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african bullets & honey
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6:48
From: african bullets & honey
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(This piece first run in the East African of February 11, 2008)
The ongoing negotiations between Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki’s administration and the Raila Odinga-led Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) should consider as one of their immediate aims a political settlement aimed not at making the militias lose their appetite for destruction but rather at ensuring that [...]
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13:01
From: african bullets & honey
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Accra is my new favorite place. Got here yesterday morning and instantly fell in love with the place. The warmth, the openness, the constant positive references to Africa, it’s too much so now I must find some way to spend more time here. On Thursday evening I went from the airport in [...]
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14:41
From: african bullets & honey
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(This post originally run in the February 3, 2008 issue of The East African.)
Watching television news the other day, I was struck by how many of the pictures of the rioting youth showed them apparently in good cheer. This despite the anger in the country about the presidential election results, at the lack of [...]
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9:16
From: african bullets & honey
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With all respect to the Kofi Annan mediation effort, perhaps it is time that the region’s leaders visited Nairobi as a group and insisted on some movement toward a political settlement. In the same way that the Lusaka and Arusha peace agreements, aimed at Congo and Burundi respectively, were crafted from tough negotiations led [...]
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7:58
From: african bullets & honey
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I am going crazy. I am blogging seating at a table with a small group of Kenyans here in Johannesburg. One of them is visiting from Nairobi and he is filled with the smug knowingness that characterises our country’s elite and is the biggest reason why the flames are up and may stay up [...]
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8:04
From: african bullets & honey
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For those of you who understand Swedish and want to hear some Kenyan ranting on Sveriges Radio, please go to the Konflikt page and tell me what it is being said other than the parts in English. Same applies to this much shorter interview also in Swedish.
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8:00
From: african bullets & honey
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Have pasted in four opinion pieces below that have run in the East African and elsewhere in the last month. Trying to restart blogging but my brain feels leaden and uncooperative.
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7:58
From: african bullets & honey
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This opinion originally run in the East Africa on January 28, 2008 under the title,
‘The problem with Kenya’s politics is the old guard‘
The next revolution in Kenya will not be a violent one, contrary to the bloodletting presently underway. Rather it will be the rejection of the generation of men from whom the leaders [...]
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7:52
From: african bullets & honey
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Kenya can avoid years of civil strife by sharing power
(This editorial originally run in the East African on January 21, 2008)
There is no great mystery about what the future has in store for Kenya.
Other nations, too, have trodden the path of contested electoral outcomes, the formation of winner-takes-all governments, mass protests, mass violence, civil [...]
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7:41
From: african bullets & honey
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A country created by grand theft, ruled by a clique
(Originally printed in the East African on January 14, 2008)
Robbery has thrived in Kenya for many decades now. The very creation of Kenya a century ago was an act of grand theft. Our country won its independence but has never broken free from the idea that [...]
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7:39
From: african bullets & honey
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This piece appeared in the East African in the second week of January 7, 2008 as Kenya continued to burn.
Ethnic strife: How Kenya’s politics was tribalised
It is Friday, December January 4. I walk through the lobby of the Serena Hotel in Nairobi. Packs of politicians and their entourages hurry past. Most have mobile phones into [...]
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10:15
From: african bullets & honey
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Everyone reading this blog must know that Kenya is aflame. We have burnt churches with dozens trapped in them, we have seen a peaceful election with the highest turnout in our history end as farce and the number of displaced citizens has risen to more than 100,000. I wrote a piece last [...]
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1:25
From: african bullets & honey
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I just got back from Djibouti and the amazing Palace Kempinsky. It is a beautiful behemoth of a hotel with almost no guests: courtesy of it having being built for the recent COMESA Heads of State Summit and with very few other conceivable reasons for existing. But then before I get into that [...]
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0:47
From: african bullets & honey
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Just got back to Addis with a bag of 2007 resolutions, one which is to temporarily close down African Bullets & Honey for a few months. Yes, I am running a stake through the heart of this monster until I can find more time to dedicate to it.
If you feel like taking [...]
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2:43
From: african bullets & honey
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Who would have guessed that the good Dr. Kevin M. De Cock, director of H.I.V./AIDS for the World Health Organization, would have been so presciently named? A study in Kenya and Uganda by the National Institutes of Health has found evidence that circumcision might reduce a man’s risk of contracting HIV from heterosexual sex [...]
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5:21
From: african bullets & honey
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Last night I attended the Jamhuri Day party at the Kenyan Embassy in Addis Ababa, an event which is on every diplomat’s and Ethiopian taxi driver’s calendar. There were at least five hundred people who attended and the food and the tusker were in full flow. So much so that I heard myself, [...]
