Netanyahu offers to coach Kenya in war on towel-heads of terror

That's got to be welcome news for the beleaguered Uhuru Kenyatta, who has been having a tough time passing his family fiefdom off as a stable and modern democracy. Every time you turn around the towellers of terror from next door are pulling some headline grabbing stunt to sully the reputation of one of our most staunch allies in all Africa.

As with virtually all terror outfits, the al-Shabaabers have come up with some flimsy excuse to justify their mayhem. In this case, it's the fact that Kenya has troops in Somalia. Well, of course they do! How else is democracy and good governance to take root in that benighted land? Of course, the Kenyan intervention is doubly good because it is being carried out at the behest of the Nations of Virtue.

Now that Netanyahu is aboard, expect the Shabaabers to exit stage right in the very near future. After all, look at how the visionary stewardship of the "greatest leader since Moses" has brought peace and prosperity to the Holy Land.

Does anyone believe Kenya killed 100 militants?

Our favourites in the Dark Continent certainly know how to treat themselves well.

Apparently, Mr. Goodluck over there in Nigeria runs a government whose legislators are the best paid in the world!

And our dear buddy in Kenya, that Uhuru Kenyatta fellow who's been busy bobbing and weaving to avoid the long arm of the International Criminal Court on war crimes charges, comes in second!

Oddly enough, our two bestest besties in the Dark Continent are facing down "Islamic insurgencies."

Now a cynic might be inclined to suggest that the reason these countries are besieged by "insurgencies" is because they are cesspools of graft and corruption.

But no. We are informed day after day by the media Big Dogs that both Kenya and Nigeria are beset by Islamic radicals, and they must therefore be given a free pass for any minor abuses of civil rights, human rights, etc. that may come up in the course of "fighting terror."

Both the Boko Haram and Shabaab terror outfits just sprung up out of nowhere, and neither have anything to do with the endemic corruption that cripples meaningful development in both Nigeria and Kenya.

Kenya scored a PR coup of sorts with the news that they have killed 100 Shabaab militants since yesterday's Shabaab attack on a bus. That's made headlines throughout the Nations of Virtue.

That's a major win in the PR department.

In the real world, even if some of those killed were in fact "militants," that merely primes the pump for the next round of violence.

The reason that radical groups like BH and the Shabaab get traction in Africa is because the populace is more than fed up with the corrupt West-friendly stooges who have been looting their countries for years.

AlJazeera suggests Kenya troops looted Westgate

A pertinent question might be why Al Jazeera is three weeks late to a story that was widely circulating at the time.

Possibly because Al Jazeera trys so far as possible to paint US allies in Africa in a sympathetic light, and in these dark days Kenya is one of America's besties on the dark continent. That would explain the fantastical scenarious sketched for us in the early hours of the "seige", when we were led to believe that a large number of Shabaab armed with heavy weapons had taken up positions inside the mall.

If you recall, a battalion of Kenyan commandos, backed up by an elite IDF unit that just happened to be shopping at the mall that day, were waiting to fight to the last man to restore the rule of law.

Reality has since set in. The fog, if not of war, at least of a good mall siege, continues to obscure what really happened at Westgate, but it now appears that the four or possibly five evil-doers, armed with nothing more than AK-47s, were probably dispatched in the early hours of the counter-attack, or slipped out among the "hostages".

The next four days were about "mopping up".... watches, jewellery, cellphones...

Al-Shabaab goes to the mall

Al-Shabaab, the Somali al-Qaeda acolytes, have been declared defeated on a regular basis over the past several years, most recently by the Council on Foreign Relations.

Turns out they're not defeated at all, they just went to the mall.

And not just any mall, but the most prestigious mall in all Kenya.

In fact, one could make a case for this not being a Kenyan mall at all, but an upscale Israeli mall transplanted into Nairobi. Apparently the Westgate mall was such a favorite among tourists from the Holy Land that it even housed a synagogue on the premises. 

Westgate Mall; a taste of the Holy Land in the heart of the Dark Continent.

Having just passed the 12th anniversary of 9/11, one could be forgiven for imagining that the forces of al-Qaeda are on the rise, rather than on the run, as we are frequently led to believe.

"Our" good FSA rebels in Syria have been defecting to the "bad" al-Qaeda rebels in droves.

Our man in Abuja, Goodluck Jonathan, is not having much luck rooting out the al-Qaeda linked Boko Haram.

Libya, Mali, and on it goes...

Recent indications are that AFRICOM intends to gets serious and rid the Dark Continent of the al-Qaeda virus once and for all.

If our past successes are any indication, then we'll really be in trouble.

US doubles down on global cop gig

According to this story, not just global cop but global judge and jury too.

So these three dudes were arrested in Djibouti and suspected of wanting to support al Shabaab fighters in Somalia.

On the face of it one might detect in this narrative some concerns for Djibouti or Somalia. Possibly even Sweden or Britain.

So why are they now in a New York jail?

It costs a lot of money to bring folks over from Djibouti and keep them in New York jails.

It will cost even more to put them on trial. This case will run into the millions of dollars in no time.

If the concern is that these three individuals have al Qaeda sympathies and might at some point in the future pose a risk to American interests, then why are US law enforcement officials not busy in Turkey vetting the thousands of fighters with al Qaeda sympathies who have been crossing into Syria?

Congo tango

Wasn't that long ago that our standard expectation of our allies in the dark continent was that when Uncle Sam said "jump" they'd ask, how high?

Nowadays the more frequent reply to an Uncle Sam request is "how much?" As in how much are you going to give us in money and guns.

But the reality on the ground is that even those days are numbered. We are soon going to see a new African reality. When Uncle Sam says "jump", his African allies will say "fuck you."

We're getting a hint of that already with the brouhaha over Ugandan support for the M23 rebels in the Congo. A UN report leaked a few weeks ago fingers both Uganda and Rwanda as being the prime movers behind the M23 group, which has succeeded in routing the Congolese army from a large swath of mineral-rich north eastern Congo.

Uganda has responded by threatening to quit the Western-backed coalition that has managed to install a puppet government in Somalia. Reuter's reports that the puppet PM has sent an urgent plea to the Ugandans; please don't go.

This is Uganda playing hardball. What they're saying is that if we want them to do our dirty work fighting the Shabaab in Somalia, then we're going to have to look the other way when it comes to their hanky-panky in Congo.

Who do they think they are?

You'd almost think they see themselves as an independent nation or something!