WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-08-02 Time: 20:00:01 Posted By: News Poster
By Jenerali Ulimwengu
Nairobi – It’s regrettable that the AU Kampala Summit that was called to discuss all-important issues related to maternal and child health was hijacked and forced to focus on Somalia, its failed state and the terrorism it seems ready to spread across this region.
In a way, it would have been well nigh impossible to hold a meeting of this nature in the Ugandan capital without the recent bombing there and its tragic consequences casting a long, dark shadow over proceedings.
Even if the heads of state in attendance had limited their references to the tragedy to messages of condolence, the amount of time expended on the subject would still have been considerable.
In the event, they devoted whole sessions to Somalia, the threat it poses to the region and ways and means of addressing the menace, and all but relegated the central theme of the conference to the backburner.
This, in my view, was a serious mistake. We are all called upon to condole with our sisters and brothers in Uganda in these dire circumstances, and hope that those who lost kin and friends will find the fortitude and resilience to carry on.
In addition, it will be a sad day indeed when our leaders accede to the dictates of terror and abandon a salutary mission such as the one Ugandan and Burundian troops are carrying out in Somalia because of terrorist blackmail.
Instead, I agree with the decision to buttress the intervention and upgrade it to combative status, or whatever the big men decide on our behalf. Still, if the issues that had been planned for the Kampala summit were to play any fiddle at all, it should have been first, not second fiddle.
We need no extensive interrogation of cause and effect to realise that failed states — of which Somalia is the pre-eminent exemple — do not become failed states by becoming failed states; they have a genesis. In simple, workaday parlance, a failed state is one that can no longer deliver the public goods that it was set up to deliver.
It cannot provide the basic needs of the people, such as education, health and social services. It looks on as its people starve or die of preventable diseases. It cannot assure the most rudimentary forms of citizen protection, including basic security and justice.
In the end, it descends into a fractured “lootocracy,” wherein the state cannibalises itself even as it devours and pulverises everything else in its path, in a devil-may-care orgy of self-destruction. It should be easy to recognise these states, beyond Somalia, even if they are only in varying stages of failing, on their way to being thoroughly failed.
I suggest they all start by not taking care of the most vulnerable members of their society, their women and children, in the process of bearing and being born, respectively. It seems to me that any state that fails to pay heed to these most vulnerable of the vulnerable cannot be bothered by anything else except the stomachs of rulers who want to outdo Siad Barre, both in longevity in power and appetite for looting.
The carnage in Kampala remains a heinous crime whose perpetrators are as despicable as despicable can be. Still, we should never lose sight of the origins of that madness, a devilish creed that besmirches a faith that sets so much store by peace and tolerance.
Al Shabaab, the so-called Youth, are exactly what follows when states make themselves redundant by not doing their job, allowing anarchy to take over and run the show.
The link between Al Shabaab’s terror and the failure of the Kampala summit to discuss maternal and child health is entirely organic: If our states refuse, out of greed and incompetence, fail to deliver on their promises — in Kampala we heard them say they had no resources to deliver health but they had enough to beef up the military in Mogadishu — there will be more terror.
It seems to me that there are three types of state in Africa: Post-conflict, in-conflict and pre-conflict. More on that another day.
Jenerali Ulimwengu, chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper, is a political commentator and civil society activist based in Dar es Salaam.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 2 August 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201008020976.html?viewall=1