Thinking Kenyan

Referendum:YES leading

2010-08-05T00:09:00.003+07:00

With the results trickling in from various polling stations YES has 66% and NO 34%.only a few votes have been counted.The Voting exercise ended at 5Pm and so far no cases of violence and irregularities have been reported.

Stay tuned for more.

Update

The Latest results

YES: 2,971,733
No: 1,509,9580

Nairobi YES 140,908 NO 65,457

Central YES 639,986 NO 106,720

Nyanza Yes 716,608 No 59,221

Rift Valley YES 363,178 NO 819,931

Coast YES 175,045 No 44,087

North Eastern YES 58,959 and No 2,788.

Western YES 454,498 No 87,899

Eastern YES 424,489 No 324,431

Total Percentage: YES 66% NO 34%

Referendum:D-DAY Tomorrow

2010-08-04T02:43:00.003+07:00

Tomorrow millions of kenyans will be headed to the ballot box to vote for a new constitution.The IIEC has promised free and fair elections and all security measures have been taken to avoid violence.

Personally am going to vote YES,I'll try to update as much as i can on the progress of the tallying.

Reds in hostile reception, again

2010-07-24T05:57:00.000+07:00

Higher Education Minister William Ruto, Igembe South MP Mithika Linturi and his North Imenti counterpart Silas Muriuki encountered a hostile crowd as ‘Yes’ supporters attempted to disrupt their campaign at Kiraitu Murungi’s South Imenti constituency.

"I am surprised you came here yet this was supposed to be a ‘No’ campaign meeting," said Linturi, amid deafening chants of ‘Yes’ from the crowd waving the Green flags.

Mixed shouts of slogans
No' team received yet again hostile reception at Nkubu town, Imenti South District.

Hundreds of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ supporters nearly clashed during a campaign rally to reject the Proposed Constitution but police acted fast to separate them.

"We shall ensure we floor the Proposed Constitution, which, if passed, would impoverish Kenyans," said Ruto amid mixed shouts of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

The Eldoret North MP, who had earlier addressed rallies at Kibirichia in Meru Central District and several roadside meetings in Meru town and Kariene market, said he was sure of ‘No’ victory in the August 4 vote.

"I have been in Meru the last two days and I am certain Meru is only 10 per cent ‘Yes’," said Ruto.

Meanwhile Tigania East MP Peter Munya yesterday decamped from ‘No’ to ‘Yes.’ "From today, I am saying ‘Yes’ to the Proposed Constitution," Munya told The Standard on Saturday.

His defection was welcomed by Energy Minister Kiraitu Murungi.

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/InsidePage.php?id=2000014632&cid=4&ttl=Reds%20in%20hostile%20reception,%20again

Police Stop 'Yes' Bid to Break Up Moi Rally

2010-07-23T02:10:00.000+07:00

Police had a difficult time stopping 'Yes' supporters from disrupting a 'No' rally at Suswa in Narok District on Wednesday.

It was the most determined attempt so far to interfere with a rival's rally in a campaign that is getting more tense and bad-natured as the August 4 referendum nears.Police officers were forced to create a buffer zone between the two groups, with 'Yes' supporters, led by nominated councillor Lydiah Ntimama vowing that the 'No' team, led to the meeting by Higher Education minister William Ruto and retired President Moi, will not have their meeting at the venue.

"Tell Moi and Ruto to keep off our land, it is a sacred shrine and we won't allow anybody to desecrate it," a charged Ms Ntimama told area police officer Isaac Odumbe.

Several lorry-loads of police officers were poured in the area to ensure there was no confrontation. But there was a near-stampede when Mr Moi arrived shortly after 1pm. 'Yes' supporters, who had been watching the proceedings from a distance, charged towards the dais waving green scarves and chanting slogans.

Police moved quickly and stopped the hecklers, who regrouped and waved placards. "Moi failed to give us a constitution for 24 years" and "Who grabbed Mau?" read some of the placards.Mr Moi and Mr Ruto later addressed the rally. Cabinet minister Samuel Poghisio and MPs Jebii Kilimo, Jackson Kiptanui, Mithika Linturi, Moses Lessonet, Benjamin Lang'at, Joshua Kutuny, Victor Munyaka, Peter Kiilu and Julius Kones also spoke.

National Heritage minister William ole Ntimama had threatened to storm the historic Suswa grounds and stop the "No" meeting. But speakers at the meeting dismissed Mr Ntimama's threat as the kicks of a "dying horse".

"They had vowed we shall not come to Suswa, but we have come," Mr Ruto told the rally. He criticised the government for using civil servants and taxpayers' money to campaign for the proposed constitution.Mr Ruto, the de facto leader of the 'No' group, accused Mr Ntimama of giving away the Mau forest land, then turning around to accuse others of taking away the Maasai's land. "It is Ntimama who dished out the Mau, the way he wants to dish out your heritage by saying 'Yes'. We want to live peacefully in the Rift Valley," said Mr Ruto.

He dismissed the 'Yes' team as having ran out of ideas to market the draft constitution, hence they were using their rallies to attack him and Mr Moi.

Disrupt rallies

"The 'Yes' team has run out of ideas. Instead of organising their own rallies, they organise people to disrupt our meetings and talk about personalities. Let the 'Yes' people tell us about the draft; Ruto and Moi are not in the draft. They are simply displaying their simple-mindedness by discussing us," he said.

He asked civil servants not to "ruin the country" by campaigning instead of serving Kenyans. "This is the first time such a thing is happening in Kenya," Mr Ruto said.Mr Moi asked the Maasai to reject the draft, saying, it threatened their land rights. "Your survival lies in the Maasai Mara, and if tourism is killed, you will have nothing to support yourselves with," said Mr Moi.

The former President, who spoke last, argued that the draft was full of chapters which were not good for the country. He warned the government against using civil servants. "You should be impartial as the constitution we are trying to make is for all Kenyans."

Mr Moi said he was confident his side would win and asked the Maasai to be vigilant on voting day so their rights are "not stolen".And Mr Poghisio accused the government of rigging "by compromising security" and using civil servants to campaign. "The government has sensed defeat. That is why they are now using guerrilla tactics. It is not right for the government to instruct the Provincial Administration, permanent secretaries and parastatal chiefs to help shore up their sinking ship," he said.

"Right now there is no civil service. When they instruct civil servants to close offices and go out to campaign, who will serve Kenyans?" asked Mr Linturi. Mrs Kilimo said that if the proposed draft became law, it would set off an influx of foreigners because "it has cheapened citizenship."

The meeting was convened by former Narok South MP Stephen ole Ntutu and United Democratic Movement secretary-general Martin ole Kamwaro, both leading 'No' figures in the area.

Source:http://allafrica.com/stories/201007220019.html

Yes camp predicts 70% landslide victory.

2010-07-23T02:06:00.000+07:00

THE YES camp is confident of a 70% win on August 4th.The team commissioned an independent survey which puts the YES team ahead.
The team will release the results of the poll next week. YES campaign chiefs Anyang Nyongo and Kiraitu Murungi yesterday described the NO campaigners as leaders stuck h the past and that they cannot be expected to support change.

“We have traversed the country and I can assure you that we have already won the referendum.” Kiraitu said.
“Kenyans will overwhelmingly vote YES.” He added. The energy minister said the margin of victory is irrelevant. They said the law requires a simple 50 plus 1 per cent win.”The referendum law requires a simple majority win but we are confident of a 70 per cent or even higher.” He said.

Addressing a press conference at the Stanley Hotel yesterday, the two leaders took issue with retired President Moi whom they branded him an anti-reformist.
“As journalists, do you believe MoI is NO because of abortion? He has been consistently opposed to reforms since 1990.” Kirauti said.
“Moi ruled this country so ruinously that he should be the last one to advice Kenyans on the referendum. Moi’s recent outbursts on land grabbing must be the joke of the century.” Ny’ongo added. Mr Nyongo said that majority of NO team were in KANU and have long opposed change.

“From the start of this campaign, the NO leadership has relied on KNU era ticks.Moi and Ruto, during their long rule fought against a new constitution and continue to do so.”Ny’ongo said.

ODM MPs take YES campaigns to Coast Villages.

2010-07-22T00:13:00.003+07:00

Kisauni MP Hassan Joho

ODM MPs from Coast province have taken the proposed constitution to the villages.Kisauni MP Hassan Joho,Malindi’s Gideon Mungaro and Magarini’s Amason Kingo have been on the ground aince last weekend to rally supporters.The MPs have conduc ted four meetings to ensure the region votes YES.
“We have agreed as ODM MPs that after our respective constituencies, we will do a wrap-up in one major joint rally in Mombasa.” Kingi said.

Police hunting Kitui attackers.

2010-07-22T00:11:00.000+07:00

Police were last night hunting for people who attacked NO supporters at Kitui petrol station.Kitui deputy OCPD Moses Kanyi said that police had recorded statements from several people and promised to arrest those involved.
Two youths,including Mutito MP Kiema Kilonzo’s younger brother were injured when the two rival groups clashed over the proposed constitution in Charity Ngilu’s Kitui constituency.

Youths allied to the NO group were being ferried by trucks to the venue of the rally and had stopped at a petrol station to fuel.They were caught unawares when youths supporting the new law attacked them with whips,stones and wooden planks.
Lumumba Kilonzo, a younger brother of Mutito MP Kiema Kilonzo who is leading the NO campaigns in Ukambani was cornered in a pick up truck with a female friend and severely beaten. Kilonzo sustained injuries on the face, chest and arms.
The public address system in the NO vehicle was wrecked as the youths attacked the petrol station which is next to Kitui police station.

A supporter of YES camp later told the star that they were provoked by the NO team who had taunted Water Minister Charity Ngilu by blowing vuvuzelas in her direction. Charity Ngilu avoided the pandemonium and but watched the drama from a safe distance.
Mrs Ngilu later condemned the attack and appealed to residents to maintain calm.

Source:The Star

'No' meets hostile reception in Central Kenya

2010-07-21T13:10:00.003+07:00

Pro-'Yes' supporters shout slogans at the entourage of Higher Education Minister William Ruto in Kianyaga township, as anti-riot police watch, Tuesday. [PHOTO: George Mulala/STANDARD]

Opponents of the Proposed Constitution got a hostile reception when they returned to Central and Eastern provinces.

The team, led by Cabinet Minister William Ruto, had to get police escort out of Kianyaga Market in Martha Karua’s Gichugu constituency after locals declined to listen to them.This is the second time the team encountered hostility after a similar scenario in Kakamega last week.In their tour of the larger Kirinyaga District yesterday, police in anti-riot gear escorted the campaigners after word went round there was a likelihood of chaos.

The tour started at Sagana then went to Baricho, Kerugoya town, Kutus, Kianyaga and later Ngurubani market.

The Campaign Trail

Save for the low turn out, the team campaigned peacefully in other areas.

The campaign trail was attended by MPs Peter Gitau (Mwea), David Koech (Mosop), Victor Munyaka (Machakos Town) and Kiema Kilonzo (Mutitu). Former Kibwezi MP Kalembe Ndile was also among them.Things took an ugly turn in Kianyaga market when locals started shouting ‘Yes!’ and declaring that they were not ready to listen to ‘No’ leaders.

An attempt by Ruto and Assistant Minister Margaret Wanjiru to address a meeting at the local bus park was jeered, with shouts of ‘Yes!’

The group cut short their speeches, jumped into their cars and sped off.

Kibaki legacy

Despite the setback, Ruto and his group continued with rallies in other parts of the district, where they called on residents to reject the Proposed Constitution.

Ruto claimed some proponents of the document were plotting to frustrate President Kibaki’s final tenure.

He said: "I did not vote for Kibaki, but he is the President of the proponents and opponents of this draft law. I would not like his legacy to be dented by the enactment of a faulty constitution."

Other MPs renewed their calls to have US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger recalled for allegedly meddling in local affairs.

"We cannot continue to host an ambassador who is abusing our hospitality. He is behaving like an activist," said Kiema.

Source:Standard Media

YES Blocks NO team from historic Venues in Nairobi.

2010-07-21T02:00:00.002+07:00

The Yes team has blocked the No camp from holding rallies in key venues in Nairobi by booking the venues in advance for the final two campaign days before the referendum on August 4th.

The YES team has booked the historic Kamukunji grounds, Uhuru Park and City stadium on both August 1st and 2nd.Campaigning over the new law officially ends on August 2nd.The booking throws into disarray a huge prayer meeting that was set for Uhuru park on Sunday August 1st to mark the climax of their campaign. The No team’s other option would be Nyayo stadium but the venue is booked for the upcoming African Athletics champion. Tom Namwamba head of the No secretariat said that they would be forced to either bring forward the rallies to July31st or use another venue like Kasarani sports Complex. However Kasarani is not popular with the masses since it is about 20km away from the city center.

“YES is in total panic, their plan is to lock us out of the city to show that we do not have support here. With or Without Uhuru park we will still show that we have the numbers. Our people are ready to trek to Kasarani from Embakasi.”Tom said.

Source:The Star

NO Clerics claim that the YES team planning smear campaign.

2010-07-21T01:56:00.001+07:00

Religious leaders opposed to the proposed constitution have alleged that the government is planning a smear campaign against them. Led by NCCK secretary general Canon Peter Karanja,the members of the clergy claimed that the arrest of a pastor and civil servant who policed claimed was a bishop was part of the scheme.

They wondered why the police also failed to indicate that the councilor is a PNU councilor. They also denied receiving cash from American NGO’s which was being used to bankroll their campaigns. Canon Karanja also claimed that the US is using some clergymen to buy out people purported to be clergymen to defect to the YES camp. When asked by journalists to substantiate his claims by,Karanja turned the heat on the media saying they have become part of the scheme of rigging.

“The blackout the media is giving us is a clear plan to rig the elections. The media has reported YES is leading throughout” he said.
The Bishops further claimed that the recent opinion polls which showed that majority of Kenyans were in favor of the new law, were doctored by the government to imply that the NO team is trailing.

Source:The Star

Walk outs heckling mars Catholic priests Sunday mass over Proposed Constitution

2010-07-19T22:50:00.005+07:00

The Catholic church pastoral letter urging its faithful to vote against the Proposed Constitution got off to a rocky start.In Some churches members of the congregation walked out when the priests started reading the letter issued by catholic priests.

In other churches,members of the congregation said they were not happy with the way the priest handled the issue.

At the don bosco shrine in upper hill,some members walked out when the priest started reading the letter which stated the churches objections to the new law.Father Ambrose Ngugi had finished mass and started reading the letter.But as soon as he started reading the letter,members of the church started walking out. Undeterred, he continued reading yet more people continued walking out.By the time ngugi realized the readers were unhappy,three-quarters of the congregation had walked out.

A similar incident was reported at the Holy Family Basilica where a section of the crowd walked out when a guest speaker Henry kamuti was invited to talk about the constitution.

The Catholic church had dispatched hundreds of priests and officials to different churches to help educate the faithfuls on the dangers the proposed law.

In Teso,Father Martin Erapu sparked off fury among mourners at a funeral services when he alleged the new law would legalize gay marriages.The mourners booed and shouted "lies,lies" forcing him to cut short his speech.

Source:The Star

Eye on The Constitution

2010-07-19T22:46:00.003+07:00

For the next couple of weeks,i will be posting articles on the progress of the campaigns and voting results on 4th August.

Breaking News: 2 Kenyans Killed in Kampala Uganda

2010-03-16T22:59:00.002+07:00

Two Kenyans have been killed by a security guard in Makerere University in Uganda.Kenyan students engaged in demos in the streets of Kampala forcing police to shoot teargas in an attempt to disperse the rioting students.The students were protesting what they termed as cold blood murder by the security guard.

it is not clear what led to the shooting,but reports say that there was an argument between the two Kenyan boys named Brian and Ignatius and the security guard.
In Uganda,unlike Kenya,security guards are allowed to carry firearms.The security guard was manning one of the hostels when the shooting occurred.

Due to the low tuition fees,Uganda hosts thousands of Kenyan students in many of the Colleges around the country.

Source: NTV News.

Big Day:Parliamentary Proceedings on Draft Constitution:Update

2010-03-16T19:20:00.008+07:00

Today is the Big day.The constitutional draft is expected to be tabled today.A Showdown looms between ODM and PNU on whether parliament should be adjourned to facilitate consensus building on the proposed draft.Parliament is at full house with almost all MPs attending today's session.The adjournment motion will probably be tabled after question time.

Currently its Question Time on the floor of parliament.More updates will follow.

Ministerial statements

Saitoti on Kawangware Killings

Saitoti has admitted that he was misled by reports that AP's shot 7 people in kawangware in self defense.The 7 people were taxi drivers and they were protesting at what they perceived as unfair competition from boda boda operators.

Saitoti has said that seven AP's that were involved in the cold blood murder have been arrested and they will be charged tomorrow in court.
Also,Postmortem procedures are being taken out and so far bullets have been recovered from several of the victims from behind the head.

He has also said that proper mechanisms such as police reforms and AP and Police retraining will be launched so as to prevent such incidences in future.He also added that proper oversight will be in place to monitor behavior of police and administration police.

Motion Time

George Thuo has moved the adjournment motion seeking parliamentary proceedings to be postponed until Tuesday 23rd march to build consensus.Kalonzo is now giving a speech urging MPs to vote for in support of the motion.

The adjournment motion has been passed by an overwhelming number of MPs.This now means that parliamentary proceedings will be adjourned until next week Tuesday.The venue of the consensus meetings will be held at Kenya institute of administration at Kabete from tommorrow until Friday.

Caroline Mutoko hits out at Esther Arunga

2010-03-13T02:58:00.004+07:00

One of Kenya's most popular radio hos Caroline Mutoko has come out hitting hard on Esther Arunga controversial escapades with Hellon's Finger of Church God,and now her alleged marriage to Quincy Timberlake.Carol wrote a piece in the Nairobi star newspaper and dedicated a better part of her morning show castigating Ms Arunga.

here is a piece from her newspaper article:

" Watching you and hearing you talk in the last weeks has led me to the conclision that you are just spoilt and shallow.Watching you for the lat couple of weeks has convinced me beyond reasonable doubt that you are an attention hungry, manipulative little wench who's enjoying every minute of this madness.

If people didn't care,you'd have been run out of town by nowand rightly so- you have the makings of a tragic soap opera and i don't feel sorry for you.

Curses be upon you.I curse you today as you have indeed been cursed in heaven.You are a spoilt brat and its time we saw you for who you really are."

These are just small excerpts of the whole article.The rest of the article goes on to say that its media stupidity that created Esthers farce.The article has lots of verbal attacks directed at Esther's personality and her rationality.

Following Caroline Mutoko's article a couple of days letter,readers responded in defence of Esther and many accused Caroline Mutoko of shoddy journalism in writing such a piece in a well circulated mainstream newspaper.

Meanwhile Esther Arunga was released on bail after being charged with belonging to an illegal association.

If she's found guilty,she might serve 1 year in jail or be fined an amount not more than 1 million kshs.

Telkom Orange broadband is a rip off

2010-03-12T05:38:00.004+07:00

After signing forms for a telkom landline,it took telkom a month to do a survey,almost two months to fix for me the landline,and another 2 weeks to come and connect me to their broadband internet using the livebox!

I had applied for a 1mb connection,but ended up with a 512kbps since according to them,the telephone lines in my area only support 512kbps.

Its been now 3 days since i have been using their service.I must say that it has good times and bad times!
I have been forced to reset my connections on the livebox several times because of timeouts and disconnections.
I did a speedtest on the connection and i was surprised that i was only getting 384kbps.a 20 Mb file takes me somewhere between 10-15 minutes to download.Youtube takes forever to stream and am forced to download the file.

The worst part is non of the other ISP's have a service for where i live.I would advice anyone who is thinking of Telkom Broadband o just forget it.Customer care is virtually non-existent,so if you encounter problems,you will be forced to sort it out on your own.

Back to blogging!

2010-03-12T05:35:00.002+07:00

I am officially back to blogging.When i started my first post,i never knew how much time consuming blogging can be.many people would send me emails asking for clarification on certain posts,and i was simply unprepared.But after a long absence.I am gonna be more serious.I promise!

So hope you all welcome me back to the world of blogging!

Kenyan Forum at Skyscrapercity

2009-07-18T11:09:00.002+07:00

Skyscrapercity is one of the biggest forum when it comes to Pictures of Skylines in the world.It has pictures of almost every city in the world.Kenya recently got its own forum at Skyscrapercity.There are tons of pictures of Nairobi,Thika, Nakuru,Eldoret Kisumu ,Mombasa and many other towns in Kenya.I doubt there is any other website with such an impressive collection of pictures of various parts of Kenya as Skyscrapercity.The kenyan posters in the forum are an active bunch.

So why don't you take a look and hopefully become a member and join the growing number of kenyan posters in the Kenyan Forum at Skyscrapercity.

Kenyan Forum at Skyscrapercity

A Great Article about Nairobi

2009-06-07T11:36:00.005+07:00

A few times you come across travel stories of your country that make you smile and deeply patriotic.This is one of them.Taken from this blog ADAM LEAVES THE NEST
Adam chronicles his experience in Nairobi,Kenya.

"Awolio eoŋ! I am lost! Life was busy: finishing up collaborations with Term One’s focal schools, writing a grant for US AID Small Project Assistance (accepted!), co-facilitating Peace Corps Life Skills workshops, attending my mid-service conference, and then . . .

“Obi!” The words became concrete as I stirred to life, my body contorted in the uncomfortable “luxury” chair that bound me for fourteen hours, save for passing through customs and waking to find the bus driver asleep at the wheel of our cruiser, in the middle of a sorghum field. “Nairobi. Hapa! Nairobi,” the conductor shouted like an alarm clock.

I quickly found my feet and struggled to unlock my bursting backpack from the overhead rack where I chained it. One cannot be too careful with a suitcase of clothes worth approximately $3000 (all secondhand, of course). Stepping out onto the sidewalk, I turned in a circle to gain my first vision of Nairobi. It looked a lot like Kampala: stucco shops that reach two or three floors max. Immediately, I felt deflated with the familiarity surrounding me; I booked a week in Kenya’s capital city for its reputation: “Manhattan of East Africa.” True, a Eurocentric notion forced upon an African metropolis but I needed a drastic holiday from the bush: a city with substance and order. My shoulders slumped under the weight of my backpack and the defeat of failed expectation. Then, I turned westward.
Soaring up from the usual African shops were crystal skyscrapers. Loads of them; well, at least enough to make a proper skyline. Like a moth drawn to a flame, I started walking towards the city centre, humming “Wonderful Wizard of Oz” the entire way. I crossed River Road, a shady thoroughfare in the old part of the city, headed down Latema until I hit Moi Avenue. I could feel the electricity of the city nearing as I turned left and joined the rapid current of urban dwellers on their morning commute. For a moment, I thought myself in an American city, only with a significantly increased Black population. I was immediately blissful.

There were no greetings, no shouts of muzungu, no beggars on the street, no motorcycles harassing me with “you sit, we go.” Only a crowd of people, individuals turning off sporadically as their journeys differed from the majority. Not paying attention, I collided with a man who stopped suddenly in the middle of the block. He turned around and immediately saw my confusion, “Bus stop.” I smiled, trying to seem like bus stops were a part of my everyday life.

I quickly apologized and continued down the street to the intersection with Mama Ngina. As the first and most exciting stop in Nairobi neared, my blood quickened and my eyes searched the storefronts for a sign. Halfway down the block I turned around to make sure I hadn’t already passed it when a door swung open and released the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans: Nairobi Java House.

I caught the door before it could close and walked in to find a proper coffee shop with café tables and fashion forward bohemians sitting next to businessmen reading the daily news. I ignored feeling awkward in my travel clothes with a huge backpack; instead, I grabbed the last available table. Within five seconds a barista approached, “Morning, something to drink? Maybe a bite to eat?” I quickly ordered a regular coffee, neither cream nor sugar, and a healthy stack of pancakes, already tasting a little slice of heaven. After taking my order the barista turned to walk to the service station but doubled back, “Where are you from?”

