This will sink like the proverbial stone. That is all.

Tribe all but vanishes from Kenyan city By KATHARINE HOURELD, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 30, 3:56 PM ET

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080130/ap_on_re_af/kenya_ethnic_cleansing

KISUMU, Kenya - The young man hefting a machete at the burning roadblock was frustrated. He'd been looking for five days, but could not find a member of the Kikuyu tribe to kill.

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Members of Kenya's biggest tribe have disappeared in their thousands from Kisumu, making it the first — but perhaps not the last — city to be ethnically cleansed.

"If we find any Kikuyus, we're going to slaughter them or burn them alive," 19-year-old Daniel Odongo said Wednesday, who wielded the machete as a mob of hundreds of young men with rusty axes and other weapons roared their approval. "But there is none in the houses around here."

When incumbent President Mwai Kibaki was announced as winner of Dec. 27 elections by a narrow margin after days of unexplained delays, many in Kisumu took to the streets of the city of 504,000 on the shores of Lake Victoria, looting and setting shops ablaze.

The residents, mainly from the Luo tribe of opposition leader Raila Odinga, soon turned their rage on Kibaki's Kikuyu people — a minority in the western city resented for their domination of politics and the economy. They set Kikuyu homes on fire and ordered them to leave, or face death.

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Nearly 1,000 Kenyans have been brutally killed since the election, and Kenya teeters on the brink. It's been one of the most stable countries in Africa.

Are "family" based. (think "Hussein") Kind like the stereotypical mafia. A woman from there explained it to me one time. Extremely corrupt. But there are so many great people there,-- this is very frightening news, not just for human beings, but for the wildlife reserves they and other African have been trying to establish, country by country.

There is a very disturbing trend in Africa -- genocide, motivated largely by radical elites acting as proxies for the world's rich. Nigeria is also unstable, and Sudan, as most of us are aware, has become an ethnic-cleansing state. The revolution in South Africa was also hijacked by forces unknown, and that's only recently calmed down a little.

I tend to disbelieve conspiracies, but Africa is an exception. In the last few years, several "entrepreneurs" and international adventurers have been connected to African strongmen -- Pat Robertson (connected to Nigeria) among them.

--p!

:P

K'n'R

This is way too sad.

it is a gut-wrenching film, and really puts a fine point on ethnic cleansing.

Thank you.

We need to know. We need to remember.

Knowing and remembering are not enough.

many corrupt governments & elections causing the suffering of the people, the rest of the world seems to sit back & turn the other way until forced to intervene in some way and then, what do you do? I hope there are some answers found someday.

This is not the first time Africa has suffered from ethnic violence. In Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Congo, Angola and many others, ethnic violence has rocked already shaky post-colonial states.

World leaders have failed to recognize the severity of the situation in Kenya and have instead used meaningless diplomatic rhetoric to avoid the harsh reality. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the situation “deeply concerning,” and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the situation was “unacceptable.”

http://thedaily.washington.edu/2008/1/31/staff-editorial/

Thanks for posting Cali, K&R.

It sounds like the Luo tribesmen would make terrific Americans. They see a problem with some people, the Kikiyu, and they eliminate the problem. Sure, they use some crude methods: machetes and immolation are kind of slow, but they are thorough. Listen to the rhetoric from our home-grown politicians when they talk about the immigration problem or the terrorism problem or the gay problem or whatever other problem they've ginned up that makes them pee their pants in ph34r. What's so very different about the Luo solution to the Kikiyu problem?

When the hacking and the burning is over, I foresee a steady stream of the likes of Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter making sojourns to Kenya to congratulate the Luo on their ingenious solution, and looking for pointers.

The involvement of Islam is that the presidential candidate backed by the Luos promised to implement sharia if he got elected and also promised that Islam would be taught in the schools.

Therefore, Hunter and Tancredo wouldn't touch that guy with a 10 foot poll.

So many of us (myself included) are so wrapped up in internal US affairs, we lose the opportunity to parse larger matters of global concern (although, I believe they are inextricably linked.

it heartening to know so many DUers care about this.

And didn't Bill gates just send a "brazzillion" dollars for farm aid?

Tanzania, on the shores of Lake Victoria.

Uganda (British-manufactured union of the former
700 year old kingdoms of Buganda and Ankole),

Rwanda (former 800 year old kingdom of Rwanda),

Tanzania (which has had relative peace thanks to
Julius Nyerere's anti-ethnocentric government
but is starving to death),

and Kenya surround the region of Lake Victoria.

See "Darwin's Nightmare" to learn why there is
so much "ethnic conflict" in the region.

Hotel Rwanda is a good movie but "Darwin's Nightmare"
goes deep into the global economic forces at work
behind the slow genocide of East African people.

Google "Darwin's Nightmare" for more information.