Shall not the oppressor cease?

The provocations we see in Kenya today (they can not be otherwise characterized) bode ill for Kenyans. The powers that be have discarded any pretense of goodwill.  They dare their opponent to war, they have "horses, chariots, armed men" beyond number, and plenty of wrath with which to enforce their will.

As evidenced by the repressive brutality against university of Nairobi students on 28th September 2017, their manifest modus operandi is to stamp out all dissent whether legal or illegal, irrespective of whether the stamping itself is legal or illegal, proportional or not.

They will also sweep these black events under the carpet in their haste to proceed with business as usual. They expect, without explicitly stating it, that the message has been sent, and will stick in the memory, though the official record will not mention it, neither will any public official go on record to deny or affirm it. But their will be reiterations of the message as frequently and as emphatically as they will deem fit. Care will be taken only to ensure that it is not spelt out in crude words, but in blood and theft and molestation.

And thus in effect goes the message soon to be widely felt rather than heard:

Let all communities from now henceforth submit to a garrison in their midst.

The garrisons will clobber whom they will, seize property on whim and rape whomsoever their lusts can seize.

The garrisons will not cease until all faces are uniformly subdued in quiet desperation, and even then, they will not cease.

Many "heroes" will die.

Their grip on power will not slacken.

Kenya could Learn from Libya

Elsewhere I posted about my severe disillusionment with the international system and its diplomatic framework. Recent events in Kenyan politics have brought these things to the fore of my mind once again.

It is said the Cold War ended when the USSR disintegrated and the Berlin Wall collapsed. Of course by now we have moved past the subsequent rhetoric of multilateral international order in the 90s. And everybody knows how the War on Terror has shaped subsequent power dynamics - you are either with them or against them. 

Despite this illusion of progress, the eternally primary "national interest" motive for diplomats representing international powers has never changed at all. Whereas the war between ideologies is presumably over, dominance is an ideology all on its own. And we can see nations striving for dominance in traditional military and economic spheres and in areas that were never before considered, like electronic spying.

Here we are in Kenya, proud of our geostrategic importance and keen to fully exploit it for Kenya's best advantage. If only it were that simple. The prestigious Western suitor and the practical Eastern suitor are interested as well, they have wooed and wooed and could very well come to blows by proxy. "All's fair in love and war" they say. From the look of things we have officially taken sides and the jilted lover is bristling with jealousy/revenge. Combining this diplomatic minefield with the various tribalistic tripwires that pollute our politics, we have a potential bloodbath in the works.

Am I being alarmist? No. I have simply seen what happened to Libya, following what was declared to be a popular revolution of citizens against a tyrant. The only winner of that war has turned out to be the foreign power. Granted, there were probably a few valid democracy-minded activists involved in the Libyan resistance. The existence of that singular squabble provided enough leverage for globalist sharks to put a foot in, fund and arm mercenaries to bring down the government, destroy Libya's society. Then they donned the executive suits and corporate colors of investors and arrived to reconstruct the oil industry. 

Kenya! We have collectively refused to repair our tribalist rifts, we have disguised them as party politics to avoid addressing the quagmire. How much easier would it be for a like minded rapacious looter to prise open Kenya's cracked national edifice and reach for the resources beneath? On the basis of our tribal politics alone there will always be discontents lugubriously milling around, ready to mingle these intractable squabbles with actual governance grievances. Let such remember: should foreign powers decide to get involved and champion their cause, the outsider's primary interest will be their own - to the exclusion and detriment of all but the most brazen sellouts.

The Scramble and Partition of Africa

"Cape to Cairo..."

Quoting Cecil Rhodes in the first sentence of a post portends doom and boredom but the thing has to be done. Since his day, the colonial dream of world powers to dominate dark continents lives on, indeed it is reality in part. Simply because the colony was permitted to fly a flag and choose a puppet leader, the fact of neocolonialism is obscured and denied hotly.

Armies were used in the olden days when commerce still followed the flag. The colonial enterprise in its initial stages had to engage official state powers in their efforts to create world-spanning empires. First the army went in and "pacified the natives," with clergy in tow. Only then did salesmen venture forth with merchandise. Since then, there has been a revolution in the colonial format such that the flag follows commerce. Today, while global corporates carry more financial clout than most individual third-world states, the flag merely represents a market for commerce to target. Global corporate firms bring their influence to bear upon their governments and international trade bodies (WTO comes to mind) to write trade policies and make economic and political alliances.

Hence, political alliances and their geopolitical ramifications are intertwined indivisibly with the economics of neocolonialism. Corporates want their raw materials and markets and are bent on getting them on their own terms. While the end justifies the means (in their estimation), the misuse of political clout for economic gains is not beneath them. One can be certain that at any one time there are any number of paid lobbyists agitating for any number of imaginable alliances because of the promise of lucre. Money makes the world go crazy.

The current tug of war between China and America over African states (read markets) leaves little to the imagination. No one is going to outright say "colonialism," because autonomous flags still fly and it's supposedly still a free market. If you chance to see a foreign army marching down your CBD, or an unmanned drone buzzing threateningly out of reach, that's just the War on Terror or KONY 2012 being operationalized. But the political pretext for such interventions always masks a more concretely lucrative inspiration underneath. Infrastructure development will also continue on such an ostentatious scale as to claim the territory for the political overlord to claim raw materials and markets. Keep your flag, though.

And they say the Cold War ended in 1990.