“Oh. I’m American but I stay in Uganda,” I answered.

“Really? My mother is from Tororo.”

“Cuti? Ijeni ijo Ateso? Really? You know Ateso?” Automatically, I began speaking Ateso. Even on holiday from my village, I couldn’t help but grasp onto all ties to my African life.

“Eebo. Ai bo iboiei ijo? Yes. Where to do you stay?”

“Buka ŋaren na Soroti. Ejai ocaalo. I’m from near Soroti. It’s in the village.”

“Wonderful! You are a true Itesot, then. I’ll be right back with your coffee. I’m sure you’re looking forward to it. Not a lot of coffee in the village.”

“You have no idea,” I smiled and rubbed my hands together as I looked around at the red wine walls, the cedar wood countertop, people rushing to the register leaving moments later with a cup of energy in hand. I closed my eyes and listened to the fuzzy chatter of coffee beans grinding, steam machines, conversations in English, Swahili and Luo. City living, indeed.

* * *

“Morning, Adam. Going out for the day?” Angela, at the hotel’s front desk, asked as I walked towards the main entrance.

“Mmhmm. I think a little exploration is necessary,” I smiled back as I plugged in my earbuds and pressed the play button on my Ipod, feeling the total invisibility surging forth from the street.

“I can call a taxi for you it you want—“ she began.

“No need. I’ll take the bus.”

“Oh, my. Okay,” she said in disbelief.

I stood at the corner bus stop for ten minutes before my bus came. No. 24 pulled up to the curb and barely stopped as I jumped on and took a seat next to an older gentleman reading Barack Obama’s Dreams of my Father. I giggled to myself and took out my copy of the same book, a last minute decision at the Peace Corps library the day I left for my trip.

“Good read?” I asked the man as I showed him my copy.

“Yeah. Loads better than the rubbish he wrote in his second book, The Audacity of Hope. You can tell which he wrote while a politician.”

“I won’t bother with the sequel, then. I haven’t started this yet.”

“Well, a good place to read it. A whole section of the book takes place in this very city,” the man said as he spread his hands to the window’s view of the cityscape in the distance. “I’d ask if you were on your way home to Karen but white people in Nairobi don’t often take the bus.” Karen is a neighborhood within greater Nairobi that houses most of the white Kenyans who decided to stay after independence, named after Out of Africa’s author Karen Blixen. “Which begs the question, Where are you from?”

“I’m American but I currently live in NE Uganda with the Iteso people,” I gave the standard response even though most don’t have any knowledge of the Iteso people, a tiny population compared to Luo or Kikuyu.

The man digested my response with a furrowed brow and made his next question, “Did you vote in November?”

“By way of post,” I answered.

“I trust by your choice of reading that you made a smart decision. Where are you off to today?”

Just as I was about to answer, the conductor shouted the stop for Hardy, which was my destination. I stood up and quickly answered as I climbed down the stairs, “I’m going to kiss a giraffe. Doing something memorable for my 25th birthday.”

“Well, just remember to wash your face. Happy Birthday,” the elderly man waved from the window as the bus pulled away. “Enjoy the city.”

“I plan to.”

* * *
“So, you been to Masaai Mara?” Andy, my guide for the afternoon, asked as we walked to the car that would take us through Nairobi National Park.

“No. I’m not much of a nature person.” As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth, I felt their dishonesty. Now a year into village life, nature wasn’t as scary as I once thought, just not my cup of coffee. “I thought if I were to go on safari, it would be within the confines of a city.”

“Well, good choice, then. You can see the skyline of Nairobi in the distance. Most strange thing you’ll ever see. Animals running around with skyscrapers in the background. Crazy sight, indeed. You . . .” And so it went for the next five hours. Andy loves to talk about any subject. I learned his mother was from Seychelles and his father was from Uganda but he grew up in Mombasa, hunting warthogs in his boyhood.

Arriving at the vehicle, I laughed at the hybrid before us. Seeing my response, Andy harped in, “Well, as a city person, I thought you’d prefer the greenest vehicle we have. She runs like a bull, swear my life on it.”

“It is perfect. I guess green would do me well. I burn my trash in a rubbish pit. Not sure how eco-friendly that may be. This may forgive some of my Earthly sins. Off we go, then.”

“Damn lions. Making their kill before we arrive. Wish ‘em to hell, I do,” Andy swore as we finished hour four of our adventure. I lost interest after the third hour but Andy was hell-bent on finding a cat. So hell-bent that he off-roaded after passing Leopard Cliff, voyaging through mud for thirty minutes before we met with a buffalo. “This isn’t good. Let me see if I can turn around.”

“Really? The thing can’t be scared off?” I asked quietly.

“Nah, it’ll charge. Worst thing to do is piss it off. Shit, another behind us. What do we do now?”

“Wait it out? What more can we do?” I offered, the words of a true villager. Waiting for things or people is second nature now.

So, we sat in the middle of the park for an hour, waiting for something to scare the buffalos away. Being off the path, nothing came by to assist. Andy became anxious after thirty minutes and when the hour hit, he could take no more. He started to exit the car when the buffalo walked forward. I turned the key in the ignition hoping the sudden noise would startle the beast. Before I could jump the engine, the fan kicked on in a silent roar and the buffalos screeched and started running down the hill towards the ravine.

“Good thinking. Well, you may not have seen a lion, but you came face to face with a pissy buffalo. What now?”

“Take me back to the city. I’m not a nature person,” I said, this time seeing the truth in my words."

PS: All credits go to the original author of the article.Images have been replaced with these from Skyscraper to enhance the story.For the Original article in its original form.Check it out here

Wish we had more positive stories like this one, about Africa.

Why Atheists seem to lose most debates with Theists Philosphers

2009-06-06T01:46:00.002+07:00

There have been numerous debates between Atheists and Christian Theists regarding various topics such as,"Does God exist","Can We be Moral Without God and The Problem of Evil.
Anyone who is unbiased will without doubt agree that Theists Philosophers seem to come out on top of most debates.

The most notable Christian Philosopher who most people will agree has never lost a debate is William Lane Craig.Craig has many debates.(over 40) during his 20 years career in apologetics.

If you ask me why most Atheists who have debated William Lane Craig have lost:

1.Presenting invalid arguments
2.Lack of proper rebuttals to Craig's argument.

Presenting Invalid/unsound Arguments

This is the most common mistake atheist philosophers make.It is rather shocking that people who teach logic would commit obvious mistakes in their argumentation.Take for instance John Shook (who is a philosopher) debated William Lane Craig.Frankly he has to be the worst of all Craig's opponents.They debated Naturalism/Theism.

John Shook after being pressed by Craig to present an argument for naturalism,goes ahead and presents this:

1.Nature Exists
2.We don't have evidence for the supernatural
3.Conclusion:Therefore Naturalism is true.

You are left in awe at this kind of amature mistake.The conlcusion does not follow at all.
The theme is prevalent in most of Craig's oppenents.

Craig can simply win most of these debates by default,sincfe the Atheist usually present unsound arguments.

Lack Of Proper Rebuttals

Craig has been presenting the same 5 arguments for Theism for 20 years.And yet all his opponents fail to present convincing rebuttals to his arguments.

A classic example is Craig's recent debate with Christopher Hitchens.Hitchens is used to his British rhetoric.And he thought that was enough to win debates.He had no coherent argument or rebuttal for any of craigs arguments.It was like he came to his senses too late."
Ohh,you mean i really have to present an argument in these debates instead of my usuall jabs at religion and rhetoric about imaginary gods?"

In my opinion,the best Atheist debators who really challenged Craig are: Walter Amstrong Sinnot and bradley.(all on the problem of evil).These were intellectual stimulating debates.

The problem is that,most Atheists prop themselves in high stools and think that Atheism is a given.That it should be obvious to people that Atheisim is true.but when put on the spotlight,most of these Atheist philosophers cannot defend their positions.John Shook was unabel to present a sound argument for naturalism,Luois anthony was unable to present a coherent atheistic ethical system with her debate with Craig on Morality,Hitchens was just a total mess.

Perhaps we should be listening to Theist vs Theist debates.Such as Wes Morristons Vs William Lane Craig on the Kalam Cosmoligcal Argument.Which was a very stimulating debate by the way.Or maybe William Lane Craig vs Richard Swirnburne on either the nature of God(Swirnburne holds the poistion that God can be contigent) or a debate on Moral ontology(Richard Swirnburne holds the view that Morality can exist outside of God.)

Or is there an Atheist Philospher who can fair better than the previous predecesors?We can just wait and see.

William Lane Craig and Me Dialogue on Divine Simplicity

2009-06-02T14:57:00.002+07:00

So I'm proud to announce that this weeks question of the week at reasonable faith,i.e William Lane Craig's website, is mine.I mailed in the question a couple of weeks ago.For those who do not know,William Lane Craig is a leading Christian Philosopher and Biblical Scholar.He has written many books and articles and held many debates and conferences with Atheists all over the world.

This was my question:

Hello Dr. Craig.

Thank you very much for your enlightening work in Philosophy of religion. I am writing all the way from Malaysia! so you know your work has touched a lot of people globally.

I am a student in Computer science just reading up on Christian Apologetics. My question regards the doctrine of Divine Simplicity. I have not yet read any articles that you have written about Divine simplicity so i am not aware of your stand on this doctrine.

Someone however does quote you and JP Moreland as basically being opposed to the doctrine:

The doctrine [divine simplicity] is open, moreover, to powerful objections. For example, to say that God does not have distinct properties seems patently false: omnipotence is not the same property as goodness, for a being may have one and not the other.

My questions therefore are:

1. Are you for or against DS?

2. Would it be correct to assert that your understanding of the doctrine of divine simplicity as characterized by the above given quote (if indeed its yours) is wrong given that Nicholas Wolterstorff Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, and Fellow of Berkeley College at Yale University, thinks that medieval Christian thinkers like St. Aquinas conceive of predication in terms of subjects possessing constituents. Whereas contemporary philosophers think of predication in terms of subjects exemplifying properties.

This makes all the difference on someone's view of DS.

Instead of God merely exemplifying eg Omnipotence, we can say that Omnipotence is a metaphysical constituent of God. And therefore it is not distinct from God. The same applies to Omnibenevolence. Instead of God just simply exemplifying goodness, we can say that goodness is part of God's nature, and thus not distinct from him.

Can't we then be charged with reducing God to an abstract property? I believe not. Since we have clearly indicated that we are talking of God's-goodness, which is a metaphysical constituent of God. If God's goodness is part of god's nature, then god's nature is surely identical or equal to God, God's-nature is just the same as God.

An objection can be raised that, We do know that there is a conceptual difference between God's nature and eg God's justice. Since God's nature is that which makes him God, and God's justice is that which makes him just. Therefore this seems to refute the doctrine of DS.

To me, this does not seem to defeat DS since DS does not claim that God's properties are conceptually similar, rather they are metaphysically similar.i.e the claim that God is identical with His nature becomes that God is identical with that constituent which makes him divine, i.e with his divine-making constituent. And the claim that God is identical with his Justice will amount to the claim that God is identical with that constituent that makes him just (just-making constituent).

I know this topic can get rather long, and i apologise for writing such a long post. I would love to hear your view on the issues i have raised.

Ernest

Dr.Craig's Response:

Dr. Craig responds:

Thank you, Ernest, for such a stimulating and profound question concerning divine simplicity! I've addressed this doctrine briefly in my second chapter on "The Coherence of Theism" in my and J. P. Moreland's book Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (IVP, 2003). The passage you cite appears on p. 524.

As I explain there, the classic doctrine of divine simplicity holds that God is an absolutely undifferentiated unity Who has no distinct attributes, stands in no real relations, Whose essence is not distinct from His existence, and Who just is the pure act of being subsisting. As such, the doctrine of divine simplicity is one that has no biblical support at all and, in my opinion, has no good philosophical arguments in its favor. Moreover, it faces very formidable objections. So in answer to your first question, I do reject the traditional doctrine that God is absolutely simple.

Now as for your second question, I assume that you're referring to Nicholas Wolterstorff's very interesting article "Divine Simplicity," in Philosophical Perspectives 5: Philosophy of Religion (Atascadero, Calif.: Ridgeview Publishing, 1991), pp. 531-52. There Wolterstorff argues that the doctrine of divine simplicity has been misconstrued by moderns because we fail to understand the medieval metaphysical framework of that doctrine. The problem, he argues, is that we moderns work with a "relation ontology," according to which a thing's nature or essence is a sort of abstract object to which the thing stands in a relation of exemplification. For example, a cat is thought to exemplify the property being feline, which is an abstract entity to which the cat is related. But medieval thinkers were working with a "constituent ontology," according to which natures were actual constituents of things. In fact, an individual nature was more like a concrete object than an abstract object. Thus, Plato's humanity was not, in this sense, the same as Aristotle's humanity; each had his own individual human nature which was individuated by the matter out of which each man was composed. (I think Wolterstorff seriously downplays the extent to which the medievals also recognized a common nature shared by all things of a certain kind, but let that pass.) Now for entities which are immaterial, like angels, for example, there is no matter to individuate their natures. So each one just is its nature. Each angel is therefore literally one of a kind! Moreover, created things have in addition to their natures certain additional properties, which are called accidents, for example, being brown, being intelligent, being good, and so on.

Now in the case of God, God is immaterial, so He just is His nature. Moreover, the claim of the doctrine of divine simplicity is that God has no accidents; He has only His essence. Finally, in the case of God alone, His nature involves existence. He exists by His very nature. So understood, the doctrine of divine simplicity does not commit one to the absurd notion that God is a property and, hence, an abstract object, as modern critics of the doctrine have sometimes alleged.

Wolterstorff's corrective of the modern reading of divine simplicity is welcome. Certainly medievals would not have thought of God's identity with His nature as His being an abtract object. But this mistaken critique is not the one I offer in Philosophical Foundations.

Rather Wolterstorff has really watered down the classic doctrine of divine simplicity. On his explication God could have a very complex nature and yet count as a simple being. The traditional doctrine is much more radical. It makes four identity claims:

i. God is not distinct from His nature.
ii. God's properties are not distinct from one another.
iii. God's nature is not distinct from His existence.
iv. God has no properties distinct from His nature.

Claim (i) is not unique to God. Angels, too, are identical with their natures. So this claim is not problematic when understood in the medieval metaphysical framework.

Claim (ii) remains problematic, however. Existence is part of God's nature. But existence is not the same property as, say, omnipotence, for plenty of things have existence but not omnipotence. It remains very obscure, therefore, how God's nature or essence can be simple and all His properties identical.

Claim (iii) is misrepresented by Wolterstorff, I believe. His is what Thomistic scholars call an "essentialist" reading of Thomas Aquinas' doctrine: Existence is a property that is included in the divine essence. But many Thomists insist that the correct reading of Thomas is an "existentialist" one: existence is not a property at all, but is the act of being which instantiates an essence. Everything other than God is composed of an essence to which an act of being is conjoined to make it exist as a concrete particular thing. But in a sense, God has no essence on this view, rather He just is the pure act of being unconstrained by any essence. He is, as Thomas says, the pure act of being subsisting. The problem is, this doctrine is just unintelligible.

Finally, claim (iv) runs into the severe problem that God does seem to have accidental properties in addition to His essential ones. For example, in the actual world, He knows, loves, and wills certain things which He would not know, will, or love had He decided to create a different universe or no universe at all. On the doctrine of divine simplicity God is absolutely similar in all possible worlds; but then it becomes inexplicable why those worlds vary if in every one God knows, loves, and wills the same things.

This is not to say that the doctrine of divine simplicity is wholly bereft of value. On the contrary, I have elsewhere defended the view that God's cognition is simple. But I do think that the full-blown doctrine in all its glory is philosophically and theologically unacceptable.

Boston Lose to Orlando and get eliminated.

2009-05-18T15:53:00.003+07:00

It was a painful game to watch.Orlando Vs Boston game 7 at the TD banknorth.In the First Quarter,Orlando were up by 10 points.With 4 out 4 shooting from the 3-point line.I squirmed every time i saw Hedo or Alston rise to shoot a 3-point.It ws almost always,a swish.

Boston tried to come back,but it was Orlando's night.Everything was going in.At the end Boston lost 101-82.A decisive 19 point win.

As for me,I am done watching the playoffs.My team is out and its not worth it anymore.

I am now rooting for Denver.I hate the Cavaliers,and I hope they get bundled out somewhere along the way.

Next year,Boston will be a better team with KG and Leon Powe back.And hopefully a new fresh power forward and point guard.Please Doc rivers,get rid of Stephon Marbury and Mikki Moore.

Boston win Game 5 to go up 3-2

2009-05-13T09:41:00.003+07:00

It was one of the best comeback in the series.At one point Boston trailed 14 points at the end of the third quarter and the only person who was scoring was veteran Paul Pierce who finished with 19 points.

With 5 minutes to go Orlando were still up 11 points.But all of a sudden the tide started changing and Boston made an 11-2 run.Ray Allen who had a cold night made a 3 pointer with less than 2 minutes left to give the Boston Celtics the lead.Orlando could not Capitalize on 3 open 3 point shots.They tried to foul Boston players to stop the clock,but Paul pierce,Eddie House and Big baby Glen davis sunk all the free throws to give Boston a 92-88 win.

Now Celtics lead the series 3-2 heading back to orlando for Game 6 on Thursday night.Its a do or die game for Magic since if they lose,they are knocked out of the series.

Meanwhile,several Orlando Magic fans have been crying foul after the game 4 loss in Orlando.Some bloggers insist that the NBA corporate would want a Boston/Caveliers Eastern Conference final.Game 5 also had its share of conterversial calls.One being what looked an airball shot by Rondo which was ruled to have hit the rim giving Celtics possesion at the closing seconds of the game.Another call is the ball tussle with Big baby glen davis with Rashard Lewis.The Magic team wanted it to be called a jump ball,but instead it ended up being a foul for Davis who sunk the two winning free throws.

Game 6 is on Thursday night 8 pm at the Amway arena in Orlando,Florida.

Watch Game Highlights here

Boston Sinks Orlando Magic in Game 4.

2009-05-11T16:45:00.002+07:00

So if you are a fan of basketball then you probably have been watching tthe NBA playoffs which are on the second round.Yesterday night Boston were hosted by Orlando down in Orlando, Florida for game 4.Orlando were leading 2-1 in the series and this was a must win for Boston.

Boston played well from the start and led most of the second half.But squandered a lead at the final seconds.Magic went up 94-93 with 16 seconds left.But surprise surprise! big baby davis hit the game winning jumper at the buzzer to give the celtics a 95-94 winner.The series now heads to Boston for Game 5 tied at 2-2.

Watch Highlights here

Uhuru Kenyatta in Yet Another Scandal.

2009-05-11T01:56:00.003+07:00

Finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta has found himself involved in yet another of the long list of scandals that now dog his trail.This time he is accused of duping parliament into withdrawing an extra 9.1 billion kshs from the treasury.In his defense Uhuru says that it was a typing error.The nation is still in shock and outraged by this brazen act of corruption at a time when millions are facing starvation in Kenya.

Read the whole story here.

C.S Lewis great quotes.

2009-05-02T14:31:00.002+07:00

One of the greatest christian minds of the 20th century,C.S lewis had some great quotes.These are my favorite:

1.A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell.

2.If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

3.We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

4.There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."

5.The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

6.Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.

7.Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

8.Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

9.It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad

What exactly is Malaysia's stand on Nigerian Students?

2009-04-06T02:05:00.001+07:00

In the early 2000's Malaysia opened up its education sector to international students especially African students.Universities and colleges launched aggressive marketing strategies to tap into middle class families in countries like Kenya,Botswana and Nigeria.The response was enormous.African student population skyrocketed in 2006,2007.Government sponsored students from Botswana came in hundreds every year,and soon also government sponsored Nigerian students were being admitted in Universities all over Malaysia.

Malaysia is reaping big from direct investment from the huge African student population in the country.Which is estimated to be well over 4000.Malaysia is attractive to international students mainly because of affordable higher quality education.The relaxed Visa laws(as compared to US or UK), make it a rising attraction to African students.Cheaper tuition fees and living expenses are also pulling factors.

But it seems colleges all across Malaysia are changing their attitudes towards admission of Nigeria students.Fewer and fewer Nigerian students are being admitted to colleges in Malaysia.In some cases some colleges are not admitting Nigerian students.

An official from one of the private universities in Malaysia(who refused to be named for job-security reasons),told me that his college is no longer admitting Nigerian students since last year.He cited indisciplne,low completion rates and security issues as the main reasons.He went as far as to say that the Malaysian government has directed a thorough vetting of all Nigerian students who seek to study in malaysia.He claimed that the colleges were even given figures of how many nigerian students they should admit,and the main point was to keep them at a minimal.

This is indeed a worrying trend.It is sad that many genuine Nigerian students who want to seek an education in Malaysia will not get the chance.In colleges like Nilai Internatinal University,INTI university and UCSI,the number of new Nigerian intakes have fallen to new lows,With some not admitting Nigerian students at all.Infact a university in Cheras near Kuala Lumpur is said to have sent over 150 Nigerians back home after a discplinary issue.

The perception among african students is that Nigerian students are an unwelcome lot in Malaysia.It would be inorder for the malaysian government to state its stand on the issue,so that it can be clear what is the future of many bright Nigerian students who wish to explore further studies in malaysia.

Kofi Annan Spills the Beans on Kibaki

2009-04-04T04:27:00.003+07:00

Finally Kofi Annan has spoken of what exactly transpired during the negotiations leading to the signing of the National Accord that saw ODM and PNU form a coalition government after the rigged election that led to violence last year.

The Standard has published the story on today's edition.Annan details how Kibaki was literally a slave to his PNU cronies who did not want anything to do with a coalition government.Kibaki had to be pushed to agree to create a prime ministers office by Kofi Annan.Ofcourse this is not news to Kenyans who know too well that PNU and Kibaki were not bothered by the death of Kenyans due to political instability.

Again,Annan mentions Kalonzo Musyoka's name as one of those people who were out to derail the negotiations.

Read the Whole Story Here

Raila Defends Grand Coalition

2009-03-29T03:55:00.002+07:00

Kenya's PM,Raila Odinga in a speech delivered yesterday defended the unholy alliance of ODM and PNU which was formed after violence rocked the country early 2008 after disputed elections.

Raila who had promised to sack Cabinet ministers and government officials who were involved in corruption left many Kenyans dissappointed with his about turn on his promise.

Raila's supporters will undoubtedly question his commitment to fighting graft.The PM who rode on the wave of a reformist with no tolerance to corruption is raising eye brows over his lack of concrete action to end corruption in Kenya.

His fellow cabinet ministers who have been implicated in corruption are sitting pretty in government.Under the national accord Raila can only spearhead the sacking of an ODM minister,therefore his hands seem to be tied.But Raila has the powerful option of ordering investigations of any minister he feels is inlvolved in corruption and recommend his termination of duties to the President.

Time will tell if Raila will keep his promise of announcing a major shake up in the cabinet to weed out corrupt individuals.

Kenya and Uganda row over migingo: Kenya Should deal firmly with Uganda.

2009-03-09T04:17:00.002+07:00

Uganda has flexed its muscles on the Migingo Island row by sending troops to the Island and ordering Kenyans to leave the island.Uganda has required all Kenyan residents to apply for a permit to be akllowd to stay or visit the island.

The island which is located on Lake victoria has been the center of conflict on borders at the lake.Uganda has laid claim to the Island despite all evidence showing that the island belongs to kenya.A look at the colonial maps and even current maps show the island lays atleast 1 km inside Kenya's borders.

While kenya has resorted to a slow laid back diplomatic resoltuion of the conflict,Uganda is using military power to take control of the island.

A delegation of Kenyan ministers are meant to travel to Uganda next week to discuss the conflict.

