolution has been driven by
Corruption and Impunity says @JohnGithongo #Mindspeak"
The ConMan @Ogu_2 Comical detail from @johngithongo on the super
cobra powerline that passes over Mukuru Slums and supplies power to
Karen #mindspeak
Onyango Rachael @OnyangoRachael "@alykhansatchu: Makuru is a Bigger
Informal Settlement than Kibera @JohnGithongo #Mindspeak
http://www.rich.co.ke "
The ConMan @Ogu_2 @johngithongo reminds us of the '98 bomblast . The
resilience Kenyans showed in conducting rescue operations and donating
blood #mindspeak
Dan Nyamai @danyamai Its nauseating for MPs to dictate on how they
wanted to be buried thro state funerals @johngithogo #mindspeak
Eva P. Wambui @penniewambie RT @maithori @zaksyengo @penniewambie
kenya gets software wrong (tribalism corruption issues.. and hardware
right #mindspeak
Walter Okelo @walterokelo 'Africa is on the verge of economic boom.
KE owes it to the world to get it right on 4th March' @johngithongo
#Mindspeak @alykhansatchu
UmeClick? @umeclick Kenya's Richest resource is its people, says
@johngithongo #mindspeak #umeclick
Robert Njathika @Njathika 'I went around the country & lived in the
informal settlements' - @johngithongo #mindspeak. The views then were
pro - #ICC
Stephen @uwanja We must ensure our county boundaries are not battle
lines. Says @johngithongo #mindspeak
Stephen @uwanja ICC has take a lot of bandwidth in our heads . We
also have an assignment as Kenyans beyond the ICC process. #mindspeak
Aly-Khan Satchu @alykhansatchu There is an Old Order in #Kenya that
is dying we are burying them @JohnGithongo #Mindspeak like an Old
dying Bull Elephant
Francis Waithaka @waithash Interesting RT @alykhansatchu: Middle
Class is a Tribe says @JohnGithongo #Mindspeak @InterConNairobi
Shazalina @beswk good morning tweeps. I am attending #MindSpeak via
Twitter today courtesy of my timeline:-)
Maggie Ireri @MaggieIreri #Mindspeak starting now.. John Gitongo CV
is 5 times longer than mine! @alykhansatchu

Macro Thoughts

G20 leaders agree to avoid currency war Aljazeera
http://www.aljazeera.com/business/2013/02/201321610114170245.html

The Group of 20 nations have declared there would be no "currency war"
and deferred plans to set new debt-cutting targets in an indication of
concern about the fragile state of the world economy.

Japan's policies, which have driven down the yen, escaped criticism in
a statement agreed on in Moscow on Saturday by financial policymakers
from the G20, which groups developed and emerging markets and accounts
for 90 percent of the world economy.

Conclusions

Predicted and Predictable.

G20 Moscow Guardian
http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/2/15/1360936961557/f1848743-aba8-49a8-9cea-ec4c6ee8ddb9-620x372.jpeg

Home Thoughts

A METEOR IN THE RUSSIAN SKY
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/02/meteor-in-the-russian-sky.html

The Russian Academy of Sciences announced that the fireball had been a
meteor, that it had weighed ten tons and entered the earth’s
atmosphere at some thirty-three thousand miles per hour. It shattered
over the Chelyabinsk region, where the Russian Army has reported
finding meteorite fragments and a twenty-foot crater. Such events
don’t happen every day, but they aren’t totally unheard of. In 1908,
the so-called Tunguska Impact levelled eight hundred and thirty square
miles of Siberian forestland. The truly new thing about Friday’s
meteoric event was, rather, how we got to watch it: from inside
people’s cars.

With their juxtaposition of the cosmic and the mundane, the Russian
meteor videos reminded me of Tolstoy’s description, in “War and
Peace,” of the comet of 1812: Only looking up at the sky did Pierre
cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane things
compared with the heights to which his soul had just been raised….
Above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded … on all sides by stars
but distinguished from them all by its nearness to the earth, its
white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and
brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds
of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with
its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he
gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which,
having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through
immeasurable space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the
earth—to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding its tail
erect, shining and displaying its white light amid countless other
scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre that this comet fully
responded to what was passing in his own softened and uplifted soul,
now blossoming into a new life.

In “War and Peace” the comet stands for one of the novel’s central
themes: the way world-historical forces interact with individual
destinies. The ancient, cosmic power of the epic exercises its
gravitational pull on the prose of the world. Every time a meteor
comes close to the earth, we all think about the end of the world—but
our internal soundtrack doesn’t turn off. We’re also thinking about
pizza, or passing a slow tractor, or making a turn, and for a magical
instant our lives seem to be in conversation with the stars.

Nairobi, Kenya - Kenya is famous for sightings of the "Big Five"
safari animals: lions, elephants, leopards, buffaloes and the
thick-skinned rhino.

Next month, that could become the "Big Six", thanks to a new marine
enclosure that will allow holidaymakers to snorkel with live whale
sharks.

Organisers of the Indian Ocean sea park say the €100 ticket price
($134 USD) will fund schemes to stop the docile fish from being wiped
out.

But a vocal group of conservationists says it is cruel and unnecessary
to catch and exhibit animals, and wants to stop the scheme, saying it
puts money before animal welfare. Organisers have dismissed critics as
"over-emotional eco-zealots".

