Sunday, January 20, 2008

What's going on in Kenya?

I saw some news stories a few days ago about problems in Kenya? Is anyone else following these stories? It sounds like some problems with the government and some genocide? If so, that would be pretty serious.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a ardent supporter of a Global Society and further Globalisation, I feel that the United Nations will take the neccesary steps to get involved and stop the situation before it gets any worse, as it has done so succesfully in the past. I can give two examples to show why we should all give vocal support for the United Nations.

1) The actions done to prevent genocide in Rwanda in 1994

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/714025.stm)

2) The actions done to prevent genocide and mass violence in the Darfur region of Sudan in, well right now.

Their further actions (with strong support from the French government) to help the fleeing Hutu (in Rwanda, 1994) people after being wrongfully accused of committing violence have shown their peace keeping abilities.

On a serious note, Joe, Yes I have been keeping track on these developments, and from what I have understood, most of it has so far has been staying within major cities and is not widespread throughout the country. However, as fairly thorough study has shown, this is how the Rwandan events began to unfold, and after intense pressure by either militias or the government, it moved out into the rural communities and the rest of the country. I guess one can only hope that the establishment that admitted their wrong actions can finally do the job that it has promised to do since December of 1946.

For more information on the mistakes of the UN (and other/all western governments) during the Rwandan genocide, PBS has two documentaries, free to watch online one of which can be found here:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/

Well anyways. Those are some of my feelings about what's going on in Africa - mainly the fact that the world is not learning from the mistakes past leaders have made. A pretty key point that apparently no one has picked up on since the end of World War I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Versailles)

Tea Talker said...

A well documented comment un lover. I can't quite tell if you like what the UN has done or not. I think the UN is what it is. A board to discuss matters. I think there maybe should be a separate peace keeping force. That might get ugly though. Not sure.

I am sad that events like this continue to occur in Africa and I'm not sure why it is not more of an issue in the Presidential debates. Perhaps the Presidents just have too much on their plates.

Maria said...

http://www.wpr.org/hereonearth/archive_080109k.cfm

Shameless plug for the radio show I work for but...
the difficulties/problems in Kenya now are often described as a result of "tribalism" Among scholarly circles (at least), tribalism is a problematic term for several reasons. We had Professor Scheub from UW-Madison on the show to tell us why