What annoys most Kenyans is,the slow pace at which the Kenyan government is taking to resolve the issue. The kenyan government is doing nothing to protect its citizens who are being harrased by Ugandan soldiers.

Uganda is firmly in control of the island,while the kenyan government is still "sending" a delegation to Kampala to discuss the crisis.Uganda knows very well the island belongs to Kenya,and the real issue is the fishing industry on lake victoria. many times Kenyan fishermen have crossed into Ugandan waters to fish.

This has annoyed Ugandans officials who feel like the island is a launching pad for illgeal fishing on Uganda's waters.Although this is the case,Uganda has no authority to grab/occupy Kenya's lands.

More and more Kenyas are feeling the need for Kenya to get involved militarily. It is an embarrasment for Kenya which is obviously superior militarily and economically than Uganda,to have its land forcefully occupied by a country which very much depends on Kenya's ports for its survival.

I think the time has come for the Kenyan government to send its military and if possible the navy to protect our land and citizens on Migingo.We have already lost 3 other islands (thanks to IDi Amin) to Uganda in the past. And Migingo will not be next in line.

Kenyans and the Facebook Phenomena

2009-03-01T07:24:00.002+07:00

There have been two technological revolutions in Kenya in the years 2007-2008.First, was the Safaricom WAP,which enabled any Kenyan who has a cellphone and WAP enabled phone access to internet anytime and at any location.
The internet was no longer a preserve for the upper middle class in Kenya.Any Kenyan regardless of class had a ready made connection to the WWW.

At the same time,Facebook,a social networking site was gathering pace.Recently,analysts have estimated that Facebook has over 175 million active users.Surpassing Myspace,friendster and other social networking sites.

It is not clear how many Kenyans are on Facebook,but are about 100,000 or more Kenyan users.
Most kenyans users on the site say they use facebook to keep in touch with their friends some ofn whom are Kenyans in the Diaspora.

One of my friends,Suzie(not real name),says," Facebook is the place to be.I chat with my sisters and brothers who are all in the USA daily on facebook,and it brings us much closer."

Suzie says she updates her photos almost every week,so as to keep her friends interested in her profile.

It is puzzling just how many Kenyans are addicted to Facebook.Some profiles status are updated almost every hour.This is possible partly because many young Kenyans are almost,always,connected to the internet using their WAP enabled phones.Business daily africa ran a story about how employers are now fearing that work hours are getting wasted on Facebook by their employees.Read the Story here.

Corporate companies have realised the huge potential in Facebook,and many have opened their own pages on Facebook.Capital fm,Business daily africa,are just some of the companies with pages on facebook.

For ordinary Kenyans,the anonymity may be one of the pulling factors.The ability to "meet" and socialise with new people without leaving your house is a pulling factor.

Not every Kenyan is a fan of Facebook though.One of my friends who is a harsh critic of facebook has this to say," Most people who spend their time on facbook are people who most likely have very low social skills in real life.I don't see the reason why someone should be making friends with people who you might never meet.Whats the point of me making friends with a girl from Cuba for example?"

The irony of the matter is,he also has a facebook acount!

In the meantime,more and more Kenyans are joining facebook,and making their networks one big global village.

Finally!

2009-02-19T04:56:00.002+07:00

Its been almost 3 months since i last blogged.And reasons are many,but the main one being,I have been quite busy with other things.But i am back.And i am going to post quite regularly.Everything from Philosophy of religion,to politics and News touching on Kenya and Africa.

Divine Simplicity - an Introduction

2008-11-06T00:48:00.001+07:00

introduction

One of the most difficult doctrines to understand and one that has continued to challenge theists and philosophers is ironically the doctrine of divine simplicity. Proposed by early christian thinkers like st. Thomas aquinas,st. Anselm and st. Augustine,the doctrine says that god is simple,with no components and he is identical with his attributes.

The doctrine has received criticism from both christian philosophers and atheists as an incoherent doctrine. The idea that god is the same thing as omnipotence,omniscience and omni benevolence has not gone down well with modern day christian philosophers. The strongest critic being well known christian philosopher Alvin plantinga.plantinga said the doctrine reduces god to a property.

Since God is identical with each of his properties and so by extension also each of his properties are identical with each other.

I must warn you guys that this topic is very complex and it involves a lot of philosophical terms. I am still trying to understand it fully and some of the solutions offered.

The doctrine can be represented by taking an example of one of God's properties,goodness:

1.God is good
2.God has a certain property called “goodness”
3.This goodness belongs to God
4.Therefore we can call it God's goodness.
5.God's goodness is identical to God.

The doctrine arose from the need of avoiding to think of God as dependent on his properties and also the need to think of God as not having components.(physical or essence components) if god had these properties contingently and separate from his nature,then it would imply that the combination of properties such as omnipotence,omniscience-benevolence made up God.

This would mean that God depended on these properties so as to be “god”.and to the early thinkers this would imply God is not a maximal being since he would depend on these properties for his essence or existence. And so another maximal being could be thought of,who did not depend on these properties but rather was identical to these(goodness,omnipotence-omniscience) properties themselves.

To get a clear picture think of a human being. A human being is made up of parts,the brain,heart and other vital organs. Without these organs a human would not function. So we can say a human is dependent on his parts. So if God was made up of omniscience,omni benevolence and omnipotence,he would then be dependent on these properties so as to exist,or so that he can have his nature.

But if God was identical to his properties,then he would not be dependent on anything.and thus maintain status of a maximal being. But this is where the problem starts.

key
G= God

op=omnipotence
os=omniscience
ob=omnibenevolence

G=op

G=os

G=ob

therefore

op=os=ob

If God is identical with all his properties,then all his properties are identical to each other God is a property a single property but properties don't create,they are not personal,in fact properties don't stand in any causal relationships. They are abstract. Just like the color yellow,or numbers. For example if God is goodness,then how can “goodness” create anything?if its just a property?if God is “just” or “merciful”,how can merciful do things like create,speak or do anything at all? this is clearly not the God of Christianity.

God is the personal creator and sustainer of every contingent being. No abstract object is a person or a causal agent. No abstract object can be omniscient, or indeed know anything at all! this is not the only coherence problem faced by divine simplicity. In the next thread i will post some of the other coherence problems. And finally the counterarguments to this criticisms. To be continued....

Euthyphro Dilemma revisted 2.

2008-10-12T21:52:00.002+07:00

Post Continued From Here

Deschain

So, Ernest seems to go along with the ideas expressed just above: by the fact that God is our Father, Creator, Sustainer, it follows that we ought to follow his commands and respect the laws that He lays down for us.

But, by the fact that God is our Father it doesn’t follow that we ought to do as he commands. By analogy, if a child’s parent (who is, in a perfectly analogical sense, the child’s Father, Creator, and Provider), commanded his daughter to go out to Central Avenue in Albany, NY and sell crack, the daughter would in no way be morally obligated to do so, just on the grounds that the command comes from her father.

A natural reply to this analogy would be that it fails because the girl’s father is a mere human being, whereas God is our Ultimate Author, the all-powerful being who is responsible for our existence. So, then, it is not God’s parental status, but more his omnipotence, that makes his dispositions unique such that they provide as an objective basis for moral conduct, when no other individual‘s desires, or set of desires, can.

Is there any reason to suppose that there is a relationship between moral obligation and how powerful a person is? There doesn’t seem to be any relation between these two things. In Wielenberg (2005), we imagine a contest between two people where the prize is omnipotence. The first competitor in this contest means to win his omnipotence and use it for the good of humanity. The second competitor plans to use his omnipotence for his own “selfish, nefarious purposes”. He “plans to slaughter most of humanity and force the rest to live in excrement pits where they will work themselves to death as his slaves and be subject to torture at his hand for his own amusement” (pg. 41-42). If the second competitor won this contest, and became all-powerful, would we have any moral obligation at all to make his desires come true? The answer is obviously no. We don’t have any obligation. So neither a person’s power or parental/creator status has any relation to what our moral obligations are.

So, it looks like there’s no bridge between “is” and “ought” for EDCT.

2. On God’s dispositions being necessarily fixed:

Originally Posted by “Ernest”

1.Conceptual Neccesity

Neccesarily God is Good.

Goodness being attributed to God can be thought of as a Propositional neccesity i.e Resulting from unpacking of a concept- the concept of God.By this I mean the very definition of God (in Christianity) is one who is all loving.eg If someone is a bachelor, for instance, then he is bound to be unmarried by conceptual necessity, because the meaning of the word "bachelor" determines that he is.therefore Good is part of the definiton of what God is.But this shiould not be confused as meaning that God is the same thing as goodness,but only part of the deifinition of What God is.

God is neccesarily Good

This can be thought of neccesity De Re i.e "of the thing".Where the neccesity holds true of the being who is infact God.And is the expression of one of his essential properties.A property without which,He could not exist.This De Re necessity ties goodness to the very existence of God.

Necessarily,God is essentially Good

For a being who was ultimately vulnerable to evil,sin or weakness in any possible circumstance,he would not be the greatest possible being.On the conception of deity,part of what it means to be God is having the property of goodness and to have it essentially,and not contingently.

Deschain:

You’ve got some things confused. Here, you’re trying to provide a reason for why God is necessarily good. But you have defined “good” as “in accord with God’s dispositions”. So the more relevant question is: Could God’s dispositions be different? If there is a possible world in which God’s dispositions are not the same as you imagine them to be, then it follows that what is right and what is wrong would be different. Since we’re all in agreement that any moral theory that entails this has been reduced to absurdity, it becomes necessary for you to show that God’s dispositions cannot be different. You haven’t really tried to show this.

The closest you’ve come to an argument of this sort is your ontological argument. God cannot be different because then He would not be the greatest conceivable being. But as I implied in an earlier post, this particular ontological argument uses the term “greatest” in (apparently) a very subjective way. How are you defining the word “greatest” in your argument, and how does it directly relate to and have consequences for what God’s dispositions could be? "Greatest conceivable being" from which person's perspective? Can you demonstrate, as a matter of fact, that differences in God’s dispositions would entail that He would not be the greatest conceivable being, in any sort of objective way that we would all have to agree with?

I think that you've been able to come up with a good answer to Euthyphro’s Dilemma, in that you have attempted to make the basis for moral facts both non-arbitrary and based on God’s commands/nature. You have the “right idea”, in other words, in terms of what you have to argue in order to make the Euthyphro argument go away. But, as far as the discussion has shown so far, it looks like EDCT fails for at least two reasons: (1) It fails to provide an adequate answer to the is-ought dilemma; and (2) It fails to show that God’s dispositions are necessarily the way that they are, and could not be different. The criticism expressed in (1) is an independent criticism apart from the Euthyphro Dilemma. The argument in (2) shows (at least, IMO) that the Euthyphro Dilemma is a continuing problem for your moral theory.

Euthyphro Dilemma revisited:

2008-10-12T21:36:00.004+07:00

Following my post about the Euthyphro Dilemma on my blog here and subsequent post at IIDB,There were several critiques of my post by a forum member AKA Deschain.Here is His analysis of what he called Ernest's Divine Command Theory.(lol)

He was responding to this:

Originally Posted by “Ernest”

I certainly did not chose horn number 2,i do think that there are reasons why God gives certrain moral commands,but it does not follow that this reasons are apart from God's nature.

As in,
1.God is Kind
2.God has a disposition against stealing
3.Because stealing causes losess to the victim,and its an act of cruelty
4.Cruelty is agaisnt God's nature of Kindness

If am correct,What Deschain and You have a contention with is that number 3 i.e reasons for stealing,would be independent of God's nature.God would need reasons indepedent of his nature to have moral commands.

But my position is,the reasons themselves are grounded in God's nature.as i have illustrated.

Then the question would be as Deschain pointed out,Would number 3 be evident enough i.e serve as a motivation by itself to humans without number 4?

Now at this juncture we have to discuss all the Atheistic/secular ethical moral systems.(which is a another discussion)

But if they all fail,then we have to move from 3 to 4,that it might not be self evident that Stealing is cruel without an Objective Moral standard,who is God.

Deschain:

1. On the Ernestombayo Divine Command Theory, actions that would normally be described as immoral can be considered objectively wrong because of certain dispositions that God has toward those acts. According to EDCT, it is not possible that God could have an alternative set of dispositions - i.e., God’s nature is strictly fixed and is as it is by necessity. As a result, it can never be the case that moral facts change; for example, it can never be the case that rape suddenly becomes morally permissible, or that charity becomes morally reprehensible, because God’s dispositions toward those acts can never change. The result of this is that, according to Ernest, we have an answer to Euthyphro’s Dilemma, which attempts to demonstrate that either: (1) morality is not founded on God; or (2) Morality is an arbitrary construct decreed by God. With EDCT, moral facts are not arbitrary because they are true by virtue of God’s unchanging dispositions toward morally-relevant actions. And with that, the dilemma seems to be answered.

Here’s why this doesn’t sound like a good theory to me: Why is it that God’s dispositions are sufficient to provide as a basis for moral facts, when no other individual’s desires (say, the dispositions of Wittgenstein, or Satan, or Whoopi Goldberg, or Boy George) are able to do so? What is it about God’s personal dispositions that provide us with an objective theory, when, according to Ernest's rejection of secularly-based ethical theories, using anyone else's dispositions as a basis for moral conduct leaves us with moral subjectivism?

Different believers that I’ve talked to have different perspectives on this. Some say that God’s dispositions are unique in that God is our Father, our Creator, and so we must do what he commands and desires of us. Others say that it is because God is all-powerful. Others say that it is because he is omniscient and therefore knows what is right and what is wrong, and so it is important that we follow him as our (much wiser) guide for moral behaviour. Ernest himself wrote that:

"From a Christian theological standpoint, if God has created us and sustains us in existence at every moment and so all good things of life come to us through his agency or permission, we have some obligation to please him and so conform to his commands and forbidding."

Continued on the next post.

Names of Politicians who played a role in the rigging of the elections.

2008-10-05T15:35:00.005+07:00

The standard's bold publication of the people who helped manipulate results and pushed for a Kibaki "declaration as winner" is not shocker to many kenyans who know these people very well and their greed for power.

The standard says ministers from PNU were instrumental in the riggin of the elections.Also 3 ministers piled pressure on ECK commisioner Kivuiti to release the doctored released which showed Kibaki had won the elections.

The standard names Uhuru Kenyatta,Martha Karua and Amos Kimunya as the ministers who pressured Kivuitu to release the figures.

Kalonzo Musyoka apparently had by this time struck a deal with PNU to be made VP after Kibaki's swearing in.His ODM-K counterpart Mutula Kilonzo,now the Nairobi Metroplitan Development Minister,was persistent in pressuring Kivuitu to release the disputed figures.

The standard failed to name the 2 former ministers who put pressure on the returning officer for the Langata constituency to announce Livondo the winner instead of Raila Odinga.

Read More here

Revealed:The Two Men Who Rigged Kenya's Elections

2008-10-05T15:20:00.003+07:00

The Daily Newspaper East african standard has broke out the story of how the Kenya elections were rigged,and who was involved.

It has emerged that the chief pointman at ECK for the PNU rigging machine was Mr Suleiman Chege,who helped and coordinated the rigging of the elections that led to the unprecedented violence never witnessed in Kenya before, that led to the deaths of more than 1000 Kenyans and displaced over 300,000 people.

The other person was the ECK IT manager Mr Mr Ayub Imbira.THe stadard says"Mr Suleiman Chege, who was deputy Commission Secretary in charge of administration during the polls, and Mr Ayub Imbira, the IT manager at the ECK, may have more to tell than Kivuitu.

"Even if they remove everybody and Chege remains, nothing will change at the ECK," a source said.

As the one in charge of administration, Chege was the one the returning officers answered to. Immediately after the elections, he was promoted to commission secretary.

It is not the first time Chege’s name has been sucked into election controversy.

The Standard on Sunday established that in 1992, after the first multi-party elections, retired President Moi was furious with Chege, whom he accused of manipulating and inflating figures in favour of Mr Kenneth Matiba, who came second in what turned out to be a strangely stiff contest between the two.

After the 1992 election, Moi tried to transfer Chege to the Ministry of Water as undersecretary, but he later left him alone

Imbira, on the other hand, was the one managing the register in the last election. The register itself had numerous faults, including ODM presidential candidate Raila’s Odinga’s name missing from the Lang’ata constituency register on voting day.

"Imbira was the only one who could insert or remove names from the computer as the IT manager," a source said."

Read HERE

Euthyphro Dilemma Part 2

2008-09-28T11:12:00.002+07:00

In my last post i wrote about the Euthyphro dilemma.Read about it here.
An objection of the Divine command theory(That which is moral is moral because it is commanded by God), is that moral truthts become arbitray.
An objection to this claim is that God is necessarily good, and that the source and standard of the Good is God’s very nature.This avoids the assertion that morality is arbtriray since morality can now be shown that its grounded in an objective moral standard which is God's very nature of goodness.

But an opponent of the Divine Command theory can ask."If God’s nature rejects the raping of little children, but it is not an arbitrary rejection (rejected for no reasons), then would this not mean that God’s nature is good in accordance with good reasons?"

Then can we not say that God's nature is neccesarily opposed to such acts as rape and murder because there are good reasons not to rape and murder?

So God's nature to call an act wrong or good,must be grounded in "good reasons".This implies that in a world where rape does not cause any suffering or injustice to the victim,then God would have no reason to call rape wrong.But someone wopul say,that,there is no possible world where rape does not cause suffering or injustice.Then wouldn't this still mean that God's nature of goodness is grounded in reasons.Making God's nature of goodness a slave to "reasons" for being good.

It seems clear that for God to escape the charge that morality is arbitrary i.e something IS just good,or something IS just bad,then it must be grounded in reasons.

The question becomes,would this reasons exists if God did not exist?Would we see reasons not to rape,if God did not exist?If the answer is yes,then it means that "reasons' not to rape and by extension,.morality exists outside of God.

What are the problems raised with this type of objection?from Christian Philoaspher's site,William Lane Craig, reasonable faithe he says.;

"The position is that God’s moral nature is the paradigm of goodness; what is good or bad is determined by conformity or lack thereof to His nature.First, we can give good reasons for why God commands what He does,eg rape ir wrong because it is injurious and unjust.But that doesn’t imply that there should be good reasons why love, kindness, and patience are virtues, and why greed, cruelty, and hate are vices apart from the nature of God.

Second, I think we should not confuse being ultimate with being arbitrary. If something serves as one’s explanatory ultimate, there can be no further explanation why that thing is as it is. But that doesn’t imply that it is arbitrary in the sense that it could have been otherwise and so just happens accidentally to be the way it is. God’s nature, like Plato’s Good, is ultimate, it is not arbitrary. Nor is taking God’s nature as paradigmatic of the Good arbitrary, for He is the greatest conceivable being and it is greater to be the paradigm of goodness than merely to exemplify it."

Craig sums it up nicely for this dilemma that has troubled philosphers for ages.

References:

Reasonable Faith - www.reasonablefaith.org - William Lane Craig.
Philosophical Logic - Sybil Wolfram
Euthyphro dilemma - Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma

The Euthyphro dilemma

2008-09-22T17:27:00.005+07:00

Euthyphro Dilemma is found in plato's dialogue "Euthyphro".In montheism its simply asks "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"

1.What is commanded by God is moral because its moral in/by itself.

This implies that morality is independent of God and, indeed, that God is bound by morality just as his creatures are. God then becomes just a messenger for morality.

2.That which is moral is moral because it is commanded by God

This is commonly known as the Divine command theory.Which says that an act is obligatory if and only if, and because, it is commanded by God.

There are several objections raised against the divine command theory(DCT).

a)It implies that morality is arbitrary. If divine command theory is true, morality is based merely upon God's whim. Divine Command Theory, this objection runs, entails that if it is morally obligatory to do x then this is in virtue of God's commanding that we do x.

If God would have commanded us to rape,then it would have been moral good.

b)Secondly, it implies that calling God good makes no real sense,rather God is just being consistent with his nature.

Most theist will say that this nis a false dilemma,and DCT is obvioiusly true.Now what about the objections ?

a)It implies that morality is arbitrary. If divine command theory is true, morality is based merely upon God's whim. Divine Command Theory, this objection runs, entails that if it is morally obligatory to do x then this is in virtue of God's commanding that we do x.

If God would have commanded us to rape,then it would have been moral good.

1. Some theist agree with the point the critic is making but arguing that it is not a problem with the theory. God could have commanded us to commit murder, and then it would have been obligatory — but he didn't, so it isn't.But this is a potenital problem because it suggets that their is a possible world where God's commands on moral values are completely different.

2.A theist can say that God is necessarily good, and that the source and standard of the Good is God’s very nature.This avoids the assertion that morality is arbtriray since morality can now be shown that its grounded in an objective moral standard which is God's very nature of goodness.

to be continued....

Undercover Mosque returns

2008-09-10T20:18:00.002+07:00

UK's controversial documentary which aired last year called "Undercover Mosque " has returned with a sequel to the original documentary.The original caused a storm in UK with Muslims complaining that the channel portrayed Muslims in a bad light.The documentary had a reporter go undercover in leading UK mosques and shot footages of Muslim clerics teaching a radical kind of Islam which calls for death of non-Muslims,killings of homosexuals among other strict sharia law.

The Channel has followed up with a sequel entitled "Undercover mosque the return",where a female reporter goes undercover with a hidden camera to the mosques,where the Saudi version of Islam is taught in the womens side of the mosque.This version of Islam is called wahabism,which is a radical and extremist version of Islam which has drawn criticism from both Muslims,non-Muslims and the secular society for its calls of oppression towards women and non-Muslims.

watch the original here

Undercover Mosque

watch the sequel here

Undercover Mosque the return

Capital Fm opens new website as Kiss Fm continues to Sleep

2008-09-06T20:07:00.004+07:00

The second most popular FM station in Nairobi has just launched its new website.WWW.CAPITALFM.CO.KE

The new site looks really great,and it is essentially 4 websites in one.All with substantial good material.The news page has upto date news and is very well organized.

The radio site still is live on air,and this makes the thousands of kenyans in the diaspora feel much at home.

Meanwhile,the sleeping giant Kiss fm continues its 3 year slumber.Kiss fm was last streaming live in November 2005.In fact the website was down for a couple of months.And when it relaunched,it was a shoddily done site.

The so called countdown was never updated for months! Even the news stayed for over 4 months without being updated.The site has gone down again,and it is now"under construction" for the last 4 months or so!

Kiss fm,spend some money,and get a professional looking website.Pay for some bandwidth and get back to streaming.Your losing out on potential advertising money because your audience is only restricted to Kenya.

Otherwise Kudos Capital FM!

Nairobi: Demand for Commercial Property drives building boom in UpperHill

2008-08-30T21:28:00.003+07:00

If you have been out of Kenya for the last 10 years,you would not recognise upperhill Nairobi.10 years ago was a vastly empty,with only a few apartment buildings.

Upperhill is situated about 5 mins drive from the city center.Since 2002,demand for commercial property for rent and lack of space for expansion in the CBD has driven the growth of Upperhill into a sort of 'mini city" within Nairobi.

Coca Cola,GeoMaps,Blue Shield,NIC bank,Coopertaive Bank,Imperial Bank,the British council and a host of other companies have set up base in Upperhill.Upperhill is particularly attractive to investors because of its clos proximity to the city center and its serene environment.

Most of the parcels of Land in Upperhill are government owned.And about 30% are undeveloped.
The empty spaces that characterized Upperhill a few years ago are no more.Glass skyscrapers and fancy archicture dot the small but growing skyline of upperhill.Its almost as if its a competition.With buildings competing for the best and most innovative look.

What is surprising is that there are a few parcels of land left in this prime area.God only knows how much this parcels of land are worth now.But one thing is for sure,if there is a private land owner in this area,he's/she's a millionaire waiting to happen.Donald Trump should have a Trump Towers here!the tallest building in Nairobi(and East and Central africa),the Times Tower has 35 floors.A building taller than this would generate enough hype in the whole region.And there would be no better place to have it than the Upperhill area.