The heated debate raises a question that splits conservationists:
whether showcasing captive animals advances or hinders their efforts.

Volker Bassen, founder of the Waa Whale Shark Sanctuary near Mombasa,
Kenya's second city, said it will be a boon for tourism and
conservation.

"If you ever have a chance to swim with whale sharks, you will never
forget the magical experience," he said. "You will become an
ambassador for the protection of these majestic animals for the rest
of your life."

An underwater polyethylene net measuring 2,000 metres by 600 metres
will give the juvenile male occupants plenty of room to shake their
fins, he said.

Conclusions

I met Volcker the last time we were on the South Coast.

Diani #Kenya Twitpic

The Sea Side Diani Video

Pope Benedict XVI’s leaked documents show fractured Vatican full of rivalries WAPO

From dreams to drones: who is the real Barack Obama? Pankaj Mishra

Viganò’s plight and other unflattering machinations would soon become
public in an unprecedented leak of the pontiff’s personal
correspondence. Much of the media — and the Vatican — focused on the
source of the shocking security breach. Largely lost were the
revelations contained in the letters themselves — tales of rivalry and
betrayal, and allegations of corruption and systemic dysfunction that
infused the inner workings of the Holy See and the eight-year papacy
of Benedict XVI. Last week, he announced that he will become the first
pope in nearly 600 years to resign.

“We can reveal the face of the church and how this face is, at times,
disfigured,” Benedict said in his final homily on Ash Wednesday. “I am
thinking in particular of the sins against the unity of the church, of
the divisions in the body of the church.” He called for his ministry
to overcome “individualism” and “rivalry,” saying they were only for
those “who have distanced themselves from the faith.”

The leak came from within the pope’s inner sanctum. On most mornings,
the pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, left his apartment, just inside the
Vatican walls, before 7 a.m. He walked past the plumed Swiss Guards
and into the Apostolic Palace, where he worked in the third-floor
papal apartments. His black gelled hair, dark suits and fleshy cheeks
became so familiar around the Vatican Gardens that clerics
affectionately called him Paoletto.

“I was the layman closest to the Holy Father,” Gabriele would later
say. “There to respond to his immediate needs.”

The official duties for the married father of three included laying
out Benedict’s white vestments and red shoes, serving his decaf coffee
and riding with the pontiff in the popemobile. Unofficial chores
included absconding with copies of the pope’s personal correspondence,
including letters from Viganò, whose grievances Gabriele found
especially compelling.

The butler read letters fleshing out how Viganò, an ambitious enforcer
of Benedict’s good government reforms, had earned powerful enemies. In
early 2011, a series of hostile anonymous articles attacking Viganò
began appearing in the Italian media. Under duress, Viganò appealed to
the pope’s powerful second in command, Secretary of State Tarcisio
Bertone. Bertone was not sympathetic and instead echoed the articles’
complaints about his rough management style and removed Viganò from
his post.

This set in motion a blizzard of letters that passed through the
office Gabriele shared with the pope’s personal secretary. In one
missive, Viganò wrote to Bertone accusing him of getting in the way of
the pope’s reform mission; he also charged Bertone with breaking his
promise to elevate him to cardinal. Viganò sent a copy of this letter
to the pope. In a separate letter to the pontiff, Viganò dropped the
Vatican’s “C word”: corruption.

“My transfer right now,” he wrote, “would provoke much disorientation
and discouragement in those who have believed it was possible to clean
up so many situations of corruption and abuse of power that have been
rooted in the management of so many departments.”

In another, he described more “situations of corruption” in which the
same firms habitually won contracts at almost “double the cost”
charged outside the Vatican. Viganò cited savings from cutting the
amount spent on the annual Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square from
550,000 euros in 2009 to 300,000 euros in 2010.

Viganò’s efforts failed, and he was soon dispatched to Washington.
Bertone and Viganò declined to comment.

“In other circumstances, such an appointment would be a reason for joy
and a sign of great esteem and trust in my regard, but in the present
context, it will be perceived by all as a verdict of condemnation of
my work, and therefore as a punishment,” Viganò wrote to the pope on
July 7, 2011. He suggested that “the Holy Father has certainly been
kept in the dark.”

As the media hunted for moles, or “crows” as they are known in
Italian, Gabriele’s office mate, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein — a former
ski instructor and papal confidant known as Gorgeous George — cracked
the case. Vatican gendarmes found 82 boxes of documents in the
butler’s apartment and arrested him. He was tried, convicted and
jailed for several months before the pope personally pardoned him.

While Benedict was the public face of the universal church, Bertone,
for now, remains the private power broker who runs the Vatican on a
daily basis. In 2006, Benedict appointed Bertone, his longtime
doctrinal sidekick, to secretary of state — the second-most-powerful
position in the Vatican.

Benedict appointed Harvey to a new job as titular cardinal priest of
the St. Paul Outside the Walls basilica. It seemed like the honor of a
lifetime, but for Vatican insiders and officials, the move amounted to
an exquisite eviction. As the head of the papal household, Harvey had
overseen Gabriele, and his new assignment seemed a classic example of
promoveatur ut amoveatur — promote to remove. (Benedict later banished
his former butler to a silence-encouraging sinecure at a hospital
adjoining Harvey’s church.)

