My Beauty Best Teacher

Co-founded by Ory Okolloh of Kenyan Pundit Mzalendo's mission is to "keep an eye on the Kenyan Parliament."It was established for the following reasons:

1. It is very difficult to get information about what Kenyan Members of Parliament are doing when in Parliament. Though the Hansard offers a verbatim transcript of Parliamentary proceedings it is not widely circulated or accessible. In addition, even if one could get access to the Hansard, extracting relevant information can be time consuming. Furthermore, there is virtually no way of knowing what government business is being conducted in Parliament; for instance, the contents of draft bills are rarely publicized.
2. The Kenyan government is still very much a “closed society” — the default de facto presumption is that the public does not have a right know unless they have special permission. The fact that the official Parliament website is still shut down after an uproar from some MPs who were upset that their resumes were available online is a testament to this. By focusing on one of the major government institutions that should be the most accessible, Mzalendo aims to both “open” up Parliament and demonstrate that it is both possible and necessary for Kenyans to demand and expect more accountability from public institutions.
3. By relying on technology and the Internet, Mzalendo hopes to be especially accessible to young Kenyans. Young people will soon represent the largest voting bloc in Kenya and we believe that it is important to both get them engaged in public participation in ways that are appealing to them and give them the tools that will facilitate this engagement. In the near future, the site will offer interactive features including a discussion board, individual constituency blogs, and an opportunity to ask your MP questions and get a response online.
4. Although Mzalendo is a long-term project, we are cognizant of the fact that the 2007 elections are around the corner and we feel it is important for Kenyan voters to have a record of what their individual MPs have been doing since their election into Parliament. Our goal is to have a complete compilation of all the Parliamentary records from 2003 we are able to access available online.

In the Washington Post Michael Fairbanks on Paul Kagame:

Rwanda is one of the few nations in the developing world spending more on education than on the military. Kagame re-wrote the constitution such that his party cannot have more than 50 percent of the seats in parliament. Though Kagame is from one ethnic group, his Prime Minister and 70 percent of his cabinet are from the other. Thirty percent of elected officials at the level of municipality, parliament, and cabinet are required to be women; and a world-leading 56 percent of parliament is now women. The country is secure and the World Bank's Doing Business report recognized Rwanda as the greatest reforming nation in the world last year.

More here

The democratic process needs to be progressive and evolutionary in nature.From the young to the less privileged its relevance and resonance need to be maintained and nurtured, various civic minded organisations have a role to play here. One of them "...the African Youth Parliament (AYP) is a continental network of young leaders, peace builders and social activists from 50 African countries working in promoting and advocating for youthful solutions to Africa’s developmental challenges... the AYP is an initiative of the African Action Partners to the International Youth Parliament ..."

"...The Barefoot College came up with the idea of a Children ’s Parliament so that children could learn how a democracy functions,the importance of the vote, standing up for your rights and not letting yourself be exploited because you are poor. The children elect their own Parliament and their own Ministers. They can make decisions about the running of their schools and dismiss teachers who neglect their duties. The children can also have their say in matters concerning their villages,such as the supply of water and electricity..."

Domestic policy results are a mix of both Congress and the President, and so Obama supporters can attempt to say that the reason why domestic policies have failed so badly over the past years is because of the Congress (House under Democratic control 2007-2011, Senate under Democratic control 2007 to today). But the results of foreign policy decisions are almost always the result of actions made purely the President, so these results can not be blamed on former President Bush (2001-2009) or the Republicans in Congress (House 2011+). President Barack Obama is responsible for foreign policy actions of the last several years.

And the latest news from Egypt is that Obama messed up badly and in so doing has led to the people of Egypt being less free, less prosperous, and private property rights being less protected. Via the New York Times:

Egyptian authorities confirmed Saturday that a political coalition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the 84-year-old group that virtually invented political Islam, had won about 47 percent of the seats in the first Parliament elected since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak. An alliance of ultraconservative Islamists won the next largest share of seats, about 25 percent....

...Parliament the authority to choose the 100 members of a constitutional assembly, so it may shape Egypt for decades to come, although the military council has sometimes tried to influence that process...

...The Brotherhood has said it intends to respect personal liberties and will focus on economic and social issues, gradually nudging the culture toward its conservative values. By contrast, the ultraconservatives, known as Salafis, put a higher priority on legislation on Islamic moral issues, like the consumption of alcohol, women’s dress and the contents of popular culture.