In the meantime,take a look at the fancy buildings dominating upperhill now.

Above is Imperial Bank,NIC Bank and CoopBank.

NOTE:for Potential investors to Nairobi or Kenya visit Kenya Investment Authority for more details on investment opportunities regulations and general information.

NEXT Post:Exploring the rising mall craze in Nairobi.

Kenya:Nairobi a "New York'" in Africa in the Making.

2008-08-26T03:54:00.003+07:00

If you read about people who have travelled across the 3 cities in East Africa,Nairobi,Dar e salaam and Kampala,most people will remember Nairobi as the "New York" of East and Central Africa.

Why is this so?unlike the sleepy coastal city of Dar,or the small CBD of Kampala,Nairobi is big,bustling,alive and most of all fast!

Nairobi comes to life as early as 6.30am,with the first workers who came early to beat the morning traffic.

Nairobi has one of the worst traffic jams in Africa,with millions of Kenya shillings going to waste in man hours.
Due to an economic boom since 2003,more people have been able to afford cars,and hence more cars on the road.

Morning traffic

Thika Road which is considered to be the busiest highway in East and central Africa,handles well over 400,000 cars a day!

So what is so unique about Nairobians?the typical Nairobian is well informed,upto date on current affairs and trendy.Tourists are usually surprised at the sophistication exhibited by Nairobians.This is evident in the food department.Where you will find local food restaurant alongside Chinese,Japanese,Thai,Western Food and Italian menus.

The clubs are also no exception.Clubs catering to mostly European clientèle and clubs for the Kenyan clientèle.Strip Clubs are now a common feature in Nairobi,with the likes of Apple Bees being very popular.

Nairobi is a drinking capital.With over 20,000 licensed bars and pubs!Virtually every estate,shopping area has more than one pub.When every company in Kenya was recording losses during the Post-election violence,one company was recording profits,East African Breweries.Kenya's leading beer maker.

What else makes Nairobi stand out?who can speak of Nairobi without speaking of its unique transport industry:the Matatus.These are minivans which have been "pimped out" with loud sound systems and extravagant paint jobs and graffiti.A trip to Nairobi cannot be complete without a ride in a Matatu.

Graffiti on a Matatu

a 14 seater mini van with a 42 inch Flat screen Tv

This series of blog posts is dedicated to promoting Nairobi(and Kenya as a whole) as a preferred tourists destination in tandem with the government efforts to restore Kenya's image to the world.

For budget hotels in Nairobi

A list of cheap budget hotels in Nairobi

A list of luxury Hotels in Nairobi

Kenya: The New Modern Nairobi

2008-08-25T19:37:00.002+07:00

Nairobi Skyline

As tourists flock back to Kenya after a rough start in the year,the face of Nairobi has slowly but surely turned for the better.

From a mean, dirty city back in the 90's Nairobi has been transformed to a clean safe bustling city.

Potholed roads in the CBD are a thing of the past,and mounds of garbage surrounded by Street children are no more.

The transformation of the city started with the change of government in 2003.After years of mismanagement,the Nairobi city council underwent radical changes,with the aid of Nairobi businessmen and the government a beautification of the city was started.Mounds of garbage left uncollected were disposed of,and street families and children were taken off the streets.Buildings were ordered repainted and cleaned.

6 years later the fruits of those efforts can be seen.Nairobi is now pedestrian friendly and astonishingly clean.

Clean Streets and Trees planted

The Pedestrian Friendly streets(below).Streets were widened and some roads made into single lanes.

The modern Skyline.(below)

The New benches(below) put for relaxing after a long stroll around the city

Mudavadi Revokes Uhuru's Scandalous nomination list.

2008-08-06T15:47:00.003+07:00

Kenya's Deputy PM Uhuru Kenyatta is making headlines again for all the wrong reasons.In his short stint as Local Government minister Uhuru managed to unscrupulously appoint 200 extra councilors illegally, contravening the Local Government act laws.He overlooked the one third rule which states a minister should appoint a third of the councilors elected in every civic authority.

Uhuru picked and dropped councilors at will,with the most contentious one being Ms Esther Passaris from ODM whose name was dropped from the list of potential Nairobi Mayoral list contenders.

The present Local Government Minister Musalia Mudavadi yesterday revoked the nomination of 57 councilors and appointed another 64 whose names were struck out by Uhuru.
He also sacked 41 public officers who were illegaly appointed by Uhuru.

However Ms Passaris name was still left out by Mudavadi,who said that she had developed other interests.

Mudavadi's act could open a flurry of court cases against the government by dejected councilors.But again this would drag Uhuru's name into the circus,him being responsible for the illegal appointments.

There is damning evidence that Uhuru received bribes from interested councilors for nominations.His aide was caught on camera receiving money from interested peoples.

Personally am very disappointed at Uhuru's errant behavior.He's slowly becoming the face of corruption in Kenya.this is especially serious since he's a potential presidential candidate.
With Land ownership scandals,corrupt deals and now the illegal nomination of councilors fiasco,Uhuru is an embarrassment and the biggest disappointment in the Grand coalition government.

Craig on Absurdity of Life Without God

2008-08-05T18:42:00.002+07:00

Having finished listening to william Lanes Craig lecture on absurdity of Life without God,it made me see life and existence in a totally new light.

Watch Here

or HERE

For a moment what is the purpose of existence if there is no God?

If there is a God,then there is continuity of life through eternal existence with God at the end of this mortal existence.

But if God does not exist then why do humans live life as if it matters?

The earth's resources are diminishing,and environmental degradtion is killing our planet.
The sun is dying,in 3-5 billion years from now it will obliterate the earth and most if not all of the inner planets.Life will cease to exist on earth.

The universe itself as we know it is finite,a time will reach when the universe will be empty space.All stars having died and matter reduced to small quakes.

Morality

Whats the point of people being good or bad?if ultimately everyone will die and there will be no human race?

There is no ultimate difference between hitler and mother teresa.At one point in the future,no one will be there to account for their deeds.They were simply two organisms which acted differently and ceased to exist.

All the charity organizations,food programmes,hunger walks, and special programmes to help the needy and suffering in society are pointless in the long run.Everyone will die.

Our justice system is if no use,since the murderers,robbers and the good people all have the same fate.

Meaning of Life

Another question we can ask is,what is the ultimate significance of a persons life?If a person lives and ceases to exist,then that persons existence has no ultimate meaning.Ultimately,it would have made no difference if he lived or not.

But you might say,"he's or her life changed peoples lives,made a contribution while he was alive."

But thats only a relative significance.He's life was only meaningful for a certain period,and besides since everything that he ever influenced will also cease to exist,then this significance is still meaningless.Its like a death row convict advising a fellow death row convict not to commit suicide on the eve his execution.

The human race is really not special after all.Mosquitos and flies and roaches all have the same fate.Human beings do not ultimately have any special existence compared to bacteria or worms.all our fates are the same.

All our efforts of science,knowledge,medicine and technological advancements are all in vain.We build cities,towns,better drainage,try to create efficient systems,end poverty, but all this is of no use if they will all cease to exist.

BBC Hardtalk Puts Uhuru on the Spot

2008-07-30T12:23:00.003+07:00

Kenya's Deputy prime minister Uhuru Kenyatta found himself at an awkward situation in a BBC Hardtalk interview when he was being asked about Land issues in Kenya by Stephen Sucker.

Uhuru Kenyatta who is the son of Kenya's first President,Jomo Kenyatta,evaded a torrent of hard hitting questions asked by Stephen Sucker.

Kiss Fm had played the interview in the morning on the breakfast show.The kenyatta family are kenya's biggest land owners.There is much speculation about how much land the Kenyattas own,but its well over the thousands of hectares.For example,the Kenyattas own about 100 acres of land in the posh areas of Karen stretching towards Ngong.With an acre of land going for about 10 million in karen!

Most of the land is said to have been acquired illegally.The new minister for Land James Orengo has been cracking the whip on illegal land owners.Ad he is to start implementing a host of land reforms based on the Ndungu Land report.

Here is the section of the interview on Land:(its not accurate word to word)

Uhuru Kenyatta: We are working on a new constitution and we will deliver.
Stephen Sucker: But that's what you said last time. 3 years later there is no new constitution.
Uhuru Kenyatta:Yes, but the main reason is,the draft constitution proposed was defeated.People voted against it.Just as Kenyans were divided during last years election,is the same way kenyans were divided during the referendum.
Stephen Sucker: But do you promise to deliver this time?
Uhuru Kenyatta: Kenyans will get a new constitution.The issue of prime minister was hotly debated,but now we have a prime minister.We are working on it.
Stephen Sucker: What about Land reforms?
Uhuru Kenyatta:The issue of Land reforms is being discussed and policies are being put in place.
Stephen Sucker:How much Land do the Kenyatta family own?
Uhuru Kenyatta: I do not need to answer that.
Stephen Sucker: But you will need to answer that when the issue of land allocation is discussed.
Uhuru Kenyatta:I don't need to sit at BBC and reveal how much land I own.The land policies affect every citizen,and its not an individual issue.
Stephen sucker:If the land reforms are implemented it means people will have to give up illegally acquire land.
Uhuru Kenyatta: Yes am aware of that.
Stephen sucker: You might have to give up land.
Uhuru Kenyatta: If thats the position taken for land reforms,then i will have to.But this is not an individual issue,its for every Kenyan citizen.
Stephen Sucker: So you will not tell me how much land you own?
Uhuru Kenyatta:its not that i won't tell you,i don't need to tell you.The issue of land reforms is a national issue,and it does not boil to how much land I own.And you can come to the hearings of land issues and reforms and participate.
Stephen Sucker: I will come.Especially to know your role in land issues facing Kenyans.

PS:The above transcript may not be an accurate word to word account of the real interview.But its close.For more info go here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/7531151.stm

The video is not yet available for viewing.

Kenya’s MPs vote no confidence on Finance minister

2008-07-02T23:16:00.002+07:00

The nation newspaper has reported this:

Kenya’s parliament has today passed a vote of no confidence on Finance Minister Amos Kimunya over his handling of the sale of a luxury hotel in Nairobi.

The MPs unanimously voted by shouting ‘Aye’ after over two hours of debate on the motion.

The motion was brought by the Ikolomani MP Bonny Khalwale.

All MPs who contributed to the motion, including Mr Kimunya’s colleagues in the Party of National Unity (PNU), criticised the Finance minister’s handling of his docket. Mr Kimunya’s sole defender was Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka.

Mr Musyoka had wanted debate on the motion to be adjourned until tomorrow to allow for a parallel probe by Prime Minister Raila Odinga to conclude.

Nation’s Political Editor Emman Omari says that with the vote of no confidence having sailed through, Mr Kimunya is required to resign from office, and if he fails, President Kibaki has little choice but to act to remove him from office.

The Finance minister stands accused that he ignored laid down procedures for disposal of public assets and companies, and for allegedly misleading Parliament that should the Government decide to sell the hotel it would be done in accordance with the law.

Defending himself during the debate, Mr Kimunya denied that the sale of the hotel had been conducted in secret.

He said the governor of the Central Bank Prof Njuguna Ndung’u had briefed the Prime Minister, Mr Raila Odinga, on the matter.

The Finance minister also denied previous claims by the Attorney General, Mr Amos Wako that he was kept in the dark. Mr Kimunya told Parliament that he was aware that lawyers acting for the Libyan firm that bought the hotel met Mr Wako six times.

Pressure has mounted on Mr Kimunya since his Cabinet colleague Mr James Orengo revealed last week the Grand Regency hotel had been sold to a Libyan company for about Sh2bn. The hotel was acquired by proceeds from one of Kenya’s infamous corruption deals – commonly known as the Goldenberg affair – and was recovered in the public interest two months ago.

The hotel was handed to the Central Bank who last week sold it to a Libyan firm. The value of the sale has been in dispute with Lands Minister, Mr Orengo saying documents showed the price was Sh1.85 billion and Mr Kimunya replying that the Government gained Sh2.9 billion in the transaction.

NB: Why is Kalonzo defending Kimunya?is there something he's not telling us?

The Two World Theodicy for the Problem of Evil

2008-06-14T18:41:00.001+07:00

Theistic philosopher David Wood had a debate with Atheist John W Loftus last year on the Problem of Evil.
This debate was an exchange,rather than a formal debate type.It was on the infidel guy radio show
and here is the link to listen to it.

Listen:

I think David Wood's Two- World theodicy was very well thought out.

What kind of world should we expect an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good being to create? Wood handles the question by suggesting that a world in which human pleasure is maximized and human pain is minimized is not what would be expected of this type of Creator.

He posits a two-world theodicy in which ‘good’ is maximized: this world with its goods, eg Courage,Compassion,endurance etc, and the next world (heaven) with its goods.lack of suffering,and the full presence of God—the latter being the ultimate good.

Neither world can contain all of the goods (since some of them are mutually exclusive).Eg You can't have Courage in heaven since there is there are no threats that would compell an act of courageousness.

And therefore the best possible situation is one with both worlds, in which the world of greater goods is eternal and the world of lesser goods is a limited world.

Loftus asks why didnt God then just put us into heaven,if the ultimate goal is for humans to go to heaven.Wood says in order to maximize good, this world could not be by-passed, for there are goods in this world that cannot be achieved in the heavenly world in God’s full presence.Wood gives several examples of the goods of this world, including the choice of whether or not we will follow God, morality, and virtues such as courage and compassion.

Full review here

very intresting debate.

Some shocking Documentaries You should watch

2008-06-02T13:38:00.004+07:00

The BBC and discovery have been running a series of documnetaries on extraordinary people.After watching a couple of them i came to realise that there are indeed strange diseases and medical conditions out there.

The most interesting one is this: HALF MAN HALF TREE!

32 year old Dede who lives in a remote village in Indonesia has an extraordinary skin condition: he has root like structures growing out of his body - branches that can grow up to 5cm a year and which protrude from his hands and feet, and welts covering his whole body.

Download it here

http://rapidshare.com/files/118763117/HalfMan_HalfTree.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/118766387/HalfMan_HalfTree.part2.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/118769652/HalfMan_HalfTree.part3.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/118772119/HalfMan_HalfTree.part4.rar

Short clip here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DStwXsmZ3OE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJLG85gn0bc

an update of his story here
http://arbroath.blogspot.com/2008/04/tree-man-regains-use-of-hands-new.html

Xenophobic Attack Against African Students in Malaysia leaves 3 injured

2008-06-01T16:40:00.004+07:00

As xenophobic attacks in south Africa graced newspaper headlines,one of a smaller scale transpired in Malaysia.The story was published here.

you can also read it here

A group of 20 to 30 Local Malaysians attacked and injured 3 african students in a College called Lagenda in Mantin,Negeri Sembilan State.

While south Africans were attacking foreigners due to competition for resources,employment opportunities and rising crime,the attack in Malaysia was due to the locals unhappy with African students dating local girls.On learning of the assault,The african students from different countries grouped outside their hostel to confront the locals.Malaysians have reacted angrily to the news of attacks and condemed such behaviors.Read their views here .

One of the African students ended up with a broken arm and the other two were treated as outpatient.The police were called and managed to intervene before things got out of hand.

Its not clear which countries the African students are from,but i'll find out more and update very soon on the story.

Meanwhile a blogger who is a local Malaysian, from another university called Limkokwing university in Cyberjaya has posted an article urging the Malaysian government to look into the recruitment of students from Botswana.

The university has a very high percentage of students from Botswana who are fully funded by the Botswana government.Estimates range from 300- 700 students in Cyberjaya.

The blogger has raised a couple of issues including drug use,car accidents,sexual harassment of local students and general increase in crime in Cyberjaya,as the main concerns.

read the story here

The story seems to be overly exaggerated,with alot of petty issues.But thats just my take!

Hillsong Concert Malaysia a Success

2008-06-01T14:35:00.003+07:00

Hillsong united performed in Petaling Jaya Malaysia on Wednesday last week at the Glad tidings church.The concert kicked off in time at 8pm.
The over 3000 crowd was more than eager to hear the youthful band perform some of their famous songs that have become anthems in churches all over the world.

The venue was full..With only a few people getting seats.Though more opted to stand.THe ushers at the door helped alot to put some order.

Hillsong united performed almost all of their famous songs.Take it all,Savior King,Hossanna,I'll stand,Mighty to Save,From the inside out,how great is our God and many more.

There were a few major setbacks however.Poor quality of the sound systems of Glad Tidings church.You could barely hear the band at times.And the speakers were either not properly equalized or were substandard.The bass sounded distorted.The person incharge of lighting also did a poor job,sometimes keeping the band in utter darkness for a whole song.

The camera work (as seen from the projector was also amateurish).It lacked professionalism.Sometimes the cameras focusing on walls,or moving too rapidly.

I hope the Church takes this as positive criticism and improves on any other upcoming major concert.All in all,the concert touched many peoples lives and showed that the Christian community in Malaysia is alive and very passionate about Jesus Christ.

MANCHESTER UNITED: Its a Double!

2008-05-22T06:30:00.001+07:00

Champions League Winners

William Lane Craig's Critic of Dawkins

2008-05-15T23:08:00.003+07:00

Well known Christian Apologist and Philosopher William Lane Craig took a swipe at Dawkins reasoning in the God delusion book.

He addresses the "who designed the designer" question.

WATCH

Richard Dawkins was criticizing the design argument for God.He asked if the universe is designed,then who designed the designer(GOD).But Craig shows that in no-way does the question make the argument fail.Its simply a question out of the blues.Consider the premises of the argument below:

The fine-tuning of the universe is due to either physical necessity, chance, or design.
It is not due to physical necessity or chance.
Therefore, it is due to design.

Dawkins has totally ignored the whole argument.He has not attacked any of the premises,or even the conclusion.So in essence he's acknowledging that the argument is valid and successful.

Craig says that we do not need to have an explanation for the explanation.If X is the best explanation for Y,we don't need an explanation for X.
The lack of an explanation for X does not negate the fact that X is still the best explanation for Y.

A good example would be,if you found a book on the beach and you exclaimed"this book must have been written by a writer".then your friend quips in and says," that cannot be,then who created/designed the writer?".
The origins of the writer are a non-issue as regarding the best explanations for the source of the book.As long as you agree that the book was written by a writer,then the lack of explanation of where the writer originated from does not negate the fact that the book was written by a writer.

In short if we needed to have an explanation for the explanation of everything in the universe,then we would never be able to explain anything.

Witchraft is incompatible with Christianity.

2008-05-14T21:20:00.001+07:00

Witchcraft/sorcery is an age-old practice in many African societies. And its still very rife in modern day Africa.
What is amazing is that many African Christians believe in the powers of sorcery and vodoo.
What is even more amazing is that educated pastors will preach that witchcraft is compatible with the teachings of Christianity.

Witchcraft/sorcery is the believe that a person(witch) possesses magical powers which can influence other peoples behaviors or bring good fortunes to people. Despite the lack of concrete evidence for the claims of sorcerers,people will still be ready to grant that witchcraft works.

The problem with witchcraft is the lack of concrete evidence. Mostly hearsay and circumstantial situations. Epilepsy or schizophrenia are automatically labeled as proof of bewitching.

Christianity preaches that demons do exist. Matthew 8:28-34 records an instance where Jesus casts out demons and sends them to the pigs.

People normally do not know the difference between evil spirits/demons and the ability of a person to control someones else's life through magic. Is it possible then that someone can "send" bad spirits to someone else so as to be possessed?

There is no teaching in the bible which records such an instance. The bible records demon possession,but not the possibility of someone being jinxed.
If witchcraft is true,then it rubbishes most of Jesus's teachings.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

If someone has the power to control someones behaviors eg drive someone mad,then what happens to Free-will?what do we make of the teachings that God gave man the ability to chose his destiny through his works,whether to go to heaven or hell?

whats the point of judgment day?how will God judge those who were "possessed"?
If witchcraft is true,then Christianity is inherently false. Salvation through Jesus Christ is a myth.

What about ghosts?Ghosts are believed to be dead people who have come back in the form of spirits .The possibility of ghosts directly contradicts the teachings of God. The bible teaches of every human having only two places to go after death,Heaven or Hell. But it seems then Earth is a third choice!ghosts hang around haunted houses and buildings. Isn't there judgment for them?Can i become a ghost after i die so as to avoid going to hell or heaven?

The above are believes which do not hold any water in Christian theodicy. They bring up contradictions within the teachings of Christianity. And so either witchcraft is true or Christianity is true,but not both.

Dead sea Scrolls to be displayed in Jerusalem Museum

2008-05-14T10:24:00.002+07:00

One of the most important biblical archaeological find in the 20th century will be on display in Jerusalem this week as Israel celebrates its 60 years of independence.The dead Sea scrolls were discovered in the qumran caves in 1the 1960's.

The scrolls contained almost all of the Old testament books found in the Bible.And even contained a complete book of Isaiah.The Dead Sea scrolls were dated to the year 150 BC.
The significance of the scrolls was that it confirmed that the modern day Hebrew bible had never been altered or changed as many critics claimed.
For example the book of Isaiah on the scrolls is completely similar to the book of Isaiah on the modern day Hebrew bible.

The scrolls also play a significant role for Israel as it celebrates its 60th anniversary.They show that Israel as a nation existed for many thousands of years in the disputed land.Ruled by many Kings and eventually the Romans.

Manchester United Does it Yet Again!

2008-05-11T23:04:00.002+07:00

Manchester united have clinched the Barclay's Premier League cup once again.A first half goal from Christian Ronaldo set the mood rolling after Rooney was fouled inside the D.A well taken penalty from Ronaldo sent the keeper diving the wrong way for a perfect goal.

Substitute Ryan giggs finished off Wigan athletic at 81minutes with the second goal.Wigan seemed ready to spoil the party for Red devils with a few close calls.But the attacking force of Tevez,Rooney and Ronaldo was too much to contain.

Chelsea on the other hand,squandered a lead at the last minute to draw with Bolton 1-1.A Win for Chelsea and a draw for Man U would have made Chelsea title winners.

This is United's 10th Barclay's Premiership title making it the team with the most number of title wins.Manchester United also won the title last year.

Eyes are now set for Moscow when United meet rivals Chelsea in the finals of the Champions league on May 21st.

But for now,sorry all you Arsenal fans,who wished ManU would lose,and sorry to chelsea for fighting so hard to level points with ManU and end up with nothing.

Is Kenya a Sucker for The West?

2008-05-10T13:46:00.002+07:00

After Raila called Zimbabwe "a major embarrassment"(probably meaning Robert Mugabe),,some Zimbweans reacted angrily to his remarks and said that Raila and Kenya is always a sucker for the US and the UK.

Kenya has a very tight relationship with the US and the UK.The UK which is Kenya's former colonial power has major interests in Kenya,business wise in tourism,agriculture,government contracts,military training and a host of other social welfare relief programmes.

Although' Kenya's dependency on aid accounts for less than 10% of the budget,the Us and UK influence on the countries economy is huge.

For example 250,000 British tourists visited Kenya last year,making it the prime source of tourist revenue for Kenya.American tourists numbered close to 100,000.
There are an estimated 20,000 British citizens living and working in Kenya. American citizens are about 10,000 living and working in Kenya.

Last year a report said that the US government had increased military aid to Kenya by nearly 800% since the September 11th attacks.Kenya's relations with the US had been cemented especially after the Nairobi august bombings 1998.With Kenya and Us working closely on the "war on terror".
Sadly Kenyan security forces arrested many suspected "Muslim extremists" just to appease the US.Many were innocent.Some were abducted and tortured.

The Us conducts regular military operations at the coast.The UK for a long time had a permanent training ground in Nanyuki in central province.(its not clear whether it still there or not).

Kenya is therefore very much Dependant on US and UK.Economic sanctions on Kenya would devastate the country and potentially lead it to collapse.

After the contested election dispute in Kenya,the US and UK exerted pressure immediately for a quick solution to the crisis.