Abu Saiba Bahrain Riot police officers patrol during clashes with
pro-democracy protesters after a march marking the anniversary of
their uprising
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2013/feb/16/24-hours-in-pictures#/?picture=404191136&index=3

Gao Mali A French soldier checks passengers from a transport truck as
security is stepped up to stop the infiltration of rebel fighters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2013/feb/16/24-hours-in-pictures#/?picture=404191138&index=8

Gao, Mali: Children walk on the Askia mausoleum, built in 1495
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/gallery/2013/feb/16/24-hours-in-pictures#/?picture=404191146&index=0

Tomb of Askia MALI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Askia

The Tomb of Askia, in Gao, Mali, is believed to be the burial place of
Askia Mohammad I, one of the Songhai Empire's most prolific emperors.
It was built at the end of the fifteenth century and is designated as
a UNESCO World Heritage Site. UNESCO describes the tomb as a fine
example of the monumental mud-building traditions of the West African
Sahel. The complex includes the pyramidal tomb, two mosques, a
cemetery and an assembly ground. At 17 metres in height it is the
largest pre-colonial architectural monument in the region. It is the
first example of an Islamic architectural style that later spread
throughout the region. Askia Mohammed was the first Askia emperor and
greatly expanded the Songhai Empire. As a reverent Muslim, he felt
obligated to make his pilgrimage to Mecca, which he returned from in
1495. He brought back with him the materials to make his tomb; all of
the mud and wood came from Mecca. The caravan is said to have
consisted of "thousands of camels." It was structured as a house, with
several rooms and passageways and was sealed when Askia Mohammed died.

Askia Mohammed is the only one buried inside the tomb itself, but
several other Askias are buried in the courtyard.

TORTURE AND OBAMA’S DRONE PROGRAM New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/02/torture-and-obamas-drone-program.html

Last week, John Yoo, the Bush Administration lawyer who authored the
infamous “torture memos,” which offered a legal rationale for
waterboarding and other forms of prisoner abuse, leapt at what he saw
as an opportunity to castigate Obama for worse behavior. Writing in
the Wall Street Journal, Yoo, who now teaches law at the University of
California at Berkeley, denounced Obama’s remote-controlled targeted
killing of terror suspects by unmanned aerial drones as a far greater
assault on human rights than anything he had ever facilitated.

“Rather than capture terrorists—which produces the most valuable
intelligence on al Qaeda—Mr. Obama has relied almost exclusively on
drone attacks, and he has thereby been able to dodge difficult
questions over detention. But those deaths from the sky violate
personal liberty far more than the waterboarding of three al Qaeda
leaders ever did,” he wrote.

In a piece in the Washington Post, for instance, Georgetown Law School
professor David Cole recently raised what is perhaps the gravest
concern: the President’s assertion of a secret, unchecked power to
kill even Americans with no due process or public accountability.
“There may be extraordinary occasions” when such killing is
permissible, Cole conceded, but he argued that some sort of public
accounting, at a very minimum, is required.

“How can we be free if our government has the power to kill us in
secret?” he asked. “How can a sovereign authority be accountable to
the people if the sovereign can refuse to own up to its actions?” He
argued that unchecked and unacknowledged lethal power is the stuff of
forced disappearances in tyrannous banana republics, not great
democracies.

The force used must be proportional to the threat posed by the
situation, and any civilian harm must be kept to a minimum. Also, in
theory, anyone targeted should be granted the opportunity to safely
surrender—an option that is disturbingly unavailable to those in
imminent danger of being incinerated by a missile launched from an
unseen drone.

In some ways, what’s most disturbing about the Obama white paper is
not that it tried to set limits in order to ensure that the drone
program was within the laws of war. Rather, what seems more worrisome
is what it didn’t attempt to figure out, and which no one else seems
to be addressing either: namely, whether conventional laws of war
should still apply to America’s unconventional counterterrorism
program, particularly now that it is over a decade old, and is
seemingly morphing into an endless worldwide lethal manhunt.

Congo: Premiere Lumumba Arrested AKA Lumumba PATHE VIDEO

Barack Obama, according to Foreign Policy magazine, "has become George
W Bush on steroids". Armed with a "kill list", the Nobel peace
laureate now hosts "Tuesday terror" meetings at the White House to
discuss targets of drone attacks in Pakistan and at least five other
countries.

Unlike the slacker Bush, who famously disdained specifics, Obama
routinely deploys his Ivy League training in law. Many among the
dozens of "suspected militants" massacred by drones in the last three
days in northwestern Pakistan are likely to be innocent. Reports
gathered by NGOs and Pakistani media about previous attacks speak of a
collateral damage running into hundreds, and deepening anger and
hostility to the United States. No matter: in Obama's legally
watertight bureaucracy, drone attacks are not publicly acknowledged;
or if they have to be, civilian deaths are flatly denied and all the
adult dead categorised as "combatants".

Obama himself signed off on one execution knowing it would also kill
innocent family members. He has also made it "legal" to execute
Americans without trial and expanded their secret surveillance,
preserved the CIA's renditions programme, violated his promise to
close down Guantánamo Bay, and ruthlessly arraigned whistleblowers.

