Has Kofi Annan been handed the poisoned chalice?

Slightly more than a decade after Kofi Annan was accused of doing too little to nip in the bud the genocide in Rwanda, he has gotten a chance to use his diplomatic skills to save my country Kenya from spiraling into the abyss of all out ethnic war. Following disputed election results in which the Electoral Commission of Kenya declared Mwai Kibaki as president and the main opposition party immediately rejected as the result of a rigged process, widespread violence broke out in the country. Initially seen as opposition supporters protesting the results of a flawed process, the violence has since morphed into an inter-ethnic war pitting ethnic groups that largely supported the Kibaki versus those that largely supported Raila Odinga, the main opposition candidate.
In the few days that he has been in the country trying to mediate between Kibaki and Raila, Annan has quickly come to realize that the election results were but the spark that lit the fire but not the fuel. A mix of historical ethnic prejudice and suspicions, real and perceived economic and political marginalization of certain groups, power at all costs politicians and politics based on personalities rather than ideology have finally brought Kenya to the brink of disaster.
With the hardened positions taken by Kibaki and Raila and the deterioration of the violence in the last couple of days, it seems that Kofi Annan has been handed the proverbial poisoned chalice in being entrusted as the chief mediator who can convince the protagonists to bring an end to the hostilities and achieve a negotiated settlement that will lead Kenya back to the path of sanity. Will he rise to the occasion and in small measure get atonement for his failure in Rwanda?

china cautious over citigroup "investment"

106 years ago, citigroup was the first american bank to establish operations in china. today, citigroup continues to do business under various names including citifinancial and citibank, and has generally enjoyed a profitable existence in china.

fast forward a few years, citigroup's holdings in the united states (us), and by extension china, is experiencing financial turbulence. the crisis began after mortgage loans made to high risk borrowers with lower income, and/or lesser credit rankings, began to default on their mortgage loans. the high default rates were quite severe, rising 11% in ten years to 20% by 2006. this resulted in the bursting of the housing bubble in the united states. the situation is so dire that yesterday, the american federal reserve chairman ben bernanke threw his weight behind proposals for short term actions to stimulate economic growth to ward off an american election year recession.

due to the crisis, citigroup and other cash strapped american financial institutions have incurred major losses and have been wooing foreign investors to help them fill up their fund gaps and to expand business. citigroup in particular, has already secured 5 billon euros (7.5 us dollars) from the abu dhabi investment authority (adia). this cash infusion guaranteed adia a 4.9% stake in citigroup as of november 26, 2007. citigroup also planned to raise roughly 1.3 billion euros (2 billion american dollars) by selling a stake to china development bank (cdb). however, according to the wall street journal's web site, the chinese government is not too eager to see this deal through and the government has deemed the speculation on citigroup's part as 'a conjecture'.

cdb received a 13.6 billion euros (20 billion us dollar) cash infusion from china investment corp (cic) and is financially capable of paying the 1.3 billion euros for a stake in citigroup. moreover, china has been on a global acquisition frenzy lately, including a 3.4 billion euro (5 billion us dollars) investment in morgan stanley's equity units which are convertible into common shares. cic planned to invest 47.6 billion euros (70 billion us dollars) in overseas markets and still has a balance of about 40.8 billion euros (60 billion us dollars).

china must have a secret plan up her sleeve as she would rather forego an opportunity to own part of citigroup given the reasonable prices and the opportunity to purchase additional bargaining power when dealing with america on economic matters.

usb 3.0, digital rights management and you

universal serial bus (usb) 3.0 connectors were recently displayed at the just concluded 2008 international consumer electronics show (ces) in las vegas nevada. usb 3.0 theoretically supports 600 megabytes per second, that is, ten times the current usb 2.0 standard. this is a huge jump from usb 1.1's 187 kilobytes per second.

the usb implementers forum (usb-if) displayed the standard's connectors but not any functional devices. usb 3.0 connectors are deeper than their predecessors and retain usb 1.1 and 2.0 compatibility. they are deeper because usb 3.0 pins are actually behind the pins that support usb 1.1 and 2.0 specifications. don't go rushing to your nearest electronics store just yet, devices supporting the new specification won't be generally available until 2010.