With the violence at its peak,deaths numbered to 700, the US and UK threatened economic sanctions on the government of Kenya.Even threatening to bar many Kenyan politicians and their families from travel to the US and UK.Visits from Jendayi frazer,condoleeza rice and a host of diplomats was the order of the day.

Within just 2 months,the Kenyan politicians bowed to immense pressure from the two governments and reached an agreement.
The US andUK quickly showed their support for the peace accord and vowed to do their best to ensure it succeeds.

It seems that the US and the UK are not ready to see such a close ally like Kenya collapse into political uncertainty.The US in particular does not have many stable friends in the horn of Africa.
Kenya being the most economically developed in the region,it would be a big time loss for the US and the UK.

But does it mean that Kenya can be bullied into making political decisions, by the US and UK threatening sanctions and withdrawal of Military aid, whenever Kenya has a problem?

Is Mugabe therefore a hero of some sorts by refusing to bow down to pressure form the West?But at what cost?

Kenya talks tough on Zimbabwe

2008-05-10T12:37:00.005+07:00

Kenyan leaders have been mounting pressure on Robert Mugabe to restore democracy after the disputed elections.Official results announced showed opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai receiving more votes than Robert Mugabe but without the 50% threshold needed to be declared a clear winner.

Kenyan Prime minister Raila Odinga hit out at the AU(african Union) for not coming out strongly in dealing with Zimbabwe (read Mugabe).

MDC,Morgan's party had already paid a visit to Raila in April before the results were anounced.
A run-off date between MDC and Zanu has not yet been set due to the potentially violent atmosphere prevailing.Fresh attacks by government forces on opposition supporters have surfaced.With doctors treating torture victims saying the violence is escalating at a dramatic pace.22 people have died and 900 injured,almost all cases perpuated by government forces.

The Kenyan government through the foreign affairs minister Moses Wetangula on Thursday urged Mugabe to adhere to the tenets of democracy stop the country from degenerating into conflict.He said that the people of Zimbabwe should be let to exercise the freedom to elect the government of their choice.

Zimbabwe's annual inflation is the worst in the world at over 100,000%.A loaf of bread back in february cost about 78 pounds(150$ us dollars)!Mugabe who propelled Zimbabwe to good economic gains back in the 90's has turned into a modern day dictator.Expelling white farmers and businessmen.

The country's poor face starvation as mugabe clings on to power.Coupled with an AIDs pandemic,the country is quickly degenerating into failed state status.Already the UK,Us and a host of the West have put sanctioned on the Zimbabwe government further dooming the countries economy.

Prime minister Raila Odinga said Zimbabwe was a major embarrassment to Africa,and yet the rest of Africa kept quite.

Contrary to the election violence witnessed in Kenya,Zimbabwe has not degenerated into full scale civil unrest.

Kenya is one of the few African countries that have come out to openly criticize Robert Mugabe's regime.

Hillsong United coming to Malaysia

2008-05-10T09:52:00.002+07:00

Hillsong United the famous Australian youth singers will be performing in PetalingJaya at the Glad tidings church on 28th Wednesday night.The youth ministry is part of Hillsong Church Australia.The band is led by Joel Houston the son of the senior pastor of Hillsong Church Brian Houston.

The Christian community here in Malaysia is very much excited about the concert.The tickets are selling fast.A ticket going for 50RM(about 1000kshs)

Visit their youtube channel here

Check out some of their concerts here

Dinesh D'souza VS Peter Singer Debate

2008-05-07T10:12:00.002+07:00

Dinesh D'Souza debates Peter Singer at Biola University. They will address the topic of God’s existence and it’s meaning for human flourishing.

WATCH

A debate between well known Christian Apologists Dinesh D'souza and atheist Peter singer on a wide range of topics touching on God's existence problem of evil and suffering etc.

I must say i was very disappointed by dinesh's performance on this debate.Peter singer's arguments were nothing new.The classical arguments against God's existence.mainly focusing on the problem of evil.
Dinesh seemed not to have a proper grasp on the counter arguments of the problem of evil,and he did miserably in defending his position on the matter.

Dinesh did not even use the free will defense by alvin plantinga to properly argue against the problem of evil.Even at one time saying that he did not know why there is evil and suffering.

Peter singer in my own view,was ok.In fact he's a very "mild" atheist. But dinesh did not capitalize on the opportunity.Instead he opened his speech on a totally unrelated topic about the problems of atheism,the injustices of former atheists,and the dangers of eliminating religion from society.I agree with some of his points,but that was not the topic of discussion.The topic was on God's existence and he should have started off with arguments in support of this position first.

When the question time from the audience reached,D'souza answered well,but at times strayed off the topic of the questions asked.He sometimes had very long answers to the questions.

Peter singer,well,there is really nothing much i can say about him,he wasn't exceptional,he was not the crowd's favorite.Compared to very loud Christopher Hitchens,the vial spitting Richard dawkins and other prominent atheists,Peter singer was rather dull.

In conclusion,Peter Singer was more on point than Dinesh.Peter failed to account for the source of moraliy in an atheistic worldview.Dinesh failed to substatially mount good arguments for God's existence.

Theory of Knoweldge and Wordlviews

2008-04-26T21:55:00.003+07:00

In the very first philosophy classess one of the major topics taught is Epistemology.Which focuses on questions like "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", and "What do people know?".

This is a very important subject because people shape their lives and world views on their epistemology.Some people have suggested that inorder to choose between world views eg to choose between determinism and free will,atheism and theism,you have to have a certain epistemology or theory of knowledge(which is free from any metaphysical prejudices) and then apply it to the facts of experience or nature and then decide what reality is all about.

It may seem reasonable to say that we should ask ourselves how we know what we know,and then proceed to compare with what we know,so as to get a grip on what is reality/factual.
One of the respected Christian Theologian the late Greg Banhsen showed that its impossible to develop an epistemology without already presupposing something about reality.

An example he gave is:

Imagine you have an Apple farm.Inorder for you to sell your apples you will need to sort the good apples from the bad apples..So you decide to develop the first ever Apple sorting machine.
This machine will sort the good apples from the bad apples.This machine is a method of apple sorting.

The big question is,would you be able to develop such a machine if you did not know in advance a good apple from a bad apple?
The answer is obviously no.You need some prior knowledge of good apples from bad apples.

The same applies to almost all metaphysical questions.If you do not know something about reality,then you cannot devise a method which "sorts"truth and false about reality.Therefore you cannot even devise an epistemology.

Banhsen shows that everyone begins with a worldview and conception of reality.So neutrality is illusionary.
Philosophical methodism,which is the view that method takes precedence over every other consideration in philosophy.
One first gets a method of "knowing" then you argue about ethics and metaphysics.The apple sorting machine shows the impossibility of philosophical methodism.

Watch Banhsen's full lecture here.Very interesting.

UK Documentary innacurate report on Kenya

2008-04-23T01:46:00.003+07:00

Channel 4 a UK TV station released a documentary called Kenya's Human Time bomb.

The documentary showed a chilling side of the post election violence that would leave even Kenyans surprised.
Channel 4 is known for stirring controversy and blowing situations out of proportion.In 2007 the channel aired a documentary called undercover mosque.Which basically said that UK's Muslims were fanning violence,racism segregation and supported terrorist activities.Police claimed that the programmed had misrepresented the views of Muslim preachers and clerics by misleading editing.

This time channel 4's target was Kenya.And the programme could not come at a worse time when the two opposing leaders in the election fiasco had signed a historic peace deal,and a grand coalition government formed.Just when tourism numbers had started picking up and the economy was back on track,the producers had to go ahead and totally misrepresent the political situation in Kenya.

The documentary focused on the Mt Elgon conflict between the government forces and a miltia calling itself the Saboat Land Defences Forces.AS i type this,the presence of the SLDF has been largely wiped out in mt Elgon area.Many of the soldiers having fled deep into the jungle.The Kenyan armed forces have setup a permanent base in the area,with helicopter patrols,tanks and land troops continually patrolling the area.Calm has returned to the area,though there are a few more displaced people.

The problem with the documentary is,they portrayed the SDLF as a militia which is about to take over the country.
They did not mention the massive security operation that has virtually wiped out 80% of the presence of the SDLF forces in the area.With most of them having fled to neighboring Uganda.And some to
Tranzoia district.

The documentary insinuated that Kenya is not stable and the militia could drive Kenya to a civil war!
I am sure over 90% of Kenyans would tell you that they have never seen an SDLF militia apart from hearing or seeing in the media.

The reporter who sadly has lived in Kenya most of his life(as he said so in the documentary) visited Internally displaced people and concluded that the reasons for the post-election violence was overpopulation.
Again no mention of illegally allocated Land which was the driving force for the bitterness that pit tribes against each other.

He did not stop there,he went to visit burn victims in Kitale District hospital and interviewed survivors of the recent clashes caused by the SDLF miltia.The crammed hospitals and children with 1st and 2nd degree burns were splashed on the screen for the world to see what type of country Kenya is.

At the end of the report the conclusion was rather unsettling "Kenya is still on the grip of wide spread unrest,without urgent measures,one of Africa's great hopes will become yet another failed state."

Its this kind of one-sided reporting that has made the image of African countries shattered and drove away potential investors and tourists.

One only needs to take a flight to Kenya to see that Kenya is nowhere close to being a failed state.There is peace and calm.The government is working,The economy is functioning and tourists are streaming back to its lovely reserves and beaches.

NB: If you want to watch the documentary leave a comment or send me an email on ernestombayo@yahoo.com
and i will post a link to the documentary.

Problems with "the problem of evil"

2008-04-23T01:26:00.002+07:00

In the last post i posted the problem of evil.One of the arguments most atheists/agnostic would say is the strongest argument against the existence of god.but is the argument logically valid?

breaking it down from premise 5
5.All-benevolent beings who can eliminate evil will do so immediately when they become aware of it.
it can be argued that unless the benevolent being has good reasons to
allow the evil.maybe to bring about a greater good or not to interfere with free will of the creatures.eg a father who allows his child to receive measles vaccinations jabs will allow the child to suffer the pains of needle injections so as to save the child from dieing from measles.

6.God is opposed to all evil.
technically yes.if the evil will bring a greater a good or will not interfere with free-will.

7.God can eliminate evil completely and immediately. (conclusion from 2) Whatever the end result of suffering is, God can bring it about by ways that do not include suffering.

this does not seem to be true.it would seem logically impossible to bring about such things as
compassion courage and endurance without any suffering.infact Peace and harmony would be senseless for creatures who have never experienced any suffering and evil.all of this are strong soul building theodicies for Christians.

it would also seem impossible for God to bring about free choices if he took away peoples ability to choose to cause suffering to other people.

God has no reason not to eliminate evil. (conclusion from 7.1)

this is false.from the rebuttal above.and also we have no-way of knowing whether God has or does not have reason to9 allow evil and suffering.we need to be omniscient ourselves to have that kind of information.

therefore conclusion 8,9,10 are all false.

Alvin plantinga's FreeWill defense has been hailed as the argument that sent the problem of evil to the coffers.i'll take a look it in the next post.

The Problem Of Evil And Suffering argument:Dead or not?

2008-04-19T21:26:00.004+07:00

The problem of evil and suffering is the old age question that everybody has asked themselves at one stage of their lives or the other.
"if God exists why is there so much evil and suffering?"

Is this a logical problem or an emotional problem.Some may argue its an evidential problem for theists.

The consensus in the Philosophy world is that the logical problem of evil is bunk,dead and is not logically valid.

But some atheist do not agree.

Its rather difficult to show how the existence of God is affected by evil and suffering.So the argument has to have many premises which try to show atleast the Christian concept of God is unlikely.The argument however does not show why it should lead someone to atheism,rather than deism ot any other reliogion that does not teach omniscience or omnipotence of God.

The logical problem of Evil goes like:

God exists. (premise)
God is omnipotent and omniscient. (premise — or true by definition of the word "God")
God is all-benevolent. (premise — or true by definition)
All-benevolent beings are opposed to all evil. (premise — or true by definition)
All-benevolent beings who can eliminate evil will do so immediately when they become aware of it. (premise)
God is opposed to all evil. (conclusion from 3 and 4)
God can eliminate evil completely and immediately. (conclusion from 2)
1. Whatever the end result of suffering is, God can bring it about by ways that do not include suffering. (conclusion from 2)
2. God has no reason not to eliminate evil. (conclusion from 7.1)
3. God has no reason not to act immediately. (conclusion from 5)
God will eliminate evil completely and immediately. (conclusion from 6, 7.2 and 7.3)
Evil exists, has existed, and probably will always exist. (premise)
Items 8 and 9 are contradictory; therefore, one or more of the premises is false: either God does not exist, evil does not exist, or God is not simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, and all-benevolent (i.e. God is omnipotent and omniscient but not all-benevolent, omnipotent and all-benevolent but not omniscient, or omniscient and all-benevolent but not omnipotent.

Manchester United 2 - Arsenal 1

2008-04-14T11:00:00.002+07:00

Deafening silence continues to scream from Arsenal fans,especially Kenyans who's hopes of the premiership were dashed yet again by Manchester United.

After alot of tough talk from the Arsenal fans who apparently had not leanred there lesson from the 4-0 drubbing they received at the hands of United,Arsenal looked a sad and confused team in the second half yesterday.With only a few good chances here and there.

Emmanuel Adebayor scored for the gunners at the start of the second half.But the lead was cut short by Ronaldo by a well taken penalty.William Gallas apparently thought he was playing handball when he tried to stop the ball using his left arm.

Hargreaves finished off the gunners with what is perhaps the free-kick of the season.Lehman watched the ball cruise to the far right of the goal post.

The BBC summed up the game in their website with a message that will sent sleepless nights to even the most ardent arsenal supporters.

"The result all-but ends Arsenal's hopes of winning the title and after their Champions League exit at the hands of Liverpool in midweek, means they will end a third successive season trophyless."

So i hope Arsenal supporters will keep quite and watch the Big boys show how its done.

Chelsea,you are next!

New Cabinet:Has PNU made a Tactical Blunder?

2008-04-13T22:37:00.002+07:00

The much awaited cabinet is finally here.The full list is here.
Now PNU seems to have worried about staying in power rather than serving the Kenyan people.ODM can put a smile in their faces after acquiring 5 key ministries which directly involve development of the country. These are :
1.ministry of roads - kipkalya kones
2.ministry of local government - musalia mudavadi
3.ministry of agriculture - william ruto
4.ministry of lands - james orengo
5.ministry of tourism. - najib balala

It now means that ODM controls ministries which deal with 2 of the biggest earners to the kenyan economy.agriculture and tourism.

The roads ministry which is usually a hotbed for corruption through sleazy tenders to incompetent road contractors is now headed by kipkalya kones from the odm camp. But perhaps the most sensitive ministry odm has acquired is lands ministry.with the election violence mainly dealing with land allocation,it will be intresting to see how james orengo will deal with land issues affecting the idp's who are mainly from kibaki's kikuyu tribe.
Land grabbing which is the norm in most kenyan provinces might be on a rapid decline if james orengo decides to act seriously on land grabbers.

What is interesting in the new cabinet list is that pnu decided to settle for positions that will work to ensure their grip on power.it seems pnu was not interested in giving up any of the key power ministries for the sake of development oriented ministries. Looking at key ministries for pnu,

1.minister for internal security and provincial adminstration: prof george saitoti
2.minister for defence - yusuf haji
3.minister for justice and constitutional affairs: - martha karua
4.minister for finance: amos kimunya
5.minister for foreign affairs: moses wetangu’la

This has to be a very bad tactical approach for PNU.Any positive developments infrastructure-wise will be a score for odm come 2012 elections. If farmers are able to get cheap fertilizers and incentives,coupled with good prices and loans,the agriculture sector will boom.and this will be attributed to odm. Better roads and massive upgrading of the roads system will also be attributed to odm,even though most of the current projects were started by the pnu government!

Another flag for odm is the local governemt held by musalia mudavadi.the ministry is in charge of all local authorities, which wield plenty of influence in matters local infrastructure and governance. These range from street lighting, road construction, maintenance and repair, regulation of trade and commerce in their jurisdiction, collection of cess and other levies, issuance of trade licences and permits and the general order through by-laws.

A booming tourism industry will also be a green light for odm.players in the industry will have better confidence to work with an odm government.the local people will also feel the effects of a booming tourism industry if the trickle effect is properly coordinated. Though pnu has control over the finance ministry,they still have to seek permission from parliament for any spending on ministries.odm can easily defeat the budget incase of skewed allocation of funds to certain ministries.

But all-in-all the 40 member cabinet will cost the kenyan economy 2 billion.

The Properties Of the Cause Of The Universe.

2008-04-09T02:55:00.002+07:00

In the 1920's Hubble discovered that Galaxies were receding from each other.This meant that the Universe was expanding predicted by Einsteins theory of relativity.This revelation has astounding implications.That if we reverse the expansion,we end up with an infinitely dense Singularity.This where the Big bang theory originates from.
Hubble's discoveries have led to the undeniable fact that our universe had a beginning some 15 billion years ago.

Philosopher William Lane Craig who has championed the Cosmological Argument has showed that the Cause of the universe must have the following properties.

Non-Temporal and Non-spatial

As the Cause of Space and Time,the Cause of the universe cannot be bound by space and time and hence must be non-temporal.It must transcend space and time.

Changeless and Immaterial.

Something can only be timeless if its unchanging.Something can only be changeless only if its immaterial

Very Powerful
Since it created all matter,energy space and time the cause of the universe must possess an alot of power.

Personal

Why should the cause of the universe be personal
1. The only things we know that are immaterial are abstract objects such as numbers and the mind.But abstract objects do not stand in Causal relations.Therefore the transcedant Cause of the universe must be a Mind.
2. Free Agent or Impersonal Mechanical Cause
Trying to account for a temporal effect from a timeless Cause which is mechanical is problematic. if it was a mechanical cause,then the Cause could never exist independent from its effect,for if the sufficient condition of the effect is given,then the effect must be given as well.
The only way for the cause to be timeless but for its effect to begin in time is for the cause to be a personal agent who freely choses to create an effect without any determinant conditions.

Who would win: Atheists Philosophers Vs Theist Philosophers?

2008-04-08T12:36:00.001+07:00

If i had the Power and resources to hold a big debate on National or international media on thiesm vs atheism,i would do it in a rather different manner.I would pull 3 of the big Christian Philosophers and 3 of the Big Atheist Philosophers and engage in a 3 day long debate.With Each day having a different topic based on the Arguments for and against God.
This in the hope to show which side,theism or atheism is the most logical position.

So who would make the list of the 3 Atheistic Philosophers?

1.Michael Martin

- He's a very well learned man,with a Phd in Philosophy - analytical,Philosophy of religion science law and even sport.
He has published several books in defense of Atheism and arguments against the existence of God eg The Case against Christianity,atheism morality and meaning,the impossibility of god etc.He' credited with the Transcendental Argument against the existence of god.
- Martin had a debate with Christian Philosopher Phil Hernandes back in 1997.

So Martin is probably one of the best Atheist philosophers out there.He would be the Team leader of the Atheist Group.

2.Dan Dennet

-He's a prominent American Philosopher, at Tufts University.He's versed with philosophy of mind,philosophy of science and cognitive sciences and theory of evolution.
- He's most notable debate was with Dinesh D'souza.Another Christian Philosopher.

3.Michael Shermer
- Famous Skeptic who is the founder of the Skeptic society,and editor of the Skeptic magazine.

On the Christian Side:

1. ALvin Plantinga
He's one of the greatest living philosophers of our time.He is famous for the Free will defense that tries to explain why there is suffering and evil in the world.He has a couple of audio eg one of the favorite i have listened to is, Against Materialism lecture.You can listen or download it here.oddly enough Plantinga has never engaged in any public debate with an atheist or agnostic.

2.William Lane Craig
is an American philosopher and New testament scholar who has had the most number of public debates with atheists.He's famous for the kalam Cosmological argument.And he's offered one the best arguments for the existence of God.
here are some of his audio debates

3.Richard Swirnburne
is an eminent British philosopher and professor who deals with the philosophy of religion.for more info on him read here.

Topics for discussion in order:
1. Cosmological Argument
2.Materialism
3.Problem of Evil and Suffering
4.Divine hiddenness
5.Free will
6.God's Attributes

The debate to be held in a conference where the audience are not university students,but Philosophy lecturers,Scientists,Critical thinkers and theologians.

Without letting your prejudice on Theism and Atheism cloud your judgment,which side do you think would present the most compelling arguments?

How Does God Know He's Omniscient?

2008-04-03T15:07:00.002+07:00

Sorry guys for the lack of updates.I m now back andd posts will be made very often.
A poster at the internet infidels website which is mostly an atheist site had a very interesting argument against God's omniscience.The poster aka Trendkill gave me permission to post his argument here.

"Omniscience is defined herein as the knowledge of all facts. Presumably, any God with a reasonably close resemblance to the God of Theism knows everything there is to know about himself by virtue of being himself, and he knows everything about his creation based on the fact that he created it all and continuously sustains its existence. My question is, how is it exactly that he can know that everything he is aware of constitutes everything that exists (which knowledge is a necessary condition for omniscience)?

In particular, what allows him to determine that he and that which he created do not exist in a sort of "causal enclosure", a self-contained system which is really just a small part of a larger world that it is causally unrelated to? If an omniscient God is possible, there must be some logically-conceivable mechanism which would allow him to know that he is not inside such an enclosure, and that the limits of his awareness are in fact the limits of existence. But it seems to me that there can't be such a mechanism, since all his mental inputs and the resulting beliefs could easily be the same whether he's lord of everything or whether he's just the God of a small sub-universe.

Of course we could just assume that he is omniscient and then note that by definition he must know he is omniscient; and there's no obvious contradiction in this. But what I want to focus on is the how--what sort of mechanism could conceivably give God the knowledge that there is nothing outside of what he perceives as being the entire world? It seems to me that this is the crux of the problem.

I assume here that knowledge, whatever else it may be, is at least a form of true belief which has a particular kind of causal relationship with the thing that it is about. Knowledge can't be just any true belief; if I believe something that just so happens to be true, but my belief was arrived at arbitrarily and has no basis in reality, then that's not knowledge, it's simply coincidence. If we have knowledge of some particular fact of reality, which knowledge we will call "x", that means there's some causal connection which we can trace from x to the thing that x is about, and the nature of that connection is such that it justifies x and disconfirms ~x. Furthermore, this connection must be such that it would not serve to justify x if x was false.

So if God is to know that he and his creation are all there is, it's not enough that he believe it and that he be correct; it is also necessary that the subject of his belief be connected to his belief by a causal relationship which justifies that belief and disconfirms contrary beliefs (such as the "causal enclosure" hypothesis), and which would not justify the belief if it was false. But how could there possibly be such a relationship? The differences between the enclosure and the non-enclosed world entail no differences at all in the kinds of mechanisms which are available to support his beliefs. Indeed, the causal enclosure hypothesis is designed specifically so that the enclosure is indistinguishable from a non-enclosed world in this respect. For any state of affairs that comprises everything God is aware of, what is to prevent him from hypothesizing that this state of affairs is not exhaustive as it appears, but actually exists inside an enclosure of the kind I have described? And if he does so, he will find that the non-enclosure world and the contents of the causal enclosure are identical in terms of the belief-justifying mechanisms they incorporate. Any differences between the two "worlds" would not be reflected in the causal chains they contain, and thus beliefs about those differences could not have the causal support that would allow them to be considered knowledge; e.g., any causal mechanism that justifies the enclosure hypothesis in both worlds obviously cannot be a mechanism that would fail to justify the hypothesis if it was false.

At this point, I'm somewhat convinced that this shows a logical contradiction within the concept of an omniscient God, given the way in which I define "omniscience" and the constraints I place on definitions of "knowledge" above. I think the weakest area is probably the part where I set out those definitional constraints; knowledge is famously tricky to define, and even a partial definition seems like it could be easily questioned. But provided these constraints are reasonable, there appears to be at least one fact about the world that it is logically impossible for him to know; and if omniscience entails knowing all facts, then logic precludes his omniscience."