Not only is Cornel West, Obama's most prominent black intellectual
supporter, appalled, but also the apparatchiks of Bush's imperial
presidency such as former CIA director Michael Hayden. Perhaps it is
time to ask again: who is Barack Obama? And how has Pakistan featured
in his worldview? The first question now seems to have been settled
too quickly, largely because of the literary power of Obama's speeches
and writings. His memoir, Dreams From My Father, was quickened by the
drama of the self-invented man from nowhere – the passionate striving,
eloquent self-doubt and ambivalence that western literature, from
Stendhal to Naipaul, has trained us to identify with a refined
intellect and soul. Not surprisingly, Obama's careful
self-presentation seduced some prominent literary fictionists,
inviting comparisons to James Baldwin.

Later biographies of Obama, published after he became president, have
complicated the picture of him as the possessor of diversely sourced
identities (Kenya, Indonesia, Hawaii, Harvard). David Maraniss's new
biography shows that at college the bright student from Hawaii's
closest friends were Pakistanis, and he carried around a dog-eared
copy of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.

But Obama also began early, as one girlfriend of his reported to her
diary, to "strike out", "shedding encumbrances, old images". "Do you
think I will be president of the United States?" he asked a slightly
bemused Pakistani friend, who then witnessed "Obama slowly but
carefully distancing himself from the Pakistanis as a necessary step
in establishing his political identity".

"For years," Maraniss writes, "Obama seemed to share their attitudes
as sophisticated outsiders who looked at politics from an
international perspective. But to get to where he wanted … he had to
change." Obama's Pakistani friend recalls: "The first shift I saw him
undertaking was to view himself as an American in a much more
fundamental way."

In an incorrigibly rightwing political culture, this obliged Obama to
always appear tougher than his white opponents. During his 2008
presidential debates with John McCain, Obama often startled many of us
with his threats to expand the war in Afghanistan to Pakistan. More
disquietingly, he claimed the imprimatur of Henry Kissinger, who
partnered Richard Nixon in the ravaging of Cambodia, paving the way
for Pol Pot, while still devastating Vietnam.

It can't be said Obama didn't prepare us for his murderous spree in
Pakistan. It is also true that drone warfare manifests the same
pathologies – racial contempt, paranoia, blind faith in technology and
the superstition of body counts – that undermined the US in Vietnam.

The White House has been used before to plot daily mayhem in some
obscure, under-reported corner of the world. During the long bombing
campaign named Rolling Thunder, President Lyndon Johnson personally
chose targets in Indochina, believing that "carefully calculated doses
of force could bring about desirable and predictable responses from
Hanoi".

But of course "force", as James Baldwin pointed out during Kissinger
and Nixon's last desperate assault on Indochina, "does not reveal to
the victim the strength of his adversary. On the contrary, it reveals
the weakness, even the panic of his adversary and this revelation
invests the victim with patience".

The last US personnel in Vietnam had to be evacuated from the roof of
the American embassy in Saigon, and this may yet be the fate of the
western mission in Afghanistan. The Taliban, it is clear, won't be
killed and mutilated into submission. A weak Pakistan, its rulers
bribed and bullied into acquiescence, is the easier setting for a
display of American firepower. In ways his Pakistani college friends
couldn't have foreseen, their country now carries the burden of
verifying Obama's extra-American manhood, especially at election time.

Obama was quick to say sorry to Poland last week for saying "Polish
death camps" rather than "death camps in Poland" in a speech. But he
refuses to apologise for the American air strikes that killed 24
Pakistani soldiers in November last year. Widespread public anger has
forced Pakistan's government to block Nato's supply routes to
Afghanistan; any hint of infirmity on the sensitive issue of
sovereignty is likely to strengthen some of the country's nastiest
extremists. Thus, the few possibilities of political stability in a
battered country are now hostage to Obama's pre-election punitiveness.

Certainly, Obama's political and personal journey now evokes less
uplifting literary comparisons. For, nearly four years after his
ecstatically hailed ascension to the White House, Obama resembles
Baldwin much less than he does Kipling and other uncertain children of
empire who, as Ashis Nandy writes in The Intimate Enemy, replaced
their early identifications with the weak with "an unending search for
masculinity and status". These men saw both their victims and
compatriots "as gullible children who must be impressed with
conspicuous machismo"; and who suppressed their plural selves "for the
sake of an imposed imperial identity – inauthentic and killing in its
grandiosity".

Conclusions

"We're killin' 'em! We're killin' 'em all!" Bush exulted, according to
Bob Woodward, during his last months in office. And now another man
sits in the White House, surveying his own kill lists and plotting
re-election, after having already pulled off the cruellest political
hoax of our times.

Full video of Gaddafi being tortured and killed YouTube

24-OCT-2011 Gaddafi's Body in a Freezer - What's the Message?

Mark Curtis - International Conference Against Terrorism YouTube

I am left thinking, this dead Gaddafi business is one powerful
message. And today Marshall McLuhan’s prediction in The Gutenberg
Galaxy (1962) that ‘The new electronic interdependence recreates the
world in the image of a global village’ has come to pass. The image of
a bloodied Gaddafi, then of a dead Gaddafi in a meat locker have
flashed around the world via the mobile, YouTube and Twitter.

Who is in charge of the messaging? Through the fog of real time and
raw footage, I note a very powerful message. The essence of that
message being;

‘Don’t Fxxk with us! Be- cause you will end up dead and a trophy
souvenir in a fridge.’