Among the remaining roughly 30 percent of parliamentary seats, the next largest share was won by the Wafd Party, a liberal party recognized under Mr. Mubarak and with roots dating to Egypt’s colonial period.

It was trailed by a coalition known as the Egyptian Bloc. It included the Free Egyptians, a business-friendly liberal party founded by a Coptic Christian businessman, Naguib Sawiris, and favored by many members of the country’s Coptic Christian minority, about 10 percent of the public. The Egyptian Bloc also included the liberal Social Democratic Party, which leans further to the left on economic issues.

A coalition of parties founded by the young leaders of the revolt that unseated Mr. Mubarak won only a few percent of the seats, as did a handful of offshoots of the former governing party....

There is no way to spin this. Mubarak gave a speech where he said that he would transition power over to groups that were business-friendly, were supportive to liberty and freedom, and would not be radically-intolerant Muslim, and President Obama went on TV and gave a major speech demanding that "Mubarak must go now."

"An orderly transition must be meaningful, it must peaceful, and it must begin now," Obama declared in his address, and he got his wish- Egypt has now gone from being a moderately bad regime to putting in place a coalition of radicals that support terror and the destruction of Israel- and it happened in under a year. He got his meaningful change for the worse pretty quickly- and it was all on him, the blame was exclusively on Obama, and the results of his actions were bad for millions of Egyptians and America.

Obama said that he turned on Mubarak in order to support the young leaders of revolutionaries in Egypt- the group that won the least from this revolution. The group that got the most out of the Egyptian revolution was the groups that we supported the LEAST- the radical Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists.

Obama messed this policy decision up. Hold him responsible.

My stances on this issue are also on the record- see my posts Obama is Picking Worst of Bad Options in Egypt: Is Obama Getting Advice from Jimmy Carter? and Obama's Egypt Policy Was a Failure?.

Last week I heard a speech from this guy on Sean Hannity, and it was great. Daniel Hannan is a Troy Member of the European Parliament (MEP) who represents South East England, criticised British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to his face in a stirring speech, and now the clip of this speech is one of the top clips on youtube.

From Mail Online:

Mr Hannan's assault came after the Premier had given a keynote speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg. As Mr Brown looked on through gritted teeth, shaking his head, the Tory lambasted him as a 'Brezhnev era apparatchik' who was ' pathologically incapable' of taking responsibility for his role in the financial crisis. The clip features Mr Brown looking on with a frozen smile, while Mr Hannan warned how Britain was entering the recession in a 'dilapidated condition' with an 'almost unbelievable' deficit. After accusing Mr Brown of losing his moral authority, he finished with the pay-off line: 'You are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.'

The speech is not long- I encourage you to take 3 minutes out of your day to watch it here. It will encourage and excite you. Now one can only hope that a US Congressman will say the similar thoughts to our Brezhnev era apparatchik who is running up an unbelievable deficit in our nation.

UPDATE: Powerlineblog also posted on this today.

UPDATE II: If you haven't already, check out the interview of Daniel Hannan over at Vox Popoli- it is very interesting.

UPDATE III: Be sure to check out Daniel Hannan's new book at The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America.

Along the lines of Ushaidi, Sokwanele maps the Zimbabwean crisis:

On March 29th 2008 Zimbabweans went to the polls and changed history. For the first time since Independence in 1980, the Zanu PF party lost its majority in parliament and Robert Mugabe lost the Presidential vote. The regime immediately embarked on a campaign of violence and reprisal attacks against the civilian population.This map aims to convey some sense of the scale of the violence and it also tries to locate responsibility in relation to key perpetrator groups

Related articles

• Observers denounce Zimbabwe vote [via Zemanta]

Although I said long ago that the election of Obama would not be good for our nation because of his fascist tendencies (before dismissing my comments out-of-hand, read my posts here and here), I really thought it would take longer for America go to bad. I was wrong.

