Friday 12 July 2013

Dear Mr. President – learn how to tweet!



Cabinet Secretary, Michael Kamau started off the hilarity this week with his unbelievable rant against the NIS – unbelievable because MK wanted us to swallow whole heartedly how he has been in some kind of time vacuum while this country’s security agencies have been used consistently against the people of Somalia and Kenyan Somali for the last 20 plus years. “The NIS obsession with security in Somalia has hurt the national interests and undermined economic development.”

What an applause his meaningless rant attracted though! He is right now ranked as the most thoughtful Cabinet Minister possibly in the history of Kenya. 

Never mind the known reality on the ground, as concerns this particular governments’ approach to Somalis and Somalia for over 100 years, we must acknowledge the miniature concern raised; that this Jubilee government should indeed pay less of their kind of attention to Somalia than they are doing.
I really don’t know what is actually worse: a government that has spent the better part of the past 40 plus years targeting raiding, massacring and raping Somalis and or having a Minister say “oh man, we pay too much attention to these people!”  

We do have a lot of crazy within our borders, but much more within powerful positions – is it true that Michael Kamau is so ignorant as to not realize the extent of the Kenya government’s atrocities against the Somali people? No. MK is not ignorant of that. He just thinks he and the rest of the government can make far much more money when NIS uses its “raid and rape” policy on OTHER people. So he decided to “expose” the NIS.

The search for “intelligence” within Kenyan borders has been going on for a long while. So long, even the President of Kenya decided to host Kenyan mainstream editors in State House in the hope that he may indeed find some intelligence and maybe placate it. Sadly, after you watched a rather disheveled Macharia Gaitho act so guile and ridiculously cute as he presents his speech, you know it is unlikely that there is any sort of intelligence in Kenyan news rooms.

It thus will not shock anybody when the president decides that someone should be tweeting on his behalf. Introducing Dennis Itumbi, Director of New Media and Diaspora - oh the way State house struggled to define this tweeter menace’s job description – it was rather hilarious! 

“Itumbi, who has worked as a journalist with local and International Media will be charged with the role of ensuring communication using new media and modern tools including mobile applications in State House and across government.”

I almost died from laughter when I reached the part that says “modern tools.” As opposed to ancient tools of course? 

I don’t want to say that NIS is just the tip of the iceberg, but hiring someone to tweet on your behalf just underscores the allegation as concerns a total LACK of intelligence.

It takes the most amazing sort of media manipulation to craft a situation where Teachers are worse than MPs but, here we are, in a situation where our president has managed to convince a room full of rather bedazzled editors that the teachers are expecting him to go borrow money to pay their miserable little salaries meanwhile he can easily pay off the salaries of MPs and of course the “misinforming” NIS and never to forget, he can always pay whoever tweets on his behalf.

I got to say; that twitter thing got to me. Not that I have an active account, no, I obviously cannot put my thoughts into a mere 140 characters, no sir that takes a special kind of simplistic thinking. But I did hope that our President could manage that on his own. After all, he really isn’t being pressured to think about poor people. We are supposed to pay tax even on our foodstuff.  Our children’s teachers should accept whatever deal he comes up with, and didn’t he pay our mothers’ maternity fee?

Malcolm X said it best when he quipped: “If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

That quote is about 26 characters. I know, not a single one of our newspaper editors can manage something so simple and concise. Not today, not ever, because of what they did this Friday morning.
The only thing I can surely ask is, since you have a smart phone Mr. Kenyatta, could you please learn how to tweet yourself? That way, you won’t spend my backbreaking taxes on someone who is so far, and up your behind, he only sees the sun when you talk.


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