[kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace

Wed Dec 10 09:48:16 EAT 2008

Guys, 

why do we dig deep into what doesn't matter most?

Well, to me this shows what a true Kenyan is, but can't we change for development?

Regards. 

Loa.

________________________________
From: Brian Munyao Longwe <blongwe at gmail.com>
To: jlobore at yahoo.com
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2008 9:40:42 AM
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace

OK. This is interesting, please point any single item or point in my Hydrrabad presentation that was either wrong, empty or abusive..

I and others have already pointed out what was wrong, empty and abusive in both your and Maina's submissions last week.

And please stick to the point, and focus your response?

B

Sent from my iPhone

On 10 Dec 2008, at 9:08 AM, "Robert Alai" <alai.robert at gmail.com> wrote:

Brian

I also beg to differ with you. Neither you nor Githongo has the capacity to determine inanity of anybody. We should have a committee which has that capacity but it can not rest on an individual. Otherwise I will say that your submission in india was inane? Would you agree. Its an abuse as long as you use the word wrongly. 

Abuse

tr.v. a·bused, a·bus·ing, a·bus·es 
1. To use wrongly or improperly; misuse: abuse alcohol; abuse a privilege.
2. To hurt or injure by maltreatment; ill-use.
3. To force sexual activity on; rape or molest.
4. To assail with contemptuous, coarse, or insulting words; revile.
5. Obsolete To deceive or trick.

Alai

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Brian Longwe <blongwe at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Walu,

I'm sorry but I beg to differ. Githongo's comment was perfectly in order. The tirade witnessed last week was definitely "inane" i.e. having little sense or importance - refer below. Kwani what dictionary do you use? 

in·ane adj
1.    having little sense or importance
2.    empty, insubstantial, or void

n
great emptiness, especially the perceived emptiness of outer space (archaic)

On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 6:26 PM, John Walubengo <jwalu at yahoo.com> wrote:

JM,

I  agree. I just checked the dictionary and the word 'inane' is indeed  quite abusive. Githongo therefore becomes the 1st victim to go onto "moderated-mode" as we speak.

As for the so called 'corrupt' (whoever they maybe), the position remains that the list is really neither equipped nor designed to burst corrupt agents.  But that said, it all depends on the angle one decides to take concerning (ICT) corruption. Specifically, general guidelines regarding libel or character assassination must prevail otherwise things get reduced very fast to shouting marches - at the expense of progressive ICT development.

walu.
--- On Mon, 12/8/08, John Maina <j.maina at ymail.com> wrote:

> From: John Maina <j.maina at ymail.com>

> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace
> To: "P Gitau Githongo" <pgitau at githongo.com>, "John Walubengo" <jwalu at yahoo.com>, odhiambo at gmail.com

> Cc: "KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions" <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
> Date: Monday, December 8, 2008, 4:27 PM

