Story by Reuters
Publication Date: 9/27/2007

US Episcopal Church bishops told Anglican leaders around the world Wednesday that they will urge restraint in elevating gays or lesbians to the position of bishop and will not authorise rites to be used for the blessing of same-sex marriages.

But it remained to be seen whether the pronouncements went far enough to satisfy critics of the Episcopal establishment or prevent further divisions in the 77-million-member global Anglican Communion.

While some conservative bishops had left the meeting early to hold their own meeting in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, there was some favourable comment from both sides.

“We have been a bit clearer about what we have done,” said Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, a gay whose consecration touched off the controversy.

“I think we have offered assurances to the (global communion) who by the way have been, I believe, destabilised by misinformation coming their way.”

When leading Anglican bishops, or primates, from around the world met in Africa earlier this year they “requested” that the US branch of the church make it clear by September 30 that it would not ordain another openly gay person as a bishop and would not allow the blessing of same sex unions.

It was the 2003 Episcopal consecration of Robinson, the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of church history, that prompted the request. In the statement approved in New Orleans the bishops of the US church reaffirmed a resolution passed by its general convention in the summer of 2006. This calls upon those picking candidates for bishop “to exercise restraint by not consenting to the consecration of any candidate to the episcopate whose manner of life presents a challenge to the wider church and will lead to further strains on communion.”

The New Orleans statement added that the bishops acknowledge “that non-celibate gay and lesbian persons are included among those to whom” the restraint message applies.

Publication Date: 9/27/2007

We have been told time and again by Nairobi council and the Roads ministry that the roundabouts in the capital will be replaced by flyovers and underpasses.

This will certainly go a long way in streamlining the flow of traffic in Nairobi, which has literally ground to a halt.

The traffic mess is costing the country dearly as a lot of man hours are wasted.

Nairobi, being the capital city, can be equated to the heart of the country. And right now, it is clogged to a point where the health of the whole country is negatively affected.

It is in this light that the unclogging of the city traffic should be done as a matter of urgency.

At this point, one wonders why the City Council has to keep on planting flowers inside the roundabouts if it is intent on replacing them with flyovers and under-passes.

Shouldn’t we be seeing bulldozers within those traffic circles instead of flower planters?

And, pray, how much is it costing the council to plant the same? Isn’t this a waste in light of the fact that they will be uprooted anyway?

Publication Date: 9/27/2007

What is going on in our country at the moment leaves a lot to be desired.

I often marvel at the calibre of the leaders we have. At times, I sincerely wonder where the greatness and the patriotism that this country has been boasting about for so long is.

There is rising political violence, and the people or group being manipulated is the youth.

I have been imagining that Kenya was moving in the direction of rejecting perpetrators of violence. From what is evident now, it is possible that we could be moving towards the worst. Most of those who call themselves leaders only know how to lead the youth to violence.

Honestly, such people should not even offer themselves for leadership positions.

What Kenya needs is not those who use their often ill-gotten wealth to buy the youth to fight for them.

I call upon the youth wherever they are to shun this crop of leaders. It is tragic to be given a mere Sh100, or even more, to be used by a leader to fight others or even burn a fellow citizen’s house.

Remember: those leaders only pretend to love, recognise and cherish the youth in the times of need — when they want to use them to instigate violence for political mileage.

After using the youth and finding their way to wherever they want to go, they quickly forget them. During campaigns, like now, the leaders are very good listeners and very attentive to the electorate.

At this time, you will find them ready to mix with people and even dare to ask their security detail to let the people interact with them.

They can attend fund-raisers and all manner of meetings.

Publication Date: 9/27/2007

The adult education programme, which witnessed a high learner turnout in the late 1970s and 1980s, has been experiencing a downward trend.

Several reasons for this decline have been advanced, but one major factor is the stigma that the community attaches to the literacy programmes and the adult learners.

The programme is popularly known as ngumbaru — a term which has acquired derogatory connotations over time.

However, according to Kamusi ya Kiswahili Sanifu, ngumbaru simply means all adult.

The negative connotation was reportedly imported from Tanzania and some Kenyans blindly adopted the same.

The most unfortunate scenario is that some officers in the department of adult education have not committed themselves fully to the programme’ success.

A senior officer in the department recently featured on a leading television channel defining ngumbaru as unteachable.

