Archive for July, 2005
A storm is brewing over a TV advert by Orange for the Make Poverty History campaign. The advert is one in a long series run by Orange in which film stars approach Orange with ideas for a movie which all get either laughed out or disastrously amended by the fictional Orange Film Board. The MPH advert has Ewan McGregor (from Star Wars) pitching a movie to raise awareness of starvation in Africa. The Orange Film Board, predictably, turns the idea of a serious movie around and suggests that the starving kids should dress like rappers to lighten up the script. It is understandable why this would cause offence but it is pretty obvious that the whole thing is spoof and that the joke is on the fictional “Orange Film Board” with their assumptions about black people and rap and their concern with box office and focus groups. The MPH txt number is present through out the advert and the advert seemed effective. If orange had run an advert with the usual pictures of dying children with a serious voiceover saying, “txt to save lives” people would have just switched off. Utilising the long running format of the Orange Film Board and making themselves the butt of the joke works well. Watch the advert for yourself and share your thoughs on whether you think it is in bad taste or not.
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Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 2:28 AM
It is not surprising to hear that two of the suspected bombers in last week’s botched attack on London’s transport network travelled to the UK on Kenyan passports according to Scotland Yard. The two, who police say were originally from Somalia, are now on the run. I’ve lost count of the number of Somalis who have told me that they came to the UK on Kenyan Passports. When you ask how they got hold of the documents you get a smile and a, “you know how these things work”. We do indeed.
Meanwhile watch the tabloid press explode with rage now they have asylum seekers to blame.
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Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 at 2:04 AM
Figures released by the Government show that Britain last year exported arms worth nearly £1.4bn (Sh158.4 billion), compared with £992m (Sh130.9 billion) in 2003. The annual report on arms exports also reveals that Iraq was the largest market for British arms last year, with 21,733 weapons. Saudi Arabia bought 2,151, and Kenya 715 … Kenya is the fourth largest arms trade partner with the UK after Iraq, Oman and Saudi Arabia.
Searching for more information, update later.
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Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 2:00 PM
In 2000 when Chelsea, her father and mother, now Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, visited East Africa, Chepkurgor, then a Fourth Year student at Moi University, tried to make his intention clear. He wrote to Clinton, offering himself as a suitor for Chelsea …
He offered to pay 20 head of beef cattle and 40 goats to the Clintons in accordance to African traditions. He also named as his referees, then President Moi, Maendeleo Ya Wanawake chairman Zipporah Kittony and the Chepkoilel Campus Principal, Prof Margaret Kamar. He also gave the names his two college mates, John Tanui and Joseph Siror …
But, instead of the positive response he was anticipating, Chepkurgor received visitors from the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS). His letter had sent security chiefs in a spin.
He who dares wins, yes, but he who drinks? Which party appointed this casanova as one of its nominated councillors?
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Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 1:39 PM
Dj Edu, whom I’ve blogged about before, is hosting his weekly BBC 1xtra Destination Africa radio show live from K2 in Nairobi tonight as part of 1xtra in Africa intiative. The show is streamed live online from the BBC website at midnight British Summer Time (11pm GMT). Check out Edu’s video diary and his blog of the trip.
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Wednesday, July 20th, 2005 at 11:05 PM
Decades of neglect by successive Kenyan regimes, Kenyatta’s, Moi’s and now Kibaki’s means that nobody in authority really knows what is going on in Northern Kenya today. When relief workers have to move with teams of police armed to the teeth to survive, when gunmen break into schools and shoot CHILDREN in the head point blank, when anyone unknown is cut down brutally in broad daylight we have to questions just how much authority the Kenyan government has in North Eastern province? Remember when Moi closed the border with Somali in response to attacks by Somali militia? After a few days basic provisions, such as petrol were running out as it became increasingly obvious that most of the basic goods for North Eastern came from Somali not the other way round. What is behind this week’s atrocities? Ethnic tension? Environmental tension? Historical tension? Is all this talk of an independent Oromo with land taken from Kenya and Ethiopia just talk or is someone out there actively trying? Sending battalions of majeshi into the area is the equivalent of sweeping rubbish under the carpet. We have to look for the root causes and be brave enough to tackle them. This neglect of North Eastern has to stop.
As an aside, when Wangari Maathai was awarded the Nobel Peace prize many questioned the logic of giving a peace prize to an environmentalist. With people killing each other over water not only in Kenya but across the globe, with massive illegal logging cartels threatening millions of peoples way of life in the Amazon, with the one of the root causes of the ongoing conflict in Congo being the mining of diamonds, the link between the environment and peace because crystal clear don’t you think?
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Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 11:33 PM
The Mentalacrobatics manifesto:
Cut down all the tea and coffee and plant maize and beans on our most fertile land instead.