i find usb 3.0's upcoming release rather interesting because in december 2007, the usb-if announced they are developing a usb cable that supports digital rights management (drm). this should come as no surprise as agere systems, apple computer, hewlett-packard, intel, nec and microsoft are a few of the forum's notable members. these members also have another thing in common; they have a stake in the successful, albeit legal delivery of high definition (hd) video content.

digital video content providers, primarily hollywood, hope to protect their valuable works as more consumers embrace hd video content on their portable devices. devices such as apple's ipod and microsoft's zune will most likely be connected to compliant computers, televisions, cable boxes and satellite receivers via a usb 3.0 cable. the usb-if hopes that the cable will limit rampant piracy that continues to plague the music industry.

the new cable will include support for intel's proprietary high-bandwidth digital content protection (hdcp). current plans are to compress video as it is transmitted though hdcp also supports encryption. the twist, the cable will not transmit drm enabled hd video data unless it receives an ok from a drm application. so anyone trying to circumvent drm needs to come up with a way of spoofing the encryption or tricking drm applications on both devices into think they are connected to legitimate cables.

my two cents if the entertainment industry cares to listen:
consumers don't want drm. drm in any form will hurt the sale of digital content. it has been proven time and time again that whenever drm enabled devices or content is introduced to the consumer, it takes some hacking group a month or less to defeat all the great copy protection features.

major music labels are finally providing drm free audio content. the new york times reports that sony bmg just announced that they will avail their entire music catalog in mp3 format on amazon.com by the end of this month. this follows emi's decision to avail its catalog in mp3 format on itunes.

prediction: drm will lose to the consumer. don't think so...

IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there. posted by glenn reynolds.

pre-election kisumu: part one of four

i was going through joseph karoki's picture blog today and couldn't help notice the pain, suffering and despair documented in most of the pictures. i decided to go through pictures i have taken in the recent past to see if i could find anything that captured life for the common mwananchi (citizen) before the 2007 elections.

this is the first of a four part series that chronicles life in kisumu before the 2007 elections. pictures were taken at random and are presented in no particular order. if you have pictures you'd like to share, contact me at: the dot wocha at gmail dot com. please include a caption with each image. you can also post a link to pictures in the comment section.

help is urgently needed. to help with the current devastation in kenya, please donate to sukuma kenya, mama mikes or the kenyan red cross. if you are in kenya, volunteer within your community and help the less fortunate. for a list of kenyan bloggers covering kenya's 2007 elections and its aftermath, check white african.

caption: vegetable vendors at jubilee market popularly known as chiro mbero




caption: buying onions from my auntie. my family has been her customer for over 20 years




caption: street kids going through trash looking for recyclable plastic bottles at the municipal fish market




caption: street kids playing poker at a stall behind the municipal fish market




caption: boda boda owners waiting for clients at the municipal fish market




caption: billboard at the entrance of the jomo kenyatta grounds which has been reinovated considerably




caption: fruit vendor at oile market. oile market is an open air market in front of jubilee market




caption: fruit vendor at oile market




caption: kisumu municipal market's main entrance




caption: pottery vendor's stall in front for jubilee market




caption: central bank of kenya




caption: western union billboard




caption: midday traffic with imperial hotel in the background




caption: mobile phone vendor, literally. driving around in a van means increased customers and lower permit fees.




caption: "vote for your orange. we all refute the draft". message reminding kisumu residents to vote against the draft constitution in december 2005. orange refers to raila's orange democratic movement (odm)




caption: taxi and boda bodas waiting for clients at alpha house




caption: format supermarket




caption: midday traffic with kenya commercial bank (kcb) in the background




caption: kenya national assurance house before it was bought by maseno university




caption: private residence in milimani, close to state house kisumu




caption: kisumu molasses plant in operation under spectre international ltd, a [raila] odinga family business




caption: kisumu molasses plant




caption: view from otonglo on kisumu busia road. grain silos and government's incomplete provincial building in background




caption: view from otonglo




caption: otonglo kiosk owner heading home after buying supplies in town




caption: tuk tuk driver adding fuel at a petrol station in jua kali [industrial area].