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6:01
From: african bullets & honey
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Word is out, the ticket is in hand, the speedo packed and the aspirin counted, I am going to The Kwani Literary Festival in Lamu from December 21st to 28th. What could be better than surf and sand and books and people who love them?
Lamu from the tourist brochures is described as ‘hypnotically [...]
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9:19
From: african bullets & honey
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Phil Gunson in opendemocracy.net on how the ‘political polarisation of Hugo Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution” in Venezuela is reproduced in the way the phenomenon is reported and assessed’. More on the defects of “solidarity journalism”.
The article kind of reminds me of the media reporting on Zimbabwe and Mugabe which often leaves me with the sense [...]
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3:21
From: african bullets & honey
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I was recently rewatching Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited when a friend of mine, who is on a one-year writing fellowship in London asked whether he should move house to Oxford so that he could commute to London for his classes. Oxford, which is a city that I enjoy and like, is ever associated in [...]
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5:08
From: african bullets & honey
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The question of whether we need a universal military draft will be important as long as this country is placing thousands of young men and women in harm’s way in Iraq. As long as Americans are being shipped off to war, then everyone should be vulnerable, not just those who, because of economic circumstances, are [...]
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5:28
From: african bullets & honey
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Matthew Crawford writing in The New Atlantis on why I should have paid more attention in wood- and metal-work class.
In the age of think tanks, consulting firms, and IKEA, craftsmanship seems to be in decline. Shop class is becoming rarer, and our children are told that college is the ticket to an “open future” as [...]
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4:18
From: african bullets & honey
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Fernando Botero is showing his incredible new paintings of the Abu Ghraib torture scenes at the Marlborough Gallery in New York. You can see more of them at Slate.com
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0:52
From: african bullets & honey
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I have just stumbled into Mr. Kristian von Hornsleth, intrepid Danish artist known for audacious works such as the Fuck Me Daddy Bikini and his generally dark view of the art world and art lovers (see his poem, ‘FUCK YOU ART LOVERS.’)
Now his war against global capitalism and consumerism (take a look at [...]
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4:48
From: african bullets & honey
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I suspect that there is a saboteur out to get bullets and honey; in the last week paragraphs have disappeared from the blog and I just now had a techie friend fix the problem (with embarrasing ease.) Maybe this is what I get for dipping my toes into Kenya’s treacherous tribal wars, in which case [...]
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4:17
From: african bullets & honey
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I grew up being told that Luos were clever but addicted to showboating; Kambas were clean but stupid; the Maasai brutal and backward; people from the Coast were lazy; while we Gikuyus were ambitious and a tad dishonest. In a Kenya where the president’s marital wars impact national politics more than his economic policy, it [...]
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9:09
From: african bullets & honey
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I thought I would take comments from Binyavanga’s open letter to his father and post them as a debate. Between Binyavanga and ‘Uncle Joe’ on the issue of Gikuyu tribal chauvanism as reflected in the actions of the Kibaki government. This argument really cuts to the heart of a debate that Gikuyus of [...]
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14:27
From: african bullets & honey
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Dear Baba,
This is an odd and public and rhetorical letter, on a subject that recent tradition has asked us to sweep under the carpet. I find myself, at 35, at odds with the tone and nature and political space that is Gikuyu. For the first time in my life, in the Kibaki government, my identity [...]
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8:13
From: african bullets & honey
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After a week of Digital Indaba polemics, entertaining outraged comments from South Africa, I had my moment of Outrage on the way to the airport yesterday morning. My flight for Addis Ababa from Nairobi was scheduled to leave at such a time as made it necessary for me to be at the airport by [...]
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19:25
From: african bullets & honey
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(This post is a follow-on to a previous one on next week’s Digital Indaba on Blogging and the resulting comments that included accusations of my being racist and illegitimate)
Does the African blog-space – if there is such a thing – need codification, a coming together, a corralling under the auspices of a code of conduct [...]
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4:33
From: african bullets & honey
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Below are some comments on the last post I had on the upcoming African bloggers indaba. It turned out that AB&H is racist and illegitimate. I will be back to talk more about the attempt to codify the African blog space and make it part of a kind of NGO-ish, funded civil society [...]
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21:41
From: african bullets & honey
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Word on the street, the Khartoum one where I am for the week, is that there is a Digital Citizen Indaba on Blogging conference being held in Grahamstown, South Africa. It is a shock that there should be this kind of meeting without AB&H being told about it. From the list of speakers, listed [...]
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11:19
From: african bullets & honey
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Tony Blair has said it is possible to identify problem children who could grow up to be a potential “menace to society” even before they are born.