Today, an Oklahoma City police officer pulled a man's car over for having an anti-Obama sign in the window of his vehicle, and then took the sign from the man. The sign read "Abort Obama Not the Unborn", which clearly states the fact that the man disagrees with Obama's abortion policies and wishes that he was not around, stated in a rather controversial way, but it's a free country. Or it was. The officer felt that this sign was a threat to Obama, pulled over the man, and took his sign away. Then the Secret Service were called and went through the man's home, making sure that he wasn't part of a hate group or something (apparently being conservative is now borderline hate-group status). The good thing is that the police feel that his rights were not violated with this harassment- the good citizen on the other hand has not said whether he is suing or not. This is a true story, and a sign of things to come. Read the whole thing and watch some video by clicking on this link.

Also, since I am sure you didn't hear about it on the mainstream news, did you know that Obama is increasingly unpopular and already being protested by ever-enlarging crowds wherever he goes? It is true. Yesterday, greeting the President in Arizona was a crowd of about 200 people who were there to express their views on the stimulus bill and other pieces of legislation that Obama is supporting. Read about this here.

How does Obama intend to combat the swelling groundswell against his policies? By hiring celebrities. Yes, Obama intends to use taxpayer money to pay millionaires to lecture us on why we should support Obama. Remember that ad where McCain linked Obama to celebrities, and how good it was? So do I (it's a bummer McCain stupidly didn't follow it up). The message was that Obama was a passing fad, with shallow ideas, and was only popular because he was a celebrity. And now he hires celebrities to parrot his policies. Read about this here.

Where is this all heading? Obama wanted our nation to be international- remember the people around the world loved him. Probably because he wants to turn our nation into an undemocratic and elitist project comparable to the communist dictatorships of eastern Europe, that forbade alternative thinking, violated citizens rights, and were poor and unfree. Kind of like the EU is turning into, as Czech President Vaclav Klaus told the European Parliament on Thursday. Speaking about the EU, Klaus said "Those who dare thinking about a different option are labeled as enemies"- which increasingly describes conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians in this liberal Democrat-run nation.

Next thing you know,, it will be considered 'patriotic' to never question the government, pay more in taxes, and bow to the increasing authority of the state... oh wait, several Democrats already think this...

In Africa Works:

Museveni aims to maintain a projection of democracy amid a reality of family, dynastic rule. Unwilling to abide by term limits on his own presidency, Museveni takes steady actions to engineer a succession by a family member, perhaps a child or even his own wife, Janet, who is a member of Parliament and a political force in her own right. Once a political icon who justly achieved acclaim for bringing stability to a strife-torn Uganda and fighting AIDS with intelligence, Museveni has become a kind of Mugabe-in-the-making, ever-more willing to sacrifice his country’s well-being for his own narrow interests.

More here

Although domestic policy results are a mix of Congress and the President, the results of foreign policy is almost inevitably the result of purely the President. So trying to blame Bush or the Republicans for the results of any major new policy decisions is useless- these results and actions can be laid directly at the feet of the President of the United States and Democratic nominee for 2012, Barack Hussein Obama.

Via Legal Insurrection's post We know who lost Egypt:

Obama’s foolish policy of forcing Mubarak out of office precipitously without giving non-Islamist parties time to organize has resulted in Islamists achieving a sweeping victory in the first round of parliamentary elections. Strength by the Muslim Brotherhood was expected, but the extremely hard line Salafists had a very strong showing.

As reported by The NY Times:

Islamists claimed a decisive victory on Wednesday as early election results put them on track to win a dominant majority in Egypt’s first Parliament since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the most significant step yet in the religious movement’s rise since the start of the Arab Spring.

The party formed by the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, appeared to have taken about 40 percent of the vote, as expected. But a big surprise was the strong showing of ultraconservative Islamists, called Salafis, many of whom see most popular entertainment as sinful and reject women’s participation in voting or public life.

Analysts in the state-run news media said early returns indicated that Salafi groups could take as much as a quarter of the vote, giving the two groups of Islamists combined control of nearly 65 percent of the parliamentary seats.

That victory came at the expense of the liberal parties and youth activists who set off the revolution, affirming their fears that they would be unable to compete with Islamists who emerged from the Mubarak years organized and with an established following. Poorly organized and internally divided, the liberal parties could not compete with Islamists disciplined by decades as the sole opposition to Mr. Mubarak. “We were washed out,” said Shady el-Ghazaly Harb, one of the most politically active of the group.

The Times article points out that this first round of elections was in the most liberal areas of Egypt. As voting moves to more conservative rural areas, the Islamists likely will gain an even more overwhelming majority.