(OK sawa we’ll keep a couple acres of tea because after a hard day weeding maize you do need a good cup of tea.)
Reduce the number of MPs to 150, televise parliament and print a free monthly newsletter detailing how MPs voted. 3 people from each sub-location in each constituency to vote in a referendum on whether or not their MP gets a salary increase each time parliament proposes one. 95% of the sub locations in the MPs constituency have to agree. If an MP fails to get 95% support of the sub locations then he/she must pay the costs for the referendum in their constituency. Reduce the cabinet to 15 maximum. At least 7 of whom must be women, 5 of whom must be under 40 and 1 who can breakdance. (The 5 under 40s and the breakdancer do not have to be women.)
Harambee Stars to have proper kit in Kenya’s colours for all international matches. Including tracksuits. All Kenyan Olympic gold medallists, Kenyan Paralympians and the Kenyan cricket world-cup semi finalists to be awarded EBSs. All members of the Kenyan rugby team to be given free gym membership for life and banned from consuming alcohol during their playing career (including off season) until they retire. Kenya to look at forming a formula1 team by 2010. Kenya to have produced a potential Tour de France winner by 2010.
Strictly impose the 18+ rule at all nightclubs/bars. Strictly impose the 18+ for the purchase and consumption of alcohol. Introduce a zero-tolerance drink driving rule. Get caught once you have to join the NYS for six months.
More policies the next night I can’t sleep.
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Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 12:47 AM
“The BBC almost operates as a foreign registered agent of Hezbollah and some of the other jihadist groups.”
Who could come out with such nonsense? FOXNews (who else). This new channel is a joke. The funniest thing about all this that they feel they are so important. They feel they are changing the world. They remind me of those attention seekers who make a lot of noise because they will never make it to the top. FOXNews thinks it has as much power and influence as the BBC when clearly it is nothing more than an American version of Kenya Times during the 1990s. As Roger Mosey, head of BBC Television News, notes the BBC has had its buildings bombed many times, if a bomb went of in the building where FOXNews come out with this nonsense, these jokers, who feel they are ninjas, would shit themselves silly.
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Thursday, July 14th, 2005 at 12:43 AM
And the snowball is threatening to turn into an avalanche as the sweet sense of liberation that comes from confession rolls across the KBW landscape gathering momentum as it goes! Now it’s the turn of “Lisa Simpson” to tell all (You’ll need to scroll down kidogo.) [Superflyshi, you see what you've started?!] Who’s next I wonder?
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Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 3:00 PM
Tom Cruise Is Nuts. Indeed.
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Wednesday, July 13th, 2005 at 12:26 PM
KBW continues to grow yet clearly we are still one happy family because we share stuff like this. Hehehehe. Aiii.
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Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 at 10:17 AM
I bet White House spokesman Scott McClellan regrets backing Karl Rove so rigorously.
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Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 at 8:30 AM
America has banned its 12,000 airforce personnel stationed in the UK from travelling to London to “ensure their safety and security” in the aftermath of last week’s bombings in the capital.
The theme in London this week is, “return to normality”. Go to work as usual, take the bus as usual, take the tube as usual. Carry on as before; do not let the terrorists change your life or way of life. The US Airforce has other ideas though and sections of the British press that are usually very pro-American and are very eager to talk up the “special relationship” are enraged. The talk is about betrayal and even cowardice. So much for standing shoulder to shoulder.
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Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 at 8:23 AM
You probably don’t know who Fred Phelps is but believe me you want to slap him. Hard. I am with Abiola Lapite on this one, Freud would have a grand old time explaining Phelps’ issues.
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Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 10:30 PM
We know what took place. A group of people, with no regard for law, order or our way of life, came to our city and trashed it. With scant regard for human life or political consequences, employing violence as their sole instrument of persuasion, they slaughtered innocent people indiscriminately. They left us feeling unified in our pain and resolute in our convictions, effectively creating a community where one previously did not exist. With the killers probably still at large there is no civil liberty so vital that some would not surrender it in pursuit of them and no punishment too harsh that some might not sanction if we found them.
The trouble is there is nothing in the last paragraph that could not just as easily be said from Falluja as it could from London. The two should not be equated - with over 1,000 people killed or injured, half its housing wrecked and almost every school and mosque damaged or flattened, what Falluja went through at the hands of the US military, with British support, was more deadly. But they can and should be compared. We do not have a monopoly on pain, suffering, rage or resilience. Our blood is no redder, our backbones are no stiffer, nor our tear ducts more productive than the people in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those whose imagination could not stretch to empathise with the misery we have caused in the Gulf now have something closer to home to identify with. “Collateral damage” always has a human face: its relatives grieve; its communities have memory and demand action.
Gary Younge on point as usual.
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Monday, July 11th, 2005 at 10:08 PM
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