KONY 2012 Study Guide: a political analysis by Pepe Escobar
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5erNLRPTe2Q&playnext=1&list=PLBA2C42DA2D8083B4&feature=results_main

Pepe Escobar - Invasion of Libya, Arab Spring & R2P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCw1ygPte18

A view of Mehrangarh the fort that towers over the city of Jodhpur in northwest India’s Rajasthan state WSJ

Currency Markets at a Glance WSJ

International Trade

Euro 1.3340
Dollar Index 80.62
Japan Yen 93.96
Swiss Franc 0.9248
Pound 1.5492
Aussie 1.0294
India Rupee 54.32
South Korea Won 1080.94
Brazil Real 1.9688
Egypt Pound 6.7245
South Africa Rand 8.8619

Dollar Yen 3 Month Chart INO 93.96 [Japan got a Free Pass]
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDJPY&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

djfxtrader: S&P Maintains #Japan's AA- Rating, Keeps Negative Outlook
djfxtrader: #Japan PM Abe: Purpose Of Monetary Easing Is To End
Deflation,Not To Manipulate FX Rates; Correction Of Excessive Yen
Strength Is Right Devt
djfxtrader: #Japan PM Abe: #BOJ Law Change Would Need To Be Considered
If Inflation Target Cannot Be Achieved Under BOJ's Mandate

Conclusions

Japan got a Free Pass.

Euro versus the Dollar 3 Month Chart 1.33475 Last
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_EURUSD&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

Dollar Index 3 Month Chart INO 80.626 Last
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=NYBOT_DX&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

International purchases of U.S. stocks, bonds and other financial
assets rose more than forecast in December as investors sought shelter
from slowing global growth.Net buying of long-term financial assets
totaled $64.2 billion during the month, up from net purchases of $52.4
billion in November, the Treasury Department said today in Washington.
Economists surveyed by Bloomberg projected net buying of $35 billion
of long-term assets, according to the median estimate.

Conclusions

Speaks to the firmness of the Dollar of late.

Commodity Markets at a Glance WSJ

Commodities

Crude Oil 5 Day Chart INO 96.17 Last
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/?s=NYMEX_CL.J13.E

Saudi Arabia’s crude shipments slid to a 15-month low in
December.Saudi Arabia exported 7.06 million barrels of crude a day in
December, the least since September 2011, according to the Joint
Organisations Data Initiative.
Iraq, the largest producer in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries after Saudi Arabia, curtailed exports by 10 percent to 2.35
million barrels a day in December, data posted on the website of the
initiative known as JODI showed. Venezuela increased crude shipments
by 19 percent to 1.97 million barrels a day, the most since July 2008,
when it exported 2.24 million. OPEC’s 12 members supplies about 40
percent of the world’s oil.

Conclusions

Its not ready to punch through Triple Digits.

Gold 3 Month Chart INO 1614.39 Last
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_XAUUSDO&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

Spot gold rose as much as 0.6 percent to $1,618.90 an ounce, and
traded at $1,614.90 by 11:56 a.m. in Singapore. Gold slumped to
$1,598.23 an ounce on Feb. 15, the lowest level since August.

Conclusions

Trades very poorly of late.

Emerging Markets

Frontier Markets

It is, therefore, perceived to be in the strategic interests of Western energy security to see Algeria turned into a failed state Counterpunch

Hidden Agenda behind America’s War on Africa: Containing China by “Fighting Al-Qaeda”

The most obvious victim of this destabilization has been Mali. That
the Salafist takeover of Mali is a direct consequence of NATO’s
actions in Libya is not in doubt by any serious analysts. One result
of the spread of NATO-backed destabilization to Mali is that Algeria –
who lost 200,000 citizens in a deadly civil war with Islamists in the
1990s – is now surrounded by heavily armed Salafist militias on both
its Eastern (Libya) and Southern (Mali) borders.

Algeria’s oil exports stand at over $70bn per year, and much of this
income has been used to invest in massive spending on health and
housing, along with a recent $23billion loan and public grants
programme to encourage small business. Indeed, high levels of social
spending are considered by many to be a key reason why no ‘Arab
Spring’ style uprising has taken off in Algeria in recent years.

Europe is about to become a whole lot more dependent on Algerian gas
as North Sea reserves run out: ”Developing Algeria as a major natural
gas exporter is an economic and strategic imperative for EU countries
as North Sea production of the commodity enters terminal decline in
the next decade. Algeria is already an important energy supplier to
the Continent, but Europe will need expanded access to natural gas to
offset the decline of its indigenous reserves.” British and Dutch
North Sea gas reserves are estimated to run out by the end of the
decade, and Norway’s to go into sharp decline from 2015 onwards. With
Europe fearful of overdependence on gas from Russia and Asia, Algeria
– with reserves of natural gas estimated at 4.5 trillion cubic metres,
alongside shale gas reserves of 17 trillion cubic meters – will become
essential, the piece argues.

It is, therefore, perceived to be in the strategic interests of
Western energy security to see Algeria turned into a failed state,
just as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have been. With this in mind, it
is clear to see how the apparently contradictory policy of arming the
Salafist militias one minute (in Libya) and bombing them the next (in
Mali) does in fact make sense. The French bombing mission aims, in its
own words, at the “total reconquest” of Mali, which in practice means
driving the rebels gradually Northwards through the country – in other
words, straight into Algeria.