> Walu
>
> Is inane chatter not an abuse? Or are there some who are
> allowed to abuse the people on this mailing list?
>
> What do people gain in defending the corrupt? Why do we
> fear to hear the people who are incorrigibly corrupt being
> rebuked?
>
> JM
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: P Gitau Githongo <pgitau at githongo.com>
> To: j.maina at ymail.com
> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
> <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
> Sent: Monday, December 8, 2008 3:14:06 PM
> Subject: Re: [kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace
>
>
> Alice,
>
> Might I suggest that you add a guiding principle to the
> mailing list rules,
> along the lines of..
>
> 'Contributors should seek to improve or benefit the
> understanding and
> knowledge of others as well as their own.'
>
> You could then urge contributors to gauge their own
> statements according to
> such a principle before forwarding to the group.
>
> Hopefully that way, the rest of us seeking to practice the
> above principle
> are not subject to the kind of deluge of inane chatter seen
> last week.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> kictanet-bounces+pgitau=githongo.com at lists.kictanet.or.ke
> [mailto:kictanet-bounces+pgitau=githongo.com at lists.kictanet.or.ke]
> On Behalf
> Of alice at apc.org
> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2008 8:45 AM
> To: pgitau at githongo.com
> Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
> Subject: [kictanet] Vitriol in cyberspace
>
> Dear All,
>
> Could we comment on the presentation that Brian (a Kenyan)
> made at the IGF
> currently taking place in Hyderabad. It was an excellent
> presentation on
> access befitting the theme of the forum: "Internet for
> all" and he has
> done us proud.
>
> It is also great to have quite a large Kenyan delegation at
> this India IGF
> contributing Kenyan specific IG issues.  The IGF is a
> process/event/forum
> that  had not received enough attention both at the
> national and regional
> level.
> ---------
>
> I will also take this opportunity to remind listers of some
> of the
> KICTAnet mailing list rules:
>
>     * Please mind your manners:
>     *  Be polite - virtual members are real not a
> cyberspace borg with no
> feelings.
>     *  Watch your words. Kick the bad language - People are
> listening.
>     *  Laws are laws - What's real in the real world
> are the same in
> cyberspace.
>     *  Don't send rude or offensive  e-mails or
> postings.
>     *  Be ethical in your posting. Don't lie,
> plagiarize, defame, or
> deliberately do harm to another KICTANet forum user.
>
>
> If you are not able to respect these simple rules...the
> KICTANet
> administrator will have no choice but to suspend you!
>
> best
> alice
>
>
>
>
> Binaifer Nowrojee wrote:
> >
> > For those who have not read this opinion piece, I
> would urge you to do
> so and reflect on it.  Why do we need to bring down Brian
> Longwe on the
> basis of his nationality?  Why not celebrate his success?
> Why assume
> that a non-Kenyan will not positively contribute to Kenya?
> >
> > Best
> >
> > Binaifer Nowrojee
> >
> >
> >
> > Barack Obama and the graveyard of hope
> >
> > Wambui Mwangi (2008-08-11)
> >
> > http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/comment/50078
> >
> > Printer friendly version
> >
> > There are 2 comments on this article.
> >
> > I am finding it very difficult to join in the
> jubilation about Senator
> Barack Obama. Not that I want to deny the man his victory,
> but my
> impulse to celebrate keeps deflating on the idea that the
> best thing
> that happened to little Barack was not growing up in Kenya.
> >
> > I have been imagining alternative trajectories for him
> if he had come to
> know the world through the eyes of a Kenyan citizen, if his
> mother and
> grandparents had not rescued him from our chaos and
> contradictions and
> brought him up somewhere his intellect and talent could
> grow.
> >
> > If he had grown up here, and had he somehow managed to
> retain most
> elements of his current self, he would have been another
> outstanding,
> intelligent and competent Luo man in our midst: and he
> would have been
> killed.
> >
> > Yes, we would have assassinated a Barack Obama if he
> had remained ours,
> with us, one of us here in this schizophrenic cauldron we
> call home.
> This is not going to stretch the imagination of any Kenyan
> - after all,
> when we had that incredibly good-looking and charismatic
> home-grown
> hero, Tom Mboya, we shot him to death.
> >
> > And when that austerely intellectual and elegant
> leader, Robert Ouko,