Some officers have even gone further to associate the word ngumbaru with the thumb, or kidole gumba in Kiswahili, because illiterates use thumb prints when called upon to append a signature to a document. Kiswahili experts deny the existence of any relationship between the term kidole gumba and ngumbaru as alleged by the officers.

Whether ngumbaru means unteachable or not, it should not be the preoccupation of the officers in the department of adult education.

From the semantics point of view, words tend to acquire new or expanded meanings as languages grow.

A good example is the word mtumba, which means a bale, but it is now used to refer to old or used clothes because used clothes are shipped into Kenya in bales.

The word ngumbaru might have acquired the same semantic switching.

If I am your client and the community perceives me to be sub-normal, you cannot remove this stigma by reminding me that I am sub-normal or unteachable.

However, the current director of adult education is to be co

Story by JACKSON MBUVI
Publication Date: 9/27/2007

I HAVE JUST RETURNED FROM A four-day trip to Baghdad and feel I can, without any contradiction, sustain the argument that the Iraq capital is the real Devils’ kitchen if ever there was one.

The chief chef here is the al Qaeda terrorist group, and there are only two items on the menu: death and destruction.

Hardly does a day pass without footage on the Web site about executions by the self-styled al Qaeda outfit called Islamic State in Iraq. Using convoluted logic disguised as religious zeal, the al Qaeda has been capturing innocent people and executing them gangland style — mostly through beheading — and posting the scary stuff on the Internet.

Hiding behind religion to perpetrate this carnage is adding insult to injury because no religion in the world, least of all Islam, which has a most elaborate doctrine on respect for life, teaches its adherents to kill and torture.

THE MOST RECENT EPISODE IN THIS lunacy is the killing of five Iraq army officers. They were captured early last week and the footage of their execution posted on the Web site on Saturday. The images on the Internet capture a masked gunman shooting the blindfolded officers in the head with a pistol as they plead for mercy.

It is a chilling scene for the uninitiated, yet this is what residents of Baghdad wake up to every morning.

On the day I arrived in Iraq, the news of the day was the killing of 25 people by al Qaeda operatives in some suburb northwest of Baghdad.

And the news three days earlier was the butchery of more than 400 people belonging to an ancient religious sect in northern Iraq called Yazidi. In all, about 2,000 people have been killed, including two provincial governors in the last couple of weeks.

Saddam Hussein is dead and interred, but his murderous spirit stills rules in the country he sprayed with death for four decades. The Iraq government, supported by the US-led coalition, may claim to have authority in Baghdad, but the real power in the capital is with underground terror gangs commanded by the al Qaeda.

Which brings us to the question: What makes the al Qaeda tick to an extent that it can literally control a nation even with the mighty US military machine in town?

The name al Qaeda (it means ‘‘The base’’) first captured the world’s imagination on a big scale following the attack in New York on September 11, 2001.

As an organisation, al Qaeda is an off-shoot of the Cold War. It first emerged as a guerilla outfit in Afghanistan intended to counter the December invasion of the country by the then Soviet Union.

Its foremost spiritual leader, strategist and financier then, as now, was Osama bin Laden. His foot soldiers were the hard-line Mujahedeen who, in the fullness of time, gave birth to the Taliban regime.

Once Osama and Mujahedeen succeeded in toppling the Soviet-backed regime in Kabul, they suddenly found themselves without a cause to rally behind. They had to find one to which to turn their resources and creativity, if only to remain relevant.

But finding a solid enemy to train guns on as was the case with the Soviet Union during the Afghanistan occupation has not been easy. So Osama has been left to fight amorphously defined groups like enemies of the Palestinian cause, his own defined enemies of Islam, and now the US/Western interests.

Of the three, the US/Western interests appear to be the most attractive. Having sharpened teeth fighting the mighty Soviet Union, an enemy as strong, if not stronger, had to be created.

BUT EXACTLY WHAT MAKES THE AL Qaeda tick? Apparently it is the ability to craftily package their “cause” as one inspired by religion.

For instance, to gain a foothold in Iraq, the al Qaeda has renamed the country the Islamic Republic of Iraq! That way, even the Islamic countries that surround Iraq, and which would ordinarily have nothing to do with al Qaeda and its murderous mission, are hesitant to be seen to be against the creation of an Islamic state.

But deep down, there is no Islamic state in the making. It is all but a reincarnation of the state of blood that Saddam created.

Mr Mbuvi is a security consultant.