Meanwhile, rather than sticking to the script, the West’s
unpredictable Salafi proxies expanded from their base in Northern Mali
not North to Algeria as intended, but South to Bamako, threatening to
unseat a Western-allied regime that had only just been installed in a
coup less than a year earlier. The French were forced to intervene to
drive them North and back towards the state that had been their real
target all along.

Britain urges Chad to arrest Sudan's Bashir Daily Star
http://dailystar.com.lb/News/Middle-East/2013/Feb-16/206741-britain-urges-chad-to-arrest-sudans-bashir.ashx#axzz2L7FXVs9T

LONDON: Britain called on Chad on Saturday to arrest Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir while he visits N'Djamena for a regional
summit and to hand him over to the International Criminal Court.

Chad is one of the countries signed up to the ICC's founding treaty
which are legally bound to arrest Bashir, who is wanted for war
crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in the long-running
Darfur conflict.

But several signatories have failed to do so, and Bashir visited Chad
on Saturday for talks with central African leaders on security,
including the operation against Islamists in Mali.

"If President Bashir is not arrested, this will be the third time the
government of Chad has failed to implement warrants issued by the
International Criminal Court for war crimes, crimes against humanity
and genocide," British minister for Africa Mark Simmonds said.

"Chad has committed itself to full cooperation with the ICC, and I
reiterate the importance that the British government places on such
commitments.

"The UK expects Chad to stand by its obligations and will be
disappointed if it does not do so."

The ICC on Friday issued a formal notice to the Chadian government
reminding it of its obligation to arrest Bashir.

Military’s Next Africa Chief Indicates 3 Terror Groups Are on His Hit List WIRED
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/africa-rodriguez/

Here’s an indicator of how the U.S. military considers northern and
eastern Africa the next major battlefield of the ongoing war on
terrorism. “Countering violent extremist groups” will be the “first
priority” of the U.S. Africa Command, according to its next leader.

U.S. Army Gen. David Rodriguez, most recently the day-to-day commander
in Afghanistan, all but laid out a hit list to a Senate panel during
his confirmation hearing to run the military’s newest regional command
organization. “A major challenge is effectively countering violent
extremist organizations, especially the growth of Mali as an al-Qaida
in the Islamic Maghreb safe haven, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and
al-Shabaab in Somalia,” Rodriguez told the Senate Armed Services
Committee in advanced questions on Thursday morning, as “each present
a threat to western interests in Africa.”

The Senate panel opted not to ask questions about al-Qaida at all — a
surprising move, given that Rodriguez testified alongside Army Gen.
Lloyd Austin, nominated to command all U.S. military forces in the
Middle East and South Asia. Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the
committee, called the swaths of territory they will oversee “the
centers of gravity for our military’s operations to counter the threat
of terrorism.” Yet senators preferred to grill Austin over his
recommendations for a residual force in Iraq that never came to pass.

Still, Rodriguez said that the Boko Haram, al-Qaida in the Islamic
Maghreb and al-Shabab are “the major threats to stability,
militarily.” He also included Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army —
which the U.S. is helping confront — in his list of threats, but as a
subordinate issue.

As befitting a new U.S. and western approach of confronting terrorist
groups without major land incursions, Rodriguez indicated that
“training” foreign militaries would be the primary tool by which
Africa Command operates directly. He regretted that previous training
for partner armies in Africa, “we did not emphasize the value of the
army and the role of the military in democracy” — an issue on display
in the recent Mali conflict, when the U.S.-trained military launched a
coup last year — and pledged to reverse that course.

Rodriguez did not elaborate at the hearing about additional steps to
confront the terrorist threats he outlined. But in his advance
statement to the committee, he said that he saw “a greater risk of
regional instability if we do not engage aggressively” against
al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, the terrorist group’s regional
affiliate. The Special Operations Command’s Africa component is
currently focused on “neutraliz[ing]” the group, including ‘a
counter-ideology component to deny al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb
recruitment and retention efforts and interfere with their
fundraising.” There is a robust and seemingly long-term U.S. military
presence in Djibouti that helps provide resource for the ongoing
counterterrorism fight. Drone strikes were not discussed at the
hearing.

There are questions about the extent of the threat that al-Qaida in
the Islamic Maghreb, al-Shabab and Boko Haram actually pose to the
United States. Rodriguez conceded in his advance questions that the
three groups “have not specifically targeted the United States.”
Instead, they’ve “carried out attacks on western interests and engaged
in kidnapping,” he said, warning that they’d be an “even larger
threat” if they “deepen their collaboration.” Asked by Sen. Kelly
Ayotte (R-N.H.), Rodriguez said Boko Haram in Nigeria “has committed
some acts that can be associated with terrorism.” Rudy Atallah, the
Pentagon’s former top Africa counterterrorism officer, told Danger
Room last month that “The short answer is they are regionally focused
for now,” rather than threatening the United States at home.