> threatened to look overly intelligent to the world, we
> killed him too.
> We killed Pio Gama Pinto and we killed JM Kariuki. There is
> no reason to
> suppose that Barack Obama, whose integrity of purpose and
> stringent
> sense of ethics even his enemies concede, would have
> survived his Kenyan
> roots.
> >
> > He is much too intelligent, too charged with the
> promise of history, too
> bold in his claim to a shining destiny, too full of the
> audacity of
> hope, for us to have let him survive. Kenya would have
> killed Barack
> Obama, or at least his dream, as we inevitably destroy, in
> one way or
> another, the best and the boldest of us. Goldenberg whistle
> blower David
> Munyakei's challenge to his country to be bigger than
> our greed was met
> with a whimper, and then with rapid abandonment. We did not
> deserve him,
> either.
> >
> > As for John Githongo, he should have known better than
> to take the idea
> of public ethics seriously - this is Kenya, after all. Let
> him enlighten
> people at Oxford instead; such considerations are too
> virtuous for us,
> too sensible, too conducive to a promising future. We do
> not even remark
> on the haunting wastage of all this shining accomplishment
> - Micere Mugo
> sings her lyrical poetry for Americans, and we do not even
> know enough
> to mourn the loss.
> >
> > And yet we are all enchanted with the power of the
> idea of Barack Obama,
> the hope of him, the beauty of his life's trajectory,
> the universe of
> possibilities and probabilities that it conjures for the
> least of the
> rest of us. If someone's cousin's friend's
> neighbour makes it to the
> United States... then we all have a chance. We have a
> strange
> predilection for schizophrenic loves and loyalties; we let
> geography
> dictate our alliances and imaginary lines decide our
> friends. It is as
> if our social contract states that here, at home, we are
> obliged to
> behave like fighting rats to each other but when abroad,
> when released
> from the shackles of kin and clan and conclave, we can fly
> and soar and
> master the sky.
> >
> > When Wangari Maathai is abroad, we feel that her Nobel
> Prize is partly
> represented in each of our Kenyan living rooms; when she
> comes home, she
> is just another Kikuyu politico. We preen about our
> athletes winning yet
> another international competition to anybody who will give
> us half a
> chance, but when they are at home we turn them into more
> fodder for
> militias.
> >
> > Caine Prize winners are Kenyan by automatic assent,
> but Binyavanga
> Wainaina is a Kikuyu writer when at home and Yvonne Owuor
> is indelibly a
> Luo - we shrink them to fit the midget-sized visions we
> have of
> ourselves.
> >
> > It is clear to all of us, and the evidence continues
> to accrue, that we
> have, collectively, a certain global competence, as
> Kenyans, that we
> produce individuals of substance and historical purpose.
> >
> > Being Kenyan, however, we prefer to drown in the
> pettiness of our
> parochial quarrels when at home, and if one of us threatens
> to be too
> hopeful, too ambitious, too intelligent, too creative or
> too
> inspirational to fit into our trivial little categories of
> hatred and
> suspicion, we kill them, or exile them from our societies,
> or we just
> cause them to run away inside, hiding from us and from
> themselves the
> grandeur of their souls, the splendid landscapes of their
> imagined
> tomorrows.
> >
> > Nothing but the worst for us, at home. We recognise
> each other by our
> most rancid rhetoric. We insist upon it, we cultivate it,
> we elevate it
> to an art form: Kenyan, and quarrelsome.
> >
> > Kenyan, and clannish. Kenyan, and counter-productive.
> Kenyan, and
> self-destructive. Kenyan, and consistently heart-breaking.
> Genius
> everywhere, and not a thought to be had. Promise and
> potential
> everywhere, and not an opportunity to be had. Money
> everywhere, and not
> an honest penny to be earned. Helicopters aplenty, but no
> help for the
> needy. A land awash in Cabinet ministers and poverty.
> >
> > I have been watching Kenyans getting high on
> Obamamania, and I am
> wondering what we are so happy about? It is perhaps that we
> are
> beginning to acknowledge what we should always have known -
> given a half
> a chance, an ever so slightly conducive context, Kenyans
> are more likely
> to over-achieve than not. At the faintest provocation,
> Kenyans will leap
> past expectations without breaking their stride or breaking
> a sweat,
> especially if they happen to have escaped the imprisoning
> edifice we
> call home and found foreign contexts to flourish in, no
> matter how
> alien.
> >