This all was very predictable. In fact, I predicted it while Obama was insisting that Mubarak leave ”yesterday,” NY Times columnists were writing delusional columns about the Arab Street and the Arab Spring, and venomous anti-Israeli pundits at Media Matters and elsewhere complained that the “Israel Lobby” was trying to stifle freedom.

On Feburary 20 I wrote The Yuppie Revolution In Egypt Is Over, The Islamist Revolution Has Begun. I wish I had been wrong.

The liberated women of Egypt will be the first to suffer. The Times notes:

The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

Obama lost Egypt, and he had plenty of help.

This post echo's my own thoughts on this issue- see my posts The Rising Threat of Fascism: Egypt, Iran, Syria, and Other States or Evidence is Pretty One Sided Against Obama's Foriegn Policy, Don't You Think?.

Image via Wikipedia African Liberty reports:

Senegalese Members of Parliament voted to amend the constitution to extend the presidential term from five to seven years amidst opposition from many Senegalese. The government has flouted the constitution by modifying an aspect that can only be amended through a referendum.
There have been several changes to Senegal's constitution in recent years and some local analysts claim the move is to prepare the ground for the Presidents' son to be able to succeed his father...[continue reading]

Emira Woods and Lisa VeneKlasen of FPIF write:

The African political landscape is being reshaped by women, generating hope for the future of the continent and raising the bar for democracy worldwide...Governments have set concrete targets for women's participation in political bodies. The newly formed Pan African Parliament has also implemented affirmative-action measures to ensure a minimum of 30 percent representation by women, all of whom have been elected to office in their countries.But African women's rising power is measured not just in numbers. In Liberia, the same women who bore the brunt of the country's more than two decades of war are the ones leading the struggle for peace and carving out a new economic and political path.

From the TED website:

Joseph Lekuton, a member of Kenya's parliament, tells the story of his own extraordinary education, and then a parable of how Africa itself can grow. His message of hope for Kenya in particular has never been more relevant.

KenyanPundit dissects the Mo Ibrahim Prize covered earlier and offers alternative methodologies:

...any organization that is trying to do any serious work around leadership in Africa has make young people the core of any programming. Otherwise you haven’t looked the demographics of Africa yet and seriously thought about the implications. Convincing the Mugabe’s of the world to step down, is only part of the problem – you have to ask who is replacing the old guard? Is there a pipeline? Are the replacements different? Or are they just a younger, hungrier, more cynical version of the same (see Kenya’s parliament today).
I see that your foundation does offer scholarships to rising leaders, that’s a good start. But if the intention is to grow leaders at home, I would offer scholarships to enable students to attend local institutions as well.

More here

Excerpt from President Barack Obama's address to the Ghanaian Parliament:

Time and again, Ghanaians have chosen Constitutional rule over autocracy, and shown a democratic spirit that allows the energy of your people to break through. We see that in leaders who accept defeat graciously, and victors who resist calls to wield power against the opposition. We see that spirit in courageous journalists like Anas Aremeyaw Anas, who risked his life to report the truth. We see it in police like Patience Quaye, who helped prosecute the first human trafficker in Ghana. We see it in the young people who are speaking up against patronage, and participating in the political process.

Read complete speech here.
Obama preaches tough love.
Related coverage here.
A snub for Nigeria
Photo courtesy of Huffington Post

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• allAfrica.com interviews Obama on Ghana visit (one.org)
• Excitement on streets of Ghana for Obama (cnn.com)
• Barack Obama tells Africa to stop blaming colonialism for problems (telegraph.co.uk)

For some reason, my blog has been getting very popular in Ukraine recently- after the US, the second largest source of readers of my blog is coming from Ukraine over the past month, and all-time, Ukraine is the 5th biggest nation of readers of my blog. Why Ukraine?

Perhaps it stems from a post I wrote in January 15, 2010 supporting Yulia Tymoshenko for President of Ukraine. You see, I keep my eyes on a lot of different subjects (just in the last several weeks alone I have written In Praise of NASA's Curiosity Mission, About Black Friday and why Obama, Robert Frank, and Other Liberals are Wrong for Hating It, and about Teaching and Brain-Dead Liberal Students), and one of the nations that I've always been fascinated with is Ukraine. So during the 2010 Presidential Elections in Ukraine, I read about all the candidates (it was a three-way race- between then-current President Viktor Yushchenko, then-former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, and then-current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), and came out in support of Tymoshenko.