Setting out plans for state intervention to prevent babies born into high-risk families becoming problem teenagers of the future, the prime minister said teenage mothers could be forced to [...]
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10:06
From: african bullets & honey
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Written for The East African (Nairobi)
July 31, 2006
By Parselelo Kantai (posted here with the author’s permission)
AT THE LAUNCH OF LOTTE HUGHES’s book, Moving the Maasai, Professor Bethwel Ogot stood up and declared the Kenyan project dead.
Ogot, the father of Kenyan history and Africa’s most celebrated historian, has spent most of his career writing Kenya into [...]
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11:10
From: african bullets & honey
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From:
To: KCL SS&PP Students (University of London, King’s College)
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2006 4:30:37 PM
Subject: DVD & video borrowing restriction
Dear all,
Please see the dull but important message below, which will principally
affect users at the Maughan Library.
************
Dear student,
We have recently implemented a borrowing restriction regarding the ISS
DVD/VHS collection.
In compliance with the Video Recording Act (VRA) 1984 [...]
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7:00
From: african bullets & honey
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Jeffrey Sachs who leaps over tall buildings in Bolivia and Russia in a single bound and lands in Africa to solve its many problems is at it again (read article in Scientific American). Where he once promoted the power of unfettered markets, advising the Russians on the ’shock therapy’ that left a bulk of [...]
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6:26
From: african bullets & honey
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Parselelo Kantai on the contested territory in writing and acting on history in Kenya, and the recent spate of books by white, western intellectuals decrying the oppressions suffered by Kenyans of various stripes under British colonialism. One of them, Caroline Elkins (author of Britain’s Gulag) reviews Adam Robert’s The Wonga Coup, [...]
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7:27
From: african bullets & honey
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Ah, peace. Who is it good for?
‘”In Afghanistan, Americans have all the wrist watches but Afghans have all the time.” The enemy will attempt to control the clock with the strategic intent of winning by not losing. He will use the clock to wear down American resolve. Management of the clock will allow him [...]
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4:33
From: african bullets & honey
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Steven Hahn reviews Eric Foner’s Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. At the heart of American freedoms is the history of Black America during the First Reconstruction. Eric Foner revises revisionism.
What if the history from which you draw ’self esteem’ were forged? Pride and mistaken identity.
John Updike tiptoes around [...]
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4:19
From: african bullets & honey
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I am a fan and historian of the 419 scam email. I have noticed lately that they seem to be getting better by the day. Now they are written (supposedly) by middle class families in England rather than the usual relative of deposed African dictators (usually West African.) AB & H will henceforth [...]
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11:16
From: african bullets & honey
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George ‘Gorgeous’ Galloway with his overly orange tan, shiny suits, ‘indefatigable’ love of the spotlight and praises for Saddam Hussein is not my usual cup of tea but that man can do an interview. There is little that is better on TV than to watch Galloway tear a hapless interviewer to bits. Watch this [...]
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10:44
From: african bullets & honey
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I am in Khartoum and I need a drink. Badly. But there are none to be had here or at least in no place that I know. Most women are covered up demurely which only seems to raise my curiosity rather than diminishing it. This is my first time here and [...]
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3:03
From: african bullets & honey
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I left Copenhagen a few days ago and find that my experience of that city was quite underwhelming even without having expected much on arrival. Perhaps it is because I was there for too short a time to appreciate anything more than its architecture and its tourist face. But even on the level [...]
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19:51
From: african bullets & honey
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Back to the land of high-speed wireless internet. Otherwise known as heaven. I must post about Copenhagen even if it is only about my initial impressions which are shrouded in a heavy fog of ignorance. Before I do that though, do you believe that there is such a thing as destiny when you meet [...]
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12:02
From: african bullets & honey
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Powerful people are not powerful: they are fumblers and jivers as we used to call them back in the day. I say this after two events: George Bush’s antics during the G8 and the latest Superman movie.
Consider this slice of the off-the-cuff conversation between Bush and Blair in Russia:
Bush: I think [...]
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6:20
From: african bullets & honey
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It was perfect wasn’t it? The moment that Zinedine headbutted Materazzi the curtain parted and revealed the immigrant’s European journey. I did not have a moment of doubt that Materazzi had made a racist comment: that he had somehow managed to bring up the subject of Zizou’s Algerian origins in a derogatory [...]
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3:20
From: african bullets & honey
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It was perfect wasn’t it? The moment that Zinedine headbutted Materazzi the curtain parted and revealed the immigrant’s European journey. I did not have a moment of doubt that Materazzi had made a racist comment: that he had somehow managed to bring up the subject of Zizou’s Algerian origins in a derogatory [...]