> > I went to a town in the Canadian Arctic once, in the
> far north, where in
> summer the sun shines even at midnight and in the winter
> the world is an
> endless landscape of ice and snow. Here, far, far away from
> home, where
> nothing was familiar except the gentleness of elderly Inuit
> women and
> the comforting weirdness of the white residents, I was told
> that the
> local dentist had, for many years, been a Kenyan. Everybody
> said he had
> been an excellent dentist, out there in the desert of the
> cold. I was
> unsurprised.
> >
> > We are an adventurous people, we Kenyans, and we take
> to the world
> outside our home as if born to a conquistador culture - we
> are brave and
> brash and bold, out there. We buy and sell things, and make
> money at it,
> out there. We go to school and excel and cover ourselves
> with
> accreditations, out there. We win things, out there. We get
> prizes, out
> there. We are at our best, out there.
> >
> > However, at home, for some reason we refuse to either
> acknowledge or
> examine - we have chosen simply to set aside this capacity.
> Here, at
> home, nothing but the very lowest common denominator will
> do; nothing
> but the basest and most brutal aspects of our selves are to
> be presented
> to each other; nothing but the most cynical manipulation is
> the basis of
> our political space. We prefer to be ruled by individuals
> whose
> mediocrity is matched only by their mendacity, here at
> home.
> >
> > We prefer to abdicate our adult responsibilities and
> capacity for reason
> to "leaders" whose lack of virtue is as legendary
> as our attractively
> exotic pastoralists. We do not only waste talent, here at
> home - we go
> out of our way to suppress and repress it. We do not only
> deny dreams,
> here in Kenya - we devour them, and ask each other,
> "Who do you think
> you are?" As if the success of another is an affront.
> >
> > In Kenya, grand vision and soaring imagination is
> illegitimate; here,
> they just call you naive. Out there, you stand a chance of
> becoming a
> hero; at home, you will have nothing but the taste of ashes
> in your
> mouth. Mothers, take your children abroad.
> >
> > Barack Obama has written two books, in which he
> discusses ideas. Ideas.
> This is a man with vision and conviction, and enough good
> ideas that
> even those who do not like the pigmentally-advantaged are
> listening, and
> changing their minds.
> >
> > Even those who think that his name sounds suspiciously
> like a
> terrorist's are reading his books and listening to his
> speeches, and
> changing their minds. This is a man with interesting and
> inspiring
> things to say - which disqualifies him from any Kenyan-ness
> we would
> have liked to claim.
> >
> > Americans like the image of them that Barack Obama has
> painted in words;
> which Kenyan leader would dare to build dreams bigger than
> his roots?
> Which Kenyan leader would ever be so foolish as to attempt
> inspiration
> instead of instigation?
> >
> > Barack Obama has seduced the world by the power of his
> persuasiveness,
> and while Kenyans raise another glass to the
> accomplishments of "one of
> our own," it seems clear to me that we gave up our
> rights to him when we
> gave up our hopes for ourselves. When we settled for
> incompetence, and
> corruption, and callousness, we defined ourselves out of
> his universe,
> and out of his dreams.
> >
> > We rejected Barack Obama-ness when we allowed those
> pangas to slash our
> dreams, when we watched our hopes spiral away in smoke. We
> allowed the
> ones who had done this to become the only mirrors of
> ourselves, and then
> squelched our disgraced selves back to the mire of our
> despondency.
> >
> > Barack Obama cannot be a Kenyan, and Kenyans cannot
> grasp Barack Obama's
> dream. We have already despaired of it, and of ourselves.
> His dream
> would have died with ours, here at home, here in the
> graveyard of hope.
> >
> > But oh, how we yearn to see ourselves reflected in his
> eyes...
> >
> >
> > *Wambui Mwangi is an assitant professor of Political
> Science at the
> University of Toronto, Canada. This article first appeared
> inThe East
> African, June 15 2008.
> >
> > *Please send comments to editor at pambazuka.org or
> comment online at
> http://www.pambazuka.org/
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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>
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-- 
Brian Munyao Longwe
e-mail: blongwe at gmail.com
cell:  + 254 722 518 744
blog : http://zinjlog.blogspot.com
meta-blog: http://mashilingi.blogspot.com

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