What are your views on this argument?

Philosophy Logic and Its Humour

2008-03-19T02:44:00.002+07:00

There are certain things that made me fall in love with Philosophy.When I was in High school i never quite understood why people bothered with such fileds as philosophy which does deals with Largely Big questions in life which no one really cares to know the answer.

For example why should i be bothered with the question, Why am I Here?or Are there Objective Truths in The Universe?

This was until one day i was bored at the cyber cafe and googling some facts on Astronomy(specifically black holes),that i ended up stumbling on the question posted on one of the Atheist site

Can God create A Rock which is too heavy for him To lift?.
Ofcourse the first answer that came to mind was no.Then i realized upon reading the article further that the question had much deeper connotations.
And this is how i became fascinated with Philosophy.

So in this post i will just show you how exciting Philosophy and Logic can be.And even humorous when you discover your mistakes in answering some of the questions.

do you spot something peculiar with this:

A.Statement A is False

so do we take that sentence to be true or to be false? If A is true it states that A is false, but if A is false, then not A is true and so not statement A is false is statement A is true.

Above is a self referential statement which produces some sort of circular logic.With no real meaning.

Consider another statement that says

1.There exists no true statements.

so if the sentence is true,then its self refuting!

Another one is Eliminative Materialism

which says that "nothing exists except matter",if were true,then neither it nor any other idea would exist.

Another self refuting statement is

"Nothing Can Be known".

Can the above claim be known?

William Lane Craig Versus Frank Zindler Debate:

2008-03-18T06:26:00.002+07:00

Finally The William Lane Craig Vs Frank Zindler Debate is On youtube.This debate was held some few years back.William Lane Craig is a professor in Philosopher and New Testament Scholarship.Frank Zindler is Professor is Biology,zoology,linguistics and psychology.

The Topic of Discussion was Atheism Vs Christianity:Where does the evidence lead.

The moderator is the famous Atheists turned theist Lee Strobel who has produced the Case For Christ and The Case for a Creator.

Watch The Debate Here

You can easily navigate to the rest of the parts.

I'll post a short review of the debate later.

Enjoy!!

The Mind Boggling Logic Of Infinity

2008-03-12T01:32:00.002+07:00

Todays post is going to be a rather mind-boggling experience.Philosophy is closely related with mathematics especially when it comes to Set Theory.

What comes to mind when you think of the word infinity?It means having no limits or boundaries in time and space or in magnitude.

But can an actual infinity exist?Infinites in theory do exist,potential and conceptual infinites.

But think of a hotel with an infinite number of rooms with infinite number of guests.The hotel is full.Since every room is occupied.

But what happens when one guest leaves?The hotel now should not be full.it should have one room free.right? wrong!

infinity - 1 = infinity.

infinity + 1 = infinity.
So adding or subtracting from an infinite is pointless.it will still remain infinite.

So back to our hotel,it seems that our hotel will still be full even if 100 guests leave.How can that be and we can clearly see empty rooms?so is the hotel full or not?

This is one of the paradoxes of positing an actual infinite existing.It leads to logical absurdities.
The most famous pardoxes of actual infintes is called the Hilbertâ€™s Hotel Paradox.

It says:A(hypothetical) hotel with an infinite number of rooms, each of which is occupide by a guest. As there are an infinite number of rooms and an infinite number of guests, every room is occupied; the hotel cannot accomodate another guest. However, if a new guest arrives, then it is possible to free up a room for them by moving the guest in room number 1 to room number 2, and the guest in room number 2 to room number 3, and so on. As for every room n there is a room n + 1, every guest can be moved into a different room, thus leaving room number 1 vacant. The new guest, then, can be accommodated after all. This is clearly paradoxical; it is not possible that a hotel both can and cannot accommodate a new guest. Hilbertâ€™s Hotel, therefore, is not possible.

Another simpler example is,if an actual infinite past exists,then how long would it take to traverse that past?an infinite amount of time.Meaning that that past cannot be traversed.

If for example our universe always existed,,had an infinite past,then how long would it have taken the universe to reach the present time?an infinite amount of time.Meaning it would have never reached the present time.It would have forever existed in the past.

Atheists behaving Badly

2008-03-06T01:06:00.003+07:00

" Religion, as all god belief, is inherently evil because it devalues humanity and stifles diversity. There can be no progression for humanity as long as god belief prevails. Imagine if all the effort that has been put into god belief were instead put into bettering the human condition ? Imagine that on sundays instead of going to church to worship something you wished existed, you took that same time and money and donated yourself to a soup kitchen or to build a home for the poor. Imagine if everyone did good for the sake of improving ourselves rather then the hope of reward from some imaginary sky daddy ? God belief isn’t just bad for who it’s killed, it’s bad for all the reasons I just mentioned and more. If that’s something you can live with associating yourself with, then indeed, you have abandoned reality, and the rest of humanity."

Those were the harsh words posted on After Faith.
An atheist site dedicated to promoting atheism and of course attacking Theism,mostly Christianity.

The site does not really deal with philosophical objections to theists, or Christianity,its sort of a preach the "good news" sort of site.
The site is very much similar to a Christian site in many ways.The zeal expressed on by the author in spreading the message of atheism,and the absurdities of believing in a God are as fervent as a Jehovah witness website.

The author has another website which is called atheist network.
The site posts articles and news which try to show religion and in particular Christianity in a bad light.The site also has a community of atheist who meet to "exchange" ideas.

One might wonder why Jake,who believes religion is a waste of time,delusional and all, is himself soo dedicated to bashing it.I do not believe in Father Christmas,or Unicorns,or Fairy godmothers,but i do not spend money to open a website,start a community,even a radio show just to debunk unicorns.

It seems Jake and some neo-atheists spend quite alot of their lives dedicated to debunking a myth.
I wish the same time and energy would be spend to debunk zeus and other mythical figures that Christianity is put into the same category with by atheists.

Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are what many people would call "fundamentalist atheists".Traveling the world,writing books,documentaries and holding debates fiercely spreading the news that God is a myth.

A far cry from the definition of atheist."Someone who "simply" lacks the belief of gods or god."

Dawkins takes a sample of minority Muslim extremists and wacko end-of-the-world cult leaders and extends them to the 4 billion plus religious people in the world.

These atheist are reasoning in a rather peculiar way. "Religious people have killed innocent people,so religion is bad."

it doesn't take a genius to see the problem with this reasoning.just replace the word religious and religion with anything.and you will see the problem.

"Alcoholic drivers have killed many people.So alcohol is bad."
"Sex has led to spread of AIDS and HIV.so sex is bad"
"food has led many people to obesity.so food is bad."
"some atheist have killed people,so atheism is bad."

If we were to dismiss things because people abused them,then i believe 90% of everything would be bad.

Of course not all atheist reason like this, many indeed acknowledge that there is a fine line between religions,and also between abusers of religion and those who practice it gracefully.

Dawkins has since refined his way of thinking and these days says that religion provides a path to violence.

If a survey was taken of the number of religious people who killed others in the name of religion and those who did not kill others in the name of religion,many would agree that the percentage of those who did not kill others because of religion would number close to 98%.If we would take the 4billion plus people in the world against a couple of even thousands in the middle east,the ratio would still be higher close to negligible.

So how come these 98% haven't discovered this path that Dawkins says is very clear and defined.?
This 98% have never discovered that path for as far as humanity existed.of course there has always been a 2% of wackos.

Jake says that there cannot be progression in humanity if the belief in God persists.Yet another fallacy.
No proof no argument,simply an assertion.
Jake forgets the pioneers of science were theists.Isaac Newton, Galileo, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and many others.

Jake sort of implies that all scientists and current inventors are atheists.That anyone who beliefs in god cannot make any serious scientific advancement.Maybe he thinks that if you are a theist doctor or molecular biologists,atoms look different to you.Or you will not be able to comprehend the science behind it.Or somehow religion will warp your intelligence and you will not be able to invent anything.

Such posts like Jake's warrant no rebuttal.But for the sake of many who will stumble upon his site and many other atheistic websites which are "preaching the good news",then i am willing to spend a post or two on it.

Now BBC says Kibaki funded violence using Mungiki.

2008-03-05T19:54:00.002+07:00

BBC has published a story which says that Kibaki and members of the PNU government orchestrated and planned attacks against other tribes in the Rift Valley using the outlawed Mungiki sect.The article says leaders of the outlawed group met with president Kibaki in state-house to receive funds for the operations in rift valley.The rampaging Mungiki killed close to 100 people in Nakuru and Naivasha during the post-election violence. A policeman and a mungiki member have been mentioned in the article confessing to the states involvement.

Read The article here

If this is true,then it might explain how 300 plus mungiki youths could confidently demonstrate in the streets of Nairobi yet its illegal to be part of Mungiki in the first place.

Raila has mentioned that ODM will be pushing for internal Security ministry.It will be interesting to see how an ODM minister will deal with the Mungiki gang which controls many matatu routes in the city,central province and parts of Rift Valley.Mungiki is an extortionist gang that demands protection money to business but in particular public service vehicles.

People who do not comply are often attacked and sometimes killed.Last year the government led a massive campaign against the Mungiki where hundreds of them were killed.The Mungiki had almost vanished and many people had almost forgotten about them.

But it became clear that the government used mungiki youths in the Nakuru and Naivasha violence which led to deaths of 100 plus Kenyans.

Mungiki Youths demonstrate in Nairobi

2008-03-05T17:10:00.003+07:00

Youth who are suspected to be belonging to the outlawed Mungiki sect were dispersed today by anti-riot police as they protested along the CBD.They were demanding the release of former mungiki leader Maina Njenga.

The youths who were about 300 in number carried placards accusing the police of unwarranted arrest of their leader whom they regarded as a hero.

The police used tear gas to disperse them and stationed police officers all over the CBD to prevent the youths from re-assembling.

The protesters claimed in one of the posters that "4,500" youths were killed by police in a crack down on Mungiki last year.

Business and shops closed temporarily fearing the gang would resort to looting.

Story first published by capital fm.

Karua accuses Standard team of "Spirited Smear Campaign " Against Her

2008-03-03T10:24:00.004+07:00

Martha Karua yesterday held a press conference where she denied reports in the press that she was denied a visa to Switzerland.She came along with a copy of her passport which had a swiss visa dated 29th February.

Karua lashed out at the standard team for "a spirited smear campaign" against her,even though the standard did not mention her name in the news report.

In fact the Kenya times online is the one that revealed that her ministry was the one affected.Though it did not mention her name as well.

The standard team had before the peace deal was made,also published several news commentaries that implicated her and Mutula Kilonzo as the hardliners in the mediation process.

One such article was titled " PNU's Hurdles Undermining search for settlement."

The standard team has been largely anti-Kibaki administration since its offices were raided in 2006 by government officials in hooded masks.

Martha Karua has said she will not sue, though she will forward a complaint to the media council.

When asked why she did not travel to Switzerland,she said," because of the winter in Switzerland and also to relieve stress here in my country.My country is like heaven to me."

It still leaves questions as to why she had applied for an imprest of about 200,00 KShs if she knew she was not going to travel.

Karua also denied being in the list of those banned to travel to the US.

The list has not been released yet by the US government.

Martha Karua Denied Visa To Travel To Switzerland

2008-03-02T16:38:00.004+07:00

Minister For Justice Mrs Martha Karua has been denied entry into Switzerland. Kenya Times Online
reported that "A senior Cabinet Minister has been denied a Visa by the Swiss Embassy in Nairobi. The Cabinet Minister, who was set to travel to Switzerland last evening on official duty was forced to cancel the journey after being denied an entry Visa by the embassy. The Minister was to attend an international forum dubbed "Session of State Counsel Law" in Geneva that is scheduled to kick off tomorrow.

The Minister had applied for the Visa on Tuesday. Kenya’s delegation to the forum is headed by the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Dorothy Angote. Following the hitch, the Minister is said to have returned the Sh 200,000 imprest to the ministry."

The swiss embassy had earlier warned that it would take measures against people that it viewed were holding the talks back.

Koffi Annan has on many occasions said that a few people in the mediation team were a hindrance to an agreement. At one time Martha Karua was reported to have insulted Mr Annan and walked out of the meeting room.
Mutula kilonzo had to apologise on her behalf.At this juncture,Mr annan is said to have expressed his unwillingness to continue working with her.

The tough talking Karua is not new to controversy.In 2004 she was Car-jacked at the wee hours of the night with a Catholic Priest Father Dominic Wamugunda.Eye brows were raised as to what she was doing with a priest at 1 am.
In the same year she was at loggerheads with Kiss FM presenters Caroline Mutuku and Walter Mongare after the presenters unleashed a torrent of verbal attacks on her for failing to address the city's water problems(she was Minister for water)in the morning breakfast show.

Karua played a vital role in ensuring that Kibaki was sworn in despite the election irregularities.Her famous words still echo in many who watched her during the announcing of the results," Any election grievances can only be addressed by a court of law".

Such travel bans are usually replicated in the EU and usually followed up by the US.Martha Karua may not be able to travel to any of the major western partners of Kenya.
It seems likely that she will be joining her other PNU counterparts who have also been banned from travel to the US and UK for corruption related offences,Chris Murungaru,Kiraitu Murungi and David Mwiraria.

Update: Martha Karua has today denied being refused entry into Switzerland.She appeared on press with her passport stamped with a swiss visa.More updates coming as soon as we get them.

Deal Document that Raila and Kibaki Signed

2008-02-29T01:44:00.002+07:00

The deal is said to have been drafted by none other than Ugenya MP James Orengo.

Acting together for kenya agreement on the principles of partnership of the coalition government preamble: the crisis triggered by the 2007 disputed presidential elections has brought to the surface deep-seated and long-standing divisions within kenyan society. If left unaddressed, these divisions threaten the very existence of kenya as a unified country. The kenyan people are now looking to their leaders to ensure that their country will not be lost. Given the current situation, neither side can realistically govern the country without the other. There must be real power-sharing to move the country forward and begin the healing and reconciliation process. With this agreement, we are stepping forwarding together, as political leaders, to overcome the current crisis and to set the country on a new path.

As partners in a coalition government, we commit ourselves to work together in good faith as true partners, through constant consultation and willingness to compromise. This agreement is designed to create an environment conducive to such a partnership and to build mutual trust and confidence. It is not about creating positions that reward individuals. It seeks to enable kenya’s political leaders to look beyond partisan considerations with a view to promoting the greater interests of the nation as a whole. It provides the means to implement a coherent and far-reaching reform agenda, to address the fundamental root causes of recurrent conflict, and to create a better, more secure, more prosperous kenya for all. To resolve the political crisis, and in the spirit of coalition and partnership, we have agreed to enact the national accord and reconciliation act 2008, whose provisions have been agreed upon in their entirety by the parties hereto and a draft copy thereof is appended hereto. Its key points are:

• there will be a prime minister of the government of kenya, with authority to coordinate and supervise the execution of the functions and affairs of the government of kenya.

• the prime minister will be an elected member of the national assembly and the parliamentary leader of the largest party in the national assembly, or of a coalition, if the largest party does not command a majority.

• each member of the coalition shall nominate one person from the national assembly to be appointed a deputy prime minister.

• the cabinet will consist of the president, the vice-president, the prime minister, the two deputy prime ministers and the other ministers. The removal of any minister of the coalition will be subject to consultation and concurrence in writing by the leaders.

• the prime minister and deputy prime ministers can only be removed if the national assembly passes a motion of no confidence with a majority vote. • the composition of the coalition government will at all times take into account the principle of portfolio balance and will reflect their relative parliamentary strength.

• the coalition will be dissolved if the tenth parliament is dissolved; or if the parties agree in writing; or if one coalition partner withdraws from the coalition.

• the national accord and reconciliation act shall be entrenched in the constitution. Having agreed on the critical issues above, we will now take this process to parliament. It will be convened at the earliest moment to enact these agreements. This will be in the form of an act of parliament and the necessary amendment to the constitution

We believe by these steps we can together in the spirit of partnership bring peace and prosperity back to the people of kenya who so richly deserve it. Agreed this date 28 february 2008 ________________________ ________________________ hon. Raila odinga h.e. President mwai kibaki orange democratic movement government/party of national unity witnessed by: _________________________ _________________________ h.e. Kofi a. Annan h.e. President jakaya kikwete chairman of the panel president of the united republic of eminent african personalities tanzania and chairman of the african union the national accord and reconciliation act 2008 preamble:

there is a crisis in this country. The parties have come together in recognition of this crisis, and agree that a political solution is required. Given the disputed elections and the divisions in the parliament and the country, neither side is able to govern without the other. There needs to be real power sharing to move the country forward. A coalition must be a partnership with commitment on both sides to govern together and push through a reform agenda for the benefit of all kenyans. Description of the act:

An act of parliament to provide for the settlement of the disputes arising from the presidential elections of 2007, formation of a coalition government and establishment of the offices of prime minister, deputy prime ministers and ministers of the government of kenya, their functions and various matters connected with and incidental to the foregoing.

1. This act may be cited as the national accord and reconciliation act 2008.

2. This act shall come into force upon its publication in the kenya gazette which shall not be later than 14 days from the date of assent.

3. (1) there shall be a prime minister of the government of kenya and two deputy prime ministers who shall be appointed by the president in accordance with this section. (2) the person to be appointed as prime minister shall be an elected member of the national assembly who is the parliamentary leader of - (a) the political party that has the largest number of members in the national assembly;or (b) a coalition of political parties in the event that the leader of the political party that has the largest number of members of the national assembly does not command the majority in the national assembly.

(3) each member of the coalition shall nominate one person from the elected members of the national assembly to be appointed a deputy prime minister.

4.(1) the prime minister: a) shall have authority to coordinate and supervise the execution of the functions and affairs of the government of kenya including those of ministries;
b) may assign any of the coordination responsibilities of his office to the deputy prime ministers, as well as one of them to deputise for him;
c) shall perform such other duties as may be assigned to him by the president or under any written law.

(2) in the formation of the coalition government, the persons to be appointed as ministers and assistant ministers from the political parties that are partners in the coalition other than the president’s party, shall be nominated by the parliamentary leader of the party in the coalition. Thereafter there shall be full consultation with the president on the appointment of all ministers.

(3) the composition of the coalition government shall at all times reflect the relative parliamentary strengths of the respective parties and shall at all times take into account the principle of portfolio balance. (4) the office of the prime minister and deputy prime minister shall become vacant only if - a) the holder of the office dies, resigns or ceases to be a member of the national assembly otherwise than by reason of the dissolution of parliament;
or b) the national assembly passes a resolution which is supported by a majority of all the members of the national assembly excluding the ex-officio members and of which not less than seven days notice has been given declaring that the national assembly has no confidence in the prime minister or deputy prime minister, as the case may be;
or c) the coalition is dissolved. (5) the removal of any minister nominated by a parliamentary party of the coalition shall be made only after prior consultation and concurrence in writing with the leader of that party.

5. The cabinet shall consist of the president, the vice-president, the prime minister, the two deputy prime ministers and the other ministers.

6. The coalition shall stand dissolved if:
a) the tenth parliament is dissolved; or b) the coalition parties agree in writing; or c) one coalition partner withdraws from the coalition by a resolution of the highest decision-making organ of that party in writing.

7. The prime minister and deputy prime ministers shall be entitled to such salaries, allowances, benefits, privileges and emoluments as may be approved by parliament from time to time.

8. This act shall cease to apply upon dissolution of the tenth parliament, if the coalition is dissolved, or a new constitution is enacted, whichever is earlier.

Details of The Deal

2008-02-28T22:50:00.003+07:00

The just signed and agreed deal has effectively created an Executive Prime minister post and 2 deputy prime ministers.

This is the structure of the deal

Cabinet
President
Executive PM
2 Deputy Prime Ministers
Vice President
Ministers

The Prime minister will supervise and co-ordinate all ministers, He can only be fired by a majority in Parliament through a vote of no confidence.
The president will still retain much of the powers he has, but he is unable to fire Cabinet ministers without the approval of the party coalition leader.Meaning that Kibaki cannot fire any of the ODM appointees.

The Cabinet slots will be shared according to party strength in parliament.In this case it will be a 50-50 deal.

The coalition will collapse at the end of the sitting parliament or if the parties so agree,or if one party withdraws.

Other details of the agreement have not been divulged yet eg, What happens if the coalition collapses,the roles of the deputy PM's and how the deal will be made law,through a constitutional amendment or through an act of parliament.

Kenya: Success! ODM and PNU Strike Deal.

2008-02-28T21:25:00.004+07:00

The two protagonists in the Kenyan Crisis Mr. Raila Odinga and Mr Mwai Kibai have finally reached an agreement.An all smiling Mr.Annan emerged from the closed door meetings held today in Nairobi to announce the historic victory to the Kenyan people.

Raila and Kibaki put their signatures to the deal at a ceremony held at Harambee house today.

The details of the agreement are to be announced tomorrow.

But unconfirmed reports indicate that a prime ministers post with some executive powers has been created. the deal has given ODM and PNU a 50-50 power-sharing agreement. two deputy PMs will also be created.

The Prime minister can only be fired by a majority in parliament.

The deal sounds almost too good to be true, but Kenyans are still skeptical. Mwai Kibaki is known for breaking promises. Until the agreement is entrenched in the constitution or passed by parliament, the deal is still a "gentleman's agreement".

Mangu High School Emerges Tops in KCSE Exam Results

2008-02-28T17:31:00.002+07:00

NAIROBI, February 28 - Mangu High School dethroned Starehe Boys Centre to emerge tops in last year's Kenya Certificate Secondary (KCSE) examinations.

Precious Blood Riruta, Loreto Girls and Limuru Girls came in second, third, and fourth respectively.

Nairobi School, Strathmore, Alliance High, Sunshine and Light Academy followed in that order to make the top ten schools.

Starehe Boys’ Morris Muchiri was named the top student. He was followed by Brian Mwiti( Mangu), Timothy Mwangi (Starehe), Daniel Mwachio (Starehe) and Neresio Mchigo (Mangu) who were named in the five list of students.

Starehe Boys and Mangu High produced seven students among the top 10.

Last year about 276,224 candidates sat the national examination administered by the Kenya National Examination Council (KNEC).

In 2006, Starehe boys bounced back to the top position after a year of misfortunes following the death of its founding director, Dr Geoffrey Griffin.

Breaking News: ODM's Majiwa Sworn In As Nairobi Mayor

2008-02-27T21:56:00.003+07:00

ODM's Godfrey Majiwa is the new Nairobi Mayor. Majiwa was sworn in today after Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, on Tuesday directed the Town Clerk, Mr John Gakuo, to reconvene a full council meeting today so that the candidates could draw a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ lot to decide the winner.
But the two parties agreed on a power-sharing deal where PNU's candidate is the deputy.

Majiwa had tied with PNU's Mr Njoroge Chege with 42 votes each.

Elsewhere in the country, ODM scooped mayoral seats in almost all the major towns in Nyanza, Coast, Western and Rift Valley.

PNU was restricted to central province,winning in only Kisii,Webuye,Turkana and Kimilili outside of central.

The Nakuru elections were postponed after councillors engaged each other in brawls.

Kenya: On the Brink Of Civil War

2008-02-27T08:47:00.002+07:00

Story by NATION Team
Publication Date: 2/27/2008

Professionals, traders and politicians from central Kenya contribute money to protect their community in case of confrontation if Annan-led talks flop while elders secretly gather, arm and reinforce thousands of young warriors in remote parts of Rift Valley in preparation for war, NATION investigations reveal

By NATION Team

On February 15, a group of professionals, business people and politicians from central Kenya held a secret meeting in Nairobi to discuss the post-election violence.

The closed-door meeting addressed a wide range of issues, from displacement of members of their community, to resettlement, help for traders who had lost investments in the violence and how to protect the community from attacks in future.