Conclusions

ALY-KHAN SATCHU Wrote: (your comment)
http://www.rich.co.ke/rctools/wrapup.php?dt=MjAxMy0wMS0yOQ%3D%3D#B29417

The US continues to expand its Hard Power FootPrint across the African
Continent. In order to better shrink China's Operating Theatre. The
Danger posed by these various Narco,Terror, Kidnapping Gangs is very
asymettric and can impale a weak State. Aly-Khan Satchu Nairobi

"And now everybody in Washington is going hang on a second, you know:
How do we reverse this process? How do we repel the Chinese?''
http://j.mp/MD6oGN

East Africa Is the New Epicenter of America’s Shadow War WIRED

ICC set to use satellite images as evidence The Standard

When Adm. Eric Olson, the former leader of U.S. Special Operations
Command, wanted to explain where his forces were going, he would show
audiences a photo that NASA took, titled “The World at Night.” The lit
areas showed the governed, stable, orderly parts of the planet. The
areas without lights were the danger zones — the impoverished, the
power vacuums, the places overrun with militants that prompted the
attention of elite U.S. troops. And few places were darker, in Olson’s
eyes, than East Africa.

Located northwest of Somalia is a former French Foreign Legion base in
Djibouti called Camp Lemonnier. The U.S. military has been there for a
decade. It’s a resupply point for U.S. ships passing by, as well as
the home of a multinational, American-led counterterrorism team called
the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

Then comes the drone war. Lemonnier isn’t the only U.S. base near the
Horn. Throughout the last decade, the military ran a smaller
special-operations base in Kenya and another in Ethiopia. Now an
Ethiopian outpost will become a launchpad for U.S. drones, as will a
facility nearby in the Seychelles, all to launch strikes against
al-Qaida allies in East Africa.

Camp Simba, a Kenyan naval base located on that country's sandy coast Esquire
http://www.esquire.com/features/africacommand0707

The word came down suddenly in early January to the fifty or so U.S.
troops stationed inside Camp Simba, a Kenyan naval base located on
that country's sandy coast: Drop everything and pull everyone back
inside the compound wire. Then they were instructed to immediately
clear a couple acres of dense forest. Task Force 88, a very secret
American special-operations unit, needed to land three CH-53
helicopters.

"We had everybody working nonstop," says Navy Lieutenant Commander
Steve Eron, commander of Contingency Operating Location Manda Bay, a
new American base in Kenya, including a dozen or so on-site KBR
contractors. By the next day, every tree had been hauled off and the
field graded and packed down using heavy machinery. The pad was
completed in thirty-six hours.

Soon after, U.S. special operators flying out of Manda Bay were
landing in southernmost Somalia, searching for survivors among the
foreign fighters and Al Qaeda operatives just targeted in a furious
bombardment by a U.S. gunship launched from a secret airstrip in
eastern Ethiopia.

The 88's job was simple: Kill anyone still alive and leave no
unidentified bodies behind.

A few weeks later, the president would announce the creation of a new
regional command -- Africa Command -- that would commit U.S. military
personnel to the continent on a permanent basis. The January operation
would be, in effect, the first combat mission of Africa Command, and
it would not go as planned.

Once boxed in by the sea and the Kenyans, the killing zone was set and
America's first AC-130 gunship went wheels-up on January 7 from that
secret Ethiopian airstrip. After each strike, anybody left alive was
to be wiped out by successive waves of Ethiopian commandos and Task
Force 88, operating out of Manda Bay. The plan was to rinse and repeat
"until no more bad guys," as one officer put it.

Camp Simba, the Kenyan navy's name for the base, is a struggle against
nature. Lieutenant Commander Steve Eron warns you upon entry that the
concertina wire strung around the base perimeter is useful only in
stopping humans. The animals -- baboons, monkeys, hyenas, deer, and
probably more deadly snakes than anywhere else in the world -- "come
on through like it's not even there."

Manda Bay's origins tell you everything you need to know about why the
Americans showed up here. The Kenyan navy built the base in 1992, in
response to the collapse of the Siad Barre dictatorship in Somalia the
year before, right about the time U.S. marines were stepping off their
amphibious ships and entering Mogadishu. Kenya's predominantly Muslim
northern coastal area is so remote that it was simply easier to send
military supplies to its border with Somalia along the coast using
naval vessels than to head up inland by vehicles, as the sandy roads
are impassable in the rainy season.

Conclusions

One of the Reasons why The US is so invested in the Outcome of the
Kenya Election and is not going to roll over.

Should you invest in Africa's future? Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/9873401/Should-you-invest-in-Africas-future.html

Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group,
said: "It is positive that the much publicised calls to nationalise
mines in South Africa have finally been dispelled, but the economic
growth drivers in Africa are as diverse as information technology,
solar electricity, beer and cut flowers. We are also interested in
industries and sectors tied to the rising power of the consumer, like
banking services, telecommunications, food and beverages."

He said: "Africa is a great story and I wouldn't be surprised if it
beat Asia in terms of economic growth over the next five years. But
liquidity will always be an issue if you are 100pc invested there, and
if you go for global emerging market funds instead, you won't actually
be invested enough there to benefit."

Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index Year To Date +18.45% 51 Month Highs
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NGSEINDX:IND

33,258.45
-83.57
-0.25%

Dollar versus Rand 5 Day Chart INO 8.8487 Last
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/?s=FOREX_USDZAR

South Africa All Share Bloomberg Year To Date +3.65%
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/JALSH:IND

Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 6.7245 Last
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDEGP&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

Egypt ^EGX30 Bloomberg Year To Date +4.64%
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EGX30:IND

DARPA's 1.8 Gigapixel Drone Camera Could See You Waving At It From 15,000 Feet

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has a new strategy to gather
evidence against the four Kenyan suspects.