caption: vendor selling refreshments and snacks at the kisumu bus park




caption: cyclist and pedestrian in front of uchumi hyper




caption: stalled ugandan oil tanker unable to make it up a steep hill on the kisumu busia road




caption: kisumu molasses plant




caption: mobile phone vendor attending to clients at the bank square




caption: crown paints' direction and distance pole at the bank square - between barclays bank and bank of baroda




caption: east african building society (eabs) building



caption: shoe vendor along kisumu kakamega road




caption: boda boda owner negotiating fare

fbi ignores surveillance phone bills

apparently the fbi is too busy chasing down terrorists and other persons of interest to pay attention to its phone bills. a couple of telecommunications carriers (telcos) have disconnected covert surveillance lines used by the fbi's field offices due to late or non payment. the united states justice department released a super edited version of the audit report that concludes:

FBI's FMS lacks the controls necessary to prevent theft and, as such, is not an effective financial system for FBI employees to use to account for and approve confidential case funds. In addition, the audit found that the FBI has not established sufficient guidance and consistent procedures necessary to track and pay telecommunication surveillance bills accurately and timely. The audit also identified areas where field division oversight should be improved to further mitigate the risk of improper use of confidential case funds.

if the fbi is so inefficient at managing its internal [financial] affairs, how effective are they at other more important operations like say... the much touted war on terror? their bookkeeping is so bad that in june 2006, one of their employees pleaded guilty to stealing $25,000. sigh.

i'm curious as to why the telcos disconnected the lines. was it a public relations stunt or are relationships souring? was it a pr move to counter the public outcry over the telco's participation in the united states national security agency's (nsa) warrantless electronic surveillance program?

since 2006, some of these telcos have enjoyed lucrative deals brokered by neocons in the current bush administration. what's a few thousand dollars in unpaid fbi bills yet the same intelligence community (doing business as the nsa) is paying an undisclosed amount of tax payer money for a peak at at&t's backbone data? are relationships between telcos and the united states intelligence community souring or are telcos preparing for a possible democratic white house come 2009?

maybe there is nothing to it, the telco billing systems just worked as they should: no payment, no service, no exceptions.

introducing the wocha

who is the wocha? well, i hail from kisumu, a town in kenya's nyanza province.

i'm not really sure how i convinced myself into starting a blog. even though my good friend e believes i'll be good at it, there is a big difference between oral (which i prefer) and written expression. there are many reasons why i should not be writing anything for the public to read. i hate proof reading. thanks to instant and text messaging, i have thrown out everything i learnt in primary school relating to spelling and grammar. i prefer to write in lower case. punctuation? errrr, what's that? need i continue?

i digress.

i've worked in the information technology sector for a few years now. back in the day, if you had an email mailbox, you were somebody to reckon with. the challenge then was finding a computer in kisumu with an internet connection. i think there were less than twenty people with a web enabled computer. sad part is that they didn't even use them, it was more of a status symbol. in july 1996, sabeer bhatia and jack smith gave hotmail to the world. six or so months later, i had my very own hotmail mailbox created using a netscape navigator browser. the account creation process was so simple, it took less than a minute to complete the registration form but maybe five or more minutes to submit it cause the internet connection was sooooooooooooo slow!

... 100 or so internet years go by ...

today, the digerati proclaim that if one does not have an email mailbox then there is something very wrong with them. one is required to have an account with at least three social networking sites such as facebook, myspace, friendster, etc. additionally, one must have a cell phone that lets them continuously connect to these social networking sites in addition to taking digital pictures, sending text messages, listening to fm radio stations, checking web mail, anything but calling and talking to someone.

since i'm too lazy to maintain a social networking account, i'll try my hand at blogging and see where it goes. i have mixed feelings about it cause i don't even know what i'll be blogging about! i guess i could start by posting at least one article a week. my interests include global economy, global politics and information technology. i also recruited my childhood friend to contribute some articles, he's a much better writer.

please send article ideas to: the dot wocha at gmail dot com. if you have a thought regarding any of the future articles on this blog, make yourself heard by posting a comment.

wow, my first article is done! time to publish...