The climax of the meeting was a fund raiser apparently to help internally displaced people living in camps across the country.

By the time the meeting ended, Sh4 million had been raised and given to the coordinating committee.

This was one in a series of similar private meetings in which huge amounts of money have been raised, which the leaders say is to sustain the IDPs and help them go back to their farms where they will have to start life afresh.

Prominent businessmen and industrialists have been contributing between Sh500,000 and Sh1 million to this effort.

Those living overseas

Sitting MPs whose constituencies have been hosting internally displaced people have been attending the harambees or sending money. Also targeted for contributions are professionals from the community.

Those living overseas have been sending in money to the meetings which have so far taken place in Nairobi, Juja, Naivasha and Meru.

Sources told the Nation that at least Sh34 million had been raised in Nairobi, with some of the meetings taking place in an exclusive private members’ club and others in Westlands.

From Nairobi and Central Province to the Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western, communities in Kenya are looking inwards, retreating to the villages and mobilising resources, preparing for an eventuality that is too grave to contemplate.

The consensus across the board is that should the Kofi Annan efforts to resolve the presidential elections dispute fail, a new round of violence will break out in many parts of the country.

Some are warning of a more serious confrontation from the conflict that has so far left 1,000 people dead and some 350,000 displaced. “If the peace talks collapse, there will be war,” an elected opposition councillor in Eldoret, told the Daily Telegraph newspaper of London recently.

According to a report carried by the paper, an army of young warriors is being secretly armed and reinforced in remote areas of Rift Valley, preparing for war if the country’s knife-edge peace talks fail.

Elders here have organised thousands of men into militia units, each split into marksmen, foot soldiers, armourers, drivers and cooks.

“If Mr Kofi Annan cannot bring us an acceptable solution, men will fight and there will be shedding of blood,” said “Andrew”, 29, a militiaman who spoke to The Telegraph in Iten.

“That solution cannot include Mr Kibaki as president.”

He described how elders gathered hundreds of men at a time in clearings deep in the arid, unpoliced Kerio Valley below Iten, preaching war.

Such gatherings have in the past only been called to organise defence against cattle rustlers.

Now they have an alarming new function, linking the 11 sub-clans in the region to plan a united offensive to secure their land.

Elders have given each man a role — some are “sharpshooters” because of their skills with bows and arrows. Some, like Andrew, are drivers.

“I went from village to village collecting weapons, arrows, bows and spears, which I took to the frontline,” he said, describing his involvement in January’s fighting in Eldoret.

“Others took lorries filled with fighters. Others carried food cooked by our women to keep the fighters strong.”

“William”, 24, a teacher, said his job was to hammer house nails into arrow heads, many of which are dipped in poison concocted from roots and leaves.

“There were three in my team and we were making 1,200 arrows a day,” he said.

Since the Annan peace talks started, the war machine has slowed and fighters have been told to wait for orders.

“We are ready if they call us again, we are adding more arrows,” said “Peter”, a village butcher.

“We tried to have our voice heard at the ballot box, but they ignored us. We tried to protest peacefully, but the police shot us and tear- gassed us.

“It is very dangerous for people not to listen to us. Now we are ready to fight to the end,” he told the paper.

In Nairobi, one of the leaders who has featured prominently in the fund-raising meetings is a former parliamentary aspirant in one of the constituencies in Nairobi who after losing twice in his quest for Parliament has settled as a business person.

Political circles

Also said to be heavily involved is a business person with wide connections and who is known to be influential in business and political circles. These are the lead mobilisers who organise venues and contact members of the community for the harambees.

According to sources familiar with the initiatives, some of the money raised is meant to buy arms for self-defence. It is not clear the kind of weapons being stockpiled but our source said there had been talk of acquiring guns.

We established that the community’s militia is already in place and each member has a machete while there are other weapons being kept for them, which nonetheless no one is willing to disclose. The militia comprises mainly groups of youth who have been mobilised and lectured to defend their people should they be attacked.

At first, the Mungiki militia volunteered to help their kinsfolk who were being flushed out of the Rift Valley since they appeared defenceless.

They are said to have been the force behind the ruthless killings in Nakuru and Naivasha where about 100 people were killed.

The youths are being mobilised in the urban centres and upcountry where the exercise is being carried out by selected elders who have been picked to do the work having been involved or witnessed similar tasks during the Mau Mau war.

Signs of serious mobilisation taking place among the young people are evident from the casual talk in the villages in Central Province.

“Keep your weapon closer to you so that when the whistle is blown you are ready to defend your people” is a common phrase in the area.

Professionals who have in the past been known to be aloof in causes such as those championed by groups as Mungiki have this time round become the brains behind the militia groups.

They are assisting them by equipping them with organisational skills and generally preparing them for the anticipated war.

In other words, they are now the intelligence arm of the militia as well as funding the operations. Those who have retired after working with the armed forces have been instrumental and are offering their services in the spirit of community patriotism.

The justification for having such a militia to protect the community, the leaders, say is because when violence erupted in the Rift Valley, the attackers seemed to have been well organised and coordinated.

“Houses were burnt down, reducing our people to paupers while the police watched as property was looted and destroyed by organised gangs, yet these people had voted overwhelmingly for President Kibaki who also remained silent during the bloodshed,” said one of the organisers.

“We are not sure whether it will happen again. But we must be prepared in case we are attacked especially when we go back to our farms.”

In the North Rift, where many people are keenly following the talks at the Serena Hotel, residents are hoping for the best while preparing for the worst.

Renewed violence

In the streets of Eldoret Town, there has been talk that news of Mr Annan’s plane departing from the country without an acceptable political settlement will immediately throw the region into renewed violence akin to that which broke out after Mr Kibaki was declared president on December 30.

“If it turns out that the talks have failed to offer us a favourable solution, we will unleash all that we have prepared over the recent past to soldier on with our protests,” an elder and opinion leader in the area said.

Investigations by the Nation revealed a worrying development in which terror gangs, and the post-election violence itself, have assumed a life of their own far beyond the control of local political leaders or government.

In Uasin Gishu, the name of a local school has been changed from Ngarua to Kipnyigei primary school. The former name is associated with Central Province while the new one is local to the area.

International level

The school has a new motto too — “Success through war”. The authorities are yet to take action.

The situation here is not helped by reports of an arms racket at the international level, where guns are reportedly smuggled into the North Rift from neighbouring countries of Uganda, Sudan and Ethiopia for onward transmission to urban centres such as Eldoret and Nairobi.

This is being done ostensibly for local militia to arm themselves ahead of any fighting that could break out in case the mediation talks collapse.

Militia in the Rift Valley are thought to have a new impetus in arming themselves following claims that Mungiki sect members have been mobilising in the region.

“We are aware of plans to arm Mungiki to unleash violence on us. We cannot sit back and wait for disaster but are doing all we can to hit back in the event their evil plans come to pass,” said an Eldoret man.

Although most residents of Uasin Gishu, Keiyo, Nandi North, Nandi South, and Eldama Ravine were not used to arming themselves with guns, that has now been possible thanks to the alleged Mungiki threat.

Some militiamen have got money from the sale of cattle stolen from fleeing victims of the violence.

The situation is not much different in Western Province as uncertainty pervades towns and trading centres which were rocked by the post-election chaos, with reports of fresh attacks being planned by youths.

Rumours of the impending attacks began circulating after it emerged that the mediation talks on the disputed presidential results between the Government side and their ODM counterparts were headed for a stalemate.

The uneasy calm in the affected towns has given way to tension as the youths began emerging at trading centres and warning of attacks if the Annan-led negotiations did not resolve the political crisis facing the country.

In Vihiga and Emuhaya districts, tension has remained high at Chavakali, Majengo, and Luanda and Mago markets.

Traders at the markets said the youths have been confronting and turning away “outsiders” and threatening to deal with them if they did not leave.

Carry out attacks

It was, however, difficult to establish whether politicians are directly involved in mobilising the youth and funding them to carry out the attacks.

In the previous attacks, the youths barricaded parts of the Kakamega-Kisumu road crippling transport.

They set up illegal road blocks and stoned vehicles and extorted money from motorist.

Trading centres on the Kakamega-Mumias road are teeming with groups threatening mayhem should the mediation talks collapse.

In Maraba and Lurambi, some of the well to do families who were displaced from their homes have hired police officers to protect their property hoping to return when the situation normalises.

In Maraba, the youths have been attacking homes in the dark and demanding money from their victims who include locals.

The situation is, however, different in Kisumu where there doesn’t seem to be any coordinated effort to unleash violence. In this town, which experienced some of the worst protests after the poll results were announced, has mainly witnessed spontaneous violence from mainly idle youth. Apart from clashing with security officers they have also be known to target some roads which they block and harass motorists.

“The riots in Kisumu, although sparked by the disputed elections, have mainly been associated with jobless youth and thugs who have used the crisis to target business people and other well-to-do residents in the pretext of looking for outsiders,” said a Kisumu resident who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals.

Security situation

In Kisii, tension has continued in the Borabu-Bomet border with sporadic incidents although the situation has improved.

But unlike the case in Rift Valley, Western and Nairobi, the armed Kisii youths known as Chinkororo who had been mobilised to fight at the border had retreated home after the situation improved.

According to sources on the ground, leaders and wananchi in the area are not keen to be involved in armed conflict with their neighbours because they feel it may endanger the lives of the many people from the community living outside the home region.

“We decided to hold back our forces for fear of endangering our people who have settled in the Rift Valley and south Nyanza.

“In any case we don’t understand why people who voted for the same party are fighting,” said a newly-elected MP from Kisii who chose to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue.

As the country continues to divide along tribal lines, it has emerged that the involvement of prominent personalities and the elite in arming and preparing their communities is as a result of the near collapse of the security situation in many parts of the country.

This has given way to organised gangs to rule through threats and extortion.

Illegal road blocks are common on roads leading to many centres in the Rift Valley, Nyanza and Western Province. Here vehicles are inspected and passengers forced to pay “taxes and fines” from motorists – whether local or not.

At the beginning, the roadblocks were conceived to be checkpoints where occupants of vehicles were vetted about their ethnic backgrounds.

“Passengers were being asked to show their identity cards to ascertain their ethnic backgrounds. If they came from other ethnic groups than the local residents, then they were beaten up,” a tout in Eldoret said.

An elderly man from Koibatek District was recently stranded in Nakuru Town after spending Sh1,200 in fare and “taxes”, According to the elder, the extortionists fix a specific sum for women and men before they are allowed to pass through the road blocks.

Outlawed sect

Although the number of road blocks has gone down to pave the way for the Annan talks, the road blocks emerge immediately a sign of failure is detected.

Huge stones and logs on either side of most roads in the North Rift region are usually returned to close the passages as soon as youths read an unwelcome sign from the Annan team.

And then the extortion begins.

Such was the case recently when Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Martha Karua criticised Mr Annan over his remarks over the likelihood that a grand coalition between ODM and PNU could be established.

In cases where the owner of a vehicle could not be verified, drivers were promptly asked to show the log books. Companies using vans to deliver goods to the affected areas are now sending drivers who can speak the local dialect to enable them to pass the barriers.

In Uasin Gishu, rumours about the presence of the outlawed Mungiki sect members fuelled the roadblocks menace.

“We were told that they were coming to take revenge. Because of this, we were afraid but also determined to ensure our safety,” said Mr Ben Kirui.

Annan Meets Raila and Kibaki as mediation efforts on the verge of failure.

2008-02-26T19:58:00.006+07:00

Kofi Annan was in closed door meetings with Raila and Kibaki for the whole day today(Tuesday) in the hope of salvaging the talks which face imminent failure.

The talks have suffered a blow after the government issued a statement on Sunday denouncing any of the reported advancements published in in the media.Basically only agreeing that a prime ministers post had been agreed on.But denied reports on Sharing of power and appointment of ministers.Which effectively meant that PNU has not agreed on any Power Sharing deal.

A distraught koffi Annan issued a statement yesterday saying "After four hours of intense negotiations this morning, the negotiating team made almost no progress toward reaching an agreement on governance, despite the fact that they had the entire weekend to consult on their positions".

There have been reports that gangs in parts of the country have been arming themselves in the event that the talks fail. Most of the violence has been directed at Kibaki's tribe the Kikuyu.

A report on one of the independent newspapers carried a story of how Kalenjin gangs in Eldoret, Kericho and other parts of the rift valley are buying and creating crude weapons like Bows and arrows.These gangs say that if the talks fail,they will ensure no kikuyu is alive in Rift valley.

ODM has already called for Mass Action on Thursday to be held at Uhuru park which is at the heart of Nairobi city.

The crisis has left 1000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.But now the crisis has reached levels that Kenyans would never have thought of a few months ago.
Calls for Secession have been quietly brewing with more people supporting the idea of a divided Kenya, where Kibaki's tribesmen who reside mostly in central province are isolated like Lesotho in South Africa.

The failure of the talks would have far-reaching consequences for the future of Kenya.Failed talks will mean more deaths,more destruction and Kenya slowly sinking into the list of Failed States in Africa.

Atheism and Definitions revisited

2008-02-26T00:57:00.004+07:00

It seems i have to spend more time on definitions of Atheism. I got an e-mail from one of the readers saying that he did not quite agree to my definitions of Atheism.
And i do not blame him. Because if he had read my post clearly,then he would have noticed that i tried to show the different definitions used. Even atheists themselves disagree on the best definitions for an atheist.

A reader recommended this video to me and others who would want to see a "clearer" distinction.

WATCH

I watched the video and i agreed to most of the content,though i found it a bit misleading.

Atheist comes from the Greek: a- "without" + theos "a god".

So a direct translation would be, "without a god".The "A" is a negator.

Consider the word Symmetry.A negator would be Asymmetry. Simply meaning without symmetry.If i was to say, Asymmetry means object lacking symmetry,it would be technically accepted in English grammar.But it would be obvious that i have imported a new word.The word being " object".

So saying atheism is "lacking the belief in god",is importing the word belief. The initial meaning was "without gods".

Meaning that even Babies or infants are atheists due to their undeveloped brains which are unable to comprehend matters such as gods.They lack the belief in gods.

But someone would ask,in which context can we use the words "without gods"?isn't it obvious that we are speaking of peoples beliefs?Not necessarily.

There are scientists who adhere to materialism.Matter is all that there is.So the universe in this case would be "without gods".In other words,the universe is materialistic in nature.Then We can say the universe is atheistic.or a-theos.

Atheism and The Burden Of Proof part 1

2008-02-24T21:57:00.007+07:00

Most religious people have come across a person who does not believe that God exist or any gods exists. Kenya being a country where atheists numbers are negligible it would be hard to find a religious person who has been challenged by a skeptic.
But for Kenyans who reside outside the country especially in European countries like Germany,UK and Sweden where Atheist are a significantly high number,then a debate with an atheist starts with asserting certain positions.

The most important one being to ask, Where does the burden of Proof lie? Who should be proving to the other what?

Atheism definitions have slowly started to evolve in the hope of leaving the theist with 100% burden of proof.
A simple and most accepted definition is, The belief that God or gods do not exist.
Another definition which is called weak atheism is, The Lack of Belief that God exists.

The strong Atheism position can be defined as:
Atheism, as a philosophical view, is the position that either affirms the nonexistence of gods or rejects theism.

To know who bears the burden of proof of whether God exists or not,then we have to work with one of the definitions.

Agnosticism is also another position that should not be confused with Atheism. Most agnostics state that agnosticism is to not know whether a deity exists. Some go further and claim that agnosticism is the belief that it is impossible for any person to know whether any deity exists or not.

It seems weak atheism is a form of agnosticism. Weak atheism says that a person simply lacks the belief that God exists.This may be because he has not seen any evidence of such a Being.Agnotism also claims that there has not been sufficient evidence to convince him a God exists or a God does not exist.

There are two positions to consider,Either God exists or God doess not exist

So weak atheism can be described as,

1.There is no convincing evidence of a God
2.So I lack the belief that God exists
3. I take the position that God does not exist.

While agnosticism can be formulated as:

1..There is no convincing evidence of a God
2.So I lack the belief that God exists
3.I take no position

Simply saying that "I lack the belief that God exist" does not make the weak atheist escape the ultimate conclusion that he will have to choose a position at the end of the day.

But Weak atheism commits a form of argumentum ad ignorantium or Argument from ignorance.which is a logical fallacy where it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false or is only false because it has not been proven true.

Something is currently unexplained or insufficiently understood or explained, so it is not (or must not be) true.

Weak atheism claims that the proposition God exists has not been proven to be true,so automatically it is false.But the atheist has not even attempted to prove that the proposition God exists is false.

A good analogy would be, "You can't prove God does exist, so God doesn't exist"

To Be continued......

Deal Likely To Make Raila Non Executive Prime Minister

2008-02-21T23:39:00.003+07:00

It seems that ODM is going to settle for non-executive prime ministers post but with significant executive powers.

Ap reported, Mutula Kilonzo, a top government negotiator, told The Associated Press on Thursday(today) that "we have more or less agreed on a non-executive prime minister but with some substantial meaningful responsibilities."

The details of what kind of responsibilities the prime minister wiull have are yet to be discussed and finalized in tomorrow's meeting.

The most crucial part being whether the PM will be hire and fired by parliament or president.The Bomas Draft says the President appoints the leader of the largest political party in Parliament as the PM.The Bomas Draft denies the President powers to fire the PM and other ministers

I doubt ODM will settle for A PM who can be sacked anytime by Kibaki.Mr Annan has been calling for short-term solutions to the crisis which will pave way for long-term solution.
It might be that Mr Annan managed to convince ODM that these are temporary measures that are to bring an end to the conflict.

The president still remains to be head of government and head of state. Its hard to see which of his mighty powers will be trimmed for the prime minister.

ODm have the following options

1. Prime minister to have power to convene parliament and set dates.
2. Prime minister to head half of government. Leaving the president with the other half. In this scenario both make their own appointments to the agreed posts and no one can cross hire or fire.

3. Prime minister who can dissolve parliament. (PNU cannot agree to this)

This looks like its going to be another dead end. If the PM does not have power to hire ministers and also can be fired by the president,then its worthless to have the post.

In the meantime,ODM should not back down on its calls for Mass Action,it seems PNU mistakes ceasefire for peace.

Mass Protests and Actions the Way to Go

2008-02-21T17:24:00.005+07:00

As the two sides discuss on the way forward,it is becoming clear that the Illegally in place government of Mwai Kibaki is not willing to let go of any of their earlier demands. Still insisting that Kibaki rightfully won the election.
The mediation talks appeared to be in jeopardy last night after "President" Kibaki declared there was no constitutional vacuum, even as it emerged that negotiators may have agreed in principle to the creation of a Prime Minister’s post.

The current constitution is in many ways to blame for the current crisis that is facing Kenya.1000 people dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.And still Kibaki sees no need of altering the constituion.in the same breathe he says,"This is not the time to dictate solutions, but to reason together so that we can find short and long term sustainable solutions to the challenges we face,’’

If Kibaki is so obsessed with following the constitution,why is he breaking the same constitution which gives Kenyans right to assembly and freedom of expression by banning political rallies and demonstrations?

Until he reverses this order then anything else he says is meaningless.

I hope kenyans will come out in numbers next week and vet out there anger at the government. We cannot let a select few dictate what people in 6 out of 8 (75%)provinces in Kenya who voted for the opposition want.

As Najib Bala said “They don’t believe this country has a crisis. They are not in a hurry."

So police should be actively involved in the demonstrations,not stopping them but keeping Law and Order. Arrest the looters and hooligans.And follow all the guidelines of the police act.The police have Killed about 100 people,this amounts to nothing short of Extreme police brutality and executions.

Back From Cornea Surgery

2008-02-20T14:02:00.002+07:00

hey people, i am back from a cornea surgery,it was one long weekend at the hospital.And all i could think about was Kenya and the blog.I can see that the goverment(as i had earlier predicted) refused a coalition government that would make Raila Executive PM.

I will be making a longer post later in the day.Right now got to let my eye rest.Thanks all for the support and keep posting comments.

Time in Heaven?

2008-02-14T19:45:00.003+07:00

Last time i started a post on questions about heaven. While we can never know for certain what heaven is like, we can speculate using the little known facts given in the Bible.

But before tackling any questions about heaven, The most important question we should ask is, Is there Time in Heaven?

We have to define what we mean by time. Many people have tried to define time,but hardly any of the answers seem enough.We can only define time in terms of other quantities.a simple definition would be,an instance or single occasion for some event.So actually time does not exist,its just the difference in spatial changes. Eg imagine trying to explain 5 km without referring to any spatial dimensions.That is without referring to any locations at all whether in space or on earth.It would be impossible.Same applies to time,no matter,implies no time.So no universe no time.

So when we ask if there is time in heaven,going by a worldly definition,it seems there is time. There are obviously events taking place,and the difference between when the events occur,is time.But here comes the complex part, if there is time in heaven,then does it mean that Heaven is also bound by time?Does heaven's time flow at the same rate that our time flows?Which means if a baby dies at 5 years of age, and the mother dies at 79years of age,assuming the baby is in heaven,does he have to wait 60+ years to see the mother?

The Bible says that people will live in heaven for eternity,does eternity imply an infinite amount of time?Dr William lane craig argues that actual infnites do not exist. because we know that when we divide anything by 2 it becomes half of its whole. eg 8/2=4 or a million divide by 2 is 500,000.a billion divide by 2 is a half a billion.a trillion is a half a trillion. Now what about infinity?infinity divide by two still remains infinity.Which is a logical absurdity.

So If infinite time exists in heaven,then assuming that you have been dead for 2 days,we should say that you have been in heaven for 2 days.But you have just crossed over to an infinite time.Which complicates things further!

There is a view that when the Bible speaks of eternity it speaks of an infinite amount of events taking place.Not infinite time.Eternity means infinite state, not infinite time.So basically this view says that you should try to conceive eternity in terms of changing states and avoid the temptation of asking how long!

So basically, i cannot answer whether time really exists in heaven or not. Anyone with a different view can post a comment and if its good enough i can make it into a post.

Kenya Crisis:Its either ODM backs down or a stalemate

2008-02-13T23:41:00.002+07:00

Today in another twist to the saga the UN released a statement defending Mr Koffi Annan's remarks yesterday at the MPs informal gathering.Kofi Annan said today his call for a "grand coalition" had been misunderstood by the government as a final deal.

Government negotiator Martha Karua had accused the former United Nations (UN) chief of suggesting that an agreement had been reached in mediation talks on forming a two-year coalition government before a presidential poll could be held.

"Unfortunately, it appears that one of the parties may have misunderstood remarks made during the question and answer period in reference to the possible ’grand coalition,’" said a statement from the United Nations.

"The chairman’s statement that a ’grand coalition’ is a possibility to manage the reform process within a two-year period represents his perspective on the discussions and does not imply a formal agreement between the two parties."

This can only mean two things.That Mr Koffi Annan is leaning more towards the government side or he's trying to calm down temperatures.
There can only be two outcomes of the mediation talks, either ODM is in government, or its not.
Judging by the speedy response of the UN to clarify the matter,Koffi Annan seems to be open to PNU's suggestion of a truth, justice and reconciliation committee. And maybe a few posts for ODM.

But if this is the case,then why did he meet with the MPs and tell them to prepare to enact laws that may include changing the constitution to accommodate the necessary decisions that will be made.

This leaves ODM at a very disadvantaged position.PNU will try to appease Mr Koffi Annan by offering all the remaining ministerial posts to ODM,setting up a commission and disbanding the ECK. PNu will agree on anything that does not involve undermining Kibaki or posing a threat to his presidency.They will only accept positions that will guarantee them full power and control.

They will obviously refuse a powerful prime ministers post,they will refuse a transitional government(taking into account that Kibaki has already started serving his last term in office and so cannot run again), and lately they have refused a grand coalition.

I see Annan siding largely with PNU's demands, and ODM will either be left with a take or leave scenario.

