Breaking News: Rishi Sunak is new UK Prime Minister

Rishi Sunak is new UK Prime Minister. He’ll be the first British-Asian PM & first Hindu PM, and at 42, the youngest PM in modern times. 

Rishi Sunak’s estimated wealth is £730 million.

Looming Danger - Kenya Will Be Harmed By Ethiopia's Gibe III Dam

BY DR ALEX AWITI, 

Three months ago in this column, I warned that the completion of Ethiopia's Gibe III dam on the Omo River could transform Lake Turkana, the world's only desert lake, into Africa's Aral Sea. Impassioned by China-style great leap forward philosophy, the Ethiopian government has pursued the development of the Gibe III dam in total disregard to the consequence associated with it.

The Ethiopian government and multilateral donor institutions present the Gibe III dam project as critical to national and regional energy security and contributing to poverty alleviation. A new report from the African Resource Working Group (ARWG) reveals that the completion of the Gibe III dam on the Omo River will touch off socio-economic, political and ecological collapse in the tri-state border region of the Great Horn of Africa.

According to the ARWG report, a major review by the African Development Bank of the hydrological impacts of the Gibe III dam on Lake Turkana omitted any assessment of the dependence of the livelihoods of local communities on the lake's resources. Moreover, the assessment by the Ethiopian government shows no regard for Kenya's sovereignty over Lake Turkana's northern shoreline zone and a significant portion of the Omo Delta.

The author of the report, Claudia J. Carr, associate professor at University of California at Berkeley, argues that no credible assessments of the environmental and social cross-border impacts of the dam have been conducted. The report charges that the assessments of the dam's impact were fragmentary and riddled with major omissions, inaccuracies and even fabrications.

For instance, the Ethiopian government and the dam proponents suggest that a 60-70% drop in inflows would only cause a 2m-drop in lake levels. The report suggests that the Ethiopian government, international development banks and global commercial investors have operated with the precondition despite glaringly inadequate appraisal of the impacts of Gibe III mega-dam project.

The Gibe III reservoir would be 150 km long, in a narrow gorge with covering an area of 211 square kilometers, with a storage volume of 11,750 million cubic meters; an amount equal to about two years of the Omo River's flow causing a 60-70% reduction in the volume of the Omo River, which contributes 90% of inflow into Lake Turkana. This will reduce Lake Turkana's volume by 58%, lower the lake level by10-22m while doubling its salinity and putting nearly 500,000 pastoralists and fisher folk at the risk of famine and conflict.

Uhuru's Case At The ICC to Proceed to Trial.

The ICC prosecutor, Fatsou Bensouda today re-affirmed that the case against Mr. Uhuru Kenya would proceed as planned. She equally confirmed that the withdrawal of a key witness; the popular witness number four, did not punch any hole on evidence against Uhuru

A Must Read Letter From Michela Wrong - Food For Thought

To be prudent is to be partial

NAIROBI — Over the years I’ve come to view the Kenyan media with a mixture of respect and affection.

In the 1990s, I watched in awe as Kenyan photographers dodged Daniel arap Moi’s club-wielding riot police. When their colleagues in the newsroom exposed financial scandals, ranging from Goldenberg to Anglo Leasing, I pasted their articles into my files. Like the press pack anywhere, Kenyan journalists liked their beer and could wolf down a buffet in a heartbeat, and the odd brown envelope definitely changed hands. But they were brave. “The best press in Africa,” I told anyone who cared to listen.

So Kenya’s recent election has been a baffling, frustrating time.

In the last few weeks, Western journalists — myself included — have become pariahs, lambasted by Kenya’s twitterati and Facebook users for our coverage and threatened by the government with deportation.

The fury seems exaggerated, given the relative rarity of offending articles. Western reports have attracted undue interest, I’m convinced, because domestic coverage, while increasingly slick, has been so lifeless. It sometimes feels as though a zombie army has taken up position where Kenya’s feisty media used to be, with local reporters going glaze-eyed through the motions.

This malaise was most obvious last week during briefings by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission at the tallying center in Bomas, just outside Nairobi, when what had been billed as a high-tech, tamper-proof election began to unravel spectacularly. The Kenyan media of old would have gone for the jugular. But when the commission chairman, Issack Hassan, after describing yet another puzzling technical glitch or mysterious delay, asked, “Any questions?” the response was stunned silence.