The prosecution intends to use satellite images and remote sensing
data, calls and emails as part of the evidence. The prosecution has
notifi ed the Chamber that their expert — a renowned United Nations
satellite specialist — would produce satellite images on the locations
of interest and alleged meetings.

Noticeable in the areas that ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda wants
processed in the satellite images, is the controversial State House
meeting.

In this meeting, Mungiki sect members were allegedly asked to carry
out retaliatory attacks against perceived ODM supporters in Naivasha
and Nakuru.

Also captured in Bensouda’s list is Nairobi members club on or around
January 3, 2008 where it is alleged Jubilee presidential fl ag bearer
Uhuru Kenyatta and former Head of Civil Service Francis met for
similar preparatory meetings.

Prosecution’s request

“This (satellite expert) specialized knowledge and skills will assist
the Chamber in understanding and interpreting these images, which will
in turn inform the Chamber’s analysis of evidence that underpins the
crime base incidents in Nakuru,

PEV-related preparatory meetings and sites of gathering of internally
displaced persons in and around Nakuru and Naivasha,” said Bensouda.

During the pre-trial stage, former ICC Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-
Ocampo convinced the judges that Uhuru, Muthaura and President Kibaki
met Mungiki members at State House in Nairobi.

But the new prosecution’s strategy comes amid request by Uhuru and
Muthaura that their cases be referred back to the Pre-Trial Chamber
for reconsideration.

The duo repeated this request on Thursday during a Status Conference
at The Hague after it emerged the prosecution had withdrawn the
principal and the only witness that linked them to the State House
meeting.

Their defence counsels claimed that the Pre-Trial Chamber had based
its decision on confi rmation of charges on the evidence of the
Witness 4 and as a result the case can now not stand.

During the Pre-Trial stage, the judges held that witness number four
was present as a Mungiki representative in State House meeting
attended by Uhuru and President Kibaki among others. But in her
submission to the Chamber, Bensouda said she wants an analysis of
satellite imagery that would assist to determine whether or not large
gatherings or movements of people to, within, or out of the said
locations took place.

Also to be captured is the large movement of vehicles within the said
locations paying attention to whether they are civilian or military,
erection of roadblocks as well as the burning of buildings.

EABL share price data and H1 Earnings Release here +11.32075% 2013

A PBS video got to look at the actual video feeds -- and they are
stunning. Take a look. Watch for the arm waving guy at about 1:55 or
so:

18-FEB-2013 A Look at EABL First-Half Results

Par Value: 2/-
Closing Price: 295.00
Total Shares Issued: 790774976.00
Market Capitalization: 233,278,617,920
EPS: 13.46
PE: 21.917

EABL H1 Earnings through December 2012 versus 6 months through 2011
Net Revenue 30.633b versus 27.777b +10.28188%
Cost of Sales [16.234b] versus [14.321b] +13.358%
Gross Profit 14.399b versus 13.456b +7.008%
Selling and Distribution Costs [2.541b] versus [2.311b]
Administration Expenses [3.564b] versus [3.699b]
Other Operating Expenses [0.436b] versus [0.134b]
Profit from Operations 7.858b versus 7.312b +7.467%
Net Finance Costs [2.061b] versus [0.642b] +221%
H1 Profit Before Taxation 5.797b versus 6.670b -13.088455%
H1 Profit After Taxation 3.982b versus 4.877b -18.351445%
H1 Earnings Per Share 4.75 versus 5.55 -14.4144%
Interim Dividend 1.50 per share versus 2.50 Last Time
Cash from Operating Activities 7.424b

Company Commentary
Net Revenue Kenya grew 12%
Uganda Breweries +3%
Serengeti Tanzania +16%
EABLi +28%
Total Beer Portfolio grew 11%
Total Spirits Portfolio grew 9%
Premium Spirits Portfolio +45%
New Beer Brands introduced Balozi and Kibo Gold
Jebel Gin Innovation

Conclusions

The Headline Numbers of H1 PBT -13.088455% and H1 PAT -18.351445%
might catch People's Attention but beneath that Surface lies a
Muscular Business.
The Half Year on Year Comparison is not flattered by the Financing
Costs around the Purchase of 20% of Kenya Breweries.
Devlin Hainsworth in My Interview spoke to an H2 Acceleration [with
the Proviso that The Election goes well].
EABL is investing now to embed its 91 Year Advantage and I think
Investors will look through the Near Term Noise and like the
Underlying Growth Trajectory.
Top Line Growth of 11% in Beer and 9% in Spirits is more than solid.
Devlin was very excited about Jebel Gin which is being sold at 100 Shillings.
290.00 will be a Floor and then I expect the Price to turn higher.

EABL Net sales By Geography Twitpic
http://www.twitpic.com/c3v1w8

Devlin Hainsworth talks about Premiumisation and the World of Spirits
EABL @Diageo_News Twitpic
http://www.twitpic.com/c3v1wu

@CKirubi asks the 1st Question EABL Investor Briefing @Diageo_News
http://www.twitpic.com/c3v1xf