Chances of Annan announcing a Transitional government or a grand coalition with a powerful PM are very slim.But if he does...............

Breaking News: Letter to US,Canada, EU,UN and the Rest of the world.

2008-02-13T09:34:00.003+07:00

Kenya Government Rejects Annan's Proposal.

Our dear partners and friends of Kenya. I would like to bring to your attention the news making headlines in Kenya. 2008 has been a bad year for Kenya. After the Kibaki government rigged its way back to power and hence killing democracy as we know it in Kenya, there was an outbreak of violence from all over the country. This lead to deaths of close to 1000 people due to ethnic killings and police executions.
The Kenyan economy which was once one of the best performing economies in Africa,has suffered a major blow. With damage to property exceeding billions of Kenya shillings,the economy has been setback to almost a negative growth. The vibrant tourism industry of kenya has plummeted to a low that has never been witnessed before. Tourists arrival fallen by a whooping 90%.

Mr Koffi Annan, jetted into Kenya 3 weeks ago with the aim of finding a solution to the stalemate and save Kenya from becoming another failed state in Africa.He had support from UN,EU,US,Canada,UK and all major world economies. He has so far made tremendous gains to help in the healing process. This week is the week that a political solution will be decided upon.But already the Kenya government has shown its lack of commitment to a lasting solution.
I am happy that the US and Canadian governments have threatened "dire consequences" to any party that is seen to be a hurdle to the mediation process. I would like to urge the US,UK,Canada,EU and all friends of Kenya not to tolerate any positions that will hinder Kenya from achieving Peace,Truth and justice.

I would like to propose the following people to add to your list of person's who will be banned from travel to the US,Canada,UK and EU countries.These are the people whom many feel that are a hindrance to the mediation efforts.They have consistently made inflammatory remarks and even belittled the mediation process.

1. Justice and constitution Affairs Minister Mrs Martha Karua.
2.Garsen MP, Mr Danson Mungatana
3. Government Spokesman Mr Alfred Mutua.
4. Roads minister John Michuki.
5.Vice president Kalonzo Musyoka

The government came out spitting fire after Mr Annan proposed to MPs at an informal meeting called "Kamukunji" that a transitional government made up of opposition and government officials was the only way out of the stalemate. This would be followed up by elections in 2 years.
Mr Annan set the ball rolling much to the amazement of the PNU MPs who were gathered alongside their rivals in the ODM camp.

It seems Mr Annan had recognized that ODM had given up much of their demands and it was PNU which was still maintaining hardline positions. Lead Mediator Kofi Annan — who was optimistic that an agreement could be concluded "hopefully this week" — urged MPs: "Let us pull together and get it done. We cannot afford to fail".
The government's so-called proposals were a joke.They said the best they could do is to set-up a truth and justice commission which will overlook the election disputes.So far the government has rejected the following proposals

1.Kibaki's resignation
2.At first the government refused a re-tally of the votes,but after cases of post-election rigging they suddenly were enthusiastic about the idea.
3.They refused a re-run of the elections
4. They refused a transitional government of 6 months
5.Most recently they have poured cold water on a coalition government even though Kibaki stays in power.
6. They have refused a transitional government of 2 years even though Kibaki and most government ministers still remain in government.
7.They have rejected the creation of a powerful prime ministers post.

Today Annan and the two mediation teams from the opposition and government side discuss the political solution to the crisis.Annan noted that a solution will be known in 48 hours.I ask the world to be watching the unfolding events as we await the decision possibly on Thursday or Friday.
I ask the major world powers to note the people who will lead to the failure of the talks.

If the Kenya government(whose legality has not even been established) does not agree to some equal form of power-sharing,then I ask you to take decisive steps that will send a clear message to the world.

Questions About Heaven.

2008-02-12T07:33:00.000+07:00

Most people have different views on Heaven. A place where most Christians believe that will be their eternal resting place.But is heaven the way it is described in the Bible,especially the new testament?
surprisingly the Bible does not have clear descriptions of Heaven.So the talk of heaven brings in more questions than answers.

The following questions are usually on most people's minds when they think about heaven. I would like to see what readers would like to answer to these questions.

1. Is heaven a physical place?
2.If it is physical,what are its dimensions and where is it located.
3.When was it built?
4. Is there time in heaven?
5.What age are we in heaven.eg when a toddler dies, does he remain a toddler in heaven?
6. What will the chosen people who go to heaven be doing for eternity?will they get bored?
7.Do we have free-will in heaven? If yes, then can we chose to sin?
8.What language is spoken in heaven?how will we understand each other taking into account that people hail from different places in the world.
9.Do people eat in heaven?

What are your thoughts on these questions?

Technorati Profile

Cosmological Argument: Another counterargument

2008-02-10T20:51:00.000+07:00

The last 3 posts have mainly focused on Kenya and the ongoing political crisis. This is because i love my dear country and i must seize every opportunity i have that will help resolve the crisis.

So today i decided to go back to philosophy and in particular The Cosmological Argument.

I came across an objection of the cosmological argument advanced by Christian Philosopher William Lane craig.For those who do not know what the cosmological argument is,its an argument for the proof of the existence of God.It Says:

Whatever begins to exist, has a cause of its existence.

The universe began to exist.

Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence

The objection is states that the conclusion of the argument is not neccesarily true.
To get a clearer picture the counterargument says, If the universe can be taken as a universal set: U and the stars/planets life and all matter as x,y,z.then we can represent the relationship with set theory as:

U{x,y,z,................}

x,y,z are elements found in U.therefore:-

If x,y,z have a property "n" , then it does not follow that U has the same property
"n".

In short, you do not apply properties of the elements and subsets of U to the universal set itself.
In other words, just because everything in the universe has a cause,it does not follow that the universe itself had a cause for its beginning.

Its a well crafted argument,though of course the argument is logically incoherent.

Then we speak of the Universe what are we speaking of? We are speaking of all matter.The argument assumes that the universe is is different from the matter.It takes the universe as a container that holds all matter together.
If this is so,then the argument is valid. But as we know the universe is not a container which might be composed of some other matter that we do not know of.
The universe is the matter itself,only difference is in its totality.

So the Cosmological argument can be rephrased to say:

Whatever begins to exist, has a cause of its existence.

All Matter began to exist.

Therefore, all matter have a cause of their existence.

All matter= universe.
What the argument proposes to say is that premise 1 and 2 are correct but the conclusion is wrong.It says that the conclusion is not necessarily true and the universe can have no cause.But lets see if the counter argument is true:

Whatever begins to exist, has a cause of its existence.

All Matter began to exist.

All matter did not have a cause for their existence

Clearly this is logically incoherent. the conclusion is false.

Maina Kiai and the steps forward for kenya

2008-02-08T19:29:00.000+07:00

My Friend (acreed)from skyscrapercitycity forum, which has the largest collection of pictures from kenya in the internet posted this article.

Guest Post

I write today because I am optimistic about where we find ourselves today as Kenyans. I watched the house committee on foreign affairs-African affairs of the USA Congress hold hearings on the situation in Kenya.

The witnesses presented a balanced and in depth analysis of what transpired before and after the disputed polls. M/s Njoki Ndungu, a former member of Parliament and Mr. Maina Kiai presented their reports and made recommendations that made sense. M/s Ndungu in particular identified five forms of violence that took place; 1) the initial outbreak of violence that greeted the disputed outcome of the election, 2) the police violence in places like Kisumu and parts of Kibera, 3) The targeted assault on people from other communities particularly in Eldoret and Parts of Nyanza as well as Western, Coast and the slums of Nairobi, 4) the revenge attacks on members of communities perceived to be aligned with the opposition, and finally 5) opportunistic attacks and criminal activities perpetrated by gangs of young men from Kisumu to Naivasha, Nakuru and other areas. Mr Kiai on his part touched on the genesis of the electoral fraud as well as the underlaying causes of the tribal conflict.

Mr. Kiai talked about how as early as May of 2007 the Kenya national human rights commission presented the then president Kibaki with a petition to follow the gentleman's agreement started in 1997 under the inter party parliamentary group, that called on the input of all parties in the nomination of commissioners to the Electoral commission of Kenya, hereto referred to as ECK. He provided the effects of the unilateral appointment by Kibaki, which were,that commissioners did not work with professional ECK staff but rather appointed casual/temporary workers as polling clerks, secondly each of the commissioners were allowed to appoint staff based on the regions they came from, thus entrenching tribalism in the ECK.

On the matter of tribal conflict, the Kenya national human rights commission compared the tribal clashes of the mid to late 1990s; 3000 Killed and 300,000 internally displaced people, to what has happened in one month; 1000 dead and 300,000 internally displaced. His conclusion is that the forces that took part in the clashes in the 1990s were able to regroup so quickly because they were never brought to book,and the underlaying cause, land which was variously discussed under the Ndungu land report were never examined nor its recommendations implemented.

The recommendation pushed by Mr. Kiai is only just now beginning to make sense to me. He proposes that the Koffi Annan team continues with the talks with the objective of having a transitional government in Place with Kibaki and Raila sharing power, and tasked with the responsibility of facilitating the enactment of a new constitution that has been debated and variously referred to as the Bomas draft or the Naivasha accord. The transitional government should not be in place for more than two years and should formulate a way to have a truth and justice and reconciliation process after the elections have been held. It is important, according to the KNHRC that elections are held to re-affirm Kenya's belief in the electoral and democratic practices.

As much as I feel that Raila was cheated, there still is something left to be salvaged in the crisis we are in. The soul of Kenya is at stake here, and should no longer be about Raila nor KIbaki, but rather should offer a chance to get Kenya away from the old political system of patronage, nepotism and tribalism. The talks should deal with, what reform minded Kenyans have been fighting for, for close to 20 years; a reduction in the executive powers, thus doing away with the imperial presidency, a reform of the land system, devolution of power and resources and the promotion of gender and minority rights among other topics already covered under the Bomas Draft.

Finally I echo what Mr. Kiai suggests on the role of the USA, UK AU and EU. Identify the hardliners on both sides and slap travel sanctions on them and their families, trace their assets and freeze them, both locally and abroad, if they try to jeopardize these talks. The results of this mediation should be adhered to by all parties. Friends Let us coalesce around this ideas and drive this debate from the front rather than let the politicians dictate its terms.

D-DAY: Kenya's Future to be known today

2008-02-06T01:06:00.000+07:00

After almost 2 weeks of dialogue between the ODM and PNU through chief mediator former UN boss Koffi Annan, today will be the day when the core problem of the dispute will be discuissed.

Kenya has been thrown into turmoil since the announcement of the 2007 elections that saw Mwai Kibaki being declared winner in a poll marred by irregularities.
Since then,900 lives have been lost in inter tirbe fighting pitting other tribes and kikuyus who voted overwhelmingly for Kibaki.300,000 people have been displaced through nforced evictions from various parts of the country with majority of them being the kikuyus who reside in rift valley.

The post-poll violence has dealt a major blow to the country's economy with losses estimated to over 50 billion kshs. The tourism industry is the worst affected with the number of tourists jetting into the country almost grinding to a halt.

The mediation efforts have been the lifeline most kenyans are hoping will end this crisis. But most people have an uneasy feeling about the process.
So far,progress has been made towards establishing a truth and reconciliation committee to look at issues of the displaced.

But the most critical part is the political aspect.ODM insists that it won the elections and PNU rigged their way into government,on the other hand PNU insists that it won fair and square and ODm should go to the courts.

With such positions being held, a significant compromise from both ends is highly unlikely.ODM expects that Kibaki should resign and call for fresh elections.On the contrary Kibaki seems to be drilling the message that he is not going anywhere.At the recently held AU meeting, Kibaki lashed out at the opposition and accused them of perpetrating violence.Adding that he won fair and square and any grievances should be channeled to the courts as is the norm.
This is very unfortunate coming from the president yet he knows the mediation efforts are underway and his presidency is the borne of contention. Such remarks clearly undermine the mediation efforts and show that kibaki has no respect for koffi Annan.

So what should we expect from the talks on Wednesday? One thing is for sure, Kibaki will not be stepping down.nor will he be calling for fresh elections. The farthest that PNU are willing to go will be to push for a truth and justice commission to look into the election disputes. They will probably propose that ODM can choose half of the committee and PNU half of the committee.
ODM will disagree and maintain that there is overwhelming evidence that PNU rigged the elections and every independent observer has affirmed this. They will say that a commission will be a waste of time and it will take too long to reoslve the many cases that have evidence of rigging.
They will propose either Kibaki calls fresh elections within 3 months to be run by UN, or to table the bomas draft in parliament and pass it into law within 3 months.this will effectively make kibaki a puppet president(ceremonial) and shift the executive powers to the prime minister, Raila.

So what will be agreed upon at the end of the day?its hard to say and i truly do not know.
But i know that by the evening of Wednesday we will not have any answers and the agenda will be pushed to the next day.
After 3 or 4 days of back n forth accusations, Annan will support PNU's offer of a truth and justice commission,but with international judges appointed by the UN>He will propose that each party signs a binding MoU that the outcome of the investigations of the commission will be law,and its recommendations must be put to effect.he will also promise that the commission will finish its findings and make a verdict within 3 months.
ODM at this point might see that they have run out of options and agree to the proposal. But add that if the commission finds that indeed there was massive rigging,then they must recommend new elections.
If i was in ODm at this point,i would suggest that the powers of calling for fresh elections be shifted to the commission,temporarily.

And Friday,might be the day we learn our fate. ODM having caved in,and PNU having taken a risk but still in power.

MASHADA.COM STILL CLOSED

2008-02-02T12:32:00.001+07:00

The famous Kenyan Website which caters for mostly kenyans in the diaspora was shut down 3 days ago by the administrators.
The forum had become a battle-field of some sorts that mimicked what was happening on the ground.Initially before elections it was all about PNU and ODM,after the elections it changed to Kikuyus Vs Kalenjins,Luo vs Kikuyus etc. Members traded accusations and even threats to other members who came from different ethnic backgrounds.

With administrators not doing anything about the situation,threads with messages literally calling and supporting Ethnic killings thrived. It did not take long for the good old folks at BBC to get wind of the situation and post a news article on their website titled Battle Of the Blogs.

Finally the website was shut after a petition was lodged against the site.
The message posted on Monday was:

While we feel that people need a space to interact; the majority of interaction on Mashada.com has began to reflect the negative aspects of what is happening in Kenya.
In the mean time, anyone who feels that they still want an avenue to express their views should either visit the blogs, or better yet start their own blog.
We still welcome any suggestions, comments or questions. Contact Us.
"Let us Promote Peace, Love and Unity in our country. Pray for our beloved nation KENYA. God Bless You."

Visit MASHADA

UPDATE: Mashada is now up and running.

Election Rigging Claims: Which is The most plausible Explanation?

2008-02-01T13:13:00.000+07:00

some of the tampered documents with inflated figures in favor of kibaki.A "0" is added to 79 to make it 790.

Following my recent post a A Scribe commented that i had worked on my arguments on the assumption that there was rigging. So i decided to take a look at the election rigging claims.
So the question is,were the elections free and fair or were they rigged?
Where is the burden of proof?

Which conclusion is the most plausible explanation.

Lets start with history,all kenyan multiparty elections since 1992 have had cases of rigging.So the last 3 elections had clear cases of rigging,what are the chances that the 4th(2007) will not be rigged?

Chances are pretty high.Infact higher than all the elections previous elections.
Why? This has been he closest presidential race ever in the history of elections,the economy has been booming and many new people have benefited from the Kibaki regime.The stakes are pretty high.

Were there any indications of rigging before the elections? Yes plenty.Double voter registration, missing names,voters card buying,intimidation and violence against candidates and supportes,ballot paper printing in government offices and many more.Not all were true,but the warning bells were all over.

After the elections the results trickled in,and in the first 2 days of vote counting Mr. Raila Odinga was leading by a significant number,at one point leading by 200,000 votes.

Then in the span of a few hours,all that had changed,and kibaki was ahead by 200,000 votes and hurriedly sworn in within less than hour.

Is there evidence of rigging?First we should ask,what amounts to evidence of rigging.Any act that does not present the true figures of votes attained by a candidate amount to rigging.
In any dispute its usually better to get a neutral persons point of view.So i will not take into account ODM's claims or PNU's defensive tactics.

Alexander Graf Lambsdorf, head of the European Union election observer mission n its 15-page report, the EU observer team singled out Central Province, a Kibaki stronghold, for the worst abuses.
The EU was equally critical of the process at the national level, writing that "the lack of transparency throughout this process undermined the confidence in the process and subsequently the results."

EU observers were in some of those disputed constituencies.And they said that what was announced on the ground by returning officers was not what was announced at KICC.It seems some clever IT clerk simply manufactured figures.

Ol Kalou constituency that had 102, 000 registered voters for instance, compilation of polling station ballot counts, according to agents, evince that Mr Kibaki got 72, 000 votes while Mr Odinga trailed with 5,000.

But ECK announced that Mr Kibaki had obtained a net 102, 000 votes at the very constituency where the Electoral body reported a voter turn out of 99 percent or 100, 980 voters

The European Union said in its provisional report that result forms for Lari and Kandara had been distorted while at Kerugoya, 10, 000 more people at the same station voted in the presidential polls than in the parliamentary elections held simultaneously.

On top of that the EU observers that observer teams had problems obtaining results from polling stations in numerous constituencies, and in one the results were signed by a member of Kibaki's party. Additionally, some people disappeared with the results after the tallying was complete.

The Eu and in particular UK has really strong ties with Kenya.And it has worked with Kibaki and his government,funding many projects in the country,and putting an end to loan freeze.
So if one says that there was no election rigging,then are these people being biased towards the government?Did they hear or see their own things?should we question there sanity?
The role of foreign obsvers is to keep aneye on the election process so that they are free and fair.What happens if they report that there was indeed rigging?

On what basis do we dismiss there claims? What other explanation could we have to explain there behavior?
I think it would be more reasonable to conclude that maybe they are saying the truth.Any other explanation is highly improbable.

In the Ugandan newspaper, this is what they had to say,In another newspaper piece published Thursday, Kampala's Monitor reports that in 72 constituencies differences exist between the count reported nationally and initial local results. For example, in Molu, Kibaki's vote count changed from 50,145 to 75,261, and in Kiene something similar happened, with Kibaki's total going from 54,337 to 72,054. In these disputed constituencies, the Monitor reports that the ECK actually obtained some results by phone.

By the way,EU observers were also present in Molo and in a news conference held after the elections were announced they gave molo as an outright example of clear rigging.
Is it logical even after all these startling claims to conclude that the elections were totally free and fair.I guess the burden of proof lies to a person who holds that view.
Is it just a "miracle" that everyone who participated in the monitoring of the elections i.e EU observers,US observers local observers and even surprisingly enough ECK itself,all admit that elections were flawed.

Why would anyone conclude that the elections were free and fair.Which reasoning would explain all this away?Are the Eu observers mad,the US observers crazy,local obsvers lunatic and ECK officials and Mr Kivuiti himself bananas? or its a grand scheme by the opposition.

You conclude for yourself the most plausible explanation.

Kenyan Crisis: Which is The Most Logical Position To Hold?

2008-01-31T16:53:00.000+07:00

Is the call for peace alone reasonable?
Are the killings happening in Kenya Justifiable?

The Kenyan Political situation has sunk Kenya into turmoil with inter-tribal conflicts taking center stage.As you all know this blog is a philosophy blog,but philosophy uses logic to make arguments.So does our daily life an reasoning.

I am totally convinced that many people who have chosen to take sides in this crisis have committed many logical errors, in short lack of reasoning skills is very prevailant when people are discussing the Post-election turmoil.

A couple of days ago i was having a discussion with my friends who were mostly from the Kikuyu tribe .The Kikuyu have felt the brunt of most of the targeted tribal killings with over 100,00 of them displaced from all over the country.

I asked them what do they think of the current situation in kenya and what should be done.
The answer i got was something like this," First of all these mass protests must stop because they only amount to killing and looting,secondly people should be peaceful and ODM members prosecuted for genocide."
The fallacy in his reasoning was very clear.Although not to the others. First you do not demonise something because it is abused.

No one calls for sex to be banned just because there are prostitutes, Also no one calls for food to be banned because there are obese people.If we started to outlaw everything on the merit that its abused,then we will be left to nothing.
Just as sex leads to sexual satisfaction for married couples and people,it also leads to populting the human race,there are those who will abuse it.Eg rapists.
Same goes for peaceful demonstrations and mass protest.Protests lets people excise their right to assembly and expression.
Now,my friend immediately jumped in and said,"but these protests are never peaceful,we can never have peaceful protests in kenya."
Just because there are looters and hooligans in the crowds,is the same way there are obese people in the world,there are child molesters and rapists.But we do not ban food and sex.Instead we devise ways to deal with such kind of crimes.
So,in the same way,arrest the looters,but don't ban the protests.

What about the call for peace?. I support the call for peace.We can go to the mountain tops and shout peace peace peace,In fact i personally went to Nakumatt and donated foodstuffs for the displaced.But in reality,have we solved the issues that brought about the unrest in the first place?
So after the Kalenjin has stopped attacking his kikuyu neighbors and become peaceful,should he just forget that he had a problem as well?Will the call for peace remove all doubts in his head that the elections were rigged?Will it have solved any land issues?

My friends were also of the opinion that,Even if the elections were rigged,Raila is not worthy to lead the country.he has a violent history.

And i had one thing to ask them," Even if Kenyans wanted Hitler as President,and could even appoint Pol Pot and Stalin as his Prime ministers and VPs,isn't that their democratic right?"

When the majority want something,they have a right to whatever they want.Even if it something detrimental to them.Nothing,and i repeat nothing,justifies election rigging.

Its logically incoherent to say something like," Even if rigging was done,people should not kill each other just because of elections."
First, if you agree that rigging is bad,its bad morality,it amounts to robbing someones right to elect his leader,its a fundamental abuse of democracy,then it would not make sense to not rebuke it and at the same time rebuke the violence.

Your morals would be highly questionable if you think election rigging is not a bad thing but violence is.You do not have any moral authority to even rebuke the violence,since to you election theft is okay.

Does it make sense to say," But both ODM and PNU rigged."what people fail to understand is,its not a matter of who rigged,its a matter of,why was their rigging in the first place. Denying someone his rightly owned voted is unjustifiable.All your saying is that since both rigged,PNU rigged better.That does not make things okay.And you have no moral authority to even call for peace.

What about the popular phrase," We should put this behind us and move on". So you are saying,we should ignore the reason why over 800 Kenyans died,and 200,000 were displaced and get back to our normal lives. You are not concerned as to the reason why this happen,and what we can do to prevent it from happening again?If the local election observers,international observers and ordinary Kenya's are right that the elections were rigged,then it can only mean that the government in place is illegal.
Again your morals are highly questionable if you are ready to live with an illegal and illegitimate government.

So which is the most logical position to hold? Condemn the violence with the highest degree.Violence is not a solution for anything.It just shows people's unwillingness to reason.
But as you all know,not everyone has time and capabilities to reason.So we have to move to the second logical position to hold,Condemn the election rigging at all costs.
Only a re-run will ease the violence. Saying that another election will cost Kenya alot of money,you should ask yourself how much do we stand to lose if the current situation persists.The tourism industry alone is worth over 50 billion, and an election costs 5 billion.Surely this is very much worth it.

I am aware that some people will say that ODm should go to the courts and contests the election results.But right now we cannot even trust the government with a major excise like elections,why should it be trusted with an an election petition.Especially where it involves Kibaki's presidency. Which judge in kenya in his right mind would rule that Kibaki is illegally in office?
And besides,everyday the situation gets worse,the court process will drag on for years,are we ready to lose more blood as we await the courts?

I hope my fellow Kenyans will see that,they can't wish this away,every effort has to be made to restore calm and order.And the only way,is by tackling the core issues.
Reaching out to your neighbor will go along way,but also addressing the problems will go a mile further and will possibly end the conflict.