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12:19
From: african bullets & honey
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My oh my, I have not blogged for the past two weeks. It is because I have been actually trying to get my running going (not going very well I must say), working and writing, all which has left me absolutely exhausted and strangely blog-mute if you know what I mean. My life [...]
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9:19
From: african bullets & honey
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My oh my, I have not blogged for the past two weeks. It is because I have been actually trying to get my running going (not going very well I must say), working and writing, all which has left me absolutely exhausted and strangely blog-mute if you know what I mean. My life [...]
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13:25
From: african bullets & honey
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My brother and I have been in Djibouti for the past six hours or so and I am already in love with the city. In the first place, after more than fifteen winters in the US and the UK, there is nothing I enjoy better than extreme, humid heat. To celebrate, I foolishly [...]
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10:25
From: african bullets & honey
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My brother and I have been in Djibouti for the past six hours or so and I am already in love with the city. In the first place, after more than fifteen winters in the US and the UK, there is nothing I enjoy better than extreme, humid heat. To celebrate, I foolishly [...]
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5:32
From: african bullets & honey
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(INT. THERAPIST’S OFFICE)
We’re in the middle of a group therapy session, containing
six or seven FATHERS with their teenage SONS. It is
[...]
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5:03
From: african bullets & honey
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Your friendly blogger has been in the Netherlands for the past couple of hours after a long sleepy flight from Addis Ababa. How surreal it is to step off a plane a few hours later and be somewhere so different from where I left. I have never gotten over the feeling that flying is [...]
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8:09
From: african bullets & honey
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JERRY SPRINGER
Now Scott, tell us about your father. Share with us.
[...]
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5:43
From: african bullets & honey
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And so now it can be said: mmk has visited the famous Concorde in Addis Ababa. And what little shreds of innocence that were still (reluctantly) hanging off me have now been stripped and buried for all eternity. Oh yes, to this son of the soil, innocence is a past state of being. [...]
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9:36
From: african bullets & honey
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If you have ever wanted to know what you think of terrorism, try and be in a city that has just had bombs go off in a public place. This is what happened in Addis Ababa (where I am staying for now) on Friday when at least six explosions went off and killed three [...]
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8:14
From: african bullets & honey
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I am in Nairobi for a few days from London and just came from a ride to Athi River with my mother who is purchasing some land there. We were accompanied by my uncle, the cliche family rogue, who knows every single trick Nairobi has to part you from your money by means fair [...]
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20:24
From: african bullets & honey
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I just got back to London from Washington DC where my close friend was getting married this past weekend. Now this is a friend I have had since boarding school in Nairobi; we went to the States for university at about the same time; and roomed together in Brooklyn for some years. BK [...]
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10:26
From: african bullets & honey
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Continuing on with what has become a frequent – and to me quite enjoyable – exchange on the religious roots of nationalism and many forms of social cohesion, I received an email from BK below that continues where the last post on ‘Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing’ [...]
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7:26
From: african bullets & honey
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Continuing on with what has become a frequent – and to me quite enjoyable – exchange on the religious roots of nationalism and many forms of social cohesion, I received an email from BK below that continues where the last post on ‘Let us get back to belief shall we? Again. And memory in writing’ [...]
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3:05
From: african bullets & honey
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Nominations are now closed and this blog has been nominated in the best political blog category for which of course I am quite excited and thankful. Unfortunately, while anyone could nominate a weblog, only Kenya Blogs Webring members can vote on the final outcome which strikes me as strange since it excludes readers who [...]
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7:04
From: african bullets & honey
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I have been fasting for the past six hours and cannot think from the hunger. I am delirious with it and cannot imagine that I will be able to maintain it for a week. My stomach after hearing that Head Division had ruled the start of a fast went into full scale battle [...]
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4:54
From: african bullets & honey
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Welcome to Wordpress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!
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10:34
From: african bullets & honey
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From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz [...]
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7:34
From: african bullets & honey
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From: MMK
To: BW, BK
Hey, take a look at the excerpt below drawn from an essay by Eugene McCarraher called The Incoherence of Hannah Arendt: Breaking the marriage between heaven and earth
‘Arendt’s intellectual debut was a dissertation on Augustine’s conception of love. It’s a convoluted and repetitious monograph, bathed in the brooding earnestness of Existenz [...]
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5:07
From: african bullets & honey
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Congratulations on your acceptance letter my friend. You must now tap into the deep rivers of American survival craft that I, with the help of the wise ones, have fashioned for the better part of a dozen years. You have struggled mightily to gain that visa, found just the right angle to pitch [...]
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4:33
From: african bullets & honey
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