Have Things Seriously Stalled

The heading of this week's The Economist Magazine boldly states, "East Africa’s most important country is failing to pick itself up after a traumatic and bloody election". The article again looks at the major problems pulling reform behind with the root of all the political confusion conspicuously being a leadership regime that just won't get it. With inflation at a rate of 18%, 4 million reportedly depending on food aid, dragged justice just really is too much for Kenyans to handle not to mention growing tensions arising from the angry and highly charged mostly-youth population. If leaders or should I say same old leaders, don't really put their words to action now and implement reform and serve justice as best desired by Kenyans, I am really afraid of a bleak future comprising instability and chaos generally.

Of course problems facing the East African stronghold do not just stem from the post-election violence and processes following from the violence but they are very deep-seated issues which would probably need more time to fix than is being expected but just for the sake of the immediate future a quick and rigid solution needs to be reached at quick hastily. Kenyans' problem's with political differences will not just be decided at a court but should come from the people themselves. That is probably a question for another day so for now, why don't "we" all just get done with the acting and do something about the delayed justice which as I see it might be a huge course of concern from the international community(which has to again be the big Bretton Woods institutions which we are now forced to look up to).

Why should we let justice and the demise of a few front line individuals, which is definitely what some of the alleged instigators are looking at by me, pull our rating down?

You can read the whole Economist article here

Speaking of Bears

This is one interesting read and I particularly like when they describe the bears as, "The word “bear” brings to mind an irrational, angry creature that lashes out at anything in its path. Of course, like their animal counterparts, some bears can be very wild indeed. The most excitable bears are not so much polar as bipolar. They dabble in conspiracy theories and talk of the collapse of civilisation and the need for investors to sell all paper assets, buy gold and retreat to Idaho. But bulls can be overenthusiastic too, talking of new eras in which asset prices will reach undreamed-of heights (remember the book “Dow 36,000”?). Over the past 20 years it has been the repeated interventions of central banks to rescue bulls, not bears, that have contributed to the current mess by encouraging too much risk-taking."

View full article here from the Economist.

A Test Of Faith

I always wanted to attribute my christianity and faith(which I would want to believe is undivided to God) to my rural upbringing. Something for which I owe so much to the village where I was born and raised. Ironically though I never really attended formal sunday school classes as other kids would because I would always sneak into the main church where the elongated service was held. Maybe I just liked being there as a way of mischief but one thing was for sure, I wasn't getting bored with doing that each and every other sunday service. My grandparents, with whom I lived with then always said they were fascinated by my perpetual interest in the church and more so the main service. It was a Presbyterian church and now that am at it I still can't explain how I held up a 4 hour service as that was how long it would normally take. The time never really seemed to a bother at that time of my childhood. As I grew up and was now well into my youth my heart didn't seem disinterested enough by the prospect of church-going although like every other kid at such tender age, it did pose some questions whether to go or not. I have always found comfort in having to congregate in church my reasons nice and simple; a quiet place to worship God and grow. Faith in God to me to me is something I believe is personal and depends so much with every individual's attitude. My upbringing did contribute a considerable deal to me being as pious as I would want to think I am but also it was only keeping the habit up by my own discretion and no duress ever forced me to do what I did. If there are things in life that really matter, I think the upbringing of kids should be on top of the list. It gives me joy to proclaim God's love and continued support in all these things because of course he is the maker of all things and the graceful one here. It has been a while since I sat and wrote something so i really hope this one is worth the while for now. Until next time that was "Something That Mattered". DAVID KINYUA

Why Debian?

Debian, The Universal Operating System, is one robust and amazing open-source distribution I consider the best running GNU/Linux. The reason I would ditch the TV for it are simply much more that just the eye candy, and in brief, a secure experience, the vast software resources, vibrant mailing lists and community to learn from, fast and slim flux box window manager besides the widely used gnome desktops, full and flawless support for most of the programming languages I am keen to put my mind to, ability to run on very old hardware that is also low on memory and with basic video and sound cards leave alone an old wireless card that needed some few hours to just get recognised, amongst many other reasons.

Its been almost 3 years using Linux and I can finally say that this is where I finally wanted to be, running a robust, multiple desktop, clean partition Linux. The succession was Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linux Mint, OpenSuse, Ubuntu and now comfortable at Debian 5.0 with kernel 2.6.29 on 32bit 17GB Toshiba laptop which must be 5 years old now.

It has been almost 6 months on Debian Lenny and the experience is just one of a kind. Being able to survive a clean upgrade from Etch to Lenny with just a few weeks after my first ever install of Debian was just like water-boarding for me but luckily enough I survived it and learning so much more from the Debian community.

Just being able to cleanly run Debian that plays flash well, compiles C code neatly, roams and catches wireless networks without hitches, sounds clear with the sound servers all souped up for comfort, can Skype, telnet, putty or ssh to Uni, has my own style in fluxbox not forgetting to mention transparent aterm, hibernates properly(had to get 2.6.29 for this), xnests just fine, social-networks fully with Pidgin, can Compiz on gnome when feeling lazy but with my video card I wouldn’t normally want compiz slowing me down so I just have it off amongst other things is just amazing. And at this rate I am about to convince all of my friends to get their tux on. And I haven’t even talked about the server side of things. Xorg for now gets me happy!

Peter Schiff on Inflation, Fed, Rule of law