Tymoshenko ended up losing the race to Yankukovych. Via wikipedia, you can read what happened next:

...In the first round of the presidential election on 17 January 2010, Tymoshenko took second place with 25% of the vote and Yanukovych took first place with 35%. The two proceeded to the runoff round held on 7 February 2010 in which Yanukovych was elected President of Ukraine with 48.95% of the votes, Tymoshenko received 45.4% of the votes. Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc members immediately claimed that there was systematic and large-scale vote rigging in this run-off. However Tymoshenko herself did not issue a statement about the election until a live televised broadcast on 13 February 2010 in which she said that she would challenge the election result in court. Tymoshenko alleged widespread fraud (according to Tymoshenko, a million votes were invalid) and said Yanukovych was not legitimately elected.

...On 3 March 2010 the Ukrainian Parliament passed a motion of no confidence in the second Tymoshenko Government in which the cabinet was dismissed with 243 lawmakers voting in favour out of the 450 (207 against).... Tymoshenko resigned from the Prime Minister post on 4 March 2010....

...Ukraine's prosecutor's office re-opened on 12 May 2010 a 2004 criminal case against Tymoshenko on accusations she had tried to bribe Supreme Court judges.... Tymoshenko also claimed that she was told by "all the offices of the Prosecutor General's Office" that President Yanukovych had personally instructed the Prosecutor General's Office to find any grounds to prosecute her....

...On 15 December 2010 the General Prosecutor's Office instituted a criminal case against Tymoshenko, alleging that she misused funds received by Ukraine within the framework of the Kyoto Protocol. She was officially charged on 20 December 2010. Tymoshenko denied the money had been spent on pensions and insisted it was still at the disposal of the environment ministry and called the investigation against her a witch-hunt....

...A third criminal case against Tymoshenko in connection with alleged abuse of power during the 2009 Russia–Ukraine gas dispute was opened on 10 April 2011.[215][216] This case was labelled "absurd" by Tymoshenko. On 24 May 2011 prosecutors charged her in connection with this (third criminal) case. She was not arrested....

...Tymoshenko's trial (she was charged in May 2011) over abuse of office over a natural gas imports contract signed with Russia in January 2009 started on 24 June 2011.... On 5 August 2011 Tymoshenko was arrested for 'ridiculing the court proceedings'... On 11 October 2011, the court found Tymoshenko guilty of abuse of power, sentenced her to seven years in jail, and ordered to pay the state $188 million. She was convicted for exceeding her powers as Prime Minister, by ordering Naftogaz to sign the gas deal with Russia in 2009.] The judge also banned her from seeking elected office for her period of imprisonment (disqualifying her from participation in the 2012 parliamentary and 2015 presidential elections)....

...A 2001 criminal case on state funds embezzlement and tax evasion charges against Tymoshenko was reopened in Ukraine on 24 October 2011. Since late October 2011 Ukrainian prosecutors are investigating whether Tymoshenko was involved in the murder of Yevhen Shcherban. With that Tymoshenko was under criminal investigation for ten criminal acts; prosecutors have claimed she had committed more criminal acts. On 4 November 2011 the Ukrainian tax police resumed four criminal cases against Tymoshenko. She was charged for these cases on 10 November 2011...

You can see for yourself exactly what is going on- Tymoshenko is a pro-democracy former businesswomen who rejects the communist approach of keeping the masses poor while the elites proposer, and the elites manipulated the voting processes and the masses to win, and then turned around and have imprisoned her and likely will kill her while she is in prison. She's one of the good guys and deserves our support. Under Yankukovych, the President of Ukraine has assumed more and more powers and has acted in an ever more autocratic manner, demonstrating that he intends to centralize more power, freedom, and property under his control and his allies control so that they can live good live while the people of Ukraine are poor and taken advantage of. Equally before the law, rule of law, and civil-rights protections have been trampled on, investment in Ukraine has dropped off considerably, economic growth has staggered to a halt, and relations have fallen apart with most nations of the world.

Yulia Tymoshenko is a political prisoner, and deserves the support of every decent nation and the support of the Ukrainian people.


For more information, check out this story from the Telegraph, or a recent letter that Yulia Tymoshenko was able to get out from prison and publish in the Wall Street Journal.