It was the same when independent election monitors announced their findings. Given just how many anomalies were surfacing, the upbeat assessments of observers from the African Union, the European Union and the Commonwealth seemed inexcusably complacent. Yet once again, Kenyan journalists left most of the questions to their Western counterparts.

Lethargy should not be mistaken for laziness. Yes, rumors are swirling about payoffs and conflicts of interest. But this professional surrender, ironically, appears to stem from the very best of intentions.

During the violence that followed the 2007 election, when militias burned families out of their houses and executed members of rival ethnic communities, Kenya’s media played a not-entirely-innocent role. Hate speech spread by vernacular radio stations and via SMS egged on the men with machetes, just as they once had in Rwanda. One of the three indictees facing trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague is Joshua arap Sang, who ran the Kalenjin-language radio station Kass FM.

Chastened by that experience, media executives reached a gentlemen’s agreement to avoid anything that might whip up ethnic tensions ahead of this year’s election. There would be no live coverage of announcements or press conferences by political parties.

“Last time,” the media “were part of the problem,” a Kenyan broadcaster told me. “They were corrupted; they were irresponsible. So this time there was a feeling that we had to keep everyone calm, at the expense, if necessary, of our liberties.”

But self-censorship comes at a price: political impartiality. The decision not to inflame ethnic passions meant that media coverage shifted in favor of whoever took an early lead, in this case Uhuru Kenyatta.

Hours after the CORD alliance of the opposition leader Raila Odinga announced that it wanted the tallying of ballots stopped and an audit conducted, Kenyan radio D.J.’s were still cheerfully assuring listeners that everything was on track. That may have prevented passions in Odinga’s Luo community from exploding, but it was a massive distortion of the truth.

The local media swiftly fell into the habit of brushing off CORD’s declarations. Television broadcasts of Odinga’s announcement that he would challenge the outcome of the election before the Supreme Court switched to Uhuru’s acceptance speech before the Q. and A. with Odinga had even begun. By this Wednesday, Kenya’s largest newspaper devoted more space to the selection of a new pope than to the lawsuits being prepared by CORD and civil society groups.

The Kenyan media’s self-restraint reveals a society terrified by its own capacity for violence. “What maturity is this that trembles at the first sign of disagreement or challenge?” asked the Kenyan cartoonist Patrick Gathara in a superb blog post, citing a national “peace lobotomy.” He went on: “What peace lives in the perpetual shadow of a self-annihilating violence?”

Shortly before handing Uhuru his winner’s certificate, the chairman of the election commission congratulated the Kenyan media on their “exemplary behavior.” As he did, the screen above his head was showing figures that did not add up.

Any journalist worth their salt should start feeling itchy when praised by those in authority. The recent accolades will chafe as more polling irregularities become public. The media should be asking themselves whether, in their determination to act responsibly, they allowed another major abuse to occur right before their eyes.

Michela Wrong has covered Africa for nearly two decades, reporting for Reuters, the BBC and The Financial Times. She is the author of “It’s Our Turn to Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistleblower.”

Miguna Miguna On Annan

Miguna Miguna responded to the recent Visit by Annan to Kenya in what appeared offensive. In his Exclusive reply via @Blowerswhistle on twitter and the Same Appearing at his face book account;  Miguna At Miguna...... The Details Are Here Below

'MY REPLY TO ANNAN

Rwandans died, Liberians died, Sierra Leones died, Iraqis died, Palestinians died, East Timoris died, Afghanis died, et cetera, under the watch of this hopeless eunuch, as secretary- general of the UN!

Kenyans and Kenya object (to) that pressure, 100 percent! Judicial authority is derived from the people of Kenya; and not from London or Washington D.C. Kenyans will have an opportunity to choose their leaders in a few months.· We must never compromise our dignity as a people and country, at the altar of slavish zombism, whatever the consequences; Kenyans and Kenya will never be ruled through evil scheming and machinations regardless of who is behind such like!· 

The ICC must behave and operate within the dictates of fairness, justice, international criminal law, et cetera, and ensure, at all times, to respect the letter and spirit of the Rome Statute and not be at the behest or political whims of a few evil, bitter, envious, jealous, malicious, hateful, and sadistic Western racist neo-imperialists.· 4) 

The great people of Kenya must refuse the choice of leader(s) that the Western racist neo-colonialists want to impose on them; the people of Kenya must decide on their own free will; the people of Kenya must be respected, unconditionally;· Let the people decide; let the great people of this great country, Kenya, decide their own destiny; kindly, please let the people decide on the kind of leaders they want! ' .... ..........

Judge for yourself